The Performance of Pride
“Therefore I, the prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, accepting one another in love, diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit with the peace that binds us.” Ephesians 4: 1-3
We’ve all been there. Frozen to the spot, staring like a deer in headlights and frantically searching for a way out when the woman smiling a little too broadly suggests we volunteer in her ministry.
If, like me, you find yourself running away from these scenarios rather than running toward them, don’t be alarmed. This does not make you a bad person, a bad woman, or a bad Christian.
All avenues of service were not created equal or for all people to participate in, but I’ll get to that later.
In the verse above, among patience, gentleness, acceptance of others in love, and keeping unity, humility is listed at the top. It’s the first characteristic Paul encourages in the early church he’s writing to here.
I don’t believe there is any detail of the Bible written by accident or coincidence. God’s sovereignty over the Bible and its passage through the years has protected its integrity, intention, and meaning.
Naming humility first was intentional. Paul didn’t slip up or casually toss it into the mix.
Even when we have the other characteristics established in our lives, they don’t always come from the best place in our heart.
For many Christian women, especially today, there is an expectation these traits will be evident and woven into our lives, to a certain extent.
As if simply having these traits present in our lives isn’t enough, we often judge one another by a hierarchy of goodness one-upping each other in comparison of our good deeds.
How good are you?
Did you spend hours filling your house with the sweet aroma of chocolate chip cookies for the Christmas program, when store-bought was acceptable?
Did you walk through dark neighborhoods, bundled up in a warm coat going door-to-door to follow-up with people interested in learning about the church, when it meant dropping the ball on something else?
Do you sacrifice time with your own small group to teach the tiny humans with sticky, jam-covered fingers?
Are you seeing the pattern yet? Pride.
We take pride in all the ways we can serve the church. It’s our natural tendency to want credit for what we do, and it goes hand-in-hand with the pride we feel, however small, for our busyness.
Busyness and pride feed right into one another.
We not only place pressure on ourselves and the women around us to be everything, be everywhere, and volunteer in every possible way we can, we take pride in it just a little bit when our schedule looks more like a grocery list.
Fortunately, this attitude is beginning to buckle, replaced by one where we embrace our weaknesses as God-given guideposts, leading us to the place we can best use our gifts and do the most good.
When I think about serving in the children’s ministry at our church my heart quickens, my palms grow sweaty, and my mind searches for any excuse to say, ‘Sorry, I promise I like kids, but no.’
My God-given guideposts do not lead me to teach little humans, as noble a pursuit as that is.
This does not make me any less of a woman, uniquely gifted, or willing to serve in some way for the glory of God.
God sees right to the heart of His people and knows when we serve in humility or out of pride.
Like its cousin fear, pride pushes us to be front and center, in the middle of all the activities, not only church-related service.
Pride tells us we are not worthy unless we perform, and our performance better be seen by a crowd.
Even in the early, ancient church God knew the likelihood of pride taking control of His people, that they would be led by pride, not by love.
Keeping ourselves humble looks a lot more like greasy hands baking homemade cookies and silently setting them on the pile. It looks like pouring into the children you interact with in the brightly colored rooms of the children’s ministry with no expectation of gratitude, reward, or praise.
It looks like sacrificing ourselves for the kingdom of God, with no flourish or fancy finishes simply because this is what God’s called us to do.
Humbleness looks much more like a bowed head, than a boastful, puffed-up chest. It’s letting the outward appearance of performance and perfection take a backseat to our inward posture of openness to the Lord.
