Pride, Fear, and Staying Stuck (Day 24 of Unstuck)

It’s paradoxical, this relationship between fear and pride. On the surface, they look very different. Puffed up over against cringing. Head up compared with head down.

The truth is that they are closely related. First of all, as I noted a couple of days ago, they are both the expressions of a self-centered heart. Sometimes the ego promotes itself while at other times it protects itself. Self is still in charge.

Another way they are connected is that they feed each other. How so? The person who acts out of pride drives others away and themselves into a self-imposed isolation. That in turn becomes a breeding ground for insecurity and fear. And then that fear becomes resentful toward others and wants to conquer them. I know. Pretty deep stuff.

Getting unstuck always involves other people, their feedback and their support. Yet pride and fear always separate. They separate us from one another: we’ve already said that.

They also separate us from ourselves in a variety of ways, one of which is the pressure to be something we’re really not. Yet that isn’t what necessarily keeps us stuck. Instead, our self separation keeps us from knowing ourselves and seeing ourselves clearly. And so the things from which we keep trying to dislodge ourselves continue to hold us. Trying to fix ourselves without a clear self understanding is like trying to repair a refrigerator with a schematic of a calculator.

Fear ignores reality. Pride defies it. Together they rob us of the one crucial prerequisite to change: pain. Until we come to believe that the pain and danger of staying the same is greater than the pain and danger of changing, we’ll stay right where we are.

Right there beside pride and fear.

Fear keeps us stuck when it says, “This is dangerous. Don’t try it. You don’t know what might happen.” Pride keeps us stuck when it says, “Change? There’s nothing wrong with you. If you admit you need to change, you’ll look bad.”

You need to find some new companions. Tomorrow we’ll talk about them, about humility and godly confidence.