part ii

So the retreat came and the first message was focused on faith and doubt. In discussing the passage of Mark 9, Pastor Mitchell Lee also mentioned the delusion of strength as opposed to the reality of weakness that we have, and that is where old unanswered questions arose.

For a long time and for a longer time to come, (I'm sure you can all identify), I have been struggling with pride. It's easy to ignore as the battle takes place in the mind although we manifest pride in our actions towards others. And I certainly have a lot to be proud about as well. In a holy way to say it: I have been blessed with many talents and abilities. I mean really, I am smarter than many people, I can make friends more easily than others, I can play guitar better than many people (some people can't even play at all), and I am more righteous than others on many accounts. Sure I struggle with pride, but I'm sure everyone else struggles with that as well, so you reduce that factor on both sides of the equation and the comparison still comes down to me being a better person. I try to be humble by trying not to not think these thoughts, but it seems that the default state is always prone to pride. It's kind of like flexing your bicep. It takes conscious thought to keep your bicep flexed when you are in sitting position, of course it's nothing hard and you could probably flex it for a very long time, but when you stop thinking about it, it naturally goes into the relaxed state. Pride is the default state of my mind; humility takes concentration.

This ties into the first paragraphs because I feel that many of the spiritual goals I pursued this break were for mixed motives. Pastor Tae brought up the question, is the Word of God humbling me? The Bible should have a humbling effect not a pride making effect. One of the reasons I wanted to read a lot of books was so that I could be more eloquent and give better advice. People who listened to me would be like wow, that's really insightful. This pride spills into every other aspect as well. I could pray a lot and people would be impressed by my discipline in praying a certain amount of time consistently. Or I could practice guitar more for the sake of leading worship and people could be impressed by the skill for learning guitar in such a short amount of time, having had little guidance from others. So is the solution simply to stop practicing, reading, or praying? Obviously not. Then how do I reconcile pursuing these things without having the pride constantly surface. There was something fundamental in my mindset that had to be changed, I knew the answer to my question on the surface, but somehow it didn't penetrate deeply. Obviously when you gain more knowledge and abilities, you become more capable - capable being close in meaning to strong. The delusion of strength would become more delirious.

Pride is tricky for example if I led worship today. I could have done it in a proud show-off way, you may or may not have noticed. Or I could have done it in a humble manner. Even if I did led worship humbly, the next day I could have looked back at yesterday and felt prideful about it, and the next next day I could have looked back, I could be humble about it again. The picture I'm trying to create here is one of complexity to the point where you almost don't want to do anything about it. So you just quit slaving over trying to be humble.