Parking Lot Pride

Earlier this morning, I was dropping my kids off for school and I encountered the usual traffic jam of cars and kids running all about in the parking lot. The lot fits about 10 cars at a time, and at any given moment during the 10 minutes of drop-off, there are about 100 cars that are attempting to enter and exit. It gets ugly. Let’s just say… parents who barely got their kids out the door and who are hurriedly rushing off to work are not the best version of themselves. And I know that from personal experience!

At the exit of the parking lot the two lines of cars converge into one, and I was waiting on the outside line for my turn to merge into the single lane. When you’re in that position, you’re really at the mercy of the other drivers and when they’ll choose to let you in. One car passes by. Two cars. Three cars, and I’m still waiting! “How dare they?!” I thought to myself. “Don’t they all know it’s accepted practice to let one car in, every other car? That’s how I generously behave when I’m in the inside lane!”

It's a silly scenario, but one that plays out dozens of times a day for me. The message I tell myself is simple: I’m better. Like a slow drip, unseen behind the wall that breeds a colony of destructive mold, so even our little expressions of pride accumulate in our hearts and minds to bring untold destruction. 

Jesus hates pride in all its forms. In Luke 18:9-14, he tells the story of a boasting spiritual leader and a confessing sinner:

“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

‘But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

‘I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’”

The Pharisee in this story was a prime example of one who trusted in himself while demonstrating contempt for another. His sense of security and standing before God was built upon the ridicule of other people—how good he felt he was in relationship to how bad he perceived others to be. And in the lineup of cars at the school I was also somehow gratified, like the Pharisee, by the prideful thought that I was in some way better than those who didn’t graciously let me merge into their lane. Apparently, our pride can manifest in a school parking lot as much as it can in the Temple of God!

Pride will always do two things: magnify the failures of others while enhancing our own achievements; it will cause us to dwell on the worst of others, while exaggerating what we consider to be our best. If that’s our self-assessed “greater” knowledge or our “superior” morality—whatever we use to build ourselves up in our own eyes at the expense of others—those can be sources of pride. The humble, by contrast, take no ownership over those qualities, seeing everything as coming from God by his grace, and they gain nothing from the denigration of other people. 
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Lord, make us humble by showing us our pride. We don’t want to trust in ourselves, nor do we want to live with contempt for others. What gain is there in a heart that boasts and a life that demeans others? Help us to accept that our achievements, our abilities, and our best qualities all come to us by your grace. Lead us to not become preoccupied with the perceived errors of others, but help our hearts and minds be attuned to our own need for growth. Thank you for the promise that as we admit our own need for you and as we lay down our pride, you will lift us up.
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“For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” – 1 Corinthians 4:7

— Andrew Schey