The Right Kind of Pride
The Reverend Dr. Jim Nelson
October 3, 2004

Bits of Advice Part 2: The Right Kind of Pride

It is getting into that time of the year when we should start accumulating all the little items and facts we want to include in our Christmas letter. Now I know that there are a few things first - Thanksgiving, Halloween, a presidential and general election, Hannukah, the Stanford USC game, a World Series, National Talk like a Pirate Day [my favorite holiday - arrgggh matey!] -but just as it is never too early to start holiday shopping - it is what makes America strong after all - it is not too soon to get all the details we want to share in order.

When did all of this start - this holiday letter craze? Kathe and I are not very good at the Holiday card business - we send them out maybe once every two or three years, sometimes with a letter. We have friends who are faithful - every year after every year, we get a card, and from some a letter as well. I love reading them as much as I dread writing them.

Often they are like this:

Dear Friends,

Well, it's been a busy year. Amanda won that fellowship at Harvard Medical school and so we no longer have to worry about her tuition; they have promised her a full position on the faculty when she finishes but she is thinking of working in drought stricken areas of Africa instead. She also plays oboe with a local symphony. Tommy just got into Stanford on an academic and swimming scholarship; I guess his Olympic gold medal this last year was a real help, and little Samantha had two poems published in the Atlantic - not bad for an 11 year old. She is now into learning other languages - where does she get that?

As for us, the IPO went well and we were able to fund that medical clinic in Haiti, and we will also use the McArthur grant Bill got to get that going. I did better than I expected in the Hawaii Ironman Triathalon and finished second in my age group. If only I had trained more …. But, as you all know, time is precious and we have so little.

Here's hoping you have a wonderful year. Come visit us at our new place in wine country - our Merlot won lots of awards - and we'd love to raise a glass with you and toast this good life.

Happy Holidays

Jane and Bill

Wouldn't it be something instead to get a letter like the one Ann Landers once published in her column:

Dear Friends:

We've had a rotten year. Bill was passed over for promotion again, so he quit his job. He hasn't lined up anything yet. In the meantime, he's drinking like a fish. Having him around the house hasn't done much for my disposition.

Bill Jr. was defeated for homeroom monitor. He flunked French and will have to go to summer school to graduate. College is out. He can't get in anyplace. Bob hasn't had a haircut since August and had to hock his guitar to pay for his Honda. Thank God he didn't lose his leg. We were plenty worried. Mary is protesting something and shaved her head two weeks ago.

My mother-in-law's visit lasted until August, and I am back in therapy. As I write this, the whole family is down with the flu, and I'm exhausted. We hope next year is better. It couldn't be much worse.

Love, Jane

There you go. Our lives are probably somewhere in between - some good, some bad, a mixture; things to be proud of and things of concern, reasons for celebration and reasons for sorrow. Bits of advice part two: the right kind of pride.

So, let me go back to Chicago and my last night with my daughter Hannah who - oh never mind, I tell you all about it in a Holiday letter- and let me retire stories about my girls for a while.

The second piece of advice I gave her was this: whatever you do, and the things you choose, choose them or do them so that you will be proud of yourself.

Pride has a curious history in our culture. It is both reviled and revered. We are told to take pride in what we do well but to be careful of being too proud. We revere the humble and dislike the proud - think Mandela and Trump. It is the deadliest of the seven deadly sins, and they are - can you name them - pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed and sloth - if you go to deadlysins.com you can get the t-shirt. I am not sure these are all UU sins - for example, I lust after sloth and gluttony.

But pride stands atop the list [a curiosity about computers - when I finished that sentence, the word count was 666 - now what does that mean]? Pride is often considered the worst; it is pride that goes before the Fall. Remember the scene from the Garden of Eden - the serpent says that if Eve eats of the apple, she will be like the gods. And this is true, once she eats God says let us [note the plural here!] let us drive them from the garden lest they eat of the tree of life and become like us completely.

This is thought to be the origin of pride as fault - thinking that we are like the Gods, or at least thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought.

But that is as slippery a notion as can be - thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought? By what standards? Who is to decide? Are there some things of which we should be rightfully proud? I would think so. But what are they? And I don't just mean that old saw about being humble and proud of it.

Pride has become more and more important in culture. Consider TV shows like the Apprentice [ugh] or the taunting in professional sports now. The 'I am #1' constantly heard. Narcissism and pride are not too far removed from one another. Self-esteem is a significant factor in our children's education - children are taught to be proud of themselves by simply being there - it is not something earned but an entitlement.

So - is pride a sin or a virtue? Of what can we be proud?

As always, a story - just a couple of years ago I got a call from a family in the church I served to come and visit, to help them plan a memorial service for their 13 month old daughter. She had just died of congestive heart failure. I didn't really know them - the father came only rarely, but the mother was usually there in worship, sitting in the back on the left with her little girl, near the doors so that she could leave if her daughter was too fussy.

Their daughter had Downs syndrome. She was usually quiet during the service - I learned that the bowl I sound seemed to calm her- my voice would sometimes stimulate her. Once, in a sermon, she was fussy and making some noise and I said - without knowing who was making the noise - how much I liked that sound, of children in a service. It was the sound of life and of hope and the future. I still think that.

So I arrived at their home. They were devastated, of course - these were really nice people - and they were in depths of their grief. They welcomed me and were gracious and grateful throughout the time we spent together. They had an older boy who struggled in learning. They were a good family - one marked by love and care for each other.

We talked about their girl and them. The father talked about how, when she was born, it was like a death as well - that the daughter he imagined would be born and grow would not be - it was the death of a dream of normalcy at least. And now a much worse death, the death of a daughter they had grown to love so very deeply. She was a sweetheart - an angel if angels there be.

