Better Relationships #9 - Love is Not Proud

 Love is not Proud 

This blog series in 1^st Corinthians 13 shows us how to love one another in the church. The previous post was how love does not boast and this one is how love is not proud. The words boast and proud essentially refer to the same problem of pride. Boasting is the outward manifestation of pride on the inside. Boasting is what a proud person does. Boast is a word that means “to brag.” Bragging is when we try to promote ourselves or build ourselves up. It is the idea of parading our abilities, accomplishments, or acquaintances. The Greek word that is translated proud literally means to be “puffed up.” It is the idea of something being bigger or more than it really is. It’s sort of the idea of inflation or the rising prices of groceries, housing, and everything else being puffed up. If you want a healthy church, healthy marriage, healthy family, you need love and you cannot have pride.

Pride keeps us from communicating. Many of our problems are communication problems. We misunderstand and misinterpret what others say to us. Human beings by and large are not good at mind-reading. It gets worse when we infuse this with pride. We assume what other people are saying and out of our pride, we assume that we are always right and others are always wrong.

Proverbs 12:15 “The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice.”

Proverbs 13:10 “Pride only breeds quarrels, but wisdom is found in those who take advice.”

Pride keeps us from listening to others in our lives who try to help us. The Pacific Conference of The Evangelical Church is a group of churches in a connectional relationship. There are reasons for this, and one of those reasons is accountability. Pride keeps us from admitting that we aren’t always right. There are times when we need others to hold us accountable. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.” Pride keeps us from listening to others in our lives who are trying to encourage us and build us up because we would need to admit that we have some blind spots.

Pride pushes us toward being critical of others. It says in Proverbs 21:24 “Mockers are proud and haughty; they act with boundless arrogance.” Pride reveals itself with a superior attitude that is constantly evaluating, correcting, and judging others. Pride criticizes and tears down others who many times have greater abilities, successes, or positions of authority. Pride causes us to try to make ourselves look better by putting others down.

A great example of pride is in the parable Jesus told about a Pharisee and the corrupt tax collector who both went to the temple to pray. Luke 18:11-12 “The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’” Pride hurts relationships because it causes us to be like the Pharisee and have an inflated opinion of ourselves but a low opinion of others, causing us to be arrogant and critical of others.

Once upon a time there was a guy who came to his pastor and said, “Pastor, I only have one talent.” The pastor asked, “What’s your talent? The man said, "I have the gift of criticism." The pastor said, "The Bible says that the guy who had only one talent went out and buried it. Maybe that’s what you ought to do with yours."