Pridefully Humble

Wow haven't really touched this in almost a year.  Been really busy with a thousand other things but through the prodding of one of my friends I have decided to make another attempt at keeping up my blog.  Over the past few day I have come to a conclusion that has actually helped me see the world in new light, actually it was more then one conclusion but for the sake of time I will only take about the first one in the post and the save the other for later this week (hopefully),  I realized that every single man on the face of the planet struggles with Pride.  If any man ever tells you he doesn't then he also struggles with telling the truth.  Pride itself comes in many forms though we as a society like to pigeon hole it into one or two of the big acts of being prideful.

One of the most common forms of Pride among men of coarse is in their physical prowess.  This is very akin to vanity but again that will be touched on later.  But being Proud in the fact that you can beat the snot out of the guy next to you in line at Publix is not the only form of Pride.  Many of us men are Proud in intellect, how much smarter we may be then the people we are around.  We are Proud of station; where we live, work, and play.  We are proud of our talents, whether this is in music or how talented we are leading or even how talented we are at metal or woodcrafting.  I just finished a book called The Language of God by Francis Collins who was the lead scientist on The Human Genome Project and a follower of Jesus Christ.  In his book he made the argument that genetics has shown the link in hereditary traits that go far beyond just our eye color.  Our cognitive ability or how well we can assimilate and retain new information, our skills and above average or below average athletic skill can all be linked to genes we inherited from our parents.  As he points out having a specific gene in most cases only predisposes you to a certain condition like having an increase risked to develop breast cancer and in the same way it predisposes you to having the ability to excel in academics.  However if you do nothing with that gift you could have the right 'gene' and still end up on the couch in your mom's basement at 30 with a box of Captain Crunch and bong in your lap.

These things that we all (men more so then women) take so much Pride in were gifts from God even before we had our first thought.  It is one thing to have pride in your work and being Proud.  Doing the best you can because you have pride in your work and desire to use the skills that God has blessed you with is completely different then belittling those around you for not measuring up to your standard.  None of us measure up to the standard set by Jesus yet he looks on us with love and devotion not contempt for our shortcomings.  If you find yourself looking on others with contempt and disdain for not being able to do something or achieve something as well as you can then you have just gotten an inside look at an area of your life that struggles with Pride.