Yes, you read that title correctly, I assure you.
Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Let's explore that maxim in a real-life way.
ONE FATEFUL FRIDAY NIGHT
One fateful Friday night, many moons ago, during my first of many stints through college, I became the living embodiment of this classic Bible verse.
The story begins as so many Friday night college stories tend to initiate: a buddy of mine randomly burst into my dorm room and asked if I wanted to go to a party with him.
Having absolutely nothing but a hot date with my SNES, Castlevania V, and Super Mario World on the schedule that particular evening, I gladly accepted his invitation.
"Having absolutely nothing but a hot date with my SNES, Castlevania V, and Super Mario World on the schedule that particular evening, I gladly accepted his invitation."
We hopped into his car, drove off into the sunset horizon, and eventually arrived at a moderately sized house with a vacant lot next door; the aforementioned vacant lot being where the party was set up.
It was a perfect little venue for a casual outdoor soirée: a three-acre open field with a couple of tents set up, fold-out tables and chairs, a grill cooking up burgers and hotdogs, and plenty of coolers filled with a plethora of adult beverages.
All of this was placed around the outskirts of the field, surrounding the main strip of grass where my brutal destruction would be taking place. But I didn't know that. All I knew was that it was gonna be a great night... ...right? WRONG.
Accurate representation of me unaware I was about to be assaulted
DUDE! PETUNIA’S GONNA BE HERE!
As we both entered the scene, a small group of individuals excitedly motioned to my friend to come join them. He did, and they began telling him something that I couldn’t quite make out. He spun back towards me with a huge smile on his face and quickly returned to my side.
“DUDE!” He exclaimed, “PETUNIA’S gonna be here tonight!”
(I should note that for the life of me I can’t recall what her name actually was, so I’m just going with “Petunia” for no explicable reason whatsoever.)
"I should note that for the life of me I can’t recall what her name actually was, so I’m just going with 'Petunia' for no explicable reason whatsoever."
“Oh…cool?” I replied with a shrug coupled by a confused stare, indicating that I had exactly zero-idea why this proclamation was supposed to be of paramount magnitude.
My buddy, a theater guy, sighed deeply, clutched his heart with one hand and slapped the other on my shoulder while dropping his head in overly-dramatic fashion. He then looked up and locked eyes with me, a dead-serious expression of super-dead-serious seriousness on his face.
“DUDE,” he stated with authority, “She does RODEOS. And she’s HOT.”
My response was a blank, clearly unimpressed stare. I loved this young man, and he was one of my absolute best friends at the time, but he was the type of guy who had a tendency to fall immediately head-over-heels in love with any female that had two arms, two legs, a torso, and an intact head.
Literally my exact expression
That said, I wasn’t exactly expecting some godlike country vixen to come riding into the party on the back of a bright white horse as the theme from some Spaghetti-Western played soft and haunting way off in the distance, a pale light breaking forth through the dark night sky and casting its glow upon her angelic, southern-belle figure.
Thus, my blank and clearly unimpressed stare continued.
My friend sighed again, this time more of a frustrated groan since I wasn’t matching his level of anticipation. He released my shoulder and reared back, “You’ll see,” he said, “trust me, you’ll see.”
And I would, in fact, “see.”
I would soon see that this was a woman to be admired. Respected. And feared.
ANTI-ROMANTIC COMPLETELY OBLIVIOUS IDIOT
Twenty minutes passed and I was several beers in when an old Ford Bronco came rolling onto the field.
The legendary Petunia had arrived.
She stepped out of her truck and was every bit as Country as a Country Girl could be: Red-and-black plaid shirt; Tight jeans; Leather cowboy boots; A belt with a huge buckle; And of course, a ten-gallon cowboy hat.
"She stepped out of her truck and was every bit as Country as a Country Girl could be: Red-and-black plaid shirt; Tight jeans; Leather cowboy boots; A belt with a huge buckle; And of course, a ten-gallon cowboy hat."
My friend darted over to greet her as one would run to The Messiah Himself, waving his arm furiously towards me to join him. With a roll of my eyes and a shake of my head, I trudged over.
“Mr. Schindler!” He exclaimed with a broad grin and sweep of his arm, “This is Petunia!”
She was, in fact, a relatively attractive young lady. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned my then exceptionally fit, twenty-something frame up-and-down. She crossed her arms, smirked, and leaned against her Bronco.
She was attempting seduction.
However, being the ultimate anti-romantic, completely oblivious idiot that I was, I didn’t pick up on a single bit of this.
"However, being the ultimate anti-romantic, completely oblivious idiot that I was, I didn’t pick up on a single bit of this."
