8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
9 Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
If we keep the perspective
that the grace of God helps us as we do all we’re asked to do we can see better
that we really are saved by our faith in Christ and not of ourselves, and then
we’re less likely to preen and boast.
See
that ye are not lifted up unto pride; yea, see that ye do not boast in your own
wisdom, nor of your much strength. (Alma 38:11)
After all we’ve read before,
we see now why Alma gives these instructions. Alma didn’t want his son Shiblon to fall into the same sins
his son Corianton had.
Later, Helaman gives these
instruction to his sons:
And
now my sons, behold I have somewhat more to desire of you, which desire is,
that ye may not do these things that ye
may boast, but that ye may do these things to lay up for yourselves a treasure
in heaven, yea, which is eternal, and which fadeth not away; yea, that ye
may have that precious gift of eternal life, which we have reason to suppose
hath been given to our fathers. (Helaman 5:8, emphasis added)
After reading some of the
previous scriptures about boasting, we can see exactly why Helaman said that
having an opportunity to boast is not the best reason to do good. If we were to
do good and then to boast about it, that would negate any spiritual benefit we
got from it by eventually bringing about our fall.
Instead, Helaman advises
taking a longer view—doing good in order to lay up a treasure in heaven. It’s nice to know that a treasure in
heaven is not going to go anywhere and it can’t be stolen and it can’t decay
like things on earth.
I suppose Helaman thought
his sons might boast of good works in order to quickly get a social reward of
praise rather than waiting for the full eternal reward. This makes me think that maybe we have
a nasty tendency to fall into the trap of thinking that the good we do in life
guarantees our reward will come in mortality with some kind of increased status
and that’s one reason why we boast.
One way we might apply
Helaman’s counsel today is by not doing good just so we can put it in our resume
or our author biography or curriculum vita or so that we can mention it to
other people or do a Facebook status post on it. At the very least, if we mention it to others, we can try to
make it a way to convey spiritual principles to help them rather than to raise
our image. Do it like King
Benjamin did.
Paul had some instructions
for the gentile converts who might have boasted that they were more faithful
than the Jews. He used imagery
like that of the allegory of the olive tree to make this point:
18 Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the
root, but the root thee.
19 Thou wilt say then, The branches were broken off, that I might be
grafted in.
20 Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by
faith. Be not highminded, but fear:
21 For if God spared not the natural branches, take
heed lest he also spare not thee.
22 Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell,
severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.
(Romans 11:18-22)
Paul
essentially said that conversion to the truth is not a win-lose proposition;
one person’s conversion is not at the expense of another person’s
unbelief. Nor does one person’s
unbelief enable another person’s conversion. If the Jews had accepted the gospel instead of rejecting it,
the gospel would still have gone to the gentiles eventually.
In
the end, God is no respecter of persons; anyone who believes can lay hold on
His mercy, whether Jew or gentile.
Likewise, anyone who falls into unbelief will be cut off.
Essentially,
conversion is not something to boast about, nor by extension is continued
faithfulness.
Let another man praise
thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. (Prov. 27:2)
Here’s something interesting—why is it that when others
praise us it is embarrassing but it’s not so embarrassing when we praise
ourselves? The reality may be that
it is just as embarrassing, but we can’t see it because we are doing it.
17 But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
18 For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord
commendeth.
(2
Cor. 10:17-18)
If we have to glory in
anything, glory in the Lord. And
of course, Ammon and David and King Benjamin have showed us samples of how to
do that.
There’s another awesome principle there too—just because we
commend ourselves doesn’t mean that God commends us. And God’s approval is what really counts forever. So that gives us something to look for, something to ask
for, something to strive for.
As a random personal exercise
while I was working on these posts, I decided to make a list of all the things
I’d done recently or that I’d been involved in recently that I had gloried in
or had boastful feelings about.
Afterwards I looked at that
list and began to suspect that maybe my complacent, boastful attitude had kept
me from having important revelation on how to improve in those things. And maybe when I’d thought I’d been
successful I wasn’t as successful as I thought or as I could have been if I’d been
more humble. It was pretty
sobering.
Try this for yourself. Make
a list of everything in your life that you’re proud of. Odds are that those things may be
things that you boast about, either vocally or internally.
Here some patterns of what I
have tended to take credit for and boast about (even if only internally):
--Other people’s good
choices if I feel I had a hand in it.
(By the same token, this may lead me to blame myself when others make
bad choices.)
--Others’ good choices even
if I had nothing to do with it. (This
is nothing more than wishful thinking.)
-- Successful outcomes (and
often I might blow them out of proportion and consider them more significant
than they really are)
--Capability to do others’
jobs (I might think, “If they put me
in that position, there wouldn’t be this problem.”) This is, of course, ignorance of the actual challenges.
--The good things I do. (But do I really understand and
appreciate all the supports that Heavenly Father gave me so that I could do
those things? Do I acknowledge the
promptings, the energy, the knowledge, the uplift, the way things were
orchestrated where I couldn’t see?
Do I grasp how the atonement was compensating for my weaknesses when I
needed it, even weaknesses I may not have known I had? Usually not.)
--Things I have become which
involved developing diligence, patience. (Unfortunately I tend to be blind to
the favorable circumstances and absence of handicap and the help of others that
enabled my development.)
Only after brainstorming
these things and writing them down and looking at them squarely have I been
able to see just how utterly pathetic my boasting has been, how completely
unmerited it was.
Sad to say, I’ve lived a lot
of life recently trusting in my own _______ and now I have to learn how to
think without internal boasting or complacency. I need to learn or re-learn to boast in the Lord and to stay
meek and contrite.
I don’t really have many
illusions about my ability to remember this long term. (Man is quick to boast,
after all.) But I can at least post this on my blog, try to practice it in my
life, pray for help to retain the lesson, and when I need a refresher from time
to time I’ll be able to go back and reread it.
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