I flunked off the basketball team in college and got a D in PE. In an Evangelical Christian college, PE stands for Personal Evangelism.

Flunking off the team humbled me. But it also made me think I was better than everyone else. Humility is so crazy. As soon as you think you are humble you are full of nasty pride. I am humble.

Want to know why I flunked off the team and why I thought that made me better than everyone?

PE required us to memorize verses, learn a sales pitch for the Gospel, and write papers. I was cool with all that. I had an A+ late into the term. But the primary purpose of PE was to personally evangelize. I don’t have time or space to go into all my thoughts about this topic. So, I’ll just say that I chose not to follow through on the cold contact sales pitch. I had chances. But I refused. I always thought it was because I was rebellious, which I am, but I now don’t think that is why I didn’t do it.

After we did our cold contact, we were asked to write a report about this experience. I would say at least 60% of my evangelical classmates wrote the report without presenting the Gospel to anyone. They lied about it. They made up stories. Hilarious isn’t it. I didn’t do the evangelizing, so I didn’t write the paper. That took my grade from an A+ to a D, and subsequently took my GPA to 1.47. All I needed was a 1.5 that semester to stay eligible. (Obviously, I had other academic issues going on at the time also).

If I would have just lied about it, I would have been eligible. So, I am obviously more righteous than my classmates that lied. They are horrible people and I hope they suffer for their inequities. I was willing to sacrifice my own happiness to tell the truth and they sacrificed the truth for a grade.

See what I mean. I am better than them.

I tend to think like that much of the time. And the truth is that it was noble that I didn’t lie about it. But I had other options. I could have actually done the assignment. Interesting concept isn’t it?

But you know, now I look at things differently. I wouldn’t say they were right for being dishonest. However, pride is a much more dangerous vice for me. I say I don’t lie. That really isn’t true. I’m sure I lie. Yet, the bigger issue for me is that I think I am better than other people for various reasons. Such as not lying.

The mixture of humility and pride from that experience has permeated my life. I am grateful for the humbling lesson it provided me (I made the Dean’s list after that and went on to a pretty average college career until graduate school where I finished with a 4.0), while I am simultaneously prideful about my humility. Twisted I know.

Through this and other realizations in my life, I am coming closer to just accepting that I am pretty much a terrible person and that I can stop pretending that I am good, humble, honest, and loving. The funny thing is, when I stop pretending that I am all of those things, I tend to be more of them.

In my weakness He is strong, which makes me think I am strong, which makes me wrong, which makes me weak again, which makes me tired, which makes me need to stop trying so hard, which makes me want to tell others about my journey, which makes me think I am humble, which makes me full of nasty pride.

And after all of this, I just want to watch Seinfeld. Or live in Alaska by myself. All because I didn’t just write the stupid sales report.