“So you do rodeos?” I randomly blurted out after a moment of awkward silence.
“Sure do,” She replied with a deep Southern drawl.
“You rope stuff?” I bluntly inquired (further proving my romantic ineptitude, in case you weren’t convinced by my earlier admission).
“Yup,” she said, pulling away from the truck and standing tall, arms still crossed, eyes now narrowed to slits, suspicious as to where I was going with this line of questioning.
With liquid pride coursing through my veins, and for no discernible reason whatsoever, I simply yet confidently stated, “Bet you can’t rope me.”
“Bet I can,” she calmly replied.
“Bet you can’t.”
“Bet I can. I got my rope in the back of the truck," she shot back.
Her tone had gotten real intense real fast.
<COWGIRL ENERGY INTENSIFIES>
“Well you better go get your rope then,” I said, my voice rising in volume and belligerence, “because I wanna see what Petunia can DO!”
She didn’t miss a beat.
Without hesitation, Petunia the Cowgirl stormed back to the bed of her truck and ripped out a giant spool of rodeo rope. Upon pulling out said rope, she began forming a lasso.
My theatrical friend and his fellow theatrics immediately began hyping the situation up with loud whoops and announcements of the event to come.
Petunia the Cowgirl was about to attempt the roping of Schindler the idiot. I didn’t realize just how many people were at this party until the multitudes lined the boundaries of the field.
There were a lot of people there.
And they were all about to view, firsthand, my sadistic demise.
Yeah, it really was worth watching
WHEN I SAY RUN, YOU RUN!
I was standing at the top of the field when Petunia sauntered up beside me, her massive bunch of rope in hand and bouncing off her thigh with every step.
All eyes, so many eyes, were fixated on us. Silence enveloped the field.
“Alright,” she said, “When I say ‘RUN,’ you RUN, got it?”
I gave her a nonchalant side-nod, then faced the field.
"I stood tall, strong and firm, with knees that worked WAY better back then than they do now, unflinchingly confident that there was NO WAY some random cowgirl at a party was gonna take down my stratospheric levels of speed and fitness with a stupid pile of rope that she took down stupid cows and other stupid livestock with."
I stood tall, strong and firm, with knees that worked WAY better back then than they do now, unflinchingly confident that there was NO WAY some random cowgirl at a party was gonna take down my stratospheric levels of speed and fitness with a stupid pile of rope that she took down stupid cows and other stupid livestock with.
She hunched forward and began spinning the lasso, a look of sheer intensity wrapped tightly across her face as she gazed a laser focus off into the distance.
“RUN,” she growled.
I started jogging forward, more of a silly, hurried trot than a jog now that I think of it. I was intentionally slow and somewhat comical as I bounced side to side, my elbows cocked and swinging emphatically side-to-side.
It was something like this
There was a collective, muffled chuckle amongst the onlookers who could clearly tell I wasn’t taking this little spectacle seriously. Petunia, however, unequivocally DID NOT find humor in my mocking display.
“HEY!” She roared.
I came to a quick halt and spun around, slightly startled by her fierce exclamation.
“GET BACK HERE!” she yelled through her harsh, cowgirl drawl.
I wandered back with a dumb grin on my face and positioned myself in the original starting point beside her. She locked eyes with me and snarled, “When I say run, YOU RUN!”
I casually replied, “Oh, okay,” with a shrug.
However, I was feeling anything but casual. That liquid pride was in full force, fueling the haughtiest of spirits that could ever dwell within the body of any mortal young man on God’s green Earth.
<COCKY IDIOT ENERGY INTENSIFIES>
My dumb grin morphed into an arrogant smile. I stood unflinching, looking straight ahead over the soon-to-be battlefield where I would lay waste to my opponent’s skill and credibility.
I was gonna make a fool out of this girl who roped stupid animals for a living.
As fate would have it, I was the stupid animal who would be made a fool of that night.
A HALO OF ROPE & A GROAN OF AGONY
“RUN!” Petunia roared, and I took off like a bat out of hell.
In flawless sprinting form, I launched myself across that field: back straight, elbows angled perfectly, arms rhythmically pumping up-and-down in counterbalanced synchrony, chin slightly tilted up, and legs thrusting my entire upper-body forward like a stallion in its prime, as an Olympian who was about to win the Gold.
A cool, calm smirk curled upon my lips as I felt I’d reached a distance that she could not possibly snare me at. A moment later, I found out that my sentiments of safety and success were dead wrong.
"A cool, calm smirk curled upon my lips as I felt I’d reached a distance that she could not possibly snare me at. A moment later, I found out that my sentiments of safety and success were dead wrong."
