setarcos
The hopeful or the hopeless?
Rebellion, arrogance, hedonism, escaping accountability, making oneself God....all things that need qualifiers which Christianity gives us.it meant thinking independently, and was equated with rebellion, arrogance, hedonism, attempts to escape accountability, wanting to make oneself God, and the like
This may be a reflection of the limitations of our language but I'll give it a go...
I'll wager nothing good comes from pride in the self. We should do all things with humility. Christianity acknowledges that we accomplish nothing solely of our own accord that is why pride in self is discouraged in the scriptures.I use the word to refer the justified feeling one has when he or others he cares about achieve goals.
How is it you justify having pride in self? Did you birth yourself? Did you create a sound mind and healthy body for yourself? Did you manipulate the myriad factors of chance which placed you in the right place at the right time to make a right decision? No, there are too many factors which come into play that are outside of our control which allow us to achieve anything of merit. We should achieve all things in humility for we are all most blessed to be able to achieve anything worth others accolades.
As for pride in others achievements, I personally can't see anything wrong with that, if by pride you mean recognition of how blessed they are or their achievements bless you in some manner. A parent can be proud of their children's accomplishments, a friend can be proud of their friends virtuous traits, you may even have a sense of pride in a stranger's achievements in the form of athletic prowess or mental achievement, but these should be considered projections of pride in the good that has been done by others not reflections into another's or one's own self accomplishment. For as been asserted WE achieve nothing solely of our own accord.
The wisdom of being meek in Christianity is the realization of the current undesirable circumstances being temporary in the light of the bigger picture.Christianity seems to conflate meekness and humility
The meek are blessed because one has to humble oneself to be meek in this world and that is often not an easy thing to do. Being meek in Christianity
means subjecting oneself to faith in the will of God.
The act of being humble is an assertion in itself. One is meek when one realizes you should not or cannot force your will upon another with justification. The assertion of your will must develop within the other not as a projection from oneself upon another.humility meant not asserting oneself, which to me is meekness when one's will falls below a certain threshold and he fails to assert himself where he should.
arrogance? An overinflated sense of one's abilities? That's not a moral failing even if one suffers from it - just bad manners that are off putting to some and that will drive some people away
How do you define moral failing? An arrogant person may be quite talented and brag about their abilities without overinflating them. What makes arrogance a moral failing is that they cannot justify their abilities as self created any more than they might brag about them being self birthed.
I was under the impression that how you defined the words reflects your disagreement with Christianity not a disagreement with their general meaning.As I said, and based in my experience as a Christian, when a Christian asks such questions, they're really talking about submission, and the substitution of a received set of living instructions for one's own free will - nothing like what I'm talking about when I use those words.