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COMPLAINING YOUR WAY TO CONDEMNATION: A TIMELY REMINDER ABOUT GRATITUDE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 12, 2024 – Let’s play a little game, shall we? Let’s see how long we can go without complaining about something. How long do you think you’ll last before being disqualified? If you’re like most people, you won’t last an hour, because complaining, unfortunately, has become the default mode for conversations these days. In other words, complaining has been normalized and even trivialized in modern society. But the normalizing of complaining is the normalizing of ingratitude, which is an expression of pride… all of which means that we born-again believers need to work extra hard at winning the “no complaining” game every day of our lives until God takes us Home.
We know that God hates when his children complain. In fact, he hates it so much, he condemned nearly the entire generation of Israelites that were of age at the time of the exodus. Their sentence was to die in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land because they chose to complain about their freedom under God and long instead for slavery under demons.
What about you? Do you complain? Do you think that your life was better before you were reborn? I in no way believe my life was better before my rebirth, but I still have to bite my tongue umpteen times a day to keep little whines from spilling out. I don’t mean any harm by them and frankly I’m usually just shooting the breeze with someone, griping good-naturedly about the weather or the traffic. These are just careless, casual remarks, but are they hurting me anyway?
Scripture says yes, they are. Any kind of an expressed complaint is signifying that you don’t like the way things are in your life. But the way things are in your life is what you’ve brought on yourself by your words and your thoughts and your deeds. Jesus says the measure we mete (dish out) is the measure we get in return, so if we feel we’re getting less than we deserve, the problem lies in us, not in other people or in “bad luck” or in God.
Even worse, at the root of our impulse to gripe is ingratitude. When we complain that things are not as good as they used to be or not as good as they could be, we show ingratitude for all the good gifts God has given us and continues to give us on a daily basis. We honestly have no clue how many blessings God showers us with day in and day out, as we tend to take nearly everything we have for granted or we mistakenly believe we have ourselves and our own efforts to thank for our abundance (all you Nebuchadnezzars out there – I’m talking to you!).
Reasonably good weather and living conditions? Check. Comfy roof over our heads? Check. More than sufficient food in the fridge and cupboards? Check. Amiable companionship? Check. Stimulating leisure activities? Check. Purposeful work and adequate income? Check. Good health? Check. All these blessings didn’t just happen; God arranged them for us and presented them to us as gifts. He doesn’t want us to faun and grovel over his gifts, but he does at least expect us not to complain about them.
If the root of complaining is ingratitude, what is the root of ingratitude? When we reject what we have and demand something bigger and better, or newer and shinier, or faster and more impressive, we’re essentially saying that we deserve more than what we have, which defies what Jesus taught us about the measure we get being the measure we’ve earned. And what is the core motivator for believing you deserve more and better?
Pride.
The same pride that consumed Satan and his followers and ultimately got them perma-banned from Heaven.
When we praise God, we’re thanking him. When we thank God, we’re showing our gratitude for his gifts. And when we show God our gratitude for his gifts, we’re standing humbly before him as his loving and beloved children. There is no better place in all of creation than standing before God, loving him and humbly receiving his love. Humility, as we know, is the opposite of pride: “A humble and contrite heart you will not despise.”
So the next time you almost let slip a complaint, remember the Israelites in the wilderness and what happened to them when they complained. If it hasn’t yet happened to you, it doesn’t mean it won’t happen; it just means that God is generous, merciful, and longsuffering towards you, giving you yet another chance after yet another chance after yet another chance, which you should also be grateful for.
I certainly am.
ON PRIDE AND THE NORMALIZATION OF SIN
CAMPBELLTON, New Brunswick, June 29, 2023 – The devil works hard to convince people he doesn’t exist. He does this because if people don’t believe he exists, then morals are relative rather than absolute, which means there can be no such thing as sin.
And if sin doesn’t exist, then people don’t have a moral compass to guide them when they’re tempted. Not having a moral compass, they fall prey to any kind of persuasion, including being convinced that what was once considered sinful is now just a personal preference for those who were “born that way”.
