SO GOOD QUOTES

When pride can’t get people to expect extravagant things of themselves, it does something that may be even worse. It makes them feel they ought to be doing certain fine and marvelous things, and makes them feel hopeless and guilty because they aren’t doing any of them. Like a cruel man overburdening a horse, pride piles heavy false obligations on us until we are nearly crumpled beneath the load. These false obligations are our “shoulds”—the things we have become convinced we “should” do by ourselves. We should avoid offending any other human being. We should make something of ourselves in the world. We should be tolerant and understanding. We should be considerate, generous, kind, and sacrificing. We should love and take care of everybody. We should accept full responsibility for everyone who’s unhappy. And so it goes, one devastating obligation after another. Pride makes people condemn and punish themselves unmercifully when they can’t meet such obligations. Many of the things pride may suggest to you are all right in themselves, but they’re things which are impossible for you to do with your particular personality, or impossible for you to do without growing a great deal spiritually, or impossible for you to do because God has something different in mind for you. And of course every one of them is impossible for you to do by yourself, without God. That’s the real catch with false obligations.

Sometimes pride will let a person think he’s meeting these false obligations well for quite a long time, let him bask in a feeling of personal success, and only then will pull the rug out from under him and point out what a lousy job he’s really been doing. Then a feeling of worthlessness, and often a feeling of being hopelessly doomed to failure, will start building up in a person. Catching false obligations early is a big help. Any time you have even a small feeling of guilt or failure or worthlessness that you can’t seem to get out from under, pray to be delivered from pride and false obligations—and keep praying, no matter how long it takes, until the false obligation that has caused your guilt or failure feeling becomes revealed to you so you can dump it. Praying for deliverance from pride always finally exposes any false obligations you may have and shatters your tyrannical fake conscience.

Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
Dee Pennock