Pride and Subtlety

Vickie Chow

It is widely known that pride is a dangerous trap to fall in, even more so when it comes to our faith. I don’t know about you, but I hereby confess that I’ve had my leg caught in that trap a couple of times. Now, I haven’t waved a banner proclaiming the things I do to serve God or commented to my friends how hard I worked on last week’s BSF homework. Lately, I’ve been more conscious of certain subtle actions that essentially spring from the same attitude. Here’s a list of things that I’ve caught myself doing:

1. I’m too good for the Table of Contents

I don’t know about you, but other than Genesis, Revelation, and Psalms, I often cannot get to the passage I want without having to undergo a little trial and error with my page flipping. Normally, in the privacy of my own home, I am indifferent to how long it takes for me to find a passage in the Bible, but during Sunday service, when it comes time to open our Bibles to the scripture reading, I’m under a little bit more of a time constraint. I would imagine that the Table of Contents page is included in every Bible for just such a purpose—to facilitate easy page finding—but I cannot bring myself to using this page for fear of others who may notice and think “She doesn’t know where the book of 1 John is? Wow. Just wow.” I realize that the reality of it is more like no one is paying attention to my Bible perusing habits, but it ultimately comes down to my pride. Yes, I think I am too good for an innocent page outlining a list of books in the Bible.

驕傲與微妙

Vickie Chow | 中譯：楊光

衆所周知，驕傲是一個危險的陷阱，尤其當它涉及到信仰之時。不瞞你說，我承認有好幾次被驕傲絆倒。雖然我沒有揮舞著旗幟宣布我怎樣事奉上帝，或大聲講我怎麼努力地做著上周的查經作業，但我最近發覺到一些更微妙的行動，其根源就是出於相同的驕傲態度。以下我列出了發覺自己做的小動作：

一，我不需要看目錄

不瞞你說，除了創世記、啓示錄和詩篇，我翻頁找其他經文時經常需要一番嘗試與錯誤才可以做到 。通常隱蔽在自己家中，我不在乎是否費長時間查找聖經中的一段話，但在主日崇拜時，當需要打開聖經找經文時，時間可就有點緊迫了。我想每一本聖經都包含目錄頁就是為了在這種時刻能方便尋找經文，但我卻怎麼也不能逼自己去查看目錄，生怕別人會注意到，並想，「她連約翰一書在哪兒都不知道？真是不可思議!」實際上，我知道注意我的聖經閱讀習慣的人一個都沒有，但最終這是出於我的驕傲心態。是的，我覺得我並不需要一張無辜的、列出聖經書卷的目錄。