Friday, November 23, 2012

Jeremy Taylor-Question 2 (Praise and Attention)


Jeremy Taylor’s list of rules to exercise humility is intense. Reading this whole thing opened my eyes to many things and convicted me hard core. Many of the rules were hard for me because I can be prideful in areas of my life, but many of the rules are also easy for me because I tend to think lowly of myself.
If I had to choose the rule that is easiest for me to follow I’d choose rule number eleven, “When you are slighted by someone, or feel undervalued, do not harbor any secret anger, supposing that you actually deserved praise and that they overlooked your value, or that they neglected to praise you because of their own envy.” This is probably easiest for me to follow because most of the time I don’t like it when people praise me for things. I don’t like it when people give me attention or honor. I like playing in the background unnoticed.
On the other hand, the rules, hands down, hardest for me to follow would be the two similar ones, numbers six and ten. Six reads, “Never say anything, directly or indirectly, that will provoke praise or elicit compliments from others… do not let praise for yourself be the design of your conversations.” Ten reads, “Some will speak lowly of themselves in order to make others give an account of their goodness.” Although I like playing the background and I hate attention or praise, every now and then when I start feeling worthless or unimportant, instead of listening to what God says about me, I start fishing for compliments, especially from people I look up to. I absolutely love it when people that are important to me give me compliments. I became aware of this in high school and I've been working on it since. I've gotten better at not doing it, but it still happens sometimes.

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