Pride At first glance, why does pride get the bad press it does? Afterall what exactly is wrong about feeling good about oneself and one's accomplishments?This world is already filled with people all too ready to bring one another down, mired in self doubt and in desperate need of role models.
Pride can mean a high sense of one's selfworth, unfortunately it can also spill too easily into damaging over estimation of one's self worth. while pride in one's intellect and pride of learning and achievement can reap benefits, pride taken to the extremes can manifest as hubris, arrogance, high-minded presumption and vainglory. Pride was the first sin that destroyed the calm of god's paradise and we are seeing all too clearly how inflated pride is playing out similarly on today's world stage.
Pride really does comes before a fall. The united states is the best example of a nation that is now slowly and painfully learning humility. The past few years witnessed an America that prided iteself on its exceptionalism, by the greatness of ts moral convictions , the superiority of its intelligence and the faultlessness of ites actions, unilateral or not. Engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought America into uncomfortable realisations of how far its pride has caused it to squander global goodwill and cooperation and made it a default number one enemy of most nations. President Obama's ascent to the hot seat is seeing America discipline itself into a strategy that is more engaging and involving, and most importantly, more humble.
Likewise, the money men of erstwhile banking and financial titans have also taken on equally mighty tumble. Hubris is at the root of the current global downturn, leading bankers to make bad bets based on the empty promises of easy riches, believing that they were untouchable financial whizzes. However, the more important lesson for us is how pride is exceedingly difficult to root out as displays of remorse or contrition are still late in coming.
Surely, it is the ulimate understatement to declare that the world needs a fix of humility more than ever, that it is time to move away from "me, myself and I" It was the sin of pride that caused Pharisees to reject Jesus Christ. Pride caused the fall of Babylon and men to spurn warnings and admonitions and to reject God's servants.Pride is the thin red line bewteen righteousness and self-righteousness, and skews our perception of reality. pride leads people and nations to act of incredible blindness and selfishness. We must move away from overblown opinions of self so that we can start to see ourselves and the truth of the world clearly.
