Monday, July 17, 2017

Pride Goes Before The Fall

"Pride Goes Before The Fall"
Proverbs 6:16-19; 8:13; 11:2; 16:5, 18; 21:24

    The Greeks distrusted arrogance because they believed that to be arrogant about one's gifts or good fortune was to incite the jealousy of the gods. Greek poets and philsophers loved to tell stories of the downfall of powerful, arrogant men whose hubris, or excessive arrogance, tripped them up when they least expected.

    There is the story told by the historian Herodatus about a powerful, but tyrannical and arrogant king named Polycrates. Herodatus was a great traveller, and gathered folk wisdom and stories not only from his native Greece, but also from Egypt, Persia, and other countries around the Mediterranean. Herodatus conveyed history in the form of stories because he believed that stories--not logical expositions--most accurately captured the reality of human history and human experience.

     King Polycrates was a rich and powerful ruler who seemed to have all that life had to offer.  What he did not have, he took.   Polycrates' good friend, the king of Egypt, became worried about him. He wrote Polycrates a letter and said that he wished for himself and his friends some failures mixed in with their successes. "I have never heard of anyone," wrote the Egyptian king, "whose good fortune was complete and who did not end up in complete ruin." He then urged his friend to give up something that he cherished.

   On reading the letter, Polycrates thought that his friend from Egypt was giving him good advice. He decided to give up an emerald ring made of gold which was very precious to him. Reluctantly, he sailed far out to sea on one of the ships of his formidable navy, and threw the treasured ring overboard. Then he went back to his palace and mourned his loss.

    A week later a fisherman in Polycrates' kingdom caught a large and beautiful fish. He decided to make a gift of the fish to the king. When the palace cook cut open the fish, he found inside it the ring that the king had thrown into the sea. Polycrates was joyful to have his ring returned, and wrote to his friend in Egypt to tell him of his good fortune.  Polycrates thought he was blessed by the gods, and must have been a much better person than all others, since he got his ring back.  His arrogance only increased instead of decrease, as the King of Egypt hoped.

     This was enough to scare his friend. The king of Egypt wanted nothing more to do with Polycrates because he knew that his friend was headed for big trouble. He didn't want to suffer in his soul while he watched his friend meet a horrible fate. And so he ended his friendship with Polycrates right then and there. And he was right to do so, because Polycrates had allied himself secretly with the king of Persia to attack and take over Egypt.

Shortly after, during the war, Polycrates was murdered in a horrible way.  Polycrates thought he was better than all others, and it was that arrogance that led to his awful death at the hands of those he trusted.


Arrogance is one of the most addressed qualities in the book of Proverbs.  It is one of the worst human qualities talked about in the Bible.  It is the part of humanity that God detests the most.  (I confess I used to be really arrogant, but I fixed that and now I'm perfect.)

A group called the Knowledge and Media Research Center, in Tuebingen, Germany, did a study of arrogance.  Their study determined that arrogance reflects an interpersonal quality that desires to over power others.  So arrogance is about power, the accumulation of power, and making sure you have power over as many people as possible.

The philosopher Nietzsche said the main drive of human beings was what he called, "the will to power."  Looking at the world, especially today and what's going on with our national leaders, it's not hard to disagree.  Or, if we are honest with ourselves, none of us likes to feel powerless.  None of us likes to feel like we just keep getting stepped on and we don't get to step on anyone back.  We want to be sure we have some kind of power over certain situations or people in our life.

But, like the King of Egypt was worried about Polycrates, too much pride and arrogance in the form of power is destructive to self and others.  The study I mentioned a moment ago that came out of the German group found that arrogant, power motivated people are drawn to words like affluence, authority, dominance, fortune, money, prestige, reputation, and status.

Arrogant people are driven by a desire to edge out others seen as competitors.  It's an over confidence in your own ability to actually win.  But it's not just about winning.  It's seeing yourself as deserving to win.

Proverbs 11:2 stated,
When arrogance comes, then comes disgrace;
But with the humble is wisdom.
The Hebrew word for arrogance there means presumption.  Presumption is an idea you take as true, but you don't know for certain.  Even though you don't know for certain, you still use it as a building block for other ideas about self-importance.  So if the presumption is that you deserve to win over others, you assume that presumption is true and act as if it is.  That is the building block of arrogance.

Arrogant people seek status.  But they acquire that status through intimidation and aggression.  In Proverbs 8:13, it is God speaking through the writer where it says,
…pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate.

The Hebrew word for arrogance here literally means to swell.  God hates people who swell themselves up by intimidating and pushing power and being aggressive.  It's an arrogance that swells itself up by deflating others.

It's interesting to me that just about every word in the Proverbs for the word arrogance is a different word in Hebrew.  They had all kinds of ways of saying "arrogant."  Most of them are pictorial words like swelling up, or rising up, or tilting the head back.  And all these word pictures have horrible consequences to those who do them:  being fractured or broken, tottering, stumbling and falling, being disgusting and morally revulsive, a disgrace, and dishonorable.  The problem is, the arrogant, while pushing their arrogance, are totally oblivious to all that.

A captain of a battleship was told there was a light ahead, apparently another ship headed right for them.  The captain signaled, "Veer 5 degrees to the starboard."  A reply came back saying, "You veer 15 degrees to the port."  The captain messaged back, "Steer 5 degrees to the starboard—this is a battle ship!"  Then came the return message, "Steer 15 degrees to the port—this is a lighthouse."  That's how the arrogant are—steering themselves into the rocks not caring they are heading to ruin, because they are a battleship!

In their study of arrogance, the German research center discovered that the opposite of arrogance is affiliation.  That surprised me because I assumed, arrogantly, that the opposite of arrogance is humility.  But it is affiliation, which is the desire to build relationships and get along with others.

People who are strong on the affiliation scale are attracted to words like attachment, belonging, closeness, collaboration, community, cooperation, family, harmony, and relationships.  Whereas the arrogant are using people or stepping on people to get what they want, the affiliative people are creating closeness and relationship in order to get through life.

Charles Osgood has a podcast called the "Osgood File."  He also hosts a television show called "Sunday Morning" on Sunday mornings.  Maybe some of you have watched it.

In one of the segments on his "Sunday Morning" show, he told the story of two ladies who lived in a convalescent center.  One was named Ruth and the other Margaret.  Both of these ladies were accomplished pianists, having performed with famous orchestra's across the United States, as well as in solo performance.  Both had reason to be prideful, even arrogant about their own accomplishments.  But both these ladies gave up any hope of playing the piano again.  Each had suffered an incapacitating stroke.  Margaret's stroke left her left side restricted, while Ruth's stroke damaged her right side.  For them it was over.

The director of the center had an idea.  There just happened to be an upright grand piano in the chapel at the convalescent center.  The director had them both brought into the chapel sat them down at the piano.  She put a piece of classical music up on the music stand of the piano and encouraged them to play the solo piece together.

Which they did, and a beautiful friendship developed between the two women as they played piece after piece cooperating with each with their good hands.

That is the affiliation side of our Proverbs for today.  Certainly there is a part of us that is prideful and arrogant.  It is that part of us that only wants power, influence and affluence.  All of us have to recognize the presence of that in us.  But it is God's desire that we put that arrogance aside and develop relationships through affiliation and cooperation.  It is God's constant mention of a frustration, even a hatred, of human arrogance that hopefully motivates us the other way towards cooperation and affiliative relationships.

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