Good pride vs. bad pride
Good pride vs. bad pride
Good pride is what you experience when you take joy in the growth and development of character in others, in terms of reaching their potential. Bad pride is when you revel in your own perceived greatness and achievements. The devil had exactly the wrong kind of pride, and it destroyed him. Conversely, God has a nice sense of pride, when he took pride in the character of Job, in the face of a frustrated devil, who sought and failed to find a way to tear him down. God took pride in the steadfast prayers of the righteous man, Daniel, and gladly shut the mouths of lions, intended for his death. God took so much pride in the unwavering faithfulness of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego that He personally rescued them in the fiery furnace. Jesus took so much pride in character of Nathanael that He declared him to be what an Israelite should be, and took so much pride in the spiritual development of Simon that He renamed him, Peter, translated as Rock, of some sort. These are instances in which God took pride and personal satisfaction in seeing people reach their potential, in becoming what they could and should become. But Jesus did not take heart in the good confession of Thomas, because Thomas had believed only because He had seen, and thus did not represent a true character hurdle. So here is the challenge for Calvinism. If, according to Calvinism, everything is predestined and predetermined, such that God is sovereign over “thought,” just as He is sovereign over “action,” in the way that Calvinism defines true “sovereignty,” in terms that there is no such thing as independent thought, and that there are no unscripted or rogue thoughts, from eternity to eternity, in that everything which exists, exists because it is formatted thusly, then how can God take heart and take pride in anything which exists, knowing that it exists solely by His own monergistic doing, and without deviation in the slightest detail? In such a world, God’s pride and joy would amount to nothing more than reveling in His own predestination. Would it not?