In other words, sin is rebranded as natural, normal, and healthy.
The normalization of sin is a process that begins with eliminating the devil, which the devil himself is only too happy to initiate. Each soul he convinces that he doesn’t exist becomes his by default, because a soul that doesn’t believe the devil exists is a soul that doesn’t believe God exists, and anyone who doesn’t believe in God is by default the spiritual real estate of Satan. That the captured soul doesn’t believe Satan exists is just icing on the cake for the old snake, who finds the irony delicious.
The image above is from a “pride” parade in Toronto a few days ago. It doesn’t need commentary but it does stand as a fitting representation of the fallen spiritual state of what used to be known as “Toronto the Good”. The devil’s obviously been busy in Toronto to bring it to the point where middle-aged men can, not only metaphorically but literally, parade down a street to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of onlookers. Yes, public nudity is still illegal in Toronto, but it seems that laws only apply to those who won’t comply with the global agenda to normalize sin.
Men who exposed themselves in public, especially to women and children, used to be promptly arrested and then named and shamed to deter other men from doing the same. Yet here we are, supposedly on our way to peak social progress, and Torontonians have less decorum or motivation to protect their women and children than primitive jungle tribes, who at least have enough self-respect and respect for their fellow tribespeople to wear a loincloth when they’re out in public.
The rebranding of pride has turned it into something we’re supposed to admire and celebrate rather than avoid and shun. Until just a few decades ago, pride in anything but your country or in the hard-earned accomplishments of yourself or your loved ones was considered vanity and the mark of an immature mind. Pride was not admired. In fact, pride was not only not admired, it was considered a sin, and a deadly one at that: one that presaged a great fall. Only vain and frivolous people paraded their pride and they were justly ostracized and condemned for it.
The rebranding of pride has turned the notion of pride into something else altogether. This is the devil’s doing, and the general public is lapping it up. If you’re reading this, you know what “pride” now stands for; there’s no point in my going into details. Let me just say that “pride” as it’s understood and used today is just as sinful as pride always was. That aspect of pride has not changed.
“Pride” was the sin that got Sodom obliterated. And if you think history isn’t repeating itself, think again. Former Christian nations are being set up for annihilation through the overspreading of “pride”, especially among children through the educational system (which includes story hour at public libraries). A whole generation is being brainwashed and groomed into accepting “pride” as natural, normal, and healthy. If you wonder how Sodom could have devolved to the point where Lot’s house was surrounded by locals banging on the door and demanding that Lot hand over his guests for, well, “Sodom-izing”, you have your answer. To the people of Sodom, who were raised believing that what they were doing was natural, normal, and healthy, Lot was the one who was perverse and out of line.
Sound familiar?
God gives the devil permission to turn everything upside-down because testing is required for his good purposes. God needs to see whether you want what he’s offering or what the devil’s offering, whether you embrace his version of reality or the devil’s. The majority, unfortunately, are choosing the devil’s version, as is witnessed by the nearly wholesale support of “pride” across former Christian nations.
I had a discussion earlier today with a self-identified Christian woman who’s allegedly against men exposing themselves to women and children but has no problem otherwise with “pride”. She didn’t see the connection between her support of “pride” and the consequence of men being empowered to expose themselves in public or dress up as caricatures of women to read lasciviously to children. She seemed to think these were two different kinds of “pride”, but really there is only one “pride”, and it’s the same “pride” that got Sodom wiped off the map.
Pride in all its forms and guises needs to be outed for what it is, not sugar-coated and heavily made up to pretend it’s something it’s not. Rebranded sin is still sin. Sin cannot be virtue. The devil cannot be God.
As born-again believers, we are obliged to pray for those who are bound by sin, but we cannot in any way align ourselves with their sin. We can’t support their expression of sin, which means we cannot support or participate in “pride”. We cannot rebrand sin as natural, normal, or healthy because it’s none of those things. Sin is today what it always has been – a fast track to death and a sure way to separate yourself from God.
And as a former “pride” supporter turned born-again believer, I can tell you there is no worse state of being than separated from God.

