Around the World in 88 Years -E Book - Arthur Burt

Living by the proceeding Word,and refusing to eat from that deadly treeI have learned there are two ways to deal with pride. I can try tocover it and control it while still feeding it, or I can starve it todeath.Take, for example, the case of a large fleshly person. The oldfashionedway to deal with all that flesh was to corset it, pullingit in. The person would look better than she really was, becauseshe had corseted her flesh. Back in the Victorian era, a maid wouldpush her knee into the back of her mistress, while attempting tolace up the corset tightly. Then, her ladyship would have theappearance of being very slim. Nowadays, corseting has givenway to dieting. The modern woman realizes that it is healthier toeliminate the flesh by dieting, rather than merely pulling the fleshin with a corset.Carrying this into the spiritual realm, we see the same principle atwork. Many a person seeks to corset his flesh life, keeping it infor appearance’s sake. That’s what pride does. It pulls flesh intightly to make it look better than it really is. Pride corsets theflesh; it doesn’t get rid of it. The flesh life is fed by our trespassing,our rebelling, our eating that which God has strictly forbiddenman to eat. Dieting for spiritual health is entirely different:“…but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shaltnot eat of it….” (Gen 2:17) Instead, “man lives by every wordthat proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.” (Deut 8:3) God’sWords bring life!In the beginning, God forbade us to eat from the tree of theknowledge of good and evil, “for in the day that you eat of ityou shall surely die.” (Gen 2:17) This has never changed. If youeat of this tree, you are then deciding for yourself what is goodand what is evil, and out of your knowledge, your pride grows.Out of your pride, you judge. You judge because you “know”what is good and what is evil, but if you don’t know, you cannotjudge. Now instead of having a God, you have become a god,as the devil predicted in the garden: “…and ye shall be as gods,knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5) Continuing to eat of thatforbidden tree, man feeds his flesh and produces the hideous fleshlife that God hates and condemns to death.96