Bro. Jim Taylor preached a sermon on the danger of pride last Sunday at First Baptist Church of Magee. He compared the disciples arguing over which of them was greatest to the world’s current pre-occupation with “me.” As an example, he said that 93 million selfies are taken every day! If nothing else, that statistic certainly indicates our modern preoccupation with ME.
I don’t think I’ve ever taken a selfie. I’ve never though anyone else would be interested in what I’m doing-- wiping the kitchen counter, eating a hot dog, flipping hangers at Dirt Cheap to find a bargain.
Besides, the technology to create selfies came along after I got a little sense about what people did and did not need to know about me, and after I realized that I didn’t have a “good side” anymore. That was about the time I also realized that the camera was not my friend.
Taking a lot of selfies requires a healthy dose of pride, which, with many other things, tends to shrink as you age.
That’s not to say that I didn’t start out with an abundance of pride and a healthy dose of self-esteem. Unlike today’s children, though, my parents didn’t bring me to believe that I was the best player on the team, the smartest kid in class, the cutest girl on the block. My parents never encouraged me to show off my backflip in front of company or bored that company with tales of my many accomplishments with photos to prove it.
In fact, I didn’t have many accomplishments. What I did have was a strong, inborn self-esteem that didn’t seem to need encouragement.
But I might have been a selfie-taker if I had owned an iPhone back then. I can think of several selfies I would have taken.
I would have taken one of myself at age 4 standing up on the church pew when the preacher asked if anyone had any more announcements to make: “I don’t think we have any pannies on!” I proclaimed, because he asked and I thought it was important for the congregation to know that in dressing myself I had omitted that important item.
So much for my parents’ self-esteem.
I would have taken a selfie at church a couple of years later leaning over my mother and saying to the little girl next to her, “My dress is prettier than your dress.” Well, I could tell the kid was proud of her frock, but mine WAS much prettier and I thought she needed to know the truth.
Church seemed to bring out the worst in me. But preachers always say we should tell the truth, and I told it proudly.
I would have snapped a selfie in the first grade when I told classmate Ellen Alexander her red cowboys boots would look better on me than they did on her scrawny feet. She was so intimidated that she shucked them off and let me wear them every day until her family moved away. I’m sure I had nothing to do with their move, but I hated it. I knew I looked good in those boots.
My pride often got the better of my sense of truth in a conversation with other kids. If someone got a gold fish, I told them I had gotten a monkey. If someone got a new bike, I let slip that I had a little red car--a real car-- and that I could drive it. I would have taken a selfie standing with my red car, but we didn’t have selfies, and, sadly, there was no red car.
The good thing about life--or the bad thing, depending on how you see it--is that it will eventually deal your pride enough blows that you settle to a level of humility.
I’ve had lots of opportunities to learn humility.
In the fifth grade I was proud to be selected to write the class play for that year. It was to be a play celebrating Book Week. I wrote, I thought, a Pulitzer Prize drama featuring Mr. Book. But I wrote so many lines for Mr. Book that the teacher had to let me play the part because I already knew the lines. So I would also star in my own play!
But my pride died when I was given Mr. Book’s costume. The girls playing Happy Readers danced around in cute street clothes while Mr. Book lumbered around the stage in a refrigerator carton painted to look like a book.
I was dining outside on a Sante Fe patio one night with friends when a bird pooped on my head. There’s no dignified way to deal with bird poop in your hair. My pride shrank yet again.
Once, sitting on our deck feeling cute and thinking maybe I was “all that,” I fell off the deck backwards in my chair. Suddenly, instead of looking cute, I was looking up at dogs licking coffee off my face and friends peering down at me flopped upside down in the azaleas with my feet in the air and an astonished look on my face.
As a teenager I’ve been ignored by boys I liked. As an adult I’ve had kids fall asleep and drool on their desks in response to my scintillating lecture on subordinate conjunctions.
Am I glad I have no selfies to record the blows to my self-esteem? You bet. Pride indeed goeth before a fall, and I don’t want any photographic evidence of those many spills in my life.
