"Love is not proud."

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There may not be a better example of opposites sides of a spectrum than the example of love and pride. Pride is a cold, selfish, and lonely attribute that is geared only towards the self. Pride does not have the ability to think of other's needs unless pride shares a common goal, in which case it simply uses others to gain what it feels it deserves. 

 

The Inklings, a group of incredible writers and thinkers, with names like CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, has built ideology around what pride is. They believed that pride was the center, the origin of all sin and evil. Pride is simply believing that oneself is deserving of all material, praise, admiration, whatever it may be that only serves the self. So things like covetousness, greed, sloth, lust, and so on, all come from the sin of pride. 

 

Now if we think about love, specifically in a biblical sense, it is the complete and utter act of selflessness that one can show. Love does not withhold anything; love gives from a Spirit that is given without limit as it says in John 3:34. In direct contrast to pride, love wishes to bow before King and to serve anyone and every one no matter if they’ve done right or wrong.

 

I wanted to quickly touch on the world around us now. There is a group of people in this world, in this country, who believe that because of the color of their skin, they mean more; they think they’re worth more. And on the other side, there are boys and girls, children, in this country that are taught by their parents that they have to be careful wherever they go because there are people who pride themselves on the lack of melanin in their skin and judge others who have it. 

 

Something has gotta change. Love is not proud, and that means it does not discriminate. It doesn’t care what color your skin is, what type of person you’re attracted to, what clothes you wear, how many followers you got on Instagram, none of that matters to love. Brothers are brothers, sisters are sisters, a human being made in the image of God can never not be that. 

 

So speak up. Speak against the plague of pride that says one man is better than another, whether it’s based on the color of his skin, or for any reason for that matter. We all fall short of the glory and righteousness of an all good and mighty God who has lavished grace upon us. There is no room for self with love. Deny yourself, pick up your cross, and show this world a love it has never seen with making this ground here as it is in heaven.