Beware of Pride

Life in Wilmington has gotten a bit interesting of late.  Monday, as we were doing E-mails home to our family, two elders walked into the library and told us that they were going to be our roommates for three weeks.  Elder Lake and Elder Kerouac are both excellent missionaries, which was why it felt a bit like President Schaefermeyer was putting them in to fix the area.  Kind of like having the KGB live in your house.

As expected, it didn't take long for stuff to start happening.  Thursday, Elder Kerouac criticized Elder Bingham quite severely for having music he didn't approve of on his IPod.  I wound up playing counselor to both of them, trying to help each understand the other.  It was good practice, since I want to become a psychologist after my mission.  Elder Bingham only wanted to be left alone, but didn't really feel that he was able to do so while being under what he felt was the constant scrutiny of Elder Kerouac.  Elder Kerouac didn't want to leave him alone, since that would mean leaving a source of contention in the house.

As I saw it, it all stemmed from pride.  Really, there's one talk that I simply love.  It's one that Ezra Taft Benson gave a while ago, called Beware of Pride.  In it, he explains how pride is essentially a power struggle between ourselves and somebody else.  Pride says, "If you win, I am a failure."  In another way, pride refuses to change, because that would imply past failure.  Sin is essentially our pride against God's wisdom. 

I remember reading a story of a janitor in a Nuclear facility.  In this facility, scientists accelerated molecules almost to the speed of light and colided the molecules together to study the result.  A janitor walked in on an experiment and shouted, "I knew it!  Y'all are getting paid a lot of money to do NOTHING!"

A lot like that, we often shout at God that he doesn't know what he's doing.  Even if we do not express this thought as such, by our actions we show that we don't believe God.  We don't believe in his promises.  We don't believe that Christ can help us.

Let's change that, and next time somebody comes to you and offends you, forgive him.  Let go and let God.