Puffed

One of the cereals I ate growing up was Kellogg's Sugar Smacks. Oh, yeah...anything better than truth in advertising? Pure sugar—a bowl full of (mostly) sugar for breakfast! Of course, now they are called "Honey Smacks," presumably because honey somehow sounds more...healthy? natural? better for you? I don't know if they even changed the recipe. Maybe they just changed the box.

The cereal is made up of more than 50% sugar, and the rest is puffed wheat. That's right—wheat grains that have been filled up with hot air to make them bigger than they should be. Puffed up.

And that's why this old cereal is on my mind today, because I was thinking about Wesley's eighteenth question (out of 22) that he asked the original Methodists. Number eighteen is a very short, simple question to remember, but it's a difficult one to answer: Am I proud?

Pride is a difficult thing to nail down, and a hard attribute to combat. We're told in school and by our parents often to be proud of our accomplishments. Then we go to church and we're told that pride is a bad thing. Which is it? Is this just another example of the world versus the church? Or is the pride we try to fight against in our Christian life different than doing our best in everything that we do?

And that brings us back to the cereal. In the Bible, one image that is used to describe an unhealthy pride is being "puffed up." Like the cereal. Being full of hot air. In other words, the pride we want to rid our life of is the sort of attitude that causes us to do things to appear better than we really are. It's the person who is always talking about what they have done, what they have accomplished, or even the person who would accomplish this or that if they were given the chance. The one who always draws attention to themselves. Being puffed up means you're full of hot air—a lot of appearance but no substance. And because it's pride based on falsehood, as well as pride based around yourself, it's dangerous, deadly and will distance us from God.

A job well done will speak for itself. We won't have to go around trumpeting ourselves to others. They will notice a job well done (and if they compliment you on it, it's also not humility to shift attention away from yourself—a simple "thank you" will do).

Maybe the way to ask the question today would be something like this: am I full of hot air? When people look at me, do they see Jesus or do they see a puffed up version of myself?

Now, pardon me, I need to go eat a bowl of Sugar Smacks.