From your experience, what is the relationship between pride in yourself and cruelty towards others? Why is that so? (Serendipity Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 978).
Pride
based upon utter certitude about what is owed to me (in contrast to
what I owe to God and others) is the basis of the cruelest pride.
And I certainly don't have to be objectively deprived in any
significant way to become impassioned by a false sense of
self-righteousness. I then lose all sense of being blessed and
instead find myself being put upon without limit. This observation is
based upon my cruelty once to the staff at Subway over a petty amount
of money and what I took to be ambiguity in the listing of prices on
their menu board. I lost all sense of proportion and a thoroughgoing
cruelty to the staff prevailed. Despite that I would not in a
million years have traded the advantages of my position in terms of
work and salary for that of the staff serving me, I fancied I was
being sorely put upon and deprived—a sense of victimization
prevailed. Indeed, there were certainly victims that day, but I was
not one of them. In my wild ride of rectitude I gave up each and
every one of the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control
(Galatians 5:22-23 NIV). Thus, when I find these missing now, I look
to indicators of pride based upon self-centered expression of
certitude.
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