An Antidote for Pride

We all know pride is a problem, but how do we avoid it? President Eyring has a suggestion.

Moroni warned that our dispensation would struggle with pride: “Behold, I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. . . . I know that ye do walk in the pride of your hearts; and there are none save a few only who do not lift themselves up in the pride of their hearts” (Mormon 8:36). None of us wants to be subject to pride, but how do we break out of our personal pride cycles?

In a commencement address at Brigham Young University in 1985, President Henry B. Eyring said, “Do I have a suggestion for a solution? How in the world can I get an antidote for pride? . . . Now, the antidote for pride is a love of God so deep that it extends to the love of God’s children and engenders in you a hunger to give service. . . . You will have heard many times while you’re here part of a motto of this university: ‘go forth to serve.’ If you know what that really means, if you know what kind of service this world really needs and you want it for the right reasons, I have perfect confidence about you, and that is that you will have within you the antidote to pride.”

As President Eyring described, when we give service to others, born from a genuine love for God and those we serve, we will be among those who Moroni prophesied would be free of pride.

For President Eyring’s full address, listen here at “Good Judgement and Common Sense.”

Source: BYU Speeches

 —Alec Joseph Harding, Mormon Insights

FEATURE IMAGE BY SASINT

Find more insights

Read Ezra Taft Benson’s “Beware of Pride” on pride or Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s “On Being Genuine” on service.