Beware of Pride

Week 8: Humility and Charity

            When you are making cookies, if you want them to be amazing you need to use the best ingredients. For instance, you would never add something from your kitchen garbage can to your recipe. When thinking about marriage, it makes sense that you would only add ingredients that will help it flourish. Pride would be one of the ingredients you need to leave out of a happy and healthy marriage.

 

            President Ezra Taft Benson in his 1989 address to the world he teaches powerfully about pride. He explains pride as, “Most of us think of pride as self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness. All of these are elements of the sin, but the heart, or core is still missing. The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowman.” 

        

Obvious sarcasm, but how many times do we have this type of attitude?

When pride is in a marriage there is very little room for love, kindness, and forgiveness. H. Wallace Goddard, Phd in his book “Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage” teaches “The natural man is inclined to love himself and fix others. God has asked us to do the opposite.” How many times have I caught myself telling my husband if he would just do what I want, I would be happy? Of course I’ll be happy if he does what I say…it’s all about me. This is a perfect example of pride.

What are some ways we can change our thinking from about ourselves to thinking about our spouses?

1.      Serve the one you love.

2.      Think about their needs before your own.

3.      Find small acts of kindness to do for them.

4.      When you are feeling irritated with them, stop and try to understand their side of the issue.

5.      Pray for your spouse. This is especially important when you feel irritated or frustrated.

I find when I try to do some of these things listed, I can shift the focus from myself to my spouse. When I do this, I am putting the life of my marriage above myself. That seems like a great ingredient for a happy and healthy marriage!