Arrogance

Message / Question

Dave, as someone who's quite intellectual you've probably had your fair share .. maybe more when you were younger .. of people calling you arrogant . what do you think when people say that .. and more importantly what has life taught about how you should respond . do you just ignore it ? is it a tall poppy Ozzie thing ?

Response

When the Bible says “Let a man examine himself....” it’s not talking about checking for skin cancers, it telling us to constantly check our character. If someone suggests that I have behaved in an arrogant manner, my task, my duty is to check my actions, motives and manner to find out if there is some truth in the allegation. If there is, then I need to make adjustments and seek a bit more help from The Lord to fix that area of my life. However, one must also accept that when you hold dear to a truth and refuse to budge from it, regardless of what people may say or do, some people interpret that as arrogance. So the accusation needs to be considered and either adjustments made or simply accept that people say such things because they have no reasonable argument against what you are saying/doing. Remember too, that sometimes, if you correct the information that someone has given, they may become self protective and accuse you of arrogance. So examine yourself objectively, don't automatically accept that what they are saying is true.

We must however, never allow ourselves to become so conceited or arrogant that we border on being unteachable. I have taught things to people who are much smarter than I and I have learned things from people who are almost totally uneducated. I have learned from older and younger people and had input into the lives of such people. I remember once (on a missions trip) seeing a Christian man who was clearly illiterate and very poor – at first I felt sympathy for him, but as I watched him seated in the front row worshiping God, I began to see that he had wealth far beyond anything that I could imagine and relationship with the greatest teacher in the Universe – and as I watched him I learned a great lesson, in our Christian walk (as it is in many areas of life) it’s not about WHAT you know, it’s all about WHO you know.

Does that mean that it doesn’t hurt sometimes when people say things about you that you know are untrue? Of course not, human emotion is part of our created being, so we feel the pain that words can sometimes bring. Sometimes when people say things, it may be appropriate to challenge them or correct them, but often you simply have to turn the other cheek and hope like crazy that they don’t too hard on one of the bruises that you’re still carrying from the last time you turned that cheek!

Tall poppies? No, we’re branches not flowers, we just hang in there making sure that our graft onto the vine is in tact and get on with what God has called us to do.