Pride

 President Ezra Taft Benson, the thirteenth prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints once said: “The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means ‘hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition’” (Ensigh, Apr. 1989, p. 2).

                                         

Pride has no place in a marriage. Unfortunately, because we are not perfect, pride does enter into marriages from time to time. Elder Neal A. Maxwell has stated: “The pressures of life in a family will mean that we shall be known as we are, that our frailties will be exposed and, hopefully, we shall then work on them. … It is an encounter with raw selfishness, with the need for civility and taking turns, of being hurt and yet forgiving, of being at the mercy of others’ moods and yet understanding, in part, why we sometimes inflict pain on each other. … The home gives us a great chance to align our public and private behavior, to reduce the hypocrisy in our lives, to be more congruent with Christ.” (Ensign, Feb. 1972, p. 7.)

So how do we have a happy marriage? C. Richard Chidester said: “Humility is a major ingredient of a happy life and a happy marriage” (Ensign, Mar. 1990, p. 1). He goes on to say that: “As a marriage counselor, I believe that pride is the reason for the mass marital failure in our society. But if you look at marriage books on the world’s market today, you’ll never see humility at the top of the list of ways to improve marriage!” (Ensign, Mar. 1990, p. 3).

I believe that humility can combat our pride. I remember that I once had to take a pride test in which I had to rate myself on how prideful I was on a scale from one to ten. I felt uncomfortable taking such a test because I felt prideful if I gave myself a high score but then I felt like I was lying if I gave myself a low score. I think that we are all prideful to some degree or other. However, that does not mean that we can take each opportunity we can to diminish our pride and improve our humility. Marriage truly is a self-less sacrifice and when it is full of selfishness, it doesn’t work. It is my wish that we all try to be a little more humble and consciously work on being self-less people in every aspect of our lives.