Pride Goes Before a Fall

I take you back three hundred years, to a fireside, as my matrilineal ancestors considered whether their actions were “justified by God.” Today’s history lesson: Pride goes before a fall.

Turtledove

Wheat dumplings simmered in the metal pot over a fire. Nourourhquotkan watched the flames, deep in thought. Nourouhquotkan had taken the name John Pagett at the insistence of his clan leaders, who had urged everyone to take names of prestigious English colonists, thus, ensuring the respect of the English. He was the husband to Runehu’hu, which meant turtledove. He loved the sound that her name made as it rolled off the tongue, Rooneh-hoo’-hoo. However, to satisfy the ukuwana’?tha? (oodoo-wawnaw-ahk-tha-ahk) or clan mother, he took to calling her Jane.

John grimaced. “The English will not be satisfied until they have taken all our land and removed our bloodline from the earth.”

War In North Carolina

Jane shook her head. “This is nonsense. Your hatred for the English will only result in our destruction. Please do not drag us into the conflict with the English. The decisions made by the war captains will have far-reaching consequences for our people.”

She had a sense of foreboding that the coming events would lead to war in North Carolina. Jane feared that many of her mother’s clan would not survive, that many would end up as enslaved people. She did not know that this was her fate, and that her own husband would not survive. Jane knew that pride goes before a fall.

Does pride justify your actions?

John could feel it in his heart that revenge on the English was justified by Tarenhiawagen or God. He was truly “righting a wrong.” The actions of the English were against God. I can hear him saying, “I wasn’t raised that way,” as he railed against the abuses of the English toward his people. How could he mingle with people whose lifestyles so blatantly ran afoul of how he’d been reared?

What Do Your Value?

No matter the “right” things we do as Christians, they can only yield a temporary good feeling, too often tainted with pride, a bit of superiority, a dose of pity, rather than compassion. I can hear the voice of Jesus speaking to me . . . speaking to us. Your genes don’t constitute your salvation. It is my blood, not yours, that prepares you to sit at my table.

Learn from Jane, pride goes before a fall. It can lead to our destruction. We are not justified by our goodness. It is because of a savior that we are justified and can stand in the righteous presence of God.

“He [Jesus] said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.’”

Luke 16:15

Copyright © 2023 Chuck Locklear

Also, see The Lost Colony of Roanoke.