On Pride

I had intended since I started my blog to write down my thoughts on pride, but I came across this article posted today by Dr. Daniel Napier of the Austin Graduate School of Theology that addresses this topic with  great insight. Following are the first few paragraphs of his post. I urge you to read the complete version at http://info.austingrad.edu/christianstudies/understanding-the-most-toxic-sin-pride


"No aspect of Jesus’ teaching is so distinctive and world-changing as that concerning pride and humility. A simple historical observation makes the point well. Among the ancient moralists, humility and a mind given to service was actually considered vicious. Servility was despicable and vile. To do great things, it was thought, one must have a high self-estimation. The great-souled man made big boasts and then made good on them. Thus humility was thought a vice. For Jesus and his followers, on the other hand, humility is a primary virtue.

"Jesus understood that the engorged self-esteem, which was considered healthy and laudable among the pagans, actually debilitated them. Pride hinders the exercise of our greatest power – 'power under' -  others in service.  As a quick litmus test of the world-changing effect of Jesus’ teaching and example, just consider the last time a political leader assumed a title like ‘the Great’. This serves as an indicator of how much Jesus’ teachings have changed the consciousness of the West… at least at the level of public affirmation. On the other hand, human nature has not changed. The individual impulse to self-aggrandizement rages on and proves just as toxic today as ever.

"The peculiar toxicity of pride lies in the blindness it creates in its practitioner. Simply consider the fact that our secular society has developed ways of addressing every other distortion of heart that Jesus unveiled. Various therapies, 12-step programs, and institutions are in place to deal with anger, distorted desire, and even dishonesty – at least to some degree.

"Anger management therapy is available through purely secular institutions. Everyone recognizes sexual addiction, compulsive shopping, and kleptomania as problems. Clinical professionals address them in some manner. Even lying, when it reaches a certain level of compulsiveness, is acknowledged as undesirable. Sociopaths are considered diseased.

"The reason these programs and institutions exist is because people struggling with such things know they have a problem. When people are gripped by anger, twisted desires, and compulsive deceit it ruins their lives in a way they cannot easily ignore.

"But what about pride? Can you name a single analogous therapy, program, or institution designed to address it? With the possible exception of marriage, there is no institution in secular society designed to restore humility. I know of no Betty Ford Clinic for the Insufferably Arrogant. I’ve yet to find a chapter of Boasters Anonymous. Where does one go to detox from an ego that sucks the air from any room into which one walks?

"Pride is the most toxic and spiritually debilitating distortion we face. Here’s why. With all other sins, one knows something is wrong. But pride impairs my capacity to notice the danger and disease of my own soul."

Sophie's Choice

In 1983, Meryl Streep won the Oscar for Best Actress in the movie, Sophie's Choice.  Streep plays the role of a mother entering the Auschwitz death camp with her young son and daughter.  In one of the most gut-wrenching scenes ever filmed, she is forced by a Nazi guard to choose which of her two children will be exterminated in the gas chamber and which will be sent to a labor camp.  Only two possible choices.  No alternatives.  In a cry of anguish, she chooses her son to live.

Life is full of  choices that have profound and irreversible consequences on our lives and the lives of others. As we mature, grow wiser, and become more prayerful, the choices become clearer.   But not always.  Sometimes we can find no good alternative even though we pray, we reach out in the right directions for help, and we strain our wisdom to the limit.

You may never have to make a Sophie's choice, but it's a sure bet that someone close to you has: a father who experienced the combat of war and returned home damaged and unwilling to speak about the unspeakable he participated in, or a sister in a horrifically abusive relationship with no apparent options but to break the vows she held sacred.  The list goes on.

Surely, we think, there must be a right choice every time.  But we live in a fallen, broken world.  And sometimes in this totally messed up world, as my best friend calls it, our imperfect eyes see no options ... only inevitables.  But that's where grace enters the picture - the mercy and healing God lavishes on us, and the balm of his reflected mercy and healing we can spread on everyone in our lives, especially those who had to made Sophie's choice.   



 

 

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Breaking the Sound Barrier

Breaking the Sound Barrier

I once taught a Sunday School class composed of mostly autistic teenage boys who were unable to  speak.  On one particular Sunday as I delivered the lesson, replete with visual aids, I noticed that one of the boys - lets call him John - was sitting perfectly still, head in his hands, staring at the floor.  To  my eyes, he looked upset and I asked him several times during the class if he was OK.  But I got no response, no acknowledgement in any way of my well intentioned concern.  However, after class, as everyone was beginning to leave, John walked up to me, placed his hands on my cheeks, and forcefully turned my head to face him.  Then looking me straight in the eye, he gave me a big smile. You see, John was concerned about me too.  He wasn't able to talk but he knew how to break the sound barrier and tell me everything was alright.   I later learned that people with autism experience sensory overload and sometimes can't  effectively process auditory and visual signals simultaneously.  That Sunday morning John had chosen to shut off the video to focus on the audio - my words.

My biggest frustration is my loss of the power of speech.  I'm no longer able to talk  - one on one - with the people I love the most.  Even my wife can seldom understand what passes from my lips for words.  So now I use exaggerated facial movements, hand signals, and body language to get my messages across.  I can compose sentences with the voice synthesizer on my IPad, but communicating this way is agonizingly slow.  And forget entirely about joining a conversation.  By the time I have my responses ready to send, the moment is lost and the conversation has moved on.

I have only now lost my ability to speak.  But John is 20 or so and has never spoken a complete sentence in his life.  And unless a miracle happens he never will.   When I'm angry and tempted to take out my frustrations on those I love, I'm going to try to remember the patience and grace that John showed me that Sunday morning. 


   

When you’re diagnosed with a fatal disease and told you probably have only about two years to live, you suddenly have a lot of things to do in a short amount of time.  Adding to my " to do" list, several of my friends and family persistently encouraged (nagged) me to put into words my “journey” with ALS. Until now I’ve done a really good job of resisting them.  This isn’t a journey, ALS isn’t my sidekick in the passenger’s seat, and it's not like touring West Texas to see all the cousins.  It's more like the Griswolds’ family vacation nightmare – but on steroids. Why expose myself at all?  And why presume that this would matter all that much to anyone else?

Shortly after I announced that I had ALS, a dear friend gave me Tuesdays with Morrie.  This little book tells the story of the relationship between Morrie, the old teacher dying from ALS, and Mitch, his former student and the book’s author.  One of Morrie’s pearls of wisdom really hit home, and it goes like this, “The truth is, Mitch, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live… Most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do... Learn how to die, and you learn how to live."

One thing that’s become crystal clear as I learn how to live with ALS is that I want to make a difference in the lives of other people with the time I have left.  And the idea of a blog made the most sense. After all, I can no longer speak and be understood, but I can still write, and the written word, sometimes converted into a computer-generated synthetic voice, is how I communicate.

This blog will be about how I live life now that I have ALS, how I deal with the obstacles, how I sometimes fail, and how I sometimes succeed.  Mostly, though, it will be about how this experience is changing my perspectives and about how I hang on to my faith.   Although I may not always pull it off, I’ll try to be personal, open, and real.  And I'll not be straying into the TMI zone. If you’re struggling too, which most of us are for one reason or another, I hope my posts encourage you.  That’s really why I’m doing this. 

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Peace

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