Biblically Speaking

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I was talking to a prison guard friend of mine the other day when he told me something that I found quite interesting. He said that one of the worst problems in the prison is the well educated prisoners being manipulated by the less well educated. It seems that the prison guards know what the rest of us don't...that in general the more educated a person is the more easily manipulated. I had been tossing this around in my head for some time when I set out to read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy.

I was struck equally by a portion of C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength (part of the Space Trilogy series) in which a very well educated college professor (with a fellowship) is manipulated and used by people with horrid motives. As the book goes along, it becomes more and more clear that this character, Mark Studdock, is being manipulated so easily because his eyes are blinded by pride. Studdock is doesn't see the manipulation, which is so easy for the reader to grasp, because he is proud of his education his sensibility and his reasonableness. He doesn't want to appear unreasonable, and therefore close-minded, so he is reasons everything out. Mark wants to be liked and respected as a reasonable man just like my friend's highly educated prisoners.

I step back and look at myself here...not that I'm exceptionally well educated or really smart...but too often my pride in being reasonable and well liked gets in the way. Someone may present themselves before me with a problem or with a situation where they need to be rebuked in love and shown their error, but I may cover it over in a cloak of reasonableness. I may end up reasoning away their guilt while actually trying to maintain their superficial liking of me.

When we do this as Christians, our pride becomes the driving force behind our fraud. We give up speaking the truth in love in favor of tickling the ears of those around us because we can't afford a blow to our self esteem and pride. We want to be liked so we speak fraud in hatred rather than the truth in love (who can argue that speaking fraud to someone who needs truth is not hateful). We place ourselves above others, and in fact, we place ourselves above God.

Dante, in his The Divine Comedy - The Inferno (Canto 26), placed these people who tickled the ears and gave fraudulent counsel in order to preserve their own pride and self esteem in a particularly horrible place in hell. He placed them in a circle where they were individually surrounded by a flame as they were constantly consumed (but never consumed) and tormented. All communication with the damned had to pass through the fire because their chief sin was with the tongue (which the scripture says is as a flame).

We must guard ourselves against pride. Knowledge puffeth up but charity edifieth (1 Corinthians 8:1). We should endeavor to grow strong in knowledge and understanding, but we must guard ourselves against pride and self love as we do. We should constantly endeavor to buffet our bodies and beat the flesh into submission so that when we must lovingly speak the truth we won't get in the way ourselves.

We must know the truth. We must study and be ready to speak the truth. We must learn to lovingly and skillfully speak the truth. We must beat down our own will, pride and selfish desires for recognition and acclaim. The church should be the head and not the tail of society. The head or leader is not doing his job when placing his likeability before other responsibilities.