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blogging, culture, faith, healing, pride/shame, redemption, wounding
I’ve written about the pride/shame dichotomy many times because something that I have learned in my walk, is that in order to really build a relationship with Christ one must surrender their pride. That is what to submit means, to yield. To yield what? Your pride.
What is pride? Pride is ego, self, vanity. It is not about feeling good about yourself and your accomplishments. In common language I call it “too much of me and not enough of Him.” All in good Humor here, but He simply cannot fill me up if I already full of myself. There’s just no room.
In life when one has been someone’s bit of collateral damage, in order to heal properly, one must yield their pride. I know of no other way to allow His healing to flow through us, except to lay pride down at the foot of the cross and to allow Him to fix what has been broken. It’s not easy, it’s not pleasant, and many people don’t like hearing that, but there are huge fruits to be found there. When we let go of our pride, we also let go of our wounding, our offense, our shame, our bitterness, our anger. It is often a process that takes some time, but it is so worth it. Who wants to lug around all those rocks your entire life, when you can trade them in for redemption and healing?
It is totally contrary to what the world teaches, which tends to be, build up “self-esteem” (pride,) demand justice, seek revenge, nourish and nurture your legitimate offense. We tend to validate people’s anger, to encourage their resentment, to instruct them to find other like-minded people and to celebrate mutual indignation….sometimes for years.
Don’t get me wrong, there is a time for righteous anger and people’s offense may be totally valid and justified. Pride is a normal, healthy response to having been wounded. It is natural to want to wall oneself off and to blame others who really are probably to blame. The problem is that when we do that, we enable them to continue wounding us. They’ve already hurt us once, to cling to wounded pride allows them to continue hurting us.
Letting go of pride when you have been hurt is not so easy. It is counter intuitive. Sometimes people fear that if they let go of those wounds they may walk right back into the same situation. I have found the precise opposite to be true, those who do not seek healing, tend to repeat the behavior that got us hurt in the first place, over and over again. It is almost like a script we are compelled to follow until we get it right.
Pride is really painful. Letting go of it is also painful, but once done, there is freedom to be found. One reason it is so painful is that it often forces us to confront our own responsibility, our own wrong doing, our shame. That is extremely challenging when one has been hurt by someone else, because our instincts tell us we’ve done nothing wrong. The thing is, “wrong” can be a subjective thing, it can simply mean we feel as if we’ve let ourselves down by allowing something bad to happen to us. Or perhaps we are “wrong” for clinging so fearfully to unforgiveness. Perhaps we are “wrong” for clinging to fear rather than love. Whatever it is, those are all individual issues that impact everyone differently.
I’m blogging about it once again because it is such a huge issue in our world. When I encounter bitterness, hostility, mockery from others, I see only shame and wounding, a painful burden for anyone to have to carry. I empathize there, I dislike seeing suffering when I know both healing and redemption are possible.
In relationships between men and women, letting go of pride in favor of connection instead, is vitally important. The two genders can wound each other like no one else can, but we also have the capacity to heal.
Here’s some more posts on pride.
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/shame-blame-and-fault/
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/the-cure-for-shame-is-not-more-shame/
https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/shamelessness/
jsneese62 said:
I have never really had a problem with pride and maybe it was the way I was forced to grow up. I was told quite often how worthless I was and smacked around enough to believe it. I am sure I had at least a few run ins with pride after I left home but then it got knocked out of me by my first husband and mentally beaten out of me by the second. I have a healthy pride now and I have the Lord to thank for all the good things in my life since I allowed him back into my life around 3 years ago. I love him as no other He is my everything and all good things come to me through him.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ah, very sweet. Thank the Lord, indeed. Pride can be really hard for people, especially when we have been beaten down so much. It may even been harder for us to let go of, because it doesn’t feel like pride at that point. God is the Great Physician however, and he can really transform and heal us, can’t he?
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jsneese62 said:
Oh yes he can. You see almost 10 years ago I ran in the middle of the night from my second husband and ran all the way to the San Antonio Texas area and luckily I had friends to help me. I started working and was doing pretty good for awhile and then on June 12 at the age of 47 I had a moderate stroke and my body just started falling apart and I could no longer work. I was shuffled from friend to friend for nearly 3 years and it looked like I was going to have to go back to Illinois and it all hinged if I would get government assistance or not so the night before my court appearance it hit me like a ton of bricks the conviction that I never truly trusted God and that my pride was always doing things my way not His or even listening to Him most of the time. I cried myself to sleep that night, however when I awoke that morning it was with a peace I had never known before that and that peace continues to this day. Unlike many people I knew when I stopped trusting God but until that night had put it out of my mind. In 1985 my youngest daughter died from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) and I blamed Him in my ignorance and I was angry with Him. Then one night I was at Wed night service at our church and our Pastor stopped his sermon came over and stood in front of me and said “God didn’t take your child!” I was floored I could not believe he just said that and because we had just started attending that church and he didn’t even know us or anything about us. That started my road to true delivery!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Wow, that is quite a testimony. It sounds like you have been through the mill. I am so sorry for your loss, I can think of no greater grief.
