Grace-based Pride

Thursday 3/3/2011 4:36 AM

A couple of weeks ago I committed to change the inner voice I hear that tells me I am not good enough.  Over the past couple of weeks I have had a few times where I have been successful at this but the majority of the time I make some disparaging remark about myself.  The good news is that I recognize that I did it immediately afterward and see that I need to slow down my response time so I have a chance to think about what I will verbalize rather than simply reacting.

Today I read 2 Samuel 22:30, David’s response after successfully defeating the Philistines, “With your help I can advance against a troop; with my God I can scale a wall.”  Lewis Smedes makes some interesting observations that I should take to heart.  “A person who has experienced grace knows that what she is and what she has are gifts from God, so when she feels pride, she feels gratitude with the same impulse.  We could put the difference between graceless arrogance and grace-based pride this way: arrogance is pride without gratitude, while grace-given pride is nothing but gratitude.  A person with hubris thinks he is God.  A person with grace-based pride thanks his God.  Grace-based pride is a kind of elation, especially about something we have accomplished.  When we feel elation, we simply must share it; we have to show somebody what we have done so they can share our pride.”

Growing up I was always under the impression that pride was a bad thing and humility was to be sought out.  Verses like James 4:6, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble,” affirmed that point of view, so when I hear the phrase grace-based pride it seems oxymoronic.  The kind of elation described by Smedes is something I experience when I have accomplished something but I have always seen it as something negative instead of something positive.  Last week I received a copy of the article that will be printed in next month’s Math Teacher magazine.  I am proud of that accomplishment and I would like to share it with my colleagues and friends.  I recognize that the patterns I discovered, which generated the article, and the ability I had to discover the patterns were both made and given by God so I should be able to experience the grace-based pride Smedes describes.  But something inside me says that to mention it would be bragging and I would be trying to show off.  As a consequence I don’t say anything and I feel frustrated rather than elated.

David recognized that God gave him the ability to advance against a troop and to scale a wall and was also able to celebrate his accomplishments with others.  I would like to experience that same celebratory feeling without the tinge of guilt for being proud of what I have done.  However, the habits of a lifetime die hard.  My assigned reading today included Isaiah 58:8, a single verse removed from its context of what constitutes true fasting.  It says, “Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear.”  This morning God used that verse to give me hope that the light of God’s goodness will break forth in my life and that I can be healed from the feelings of frustration that are my constant companions to experience the elation of grace-based pride.