Atheism: Where Pride Comes Before The Fall

 1. The Billiards Table Saga. In his 19^th century classic, ‘Three Men In A Boat’, Jerome K. Jerome shares the story where he and his friends (with his little terrier, Montmorency) were rowing up and down the canals of England on a boyish sightseeing tour of their native country. One evening, after they decided to stop over and had pulled the boat up the bank for a rest, they started scouting for a place to sleep.

   Overnight accommodation could, however, nowhere be found due to some important festival that had drawn great crowds to that part of rural England. The best offer they hitherto had received was to share a large (“vacant”!) billiard table between the three of them, which they of course scornfully rejected with the contempt it rightly deserved. 

   It was only after they proceeded further with their search and it had become increasingly clear that no ‘decent’  accommodation was forthcoming, that they, deep into the night, decided to return to the hotel with the ‘vacant billiard table’ to take the host up on his offer, irrespective of the humiliation and inconvenience involved. 

   When they arrived at that hotel, however, they were to their dismay and bitter disappointment told that the billiard table had in the meantime been taken and was already fully occupied. This was the well-deserved reward for youthful snootiness and snobbery when they should have thanked their ‘lucky stars’ instead for the privilege of a roof over their heads for the night at all.

2. Pride Comes Before The Fall.  Today we often see how atheists of all and diverse kinds still mock God and scoff at the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, apparently too ‘avant garde’, ‘refined’, ‘erudite’, ‘educated’, ‘sophisticated’ and ‘sagacious’ to listen to anything the Bible has to say:    

   “Jehovah will destroy the house of the proud, but He will set up the border of the widow. Everyone proud in heart is hateful to Jehovah; though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished. Pride* goes before destruction, and a haughty** spirit before a fall. And to man He said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom … !" [Proverbs-15:25; 16:5; 16:18; Job28:28b].

3. Definitions. 

*Pride: "the quality or state of being proud: such as

a

             : inordinate self-esteem : CONCEIT

b

             : a reasonable or justifiable self-respect." [Merriam-Webster]. P.S. It is clear from Scripture that in this case (a) is meant.

**Haughty:  "blatantly and disdainfully proud : having or showing an attitude of superiority and contempt for people or things perceived to be inferior." [Merriam-Webster]

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