Pride, part 3

President Benson also identified enmity towards our fellowmen as a part of pride.  Jacob admonishes us to “think of your brethren like unto yourselves.” (Jacob 2:17).  Alma laments, “yea will ye persist in supposing that ye are better one than another?” (Alma 5:54)

The gospel unites.  Pride divides, sorts and ranks.

Nephi and Jacob both identify riches and learning as two sources of pride (2 Ne. 28:15, 2 Ne. 9:42).  People, puffed up by riches and learning, are those whom the Lord despises (2 Ne. 9:42).  We tend to esteem them.  We laude the hard work, discipline, and persistence required to obtain riches or learning.  Some view those blessed with riches as favored by heaven.  We hear preached the gospel of success.

I love being on the campus of BYU.  I love the sense of learning and excitement and of young inquisitive minds seeking to expand and understand the world.  There is a good spirit there and much that is very good.  

But there is also found in the halls and ivory towers of academia at times a suffocating, insufferable pride.  BYU is not exempt.  Those who have worked hard to gain some esoteric knowledge sometimes think themselves better than others who do not possess their particular understanding.

We see the same in business, in sports and in all other areas of life where competition divides and grades us.  When we have sacrificed years of hard work to gain mastery of a particular skill or thing, it is so very easy for that to become a source of pride for us.  Anything, which distinguishes us from others, can be a source of pride. 

The Nephites didn’t have different styles and models of cars.  And one grass hut or stone house was probably much like any other.  They often distinguished themselves by their clothing.  Wearing costly apparel set one apart from others who couldn’t afford it.  Though we like to think ourselves more advanced, we can see the same thing in any of our high schools today.  Kids can’t fit in without the right label on their pocket.

Our entire society is built upon pride.  It is all around us every day.  Where would we be without competition?  It is hard for us to imagine such a place.  It seems so foreign.  Isn’t competition good? Doesn’t it push us to improve? Don’t market forces balance out and foster innovation?  Isn’t capitalism good?  It is, after all, the best economic system the world has ever known, isn’t it?  Survival of the fittest seems to be the law of nature (our telestial world).

In the D&C, the Lord rebuked William Phelps and admonished him to repent, ‘because he seeketh to excel’. (D&C 58:41).  Well what’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we excel?  Look at communism or socialism, where no one has an incentive to excel.

The big problem in all of this is that too often it interferes with keeping the second commandment, that of loving our neighbor.  We can’t feel smugly superior to someone else and go about humbly serving them at the same time.  We can’t be seeking recognition and praise from the world for ourselves and at the same time bring honor and glory to God.  Our motives and intentions matter.

Our entire society is founded upon pride.  It is manifest in every part of our modern culture.  It will one day fall.

It is not the culture of heaven.  We get glimpses of what the society of heaven is like in the temple.  There we find joy, peace, order, unity, and equality. Service replaces competition.  Humility replaces pride.  We find rich symbolism, ritual, instruction and edification. 

When the Lord finds a people sufficiently pure that he can dwell with them there you find Zion—the society of heaven.  It is the antithesis of our world.  No wonder President Benson identified pride as the great stumbling block to Zion.

I have had far too much pride in my life.  It is something I am seeking to set aside and to be stripped of.  Often that requires challenges and difficulties as a gift from the Lord.  In fact, we are told that we are given weakness precisely to help us learn humility (Ether 12:27).  It is one of our purposes in coming here.  It is hard to do on our own.  But it is a defect that the Lord can correct in us if we will let him.

If we awaken and begin to see things as they really are, we can let go of our insecurities and begin to accept ourselves and our lives and our limitations and find a measure of peace and contentment.  Our value lies not in our accomplishments.  Our true value lies in the divinity that resides in each of us.