Arrogance is “having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.”
During the Great War, Woodrow Wilson’s administration passed laws to abridge Americans’ freedom of speech while “doughboys” were overseas, fighting to preserve it. The administration promoted an atmosphere of suspicion among Americans. H. L. Mencken predicted that within three years, 30% of Americans would be spying on one another. Wilson did not like criticism of his administration.
When the war was over, Wilson, a Democrat, chose to go to France to negotiate terms of surrender and took others with him but no important Republicans went along. Even many Democrats felt he had froze them out of the negotiations. One of Wilson’s closest friends and advisors (until he “acted” without Wilson’s authority), Colonel House, said Wilson was “stubborn.”
French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau said Wilson “thought himself another Jesus Christ come upon the earth to reform men.” Wilson’s own Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, wrote in his diary that President Wilson “is a wonderful hater.”
While in France, Wilson suffered a series of strokes of various magnitudes. But, back in the states while touring the country trying to gin up support for his “League of Nations,” he suffered a massive stroke that nearly left him incapacitated. It is the fall out of this event that serves as a lesson for us today. Through the debate over the League of Nations, I do not know how many times his biographer writes that he would not “compromise.”
In “the greatest conspiracy that had ever engulfed the White House” (A. Scott Berg in Wilson, 644), Wilson, his wife, his medical doctor, and his advisor all vowed to keep his health a secret from not just the American public but Congress as well as his own cabinet. Berg, who is otherwise generally sympathetic to Wilson, writes: “so they took the law of the land into their own hands, concluding what best served Woodrow Wilson best served the country.”
This is a generic form that helps to levitra on line deeprootsmag.org improve the strength of male erection. By the virtue of this property it is widely believed (but not proven) that both nostrils are actually working on different smells to provide viagra viagra us with the ability to recognise a broad spectrum of stinks. If you are india generic cialis deeprootsmag.org facing infertility then don’t get panic. The condition can be both acute and chronic. cialis sale online It is that statement that struck me about Wilson’s personality – “what best served Woodrow Wilson best served the country.” This mentality of “me first” is what is bad about every human relationship. “Me first” is the antithesis of love which is “you first.”
It is easy for each of us to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (Rom. 12:3). We can easily slip into the tar pit of thinking “I know what is best.” Or, “This [you name the organization] can not do without me.” But that surely is not the case. The larger and more complex the organization, the less significant is any one person to its operation.
What is extremely dangerous is when an elder or preacher in a congregation begins acting like the church is his church. God did not put the preacher at the top of the organizational structure in His church. God did put a plurality of elders into position such that there are no “senior” elders nor “junior” elders. The church, in fact, should be able to get along – with changes – without any one person. It is Christ’s church, after all, not man’s.
My dad used to say, “You are getting too big for your britches.” When he said that, I knew I had overstepped my boundaries.
Many of us need to frequently take a “humility” pill and the more confidence we have in ourselves, the more pills we may have to take!
–Paul Holland
