These are attributes of the unsaved unregenerate human nature. These are the root of foolishness, ignorance, darkness, sin, despair and death.
No one ever says they absolutely maintain their right to be prideful, rebellious or cruel to another person. They simply stand upon the self justifiable position of the offended one and withhold their forgiveness from that other person. And right there they’ve done the very things they would never have dreamed they were capable of.
Un-forgiveness a/k/a grudge bearing never stands alone. Pride, rebellion and cruelty are always there alongside feeding and supporting one another as the best evil friends. Think of any human deprivation in history and you see them standing shoulder to shoulder. Their order of appearance or level of severity is subject to many variations but surely they are there, none ever far behind the others. Pride is usually the first one on the scene. If he had been properly identified we might have kept the other three from making themselves comfortable. The mess of horrors created is most often accounted for by the term cruelty. Cruelty works itself out the best making for an easy target. To flip cruelty we just have to apply the intellect of self improvement. Expand our minds, maintain some order and sense of priorities, these are universal desires, very noble and doable; in fact we feel good about overcoming cruelty.
Pride is so personal and subjective; we all suffer a bit of that so the harm from him is not worth the bother of serious analysis. Can something as plainly evident as pride be the cause of all these problems? He’s always around, part of the human condition, and how much effort must we really put into this to get a little hubbub resolved which ought to pass by on its own soon. Pride causes real problems for the powerful people in this world, they get carried away with him and do horrible things. That is not who we are. The very notion of pride is offset by the many good and humble works and offerings we’ve produced in a lifetime. Let’s keep this all in balance.
Rebellion is simply too radical a state, to call it out is so judgmental, can we seriously apply that term to any rational person’s intent or actions. Rebellion is the sort of thing devils and fiends do. Rebellion is aligned with out and out war and destruction. We’re not talking about anything like that here.
Grudge bearing, well we’ve all suffered through a bit of that in our past and may well justifiably do so in the future. We all try so hard but others do fail to meet the reasonable expectations of the very dear friendships we’ve invested in. Leaders fail too, they are only human, but they leave that bad taste and those messy consequences, are we never to think ill of those people in such conditions?
Yes, leave it all on cruelty. All we need do then is tell ourselves we’ll be better people going forward. We’ll learn from the past, focus a little more diligently and we’ll come out all right. Cruelty can never define us. We know we’re better than that. We’ll win this yet, you’ll see.
All this time grudge bearing, pride, rebellion and cruelty have huddled up, locked arms, tightened their grip and we’ve lost our breath or our will to throw them off. We don’t even know who they are and what they are doing. Self improvement and a consensus of new priorities will simply make the mockery of the next crises more painful in light of all we failed to notice and overcome. Have no illusion, there will be a next crisis and we’ll fail in it.
Forgive fast, at the very first sense that you might be justified at being offended. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Keep a strict watch out for pride. Plead with God to convict you and strip you of sinful pride. Find a devoted trustworthy disciple of Jesus to stand with you against a prideful nature. Do this by the power of the blood covenant, poured out for you. Do it in the power and the name of Jesus.
Matthew 26:28
This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
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