I am so glad that the Lord kept pursuing you and finally managed to wrap you in His peace and love. I pray that He continues to lead you and guide you.
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jsneese62 said:
Thank you and it was a crazy and quite painful life some my own fault and some not. I am so glad He kept pursuing me as well and I know He will continue to guide my life.
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osarobohenry said:
Thank you for this post. God’s blessings and grace be upon all that you do in the name of Jesus Christ. I will reblog this my friend
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insanitybytes22 said:
Thank you for your kind words and for the reblog.
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osarobohenry said:
Reblogged this on osarobohenry.
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Wally Fry said:
Darn IB…good post as I wake up on a Sunday morning. Nothing like a good reminder about pride as we head down to God’s House for some praise and worship. Pride screws that up to..sadly. Have a wonderful Lord’s day my friend.
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superslaviswife said:
What people perceive as a lack of self esteem is actually a lack of self respect and a lack of internal motivation and intrinsic reward. You can esteem yourself very highly, but if you don’t respect yourself and only derive motivation and reward from other people you will repeatedly debase yourself for the pleasure of others. You can think you are a genius artist whilst performing lewd acts for attention.
Instead, humans benefit from internal motivation and intrinsic reward combined with self respect. Through that, all your self esteem can grow. You respect yourself and your morals, motivate yourself to aspire to your morals and reward yourself for abiding by your own beliefs. Of course you can still be proud within that. You, for example, would add a religious element to that, with your morals being Biblical. My morals are all based on self-service, making me still prideful, but at least I’m doing better for myself than everyone who focuses on externally rewarded “self esteem”.
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insanitybytes22 said:
You bring up and interesting point about self respect, an issue that is also being discussed by others.
I guess I prefer to seek God’s favor, because I have learned that my own self respect can be a rather fickle thing. I have lost it, regained it for the wrong reasons, thought I had it when I probably shouldn’t have, and failed to have self respect when I was more then entitled to claim it. Today I don’t seek my own self respect, but ask if I am right with the Lord. If I am right with the Lord then I am worthy.
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toomajj said:
Nice post. Especially where you mention the distinction between pride and having self-respect. I see pride as an illusion, a consequence of ignorance. Even if you’re a non-believer you should see that all your efforts and their fruits depend almost entirely on matters or circumstances that are out of your hand; you do not do the breathing, the beating of your heart and the functions of your brain; you will and the body moves but it doesn’t have too. Whether we call this “other” nature, God, etc. it should be obvious that it is in the bosom of this “other” that things work for us. We are in the world but our being is not our own effort; these are matters of brute fact and if we see through them there remains no place for pride. Of course if you are a more intelligent and less biased person you will also see that this “other” is not a material nature nor anything itself in the world but a source of all existence and intelligence; but even without this intelligence a person should see that he/she never truly gains anything by him/herself alone: I cannot be except in the non-I,” and this is a matter of simple observation without having to designate that non-I.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Great comment.
“I cannot be except in the non-I,” and this is a matter of simple observation without having to designate that non-I.”
Ah yes, but you are very smart! Others just cannot make that simple observation, it is beyond them. I’m laughing here, but it took me forever to finally understand it myself. Pride is such a defensive thing and without “self,” it feels as if we’ll die, cease to exist. The bible speaks quite a bit about dying to self, about becoming a new creature in Christ, and there’s some great wisdom there. It is a paradox, when we can let go of ourselves, we actually discover ourselves, the way we were intended to be, the way He sees us.
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toomajj said:
Beautifully said. It is all about the difference between what we are told to be, whether by others or our own egos, and what we truly are. The defensiveness and fearfulness of the ego arise precisely because it knows deep down that what it is not what it thinks it is. In the absence of this knowledge there would not fear and no ego, for a thing is always itself without having to show or prove it 😉
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betternotbroken said:
Pride is painful beyond all belief, perhaps that’s one of the many reasons belief is better.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Amen to that, short and sweet, but to the point 😉
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