I caught a slight, thin shadow in the peripherals of my vision hovering about the ground whipping by both sides of my rapidly advancing self. Suddenly, a halo of rodeo rope descended around my body. As it reached my shins, it went from approximately five feet in diameter to six inches.
My legs slammed together as though God Himself had just grasped my ankles with His mighty hands and instantaneously fused them into a single entity.
Due to the high velocity I was traveling at combined with the rope that had just ground all motion to an immediate halt, I hit the ground with a thud so thunderous that the entire crowd watching let out a collective groan of empathetic agony.
Imagine 70 people simultaneously doing something like this
And yes, “agony” is the proper word to describe what I felt in that moment.
I came down on my left side: my left thigh, left ribcage, left shoulder, left knee, and left arm rang out in silent screams of throbbing pain the likes of which I hadn't felt since I went down a slide on my roller blades and broke my wrist (that's a story for another day).
I laid in complete stillness for mere seconds before I realized I was moving again, although "moving again” isn’t really the proper phraseology here.
I was being dragged by the rope that was currently holding my ankles together. Dragged back towards that devil cowgirl who was on the other end doing the dragging.
She wasn’t done with me.
My fall was not yet complete.
Fall in progress. Please hold until fall has completed.
MY FATE WAS SEALED
Though bigger, stronger, far more muscular, and clearly a physical threat to Petunia (or so I thought), I went into pure panic-mode as she pulled me closer to whatever wrathful punishment she had in mind.
I clawed at the dirt and grass as though my very being was being dragged into hell itself, but it didn’t matter. I tried to escape my fate, but my fate was sealed.
I knew that when I finally reached her eager hands, Petunia the cowgirl would utterly decimate me.
And she did.
It felt a lot like this, but without the ability to run away
She planted her knee into my upper-back; both of my arms went up behind me, followed by my legs. Instantaneously, I felt rope binding my wrists and ankles.
It became unquestionably apparent to me and all in attendance that Petunia was hogtying her newfound “stupid animal victim.”
Reverse hogtying me, if I'm being completely accurate here.
I tried struggling a bit, but there was no possible path of significant physical resistance. And due to the compression of my chest under the weight of her entire body, I could only slightly grunt in objection to her (what I perceived to be) borderline-illegal actions.
"It became unquestionably apparent to me and all in attendance that Petunia was hogtying her newfound 'stupid animal victim.' Reverse hogtying me, if I'm being completely accurate here."
Fortunately, the scene was so barbaric that multiple grown-men ran to my aide and pulled Petunia off of me, but not without a fight.
This girl threw elbows and kicked her legs furiously as these dudes ripped her from my body, pulled her back, and then dropped down to untie me.
Once unbound, I laid on the ground staring up at the night sky, gasping for air, and wondering if the the full essence of my masculinity had been entirely removed from me along with Petunia The Cowgirl.
It looked a lot like this, but without the horse
TOLD’YA I COULD
I was assisted to my feet by a couple of the fine young men who had untied me, only to be met with the glowing grin of my assailant not ten feet in front of me.
The crowd around us was emitting a buzz of murmurs and chuckles as I stepped towards her.
Bruised, scraped, beaten and broken, with soil and grass lodged beneath every single one of my fingertips and staining my outfit head-to-toe, I extended my hand to her in cordial submission. She confidently accepted, taking said sullied hand with a firm grasp.
"Bruised, scraped, beaten and broken, with soil and grass lodged beneath every single one of my fingertips and staining my outfit head-to-toe, I extended my hand to her in cordial submission. She confidently accepted, taking said sullied hand with a firm grasp."
“Told’ya I could,” she said, her grin morphing into a broad smile.
Everyone around us and within earshot who heard the comment broke out into uproarious cheers, laughter, and applause.
I gently formed a defeated smiled, nodded, withdrew my hand (before she could tie it up again), and walked away shaking my head, a head held low.
PROVERBS 16:18 “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Indeed.
If by some chance you haven’t picked up on the unbelievably obvious, real-world representations of this verse in my actual life by way of reading this absurd story, let me just lay it out plain and simple for you:
I was being driven by an extreme level of pride and an inarguably haughty spirit when I challenged Petunia to a roping match. Then, I took a fall. A really, really hard fall.
And it hurt.
BAD.
"I was being driven by an extreme level of pride and an inarguably haughty spirit when I challenged Petunia to a roping match. Then, I took a fall. A really, really hard fall. And it hurt. BAD."
While all of this seems to be a description of stupid, irreverent, and ridiculous antics regarding some college-aged kids out for a fun (if not raucous, and I would add: violent) time on a Friday night, there’s actually a lesson to be learned here.
