Three Beliefs of a Proud Heart

(JoeThorn.net) P ride is not something you do, it’s worse than that. Pride is a kind of spiritual heart disease; a sickness of the soul that destroys faith and piety leading to disgrace and destruction. This disease spreads by means of lies our proud hearts are eager to believe. There are three beliefs common to a proud heart which must be refuted by the truth.

“I Am Better”

A proud heart plays the game of comparison with a stacked deck guaranteeing that all others lose. It assures a man that he is good, very good in fact, in comparison to others—others he deems to be failures. A proud man ignores the strong and mocks the weak in order to establish himself as superior. In every form of its existence “I am better” is built upon self-righteousness. It is the belief held by the pharisee who stood near the tax collector in the temple who, even as he prayed, was playing the game. He was so fixated on the unrighteousness of another man he lost sight of the holiness of God making it easy to imagine himself to be holy. He found comfort in his perceived exaltation over another sinner when he should have been humbled and broken before the face of God, just as the tax collector was. For the proud heart to exist, it must believe “I am better.”  MORE