Pride or Humility?

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom." Prov. 11:2

Why do we as people have such a hard time admitting wrong? Why is there always such a need to defend our actions?

My mom decided to come to Hanford for Thanksgiving and her favorite family tradition is going to see a movie with everyone. Since this is the year that all of Bruce's extended family from Southern CA came to Hanford, we decided to take my mom to the movie on Wednesday. We went to the small theater at the Hanford mall. Our movie, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, started at 11:50 and we got there about 20 minutes before the movie started to have plenty of time to get our popcorn and such. We sat down in the theater that had the sign above it showing our movie title and at about 12:20, after 20 minutes of previews, the movie This Christmas started. The movie was off center, so I didn't even realize it was a different movie starting when I got up to go tell someone to fix the screen. When I was talking to the employee at the concession stand another girl came to tell them that the movie was off center too, only she was talking about This Christmas. When I went back into the theater, I noticed that the sign above our theater had changed and our movie was in the theater across the hall. I went to where we were seated and told Bruce that I thought we were in the wrong theater, which he was starting to figure out himself (the title of the other movie hadn't come on the screen yet). We, along with several other families, gathered our stuff and moved to the correct theater to join the movie that was already 30 minutes in. This exact thing happened to us a few years ago on Christmas in Lakewood and I couldn't believe it would happen again. After I got my family situated, I proceeded to speak to the manager about this mishap. Now when this happened in Lakewood, the manager was stumbling over himself to make sure we were satisfied customers. They not only apologized, they gave us our money back and free tickets to come back and see the movie in its entirety (or any other movie). This time however, the manager immediately started blaming me (and the other people who were there talking to him). He said we must have arrived late. Arrived late? Duh! If we had arrived late, we would have been in the correct theater. It turns out that he was the one who changed the sign and neglected to go in and tell the people who were already sitting in there. I felt bad for him because, aside from the guy running the concession stand, he was the only employee there - and he had a movie that wasn't running correctly when he changed the sign. He did refund our money after I told him that it would have been nice if he would have just said "I'm sorry" instead of trying to blame us for his mistake. Honestly, I would have been waaaayyyyy more sympathetic to his situation if he had just admitted his mistake and said, "I'm sorry."

So I have been pondering how well I do at this and I have to admit that although sometimes I am the first one to admit my wrong and say sorry, there are other times when I feel I need to justify my actions and stand my ground. That is so prideful, but a normal human reaction. I was sharing with a friend what God had been showing me through this, and she said that God had been showing her the benefits of humility too, not only in how it disarms others, but in how it affects her witness - especially in a small town like Hanford. It is a very likely reality that the people we are in contact with on a day to day basis will walk into Epic on any given Sunday. Wow! I hadn't even thought about that aspect of the consequences of my actions. I have to consider that, if they did walk in on Sunday morning, would they see the worship leader and remember me for something positive or something negative that I did or said (acting in humility or pride)?

Even if my actions are justified, I need to see the situation from the other persons perspective too, but that takes quite a bit of humility. Its the whole "consider others more highly than yourself" (philippians 2:3) that is so hard. So I endeavor to be clothed in humility and consider what consequences my actions might bring for the Kingdom of God.