LOVE IS NOT PUFFED UP

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let’s think about being proud.

The Greek word for pride in 1 Corinthians 13:4 means being inflated. It has been translated as “puffed up,” “proud,” “arrogant,” and so on.

Love is not puffed up, Paul writes. God is love; therefore, God is not puffed up.

It seems silly writing that about God. Pride as a virtue or as a vice dwells within creatures that are not so sure of themselves.

Pride is a driving force in the economic class wherein I find myself. We of the middle class are driven by merit and recognition. Respect is earned among us in accordance with what we have accomplished. If I’m Billy Bob shooting mourning dove mating bows with a camera on a high wire one day, I’m nothing, but if I’m Billy Bob directing and acting in a blockbuster, I get to be a guest on the Colbert Show.

The upper class is driven by money. Those who rose from the ranks would be proud if they came from the lower classes, but those who were born in that class—I wonder if pride affects them at all. I imagine a son or daughter of wealth would not care what others thought of them because they have enough money to purchase adulation at some level. I imagine rich folks take pride in having more money than other rich folks.

The lower class is driven by relationships. They have an arrogance that says they are wonderful just as they are, and they do not need to change a thing about themselves.

Now, I’ve just shared the current sociological construction that defines the psychological profile of the economic classes. From the standpoint of individuals it is nonsense. From the standpoint of surveys and scientific analysis it has the sanction of wide acceptance until something new comes along.

It remains difficult for us to imagine our God of love having anything to do with pride. If God were some sky god who needed worshippers to grovel before him and kill animals so he could smell their burning flesh, then a suggestion that such a god was an arrogant, fiendish megalomaniac with no one brave enough to protest him.

Our God of love is not that. If our God of love had a consciousness, it would be comprehensible to us the way a  low density galaxy is comprehended by a tick or a neutrino is conceived by a whale.

In any case, love transcends pride everlastingly, so God does too. Indeed, love has nothing to do with pride. All love does is love.

Blessings…