Proud vs. Pleased

A few weeks back my brother and I were driving around and he said, “Aren’t you proud of your older brother?”  I immediately said that I was not.  Needless to say he was a little taken aback.  I told him I had a blog post coming that would explain more and so here it is. 

          President Benson, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite prophets ever, had an amazing talk on pride that kinda blew me away and I’d highly recommend it for anyone who thinks they’re doing pretty good spiritually lol, cause it’ll be a wake up call to you like it has been for me.  We covered a portion on his talk in Sunday School a few weeks back and I wanted to bring his points to the forefront and add some of my own legit sound doctrine to it.     

I had heard a while back, and I can’t remember now where I learned it, but Heavenly Father isn’t proud of anyone!  Ever!  Never!  See following.

Matthew 3:17 And lo a ^avoice from heaven, saying, This is my ^bbeloved ^cSon, in whom I am well pleased.

Mark1:11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Luke3:22 And the ^aHoly Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a ^bdove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.

3 Nephi 11:7 Behold my ^aBeloved Son, ^bin whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him.

          So…why pleased and not…proud?  Enter President Benson (my comments/musing are in italics):

Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core, is still missing.

The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.

So this is why I told my brother I wasn’t proud of him.  If I was then essentially I’d hate everyone else or be hostile to them.  I’d “guard” if you will the fact that my brother did this or that.  When people say they’re proud of their kids, deep down…really…what are they feeling/thinking about their kids in comparison to others?  Are they getting some long since denied/missing self-fulfillment that they’re now getting by vicariously living through their kids?  If you haven’t thought about this ever and then you hear me say this now it sounds like I’m heartless. 

When we were talking about this in Sunday School I got a little emotional and probably felt the Spirit confirm to me that Heavenly Father is so careful to watch his words on multiple occasions so as to not misconstrue His feelings towards His Son, but to me as well.  Of alllllll the people to be “proud” of Jesus would top the list.  Even with Him though Heavenly Father made sure to say He was pleased with Him and not proud.  He did this to show me He still loves me and His Son.  Had He said He was proud of Jesus at any point than that would’ve destroyed any prior belief I had that Heavenly Father truly loves all His children the same and that I was/am worth as much to Him as anybody else.

The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents, or any other worldly measuring device against others. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, pp. 109–10.)  This reminds me of the current global class warfare we’re currently seeing!  It is interesting to note that we are taught to look to the Godhead in all things, even our validation, hence the repetition of focusing on being a son or daughter of God.  I think/wonder, perhaps, if the “final” leap for me and any son or daughter is for us to make the leap of not needing anybody’s validation, even the Godhead’s.  Their teaching of “Do things of your own free will and choice” I believe is Them prodding us to the truth to come to the realization that in so doing is where real progress and happiness comes from.  Not from putting down another person and making yourself more important than them, but from being comfortable and content with who you are (once you’re perfect of course) and then helping others to do the same as that is the most mutually beneficial mindset to have for everyone and results in the greatest prosperity and happiness despite what others may say…if that makes sense.

 

Benson continues…”pride from the bottom looking up. It is manifest in so many ways, such as faultfinding (BINGO THIS IS ME!), gossiping (BINGO THIS IS ME!  I heard a quote or something saying that if someone will listen to you gossip you better believe they’ll gossip about you no problem.  I’m currently trying to stop this completely even if it is harmless.  I try and look at people more Christlike.  It has been interesting.  Instead of agreeing with people I find myself finding the good in the person being talked about and in some cases that has completely changed the mentality of the gossiper about the gossipee), backbiting, murmuring, living beyond our means (I feel this is me a little bit), envying (BINGO THIS IS ME!), coveting, withholding

gratitude

 and praise that might lift another(BINGO THIS IS ME!…at work), and being unforgiving and jealous.

Selfishness is one of the more common faces of pride. “How ffects me” is the center of all that matters—self-conceit, self-pity (addiction…duh!  I never really thought of self-pity as prideful, but it makes sense as often addictive behaviors require putting oneself above another), worldly self-fulfillment, self-gratification, and self-seeking.

I found the following very interesting…Pride results in secret combinations which are built up to get power, gain, and glory of the world.

This fruit of the sin of pride, namely secret combinations, brought down both the Jaredite and the Nephite civilizations and has been and will yet be the cause of the fall of many nations….woooow.  Watch out USA and other developed countries!

The scriptures testify that the proud are easily offended and hold grudges. 

