Darren LeBlanc

I took my date out to the mall tonight. She had a great time. The escalators are just about her favorite thing in the world. And when we are up on the second level she loves to look through the glass down at the people and wave. Occasionally she will catch someone’s eye and get a wave-back. This of course thrills her. Also occasionally, she will put her face on the glass and force me to speak strongly about germs and such. We walked through the whole mall just observing people riding the escalators. Letting her walk by herself next me makes her feel so grown up, like she is among all the big people…and just one of the crowd.

Tonight though, I was taken aback with my own Pharisaical tendencies. I passed a man who was speaking to his son in a way that I didn’t totally approve of. Immediately, I was filled with this sense of how much better I am than him. A few seconds later I came to my senses and nearly slapped myself. Please don’t get caught up on the fact that the manner in which this man was speaking was in fact wrong…that doesn’t matter. I want to ignore his ignorance for a moment and talk about my arrogance.

This is something that creeps up often and I hate myself for it. For instance, if I am in a group, I often have this instinctive compulsion to play “can you top this” during group interchanges. A few weeks back, I went to a photography expo with a few friends and 3 or 4 times during the day I found myself literally biting on my tongue while doing some serious coercing of my inner attention hungry demon.

Even in little things I find myself struggling with pride. My aunt Valerie told me that she has seen such a change in me over the past year. I immediately felt the need to explain why I may just have been a little more mature than she thought a year ago. Give me a break. And when I took those pictures of Acadia National Park a few months back, I don’t think I ever gave full credit to Artie Hughes who taught me a few things before I went. It was like “oh no, people can’t know that I’m only now learning how to use a circular polarizer” – yes, I struggle with pride.

Some recent research by the Barna Group (an authority in church-related statistics) indicates that for 16-29 year olds who are not Christians, the #1 reason for hostile feelings towards Christianity is the perception of a certain swagger or arrogance that we Christians carry around. That makes me sad and I’m going to do my best to not support that statistic.

In his musings on Christianity (and the disparate lives of its purported Christians) Leo Tolstoy writes:

Blame me — I do that myself — but blame me,
and not the path I tread and show to those who ask me where,
in my opinion, the road lies ! If I know the road home, and
go along it drunk, staggering from side to side — does that
make the road along which I go a wrong one ?

Anyway, I am not always an arrogant jerk…wait… Here I go again…caring too much about what you think of me :)

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 1 Corinthians 3:7