Week 8 - The Many Facets of Pride

Pride.
Not me.  Right?  Pride goeth before the fall.  Pride is one of the deadly sins.  I don't have that problem.  Definitely not me.

Sigh.

I learned a lot about pride this week.  The more I learned about it, the more I saw it within myself.
I was reading Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage by H. Wallace Goddard, and he talks about the battle we wage due to pride.

The scene is set for the battle because of our pride. Pride includes our own attunement to our own needs as the standard ofjudgment. Pride also includes the fact that we honestly believe that we understand our partners and what makes them tick. We presume to understand their thoughts, motives and intent better than even they themselves do.

We then go on to mentally review current and past violations of the other person, we define the problem, which almost always is solely our partner, and we declare innocence and guilt.  We focus on what we know, how we see things, and how we think things should have gone.

So we enter battle prepared to whack off the offending behaviors and traits in our partners. But our partners respond to the attacks with counter-offensives. The story our partners tell is very different from ours-filled with their innocence and our errors. We respond with indignation and fury. The battle is on...We leave each battle dismayed that our partners did not see our wisdom and respond with needed changes. And, hunched over a lonely campfire, we continue to grieve over our injuries and rehearse our opponents' offences.

It all sounds SO dramatic, and yet SO familiar.  I can replay many of the arguments my husband and I have had, and they almost all pretty much follow that play-by-play.  We each focus on our needs, and our definition of right/wrong/history/how things need to change, and that is exactly the wrong thing to do when you want a strong and healthy relationship.  Pride.  Not me, right?  It seems I may be one of the worst offenders.

Then lets review the basics, and maybe we can find a way to combat this deadly sin.
What is pride? Pride is...

• self-centered and conceited
• boastful and arrogant
• full of enmity or hatred
• hostile or in a state of opposition toward something
• competitive
• stubborn 
• fault-finding and murmuring
• gossiping and backbiting
• living beyond our means
• withholding love, gratitude, or forgiveness
• selfishness
• contention
• holding grudges

Whoa.  Please tell me that theres a cure.  Tell me that I can do something to overcome pride!  President Ezra Taft Benson comes to the rescue here and lets us know the antidote to the disease called pride.

The antidote to pride is humility.

It sounds so simple and so tiny.  Humility means you are meek and submissive.  You come with a broken heart and a contrite spirit.  Try to see things from others point of view, and acknowledge that there are other perspectives and experiences.  President Benson says "Either we can choose to be humble, or we can be compelled to be humble."  I have definitely been compelled a few times, and it was not fun, so I think I'm going to be working on humility.  

"Since the universal sin is pride, the heart of repentance is giving up our self-sufficiency, our sense that we can set our own lives right. We must turn ourselves over to God. He can make sense of our fractured and flawed lives. We cannot." - Goddard