When Harry was elevated to become vice president of his company, he boasted to his family and fellow associates so much about the promotion, that they soon turned a deaf ear to him. One day when he got to bragging again, his wife retorted from across the dinner table, “Oh Harry! Vice presidents are a dime a dozen; why, in the supermarket, they even have a vice president in charge of prunes!” Her comments so infuriated Harry that he jumped up from the table and immediately phoned the local supermarket. “I’d like to speak to the vice president in charge of prunes,” he shouted into the receiver. “Which kind!” was the reply. “Packaged or bulk?”
Harry’s demeaning blow is forecasted by the writer of Proverbs when he says that “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”. The Apostle Paul not only makes a statement about haughtiness, but in Romans 12:3 gives a profound directive on the subject: “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.”
There’s no doubt but that the carnal nature within us wants to push self to the foreground. Someone has said that the trouble with singing your own praises is the fact that you seldom get the right pitch! When we get to inflating our own egos, we’re like the man who rides his balloon high in the sky. Everybody looks small to him, and he looks small to everybody else! How we need to take quite literally the words of John the Baptist (John 3:30) when he referred to his relationship with Jesus Christ. He said: “He must increase, but I must decrease!” To make John the Baptist’s statement applicable to our own lives, increasingly we must subdue the inflated estimations we have of our abilities and our accomplishments; and more and more, our own selfish desires and motives and attitudes must take a back seat to the control which Jesus Christ asks of us. Egotism is a deadly sin, and one which is rarely openly confessed. May the “I love me” attitude which we have by nature, be replaced by an attitude of humility, meekness, and subjection to the One who alone is praiseworthy!
