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News | Nate Talks . . . The Peril of Pride
4 February 2009
Nathan Morgan Locke, Christianity Explored's Youth Evangelist, on what the bible says about looking down on your brother
One of the most popular things to do as a young teenager is to offer your hand to someone and at the point at which they offer to shake it; you pull your hand away leaving them looking stupid.
Hilarious. It’s perhaps the world’s simplest practical joke.
I imagine most youthworkers have at some point been made to look foolish in this way and I hope that most youthworkers have found the resilience not to retaliate. What makes it worse is if it happens in public.
Imagine a youth group. They are sitting around waiting for something to happen. Someone makes a joke. A joke that isn’t particularly funny. No one laughs. Someone decides to point out the fact that no one laughed. People laugh.
Anyone who has any experience of the dynamics of a group of young people will be familiar with the tactic of self-promotion through putting others down.
Obadiah’s message concerns a similar theme, the pride of Edom in the humiliation of Israel. These two nations came from a single womb and were originally known as Esau and Jacob, the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. There had always been sibling rivalry but God had spoken to Rebekah to tell her just how complicated things would be between these two brothers.
‘The Lord said to her,
“Two nations are in your womb, and two people from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.”’
Genesis 25: 23
So when, centuries later, God said to Edom “I will bring you down” in Obadiah verse 4, it was because of Edom’s condescension towards the people of Israel; Edom’s joy in Israel’s embarrassment; the arrogance and pride of Edom.
You should not look down on your brother in the day of his misfortune,
nor rejoice over the people of Judah in the day of their destruction,
nor boast so much in the day of their trouble.
You should not march through the gates of my people in the day of their disaster,
nor seize their wealth in the day of their disaster.
You should not wait at the crossroads to cut down their fugitives,
nor hand over their survivors in the day of their trouble.”
Obadiah 10-4
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