A Pilgrim’s Progress

photo by halocyn

“Pride is a persistent problem for people who strive for spiritual growth.

Once in a while I go on a diet.  At those times, if I am in a restaurant, watching people eat, I find certain thoughts involuntarily running through my mind.  How can people eat like that?  How can they treat their bodies that way?  don’t they know that junk is lethal?  Have they no discipline, no self-restraint?  Are these the ones, then, of whom Paul wrote, “their end is destruction; their god is the belly?”

I get these thoughts even though- or perhaps more precisely, because- these people are eating the same things I ate yesterday before my diet began and will be eating again next week after I have given it up.

Here is the problem.  When I try to do something good, I am intensely aware of it.  And I tend to be aware of other people who aren’t putting forth the same effort.  Then I tend to think they should : I start to compare my effort with their sloth.  The result is pride, comparison, judgmentalism, and a lack of love. 

One of the hardest things in the world is to stop being the prodigal son without turning into the elder brother.”

John Ortberg; “Appropriate Smallness"

Ouch.  I asked for it.  And I got it.  “Show me the root of this inner struggle, Lord… what am I *really* wrestling with here?”  BOING.  Ask and you shall receive.  The problem?  Pride.  The worst kind of pride, for there are many… mine is the sneaky kind.  The kind cloaked in false humility and self aggrandizement.  You know, the kind that is proud of being humble… ouch.  Yeah… all the symptoms are there, there’s no denial of this diagnosis.  But where do I go from here? 

“So how can humility be pursued….?  The ministry of bearing with one another is more than simply tolerating difficult people.  It is also learning to hear God speak through them.  It is learning to be “for” them.  It is learning that the difficult person I have most to deal with is ME. 

This means that a part of the ministry to which I am called is to free people- repeatedly if necessary- from the little mental prisons to which I confine them.  It may be a person who criticizes me, whether justly or unjustly, lovingly or spitefully.  It may be the most difficult kind of person of all- one in whom I see the same struggles that rage inside me.

Bearing with them does not require becoming best friends, but means learning to wish them well, releasing our right to hurt them back, coming to experience our common standing before the cross.

It turns out that the life we have always wanted- when our wants are purified and true- is a life of humility.”

John Ortberg, The Life You’ve Always Wanted.

I feel rather  like Pilgrim. I’ve just discovered this bulky burden on my back.  With trembling fingers I’m reaching for the buckles that have held this pack in place for God only knows how long.  I’m laying it down in pursuit of the life I’ve always wanted.   Trading it in.  Extra baggage for appropriate smallness. After all, I've always wanted to be small =) Here's my chance.