The Horribly High Cost of Arrogant Pride

"I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/invictus/

These last two lines of the poem Invictus written by William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), are an expression of total arrogance, a contradiction of recorded history that records just how ineffective such a prideful arrogance on the part of so many men and women can have abased their souls. 

Still people don't learn. 

Let us share some examples shown below:

"12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13  For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High
15  Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
16  They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this  the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

17  That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

18  All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, everyone in his own house.

19  But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch, and as the raiment of those that are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcase trodden under feet. "

http://kingjbible.com/isaiah/14:12-19htm

These biblical verses demonstrate how the archangel Lucifer self destructed down from an almost hallowed position in the Kingdom of God down to being God's enemy and ours, and all the way down to total destruction, which remains pending now.

Unfortunately, today, many human beings and equally important, many societies have the attitude of  missing biblical alerts and examples.  You may even be one of them.  Therefore, let me then share a warning from an unexpected source, the Prince of Machiavelli.  He was certainly no biblical author and in anything, his writings give the feeling of amorality.   However, in all this, he expressed a humility and an honesty that should be heeded when he gave the right sort of advice.

"It is not unknown to me how many men have had - and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God - that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs, which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince25.htm

No one gets to be a master of their fate, nor captain of their soul.  Weare just not created to go that far up.  We never arrive to be powerful enough to be our own gods; we never come to worship ourselves.  We are not equipped for that.  Moreover, when we achieve great feats, we are to give God the credit. 

I believe that pride is an infectious disease of the soul that sets in when we suffer some trauma that afflicts our self esteem as humans.  We were not created to suffer humiliations or to have our self esteems trampled under foot.  Such offenses are horrible injuries to our person hoods.  So if we need some ego trip to boost our sagging self esteem, we need to turn to God, through Jesus, and talk that over with Him. He understands our feelings, our pains. He doesn't want us to go through life like that.  Getting humiliated is a way of getting our hearts broken.  Here's what Jesus Christ said about people' broken hearts.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,"

Luke 4:18  (King James Version)

Thus we know that going off on an ego trip is not the way to solve an inner humiliation wound. We are to go to Jesus Christ with it and hand to him our humiliated souls and broken hearts. He will give us the appropriate relief if we turn to him with our pains.
Therefore, your free will you may use it as you choose.  If you choose to go off on an arrogant ego trip, trampling under foot all who would stand before you, please at least consider this warning:

"11  But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant.

 12  And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."

http://kingjbible.com/matthew/23.htm


Should you not want to accept a Biblical warning, then let's refresh your memory with Machiavelli:

"It is not unknown to me how many men have had, and still have, the opinion that the affairs of the world are in such wise governed by fortune and by God that men with their wisdom cannot direct them and that no one can even help them; and because of this they would have us believe that it is not necessary to labour much in affairs, but to let chance govern them. This opinion has been more credited in our times because of the great changes in affairs, which have been seen, and may still be seen, every day, beyond all human conjecture. Sometimes pondering over this, I am in some degree inclined to their opinion. Nevertheless, not to extinguish our free will, I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half, or perhaps a little less."

http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince25.htm

In the final analysis, the decision is yours.   Choose wisely then.

How to Handle Feeling Disgusted with Yourself

There will be times when you will make horrible mistakes with yourself, in your life, in which you will be judged foolish, evil, or bad intentioned by others.  Some may even say that you were a mistake of God's creation.

You could be pointed out as inferior, evil, valueless, a mistake of life by people who disapprove of you, for some reason, or other. 

It could have been done to you already, only once, many times, maybe even too many to count.  You could be pointed out as a mongrel, a bastard, worthless, human excrement, a mistake of humanity, a disgrace to society, a black sheep of your family, any bad title that anyone else could imagine saying to you for any reason at all.

Let's say you've faced disapproval throughout your whole life from the time that you were an infant.  Let's say that's all you know.  Let's say you were kicked out of your home and face an unknowable, hostile world. 

With those horrible, unfair labels, you've been raised being exposed to throughout your life, how do you judge yourself, how do you measure and weigh your own worth fairly, when all you know is all this bad stuff you've been told about yourself?

The truth about your worth as a human being is very simple and blunt.  You are in no condition at all to judge your own worth at any stage of your life, no matter whether all of humanity judges you as almost a god — or whether the rock bottom of all of the human societies are above you.

Guess what!  No one at all — except Jesus Christ —is qualified to judge you or set your level of human worth in life.

On what information is based the truthfulness of this last statement, this last paragraph so far?

"The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;"

The passage from the Bible's New Testament Book of Matthew, chapter 13: verse 41 explains what this has to do with you and your worth as a human being.

Where in the Bible does it then say that Jesus Christ will send out human society's standards value enforcers or regular human people, no more or less than you yourself to gather out of God's Kingdom all things that offend and them which do iniquity?

Nowhere — He's sending out his angels and not people, not parents, cousins, aunts and uncles, guardians, groups, committees, police officers, lawyers, bureaucrats, inspectors, judges, bailiffs, correctional officers, clerks, etc. to that task.

There are rightful places and tasks that must be done by all of these people. Each of these has their rightful purpose and their own values to enforce.  However, passing judgments on the worth of other people and condemning them is not among those.

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