Pride and arrogance do lead to a fall. It may not be a literal fall on a field at a party because your legs were just snapped together by a lasso, but a fall nonetheless.
You think that you’re the absolute BEST at your job, then some hotshot comes in and undeniably WRECKS your performance in comparison to theirs to the point that you overcompensate and say or do things that just make you look silly and desperate.
FALL.
Don't do this, by the way
You’re at the gym and some young man far less in age simply walks in and nonchalantly throws a massive amount of weight on the bar, benches it with ease, and moves on. You throw on the same amount of weight to show him who’s boss and are nearly crushed into suffocation by that very same bar.
FALL.
You're not this guy, so don't try to be this guy
That cute, flirtatious intern at work keeps making pass after pass at you, and your walls of restraint are slowly being chipped away at. Eventually, you find yourself with them at a company convention, after hours at the bar. The conversation turns outright sensual.
Pride, arrogance, and a huge dose of sexuality take over. Then a brief kiss ensues. Before you know it, you’re both on the way to your hotel room while your spouse is at home completely unaware of the adulterous activities that already have and definitely will take place.
FALL.
EPIC FAILURE
And what about Judas?! That dude was one of the original TWELVE DISCIPLES, and HE FELL by betraying Christ, handing Him over to the Roman authorities to be arrested, tortued, and eventually executed.
"And what about Judas?! That dude was one of the original TWELVE DISCIPLES, and HE FELL by betraying Christ, handing Him over to the Roman authorities to be arrested, tortued, and eventually executed."
Imagine THAT level of arrogance, to think you could get away with such a treacherous feat against the God of the universe!
It doesn’t necessarily need to be said regarding Judas, but I’ll say it anyway to keep the pattern consistent:
FAAAAAALLL.
SOOOO...WHAT DO WE DO?
We all fall. It’s inevitable. But the question is this: what will you do when you realize you’ve fallen?
Shake your opponent’s hand and accept defeat with humility?
Learn from your mistakes and do better next time?
Hang yourself and explode your guts in a field like Judas did?
Sure, these are great options (well, the first two…not so much the third one), but I've got two passages from the Bible that I find to answer this question quite well.
Listen up; here comes the important part
First we have a simple, straight-to-the-point verse from Proverbs 11:2 which says this:
"When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."
Yeah, you sure can say THAT again.
Profound in nature yet simply stated, the point is this: if you're running on pride, you're gonna fall into disgrace. However, if you're living in humility, you will have wisdom that solidly assists you in avoiding many pointless, humiliating falls. So boot the pride and stay humble, Friends.
"Profound in nature yet simply stated, the point is this: if you're running on pride, you're gonna fall into disgrace. However, if you're living in humility, you will have wisdom that solidly assists you in avoiding many pointless, humiliating falls."
That said, I think the best description and advice regarding the struggle of a fall in our life and how to deal with it comes from Paul when he was describing how he repeatedly fell into sin.
Bear with me, ‘cause this one’s a bit lengthy:
YUP.
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that The Law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but the sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me; that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing."
"Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s Law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.”
(Pay attention to this next part, Friends.)
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Romans 7:15-25
YES. EXACTLY. PRECISELY. CORRECT.
And there it is. After a series of psychological, spiritual, and theological gymnastics attempting to describe, make sense of, and ultimately deal with his incessant fall into sin, Paul comes to a single, simple conclusion:
Who will save me? God.
Acceptance and Faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the answer, Friends.
He died on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice for your sins. Therefore, your sins are forgiven by the blood he shed, and subsequently your life can be course-corrected towards the actual antithesis of falling: rising glory.
And that rising glory is, of course, glory to God.
CONCLUSION
Have you had a recent fall? A big fall, one of those “that shook me and my life to the core so hard that I can’t stop thinking about it every second of every day no matter how hard I try” kinda falls?
Or maybe you keep falling into the same sin over and over, and you just can’t stop falling back into that sin, again, no matter how hard you possibly try.
Believe me Friend: I’ve been there, in both of the above situations. More times than I can count on my fingers, toes, and most of the hairs on my head, I should add.
It really is.
But whether you’re dealing with a big, huge, terrifyingly life-shaking fall, or a repeated trip-and-fall into sin, there’s one single answer to the hurt, the pain, the shame, and the overall problem.
There’s one single way to salvation through and from the fall.
Jesus.
“Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Right on, Brother Paul. Thanks be indeed.
Stay humble, and stay in The Lord Saints. Also: never challenge a cowgirl. You will be injured, severely, I assure you. Blessings, Friends.
-Schindler
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