From my 2009 Journal. Webster has several definitions for pride including the negative synonyms of “haughty” or “arrogant” or “puffed up.” A proud person in this sense is ego-centric and egotistical. He is like someone strutting around with a blindfold on, thinking he’s a peacock, when all along he’s a naked chicken. If you take his blindfold off, he’ll feel exposed and run for cover. Somehow we’ve attributed a negative connotation to this bird: “proud as a peacock.” But I think the small-minded chicken who coined this phrase was just jealous!

God is not proud according to this definition. “Puffed up” cannot apply to God because He cannot get any bigger.

Is God humble, then?

Humility is having or showing a modest or low estimate of one’s own importance. It is attributing all to someone else of higher rank, and God can’t do that. Humility has no reference point or meaning for God because there is no one higher than He. Humility acknowledges that power and glory belong to a higher power. God IS the higher power.

Pride and humility are terms that are understood because they are relative to a different standard. God is His own standard.

However, a second definition of proud is “a sense of one’s own dignity or worth.” When I look at God, He is a peacock—majestic in all His splendor and worthy of admiration and “oohs” and “aahs.” He’s not showing off. He just IS. Beautiful, magnificent, splendor-filled, majestic, full of awe, unlike any other being in the universe, take-your-breath-away gorgeous.

By Definition #2, we could conclude that He is indeed proud: proud of His creation and having a self-awareness of His true identity.

What do you think?