Narrow Way with Steve Phillips 1 Shimmering Drop
Boil out everything from the kettle of humanity, and the singular scum remaining is Pride.
It was the original downfall in unseen realms amidst once bright spirits, now darkened demons. Pride entwined its serpentine coils around the soul of our first father, Adam, though surrounded by Eden’s unsullied splendor. Pride is that distorted confidence in self, an inflated sense of self-esteem.
Pride is a delusional self-sufficient orientation that accounts itself as adequate to assess matters of life without recourse to God. The proud person consults with self preeminently; God is in none of his thoughts. It is the opposite of sound judgment; it stems from thinking more highly of self than one ought to think. The terse summation is this: “As for the proud, his soul is not right within him” –Habakkuk 2:4.
Pride warps everything within the inner man. Perception is dulled, values are clouded, understanding is darkened, aspirations are skewed, volition is weakened, and delights are perverted: all because of 1 Shimmering Drop of pride. And the consequences do not end there.
Pride issues in everything that Christ is not. The Lord Jesus emptied Himself, stooping to the level of the creature and assuming the lowliest station among them. Abject humility in performing the will of Another characterized Christ. This the proud soul repudiates with disdain. Pride is the embodiment of the antichrist spirit by insistence upon its autonomous will. Pride leads to lawlessness which issues in violence. Pride’s self-assertiveness manifests itself in the ugliness of self-insistence. And that inflated autonomy spills over in unmitigated aggression.
When self is raised to the level of autonomy, we have lawlessness: the arrogant stiff resistance and rejection of any outside influence attempting to influence or govern the life. The lawless soul is defiantly determined that nothing and no one besides self will direct it. Any who would curtail its insistence upon self-will must face rebuff or worse in the pursuit of its chosen course. And pride is at the helm.
In Christ-like godliness, humility leads to submission issuing in peace. Pride leads to self-insistence issuing in conflict. The Beatitudes of Jesus are the antithesis of Lucifer’s ambitious revolt of self-ascendency prefaced by his 5-fold blatant “I will” as recorded in Isaiah 14.
“Sin is lawlessness” -1 John 3:4. Lawlessness is not merely transgression, a violation of codes and commandments, rituals, and regulations. It is much more than that. It is the self-absorbed disposition that refuses any other contributing or controlling influence. Self is conceived to be sufficient in wisdom, ability, and purpose apart from all others, especially God. And that desperate conceit arose from 1 source.
What is pride but 1 Shimmering Drop of poison that pollutes the whole well?
In Paradise man opted for devilish delusion. And thus Satan’s insurgence invaded Edenic innocence, being invited knowingly and willingly by our first father who drank from that polluted fount.
Pride is the spoiler of the inner man. Pride is the independent lawless perspective that accounts self as sufficient in wisdom, power, and resources and thus needing nothing. It is the antithesis of dependence. By it God is accounted as irrelevant and His truth as benighted opinion. It is devilish.
God is at war with this polluting poison. The Almighty acts “that He may turn man aside from his conduct, and keep man from pride; He keeps back his soul from the Pit” -Job 33:17,18.
But why does God not eliminate evil trans-globally? Because to do so He must eliminate pride. And should He do that, He must eliminate man altogether; for pride has so entered the collective soul of humanity like water permeates every fiber of their being. If God would purge the world of evil, the earth will become one vast wasteland of human carnage, heaps of corpses littering the then purged landscape.
Pride leads to lawlessness. Lawlessness leads to self-assertion. Self-assertion leads to repudiation. Repudiation leads to violence. O how pervasive is the ruin of pride!
“Those that walk in pride He is able to humble” –Daniel 4:37. But will we allow Him to do so?
The continuing involvement of the devil dragon king in the affairs of man is a consequence of Adam’s moral, spiritual, and intellectual revolt. By that choice, his moral nature was corrupted, his spirit gasped its last, decay set in within his body, and his understanding was obscured by darkness and delusion.
Pride is the polluted cesspool from which all evils have flowed. Utter annihilation of every proud soul is the prospect if evil abides: that is, if pride remains, even if only 1 Shimmering Drop.