Power mongering, pride's byproduct

Washington, D.C., just like every seat of government, suffers from the malady of arrogance. One needn't look beyond the local city council, county board, state or national legislatures or any executive office at all levels of government to find how pride infects thought processes. Hardly an individual taking an oath of office manages to escape the pride of position that soon engenders pretentiousness, rapidly replacing the mindset of representing the voters who elected them. Barely detectable, the process occurs incrementally with disastrous results as those claiming expertise by virtue of their office annul the people's will.

Loss of perspective can happen in a heartbeat if pride, an exclusively human attribute, gains traction. And as our current culture has developed, education progressively encourages pride in knowing little, calling it intuitive intellect. This is the picture of society's demise, believing that accumulated information is knowledge, the source not withstanding. The computer age brought with it one of the truest axioms, "garbage in, garbage out." An example of small town politics taking a furtive turn, with all but one council member recognizing its insidious nature, illustrates how pride can overtake, and undermine, the body's purpose. A town hall was held where the major issue was the deteriorating roads and how to finance their repair. Constituents packed the meeting and came to a general agreement on an acceptable amount that could be added to the monthly water bill. The proposition passed muster and the assembly dispersed expecting the council to follow the approved course of action. Within the month, an emergency council meeting was called, where only a quorum was able to attend. Based on an assumed superior understanding of the situation, the council decided to alter the revenue proposal before placing it on the ballot by creating a flexible addition to the property tax rather than following the arranged plan. Only one member dissented, lecturing the council on how they were abrogating the public trust by creating a loophole for raising future property taxes without citizen input or consent. Witness the pride of power and the belief that position increases knowledge. There is reason why Scripture castigates pride as the most hateful of man's traits... it supplies the rationale for denying God. Pride in whatever insignificant knowledge man accumulates has given rise to presuming our intellect, derived from randomness, to be the most advanced in history. It is awarded higher value than the universal knowledge embodied by the Almighty.

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Following the lead of Gnostic precepts, the forerunner of communism, all critical thought is allocated to man's capacity to reason, which is attributable to nothing better than a few random cells managing to rub together in the recesses of time. Or, some of those superior minds with advanced physics pedigrees claim that other intelligent beings or comet-born DNA from galaxies afar seeded this planet with the building blocks that morphed into the incredibly complex plant and animal beings that populate the planet. "Incredibly" is chosen purposely as the concept is indeed implausible. Yet, highly intelligent scientists believe it, or they espouse faith in nothingness from which came something. The theory allows for pride because it places us at a level of equality with other randomly created life, be it highly conscious beings or primordial soup ingredients. Justifying a wholly invalid theory, backed by no evidence that intelligent beings exist anywhere beyond Earth other than fanciful twisting of emanations from the blackness of space that appear to show a pattern, scientists reject the obvious -- an omniscient designer. This pride[1] that God despises is what keeps us from "seeing" God and, ultimately, from receiving Christ. Our arrogance in believing that our haphazardly acquired intelligence is the best that nature can "create" is our failing. This same arrogance is what feeds the elitist attitude that slips in, almost unnoticeably, to sever the connection between the elected and the electorate. Within the blink of an eye, pride becomes superior knowledge, and that elitism is expressed through power... the power to tell others what is best for them, including that belief in God is fantasy. The bottom line is that our ability to conceptualize creation is so limited that we prefer to deny the capacity of our brain, which is finite while focused on what we can physically see and hear. It takes acknowledging the existence of something eternal, greater and wider than the boundless universes, of which we are less than a nano-speck, to open the mind to truly see creation for what it is, made by a Creator. Pride will ever bar that leap of simple faith that, by humility, gives us the one thing we need most -- Hope.