Is It Pride that is Causing This Problem?

• DECEMBER 2018
• WIN THE BATTLE WITH THE NATURAL MAN

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Win the Battle with the Natural Man

By Elder Carl B. Cook

Of the Presidency of the Seventy

From a devotional address, “Putting Off the Natural Man and Becoming Saints,” given at Brigham Young University on October 10, 2017. For the full address, go to speeches.byu.edu.

One sign of pride is pushing back or turning away from God or from others who invite us to do God’s will. A resistant and prideful condition is described well in the Book of Mormon: “Behold, they do not desire that the Lord their God, who hath created them, should rule and reign over them; notwithstanding his great goodness and his mercy towards them, they do set at naught his counsels, and they will not that he should be their guide” (Helaman 12:6).

In other words, pride says, “Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t try to control my life.”

When we rebel or turn our backs toward God, we are actually turning our backs on true joy and happiness. Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, “Only by aligning our wills with God’s is full happiness to be found.”5

Pride, that sinister, grievous, subtle, disrupting, insidious, menacing, and rotten attribute of the natural man, constantly pulls us to focus on ourselves: our looks, our talents, our desires, our goals, our passions—on me, me, me. We look inward rather than outward toward others or upward toward God. Pride causes us to focus on what we want instead of on what others want or on what God wants.

The antidote for pride is humility. It is humbling ourselves and putting God’s will above our own, seeking what He wants instead of what we want, and aligning our will with His.

It is often challenging to recognize pride in ourselves. As President Benson described, we often sin in ignorance.6 When I lose the Spirit or feel distant from God or from others, I find it helpful to ask myself, “Is it pride that is causing this problem?” Inevitably, the Spirit whispers, “Yes, it is!”

I am grateful for the Lord’s mercy and kindness in helping us overcome our weaknesses. It is not easy to ask the question “Is it pride?” or to accept the answer. But recognizing pride is the first step toward overcoming it. We can then identify what we need to work on, humble ourselves, plead for forgiveness, let our pride go, and align our will with God’s.

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