Pride and Foolishness

Three symptoms of pride include (1) lying to protect our self-image; (2) competitiveness; (3) believing our personal ideas are more valuable than God's Truth.

Human nature has a perverse drive to take risks, pushing the envelope, taking unwise chances, foolishly gambling away the future. Foolishness is sin.

Why does God carve out a special role for rejects, off-scourings, and castaways? Are there characteristics of outcasts and 'undesirables' that we should copy?

In this sermon on the deadly consequences of pride, John Ritenbaugh warns that pride elevates one above God, denigrating any dependence upon God, replacing it with insidious self-idolatry. Pride is entirely about disrespect (of God, other people, tradition. . .

Martin Collins, reporting the findings of a recent Barna Poll, reveals that many Americans (especially the Millennials) have rejected the concept of moral absolutes and have embraced the treacherous notion that truth is relative, totally a matter of person. . .

Without thanksgiving and praise, our prayers degenerate into the 'gimmes' with the emphasis on the self. We must give God thoughtful thanks in every circumstance.

John Ritenbaugh suggests that carnal hostility to God's law may be one contributory factor for the extreme difficulty that people have responding to government. The key to a positive attitude toward government seems to be the learning of self-government or. . .

Proverbs 14:12 reveals that, when men follow a way of life that they think is right, it ultimately ends in death. Only God's way of life results in more life.

Children do what they do because they are allowed to and because there are no immediate consequences for disobedience. Ecclesiastes 8:11 describes a permissive and tolerant climate in which no fear of immediate consequences occurs. The most significant scr. . .