Pride Comes Before

I tend to be naturally skeptical of a lot of things.  For some reason skepticism has been equated with intelligence in our modern world, but I don’t think my skepticism is because of intelligence.  My skepticism is due to pessimism.  Whenever something seems good, I tend to start questioning and doubting.  Unfortunately, this has affected my spiritual life a number of times.  I often tend to doubt God, even when I don’t have good reason to.  Many times I have asked God to help my faith, and he has worked in my life – taking care of me in amazing ways and always providing for me and my family, and even answering very specific prayers.  But for some reason, I still struggle with doubt sometimes.

I was caused to think about this with a recent reading from my daily Bible reading, which comes from Deuteronomy 8:17-18 –

“You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’  But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.” (NIV)

What this passage reminds me of is that these doubts are not so much about intelligence or pessimism, but about pride.  Maybe not always pride in the typical sense; I may not sit around thinking about how awesome I am and how I never have needed God.  Nevertheless, I do often fall into the trap of thinking that I can do things on my own.  It’s an easy trap to fall into.  We live in the world and we live in the flesh. So for us it is difficult sometimes to look from the outside and recognize that God is really at the heart of it all.  That’s the kind of pride I am talking about.  We allow ourselves to sit in our own world and imagine that it really is all about us.  That really, we can do it on our own. After all, it’s not like people who reject God somehow cease to live, right?

But here Moses reminds the people of Israel not to go down that path.  It is going to be easy for them, especially for people generations down the line, to imagine that it was all by their own power.  But in reality, it is not at all by their own anything!  They are not more powerful, not more righteous, not more cunning, not more deserving than anyone else.  But God has worked in them to bless them (and indeed the entire world) and so they should always remember that.  They should always remember that it is only through God that these blessings have come.

We need to remember the same thing.  God is at the heart of all life.  Every blessing, every good thing – life and existence itself is sustained by God.  So in a very real way, we need God in everything we do.  I know many people who have fallen away from God for various reasons, and I am sure that this kind of pride is at the heart of much of it.  Let us all remember that it is God who gives us the ability, not just to do this or that, but to “live, and move, and have our being.”  And let us glorify and honor him accordingly!