Pride and Accomplishments

Despite God's method of reducing the Israelite army doesn't seem to make much sense, His reason for doing so is spelled out plainly in Judges 7:2, in which the Lord told Gideon "The people that are with thee are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, Mine own hand hath saved me." The Lord wanted the Israelites' victory to be truly and undeniably miraculous to help reduce the chances that the Israelites would fall victim to the sin of pride. God didn't want to give them any reason to think that they accomplished this victory themselves because He didn't want them to brag about it. However, while reading this explanation, I could hardly help thinking that one's accomplishments are perhaps the one appropriate cause of pride.

These days, people take pride in many things. Some people take pride in their nationality and/or heritage. Some people take pride in their race. Some people take pride in their gender and/or sexual orientation. However, if you ask me, I'd say that it's foolish to take pride in things like these, things over which the potentially-proud person has absolutely no control. It doesn't make sense for a person to be proud of the circumstances of their birth or of their genetic traits because they didn't earn any of those things. When a person actually accomplishes something, they have good reason to be proud of that, but when a trait is brought about by luck or by something someone else did, the person who inherited that trait has no legitimate reason to be proud of it.

So, since the Lord was saving the Israelites from the Midianites, and the Israelites weren't really earning that victory, it is not justified for the Israelites to take pride in that victory. They hadn't (and probably could not have) earned it, even with the 32,000 soldiers Gideon started with. The Midianites were described as being innumerable, so any Israelite victory against them could only have been miraculous. Yet, if the Israelites were only outnumbered 2-to-1 or even 5-to-1 or 10-to-1, they could have plausibly (and arrogantly) assumed that their victory was earned and boasted of it. Now, if the Israelites actually had earned that victory, a little bit of boasting might have been justified, but God wanted to make it clear that they hadn't and it wasn't.

Pride is a fairly serious sin, and many people fall into it by taking pride in things that they had little to do with. The Israelites didn't defeat the Midianites; God did. Similarly, a combination God, genetics, and luck determines each person's nationality, heritage, race, sex, gender, and sexual orientation, so it makes little sense for any person to take pride in theirs. Instead, let's make sure we give credit where credit is actually due, rather than taking credit for things we haven't earned, and when we do take pride in anything, let's make sure that it's something that we actually accomplished.