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The Tragedy of Ego


My son, pay attention to my wisdom, listen well to my words of insight, that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge. For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths are crooked, but she knows it not. (Proverbs 5:1-6) 

            So much tragedy crossed my computer screen in the past 24 hours. Six police officers dead and five injured in Dallas. They were shot by someone who used a protest of two police killings of civilians as his/their trap. A video of a young man who was treated brutally by a police officer after the young man foolishly and repeatedly disobeyed the officer's commands. A young woman apparently went to a professor for counseling after she found out she had genital warts. She was upset that she might have difficulty conceiving someday (apparently not true) and protested the she was not promiscuous, having only been with six guys in her 19 years. I've heard young adults rage that what they are doing may be wrong, but it's their life to live and no one has a right to say a word.
            The adulterers and adulteresses of this world aren't only those who entice us away from our marital vows. They entice us away from our spiritual vows, our social vows, our personal vows, and their weapons are their mouths, however, it is out of the heart that the mouth speaks. The heart is the will. The will is the ego. The ego is the source of these tragedies. One person decides he will take his anger out on another. Someone else decides no one has a right to tell him/her what to do. A third and fourth can't believe that her behavior is unwise or at least cannot listen even if she recognizes the lack of wisdom. Those of us who aren't there now have been there before and probably will be again. Human arrogance is endemic, and we find it difficult to give up even when we know it's deadly. 
           We do not need anyone to build up our confidence. G. K. Chesterton once wrote of a discussion he had with a publisher.
          The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.”
          And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written “Hanwell.” I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.”[1]
         We can either celebrate that our society has become Bedlam, or we can turn from the arrogance that makes it so.


[1] Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/orthodoxy.v.html)

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