I feel bad about reading this one and thinking back to Sunday School just yesterday.  One brother was called upon to answer a question and he went on quite the tangent and the teacher then re-directed him to answer the question and he essentially pouted that he was going to get to that and then…he grabbed his stuff and left the room.  Sad.   They withhold forgiveness to keep another in their debt and to justify their injured feelings.  Oops…I’ve done this a time or two to people I know.

The proud do not receive counsel or correction easily. Defensiveness is used by them to justify and rationalize their frailties and failures. (See

They won’t change their minds to accept truths, because to do so implies they have been wrong…sounds like me a few years ago and even a few people I talk to now about addiction issues and even our current political, social, and economic issues.

Pride is the universal sin, the great vice. Yes, pride is the universal sin, the great vice.  (I actually did not italicize the “is” in this last sentence)

The antidote for pride is humility—meekness, submissiveness. It is the broken heart and contrite spirit.

God will have a humble people.  This definitely stood out to me lol.  It seems that either we accept being humble and the true way of living and benefit immensely from so doing or…the other option is probably being cast away into hell for eternity cause Heavenly Father is not going to waste His time.  Either we can choose to be humble or we can be compelled to be humble.

Let us choose to be humble.

Pride is the great stumbling block to Zion. (Again, didn’t italicize his “is” this time either…I think he is trying to tell me something…)

We must cleanse the inner vessel by conquering pride.

 

Ok regular writing is back now.  I’m not sure if I “got out” everything I wanted/needed to, but this is a good start and I can always come back to it if I want I guess.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Where is it safe?

         After hearing about and reading about Cyprus banks doing a “bail-in”, i.e. they use their customer deposits to make the bank whole for the bad bets they took, people started freaking out there and elsewhere.  My wife and I are expecting our first kid and had some of our dough in our account set aside to help pay for it and we figured we’d take a little bit out just in case something like that happened between now and when the baby is due so that we’d for sure have enough money to pay some of the upcoming bills.  Funny enough I asked my teller if people were freaking out cause of what was going on in Cyprus and she responded saying, “What is going on in Cyprus?”  To her defense she may have been told to act that way should a customer ask so as to not initiate panic.  That or she just plain ‘ole doesn’t know, which is ironic considering her job and is also very sad/scary.

            So lately I’ve read a few interesting things about Cyprus and heard other things about other countries and what they’re doing.  By the way it is interesting all these things/countries I’m going to mention are already cocked and loaded and ready to go just two seconds after this whole Cyprus thing came about.  Makes me think…well this is a huge deal and people at the top in these institutions and countries knew about it…what else do they know that is a big deal that we don’t know about yet?

So back to things I’ve been hearing.  New Zealand mentioned maybe doing something similar.  People of course in Spain, Italy, and Greece were thinking, “If it could happen in Cyprus then it could happen here” and hence why global markets really were shaken by the Cyprus news and its potential domino effect of collapsing a fractional reserve banking system.  Then a Dutch EU guy said that the Cyprus “bail-in” would be a template going forward for other countries.  Then this morning I read that the government of Canada, and I quote from page 145 of their Economic Action Plan 2013, “proposes to implement a “bail-in” regime for systemically important banks.”  And finally, if that wasn’t enough of course, the other day I read that the FDIC, which is the insurance company you see on all the plaques at your local bank in the U.S. insuring deposits up to 250k against loss, and the Bank of England (why the two are working together I don’t know other than they’re puppets of the central bankers who own them both really) also proposed that a “bail-in” would look like funds getting seized in customer accounts and in exchange for those funds bank depositors would get shares of stock in the bank instead and could have some say in what the bank does at that point.  What is funny about the FDIC saying this is that by co-writing the article that this nugget came out in they’re openly admitting they are NOT going to be insuring bank deposits, but instead are opting for this plan instead.  Not sure how many of you know, but the FDIC, they private company that is supposed to bail out others when they lose their money…got a bail out in the 2008 collapse.  One thought I had was, “Oh cool the guys who are supposed to insure my money, won’t, and when they do on the small amount that they do, they don’t have enough and get a bail out, which is in the form of printed money, which slightly kills my purchasing power.  In the meantime I’m sure there are some execs there who get paid very well.  Cool.”

So…where is your money safe?  Well if you consider worthless shares in a failed bank safe then you’ll be ok to stow your money away at any bank.  Otherwise…if you don’t hold it/own it, its not yours.  

Oh I also heard that last week there were thousands of people who logged into their online banking account and their account was set to $0.  Lesson I learned…I need to reinitiate my paper statements sent to my house each month so I have proof of exactly how much I had in my account should that happen to me.