And both of them, in the depths of sorrow and grief, expressed gratitude that she had come into their lives; they said she had been a gift to them, and that their lives were immeasurably richer because she had been in it. We talked for a while about attitudes to those with disabilities and how often people just don't know what to say - and often what is said tastes of regrets. ''Oh, I am so sorry' people would say to them when she was born and they learned she had Downs. They often thought that, too. But they learned otherwise.

They learned, they told me, that it was in the quality of her living, by how she seemed able to bring joy and find joy in relationships that her gift to them resided. It wasn't in any great worldly accomplishment, but in her relationships. They were proud of her, of who she was. They were humbled by her, and by her ability to draw people out of themselves and into a web or relationship. They sincerely thought they had received more than they had given.

Isn't that wonderful? In their pride, they were humbled - and this is the key.

When pride is touched with humility, pride becomes a virtue. When you feel that you have received more than you have given, pride becomes a virtue. So, in a curious but significant way, humility is the key to pride.

And remember: the word, humility, is from the same word root as human and humane and humanitarian, and humor - all corrections on a pride that is destructive. Humane, human [humus, too, of the earth - from dust to dust], humor. How rarely people we experience as too proud have no sense of humor. What matters is not thinking you are better, but equal, one of the same, simply human. This is where Black and gay and Feminist pride are virtues - they proclaimed not that they were better but that they were equal, were human and humane.

There is great truth to this. If we are to be proud, I would think, it should come from those things we do which matter most - in the building or relationships, in creating that web of mutuality Martin Luther King Jr talked about. It is to take pride in being human, not more than human, not like the gods.

Maybe what we should learn is that pride is rightful when we do the best we can with what we have or have been given. But when we somehow think that means we are better than other is when pride destroys. When we think we are superior - that is when pride becomes a sin.

So - where does this leave Hannah and pride? It is back to the Garden of Eden. We are not the gods nor are we the measure of all things. The purpose
of faith and religion is to connect us with the transcendent so that we can hope, so that we can achieve humility. If Hannah can believe in something grater than herself, something that demands something of her, and if she struggles and does her best to live up to those demands, then I hope she will be proud of herself. If she realizes that she has been given something and makes the most out of it, and in doing so, believes she has been given something even greater, then I hope she is proud. She will always fall short - this is why humility matters. But proud because she has tried to live up to the best.

One last story: I have learned everything about I know about ministry from the people I have been privileged to serve. It has been humbling and rewarding beyond measure. One man who was dying of cancer - he had been fighting leukemia for a number of years and that he was alive was, in itself, a miracle, was sure his time was short and asked me to visit. He talked about his shortcomings and his failures; he confessed to me things for which he was ashamed.

He wished he didn't have so many regrets about his failings. I suggested to him that all it meant was that his standards were high enough. If there were nothing he regretted, it would mean his standards were too low.

We talked about this for a while and he began telling me about growing up in Hungary during World War II and coming to the US in the 50s. He talked about how his parents had sacrificed for the family, and how much freedom meant to him. He told me that he felt privileged to live in the US - given what the alternative for him was, this was quite understandable.

And yet, he kept coming back to his failures. Having been given so much, he thought he had squandered it. His mistakes, his sins, were pretty minor I thought, and I kept coming back to the idea that his standards, his values, had been right - that if he had no regrets, it would mean his standards and values were too low.

I don't know if he ever reconciled that within himself; he died before we ever followed up that conversation. I hope he did. And I believe that what I said is true.

And, I believe that we do know - because it is built into us - what those standards are. That we love one another; that we use what we have been given - life, talents, privileges - not primarily to please ourselves but to serve others. If Hannah's art opens the vision of the world for another person, then she should be proud. If she treats others well, and does not treat others as objects, then she should be proud. If she keeps her standards high so that she is always reaching, then she should be proud. If she remains humble, then she should be proud.

This is not any easy, thing, I know. It takes diligence and thoughtfulness. In the Catholic tradition, there is a spiritual discipline called the examen of conscience. Each night, or once I day, I guess, it is suggested that you catalogue what you have not done well. It is not a bad thing to do. The purpose is to learn, and so become better. You might try it.

We are put on this earth to serve others, not ourselves. Whatever we might need - an extra dose of humility or an extra dose of pride - to help us receive this life as a gift, to bring about gratitude is what I hope we can all find.

For some years, now, my mantra has been a verse from Micah: What else is required of you but to love mercy and do justice and walk humbly with your God. I take this to heart - that mercy is far more important than judgment and that we are always called to do justice, that is treat others with mercy and equality, and that we should walk, or run, or skip, or jump through our lives humbly with our God - with what we hold to be the highest. And then maybe we can be a little proud.

Amen

Readings

Robert Frost 'The Road Not Taken'
Robert Woodruff, and excerpt from Reverence
For you, humility may not be as central to bringing God home to your life as it has been for me. In fact, people who have had the pride beaten out of them may discover self-esteem to be far more important than humility to the advancement of their own spiritual search. If a dose of humility enhanced my self-worth, for another a double-shot of pride might be necessary to work the same change. Without a healthy sense of self-esteem, we may not feel worthy enough to invite God into our homes. I know of women who accept humiliation as if it were their birthright, and others who argue angrily that indeed it is just that. For Jesus or anyone to tell a person who is already empty of self that she should empty herself and be filled is nothing less than cruel. Far from being sins, Black Pride, Gay Pride, and Feminist Pride are in fact virtues. Perhaps one can go to a store and redeem a coupon that isn't worth anything, but the same does not hold true for a human life. We may go from dust to dust, but our life need not be ashes in between.

Nonetheless, the pride that divides us from others and keeps us from receiving the gift of life with humble gratitude cannot help but diminish both us and our world.