Something about serving and pride

Who is the most difficult person you have to deal with? You may have named one or more people without having to think very much. But you should read on and see if you agree with John Ortberg.

In his book ‘The Life You’ve Always Wanted’ Ortberg has a chapter titled “Appropriate Smallness’ that deals with pride. He offers examples of pride including vanity, stubbornness and exclusion.

But he offers a way to deal with pride. It is through servanthood and this is part of the chapter subhead. 'The primary reason Jesus calls us to servanthood is not just because other people need our service. It is because of what happens to us when we serve.'

One form of servanthood he identifies is 'The ministry of 'Bearing.' This spoke to me about the way I think about some people. An excerpt is below.



‘We are called to bear each other’s burdens…But at times it may feel as if an entire relationship is burdensome. I may need to ‘bear with’ people until I learn to love them.

…The leader of the group gave some thoughtful advice. She said we should set aside any tendency we might have to evaluate the people and their comments and simply let God speak through them.

I realized that I tend to approach things the other way. As a reflex I had started sizing up the group from our first meeting. Here is a troubled, whining, recovery junkie type, I thought as one person spoke. And here is a traditional, hyper-rational, old school character who will not discover or reveal his heart. And here is a wise, high functioning person I can really learn from. On I went, putting people on a kid of maturity continuum, ready to listen to and try to connect with those who seemed advanced and to endure those who seemed to lag behind.

The leader’s directive - to let go of evaluations and allow God to speak – was, unknown to her, a gentle indictment of my whole way of listening. I realized that my evaluations, while perhaps not totally off base, had more to do with me than with the people I was evaluating. More important, they kept me from listening to what God might want to say to me through people. They kept me from seeing the truth that all of us are somewhere on a journey to God, and the gap between least and most advanced is infinitely smaller than the gap between the most advanced and God himself.

The ministry of bearing with one another is more than simply tolerating difficult people. It is also learning to hear God speak through them. It is learning to be ‘for’ them. It is learning that the difficult person I have most to deal with is me.

This means that…I am called to free people... – repeatedly if necessary – from the little prisons to which I consign them….It may be the most difficult kind of person of all – one in whom I see the same struggles that rage inside me.’