Article March 27, 1995 Issue

Beyond the pride of life

Sandra Peterson

I Wouldn't have called pride justifiable. But I hadn't paid much attention to it either; I didn't feel it was something I especially needed to eliminate. As I pondered an important decision, though, I realized that what was keeping me from an otherwise appropriate action had to be pride. I'd been remaining aloof from a situation that seemed unlike what I saw approvingly as "my style."

The self-knowledge was sobering. It caused me to think more deeply about pridefulness. I came to see clearly that pride isn't just an unattractive human flaw. It's actually the way a personal ego, or a selfhood apart from God, would assert itself.

Mary Baker Eddy observes. "Even vanity forbids man to be vain; and pride is a hooded hawk which flies in darkness" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 145). Who would knowingly act from a standpoint of darkness? Yet to the extent that we admire what we think of as our personal selfhood, we remain blind to spiritual identity, to that which reflects God.

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