Some thoughts on pride

Dan and I have been asked to give talks in church on Sunday--on the topics of humility and gratitude (not surprising, given the season). When I thought of my topic, I immediately thought of President Benson's classic talk on pride, where he argues that pride is essentially enmity between us and God, and us and our fellowmen. Ultimately, he suggests that the only real antidote to pride is humility.

I find, though, that as with so many talk preparations, what begins as a primarily intellectual exercise (although it shouldn't, I know!) ends up being something profoundly spiritual. As I reread President Benson's talk, I found myself increasingly convicted by his examples of pride. Jealousy? Unfavorable comparisons of myself to others? Check. Reliance on the praise of the world? Check. (Not for nothing was the graduate student association at Penn State called EGO, and their softball team the EGO-maniacs; something about intellectual attainments seems concomitant with an increasing ego). Someday, I hope, I will have a sense of self derived wholly from my relationship with God--but I confess, I'm not there yet. I still rely too much on the praise of those around me (particularly praise of my intelligence) to affirm my sense of self worth. I've been like this as long as I can remember: I remember as an overwhelmed freshman in college walking around BYU's campus and reminding myself that I must not be stupid, because after all they'd given me a scholarship to be there. (But only constant self-reminders served to convince me, sort of, that I had a right to be there). I'm not proud of this. I hope someday to out grow this tendency.

And I suppose I find myself also convicted of a kind of pride that uses an inflated belief in one's own intelligence to justify a sense of superiority. Yes--on occasion I have been known to be a snob. I suppose that is why I was so moved by this passage by Elder Maxwell (reprinted in the December 2008 Liahona): "Since knees often bend long before minds, holding back this 'part' deprives God’s work of some of mankind’s very best intellects. Far better to be meek like Moses, who learned things he 'never had supposed' (Moses 1:10). Yet, sadly, brothers and sisters, in the subtle interplay of agency and identity, there is so much hesitation. The surrender of the mind is actually a victory, because it then introduces us to God’s stretching and 'higher' ways! (Isaiah 55: 9)." We don't rescind our claim to intelligence when we bow ourselves to God's will; we enhance it.

This is what I want: the kind of mind and will that puts itself wholeheartedly in the service of God, laying aside lesser questions of self, and in the process becoming much more. In another talk I found, Marlin K. Jensen includes a powerful quote by John Ruskin about humility: "the first test of a truly great man is his humility. . . . I do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power. . . . [But really] great men . . . have a curious . . . feeling that . . . greatness is not in them, but through them. . . . And they see something Divine . . . in every other man . . . , and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful." This, I think, is the kind of person I would hope to be.