Egotism

Tom Brady has expressed frustration with the attitude of new athletes in professional sports. On the "DeepCut with VicBlends" podcast, he discussed the self-centered mindset of younger players.

Brady said, "I think the biggest problem with a lot of (expletive) kids these days, it’s all about them. Their brand, their social media. When it’s about ‘me’ and then not about ‘us,’ well, there’s no way to succeed as a team if all you’re doing is thinking how selfish it is for you to get the attention."

VicBlends agreed, emphasizing the value of elevating others. "It’s cool to show the world how great you are, but the most inspiring thing is how great you can make others."

Brady reflected on the broader implications. "That’s the point of life. Is what we could do – how do you help other people finish the race?"

Picture this: you’re nestled comfortably in your airline seat cruising towards your holiday destination when a flight attendant’s voice breaks through the silence: “Ladies and gentlemen, both pilots are incapacitated. Are there any passengers who could land this plane with assistance from air traffic control?”

If you think you could manage it, you’re not alone. Surveys indicate about 30% of adult Americans think they could safely land a passenger aircraft with air traffic control’s guidance. Among male respondents, the confidence level rose to nearly 50%.

We’ve all heard stories of passengers who saved the day when the pilot became unresponsive. For instance, in 2022, Darren Harrison managed to land a twin-engine aircraft in Florida – after the pilot passed out – with the guidance of an air traffic controller. However, such incidents tend to take place in small, simple aircraft. Flying a much bigger and heavier commercial jet is a completely different game.

Takeoffs and landings are arguably the most difficult tasks pilots perform, and are always performed manually. Only on very few occasions, can a pilot use autopilot to land the aircraft for them. This is the exception, and not the rule.

Landing is complicated, and requires having precise control of the aircraft’s direction and descent rate. To land successfully, a pilot must keep an appropriate speed while simultaneously managing gear and flap configuration, adhering to air traffic regulations, communicating with air traffic control, and completing a number of paper and digital checklists.

Once the aircraft comes close to the runway, they must accurately judge its height, reduce power, and adjust the rate of descent – ensuring they land on the correct area of the runway. On the ground, they will use the brakes and reverse thrust to bring the aircraft to a complete stop before the runway ends. This all happens within just a few minutes.

Both takeoff and landing are far too quick, technical, and concentration-intensive for an untrained person to pull off. So, if you’ve never even learned the basics of flying, your chances of successfully landing a passenger aircraft with air traffic control’s help are close to zero.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Pride; Self-confidence; Self-exaltation – This illustration speaks to the overconfidence of the human nature. We have been encouraged to overestimate our abilities and underestimate our shortcomings in today’s culture; 2) Criticism; Pastor; Minister – This could also apply to a church setting in which members criticize the performance of the pastor and leadership and often have the thought “I could do their job so much better!”

Gospel singer Bobbi Storm would seem to be aptly named, for her latest actions created a firestorm of controversy, testing the axiom that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. In Storm’s case, she might wish she had done things differently.

Storm is part of the Grammy-nominated praise-and-worship group Maverick City Music, which was recently nominated for two Grammy awards. In her excitement over the nominations, Storm stood up during the middle of a recent flight on Delta Airlines in order to make an unsolicited performance for the people in the cabin.

In a video posted to her Instagram Live account, Storm is heard saying, “I sing for the Lord … I'm doing what the Lord is telling me to do.” After a flight attendant insisted she sit down, she sang a portion of her new song, “We Can’t Forget Him,” at a lower volume, while seated.

Since it went public on Instagram, the video garnered a variety of comments, many of them negative. Storms actions were deemed by commenters as “wildly out of pocket,” and “one of the most egotistical things I’ve ever seen.”

One user summarized the criticism by saying: "Imagine the entitlement of thinking you are the only one with something that can bless folks and it happens to be in an airplane where they have no choice but to hear you because they can’t go anywhere?!?”

Possible Preaching Angle:

While it's important to be bold in our faith, that boldness should be clothed in humility and kindness, truly seeking the best for those around us.

Author and pastor Mark Sayers says there are two stories competing for our minds and hearts. The first story is broadcast loudly across pop culture, social media, and all media. It claims that you and I are the center of the universe. We are unique individuals, and we can be awesome. We just need to create our identities. By making the right choices with our wardrobe and weekends, and by hanging out with the right people and doing the right things, we can be limitlessly happy. The world offers you and me an amazing life; we just have to go out and make it happen.

The second story is quiet. It’s more of a whisper from the back burner in our brains, but it will not go away. It’s there in the quiet, in the middle of the night. It’s the longing when the promises of the first story under-deliver. The whisper tells us we were made for more. In hushed voices, it insists that we have an immovable and important identity, a sort of real home somewhere out there. We’re longing for it, and we know it’s not just in our imaginations. There’s got to be more to this life, it nags.

We continuously suppress that second story, though, largely because the first story is so loud. Everything from Instagram to movies to clothing ads to political campaigns declares that we can be whoever we want to be. Pursuing the second story takes time and intentionality and going against every cultural grain.

Tim Keller used this story to illustrate the “conversion of the heart.”

Many years ago, when I was in college, I was part of a Christian fellowship, and there was a young man who joined up. And it shocked us all. This young man was famous on the campus for being incredibly sexually active, and he had the looks to go with it. He was handsome and charismatic. And then, to our surprise he came into the fellowship where he declared that “He’s a Christian now … and he foreswears his sexual past … and he going to live a chaste, pure life.”

He threw himself into the Christian activities. Everyone said, “Wow! This is a real change.” However, it wasn’t long before we came to realize that this young man, in every group, any committee, any Bible study, whether he was the leader or not, he had to be the leader. He always sought control. There was power struggle after power struggle, and after a while it became clear that when he was sexually active it really wasn’t about sex; it was about power. He would go after some girl until she fell for him, and then he lost all interest. It wasn’t about sex. It was about power.

When he came into the church, he suddenly adopted all the Christian beliefs, the Statements of Faith, and Christian practices. He stopped living in sexual promiscuity. But deep down inside, he still wanted power. Power in relationships.

Keller points out that we all have the need for deeper conversion in our heart. He says, “Deep down inside, every one of our hearts is saying, ‘If I have money, if I have approval, if I have power, if I have comfort, if I have control, if I have romance ….’ Every one of our hearts needs that deeper conversion from our idols to the Living God.”

You can read a free PDF copy of the book here.

Columnist David Brooks mocks what passes for humility these days. He points to a tweet from the president of the European Central Bank: “I was humbled to be awarded an honorary degree by the London School of Economics earlier this week. Thank you so much for this prestigious honor!” Brooks notes the three rules of this fake humility.

#1) Never tweet about any event that could actually lead to humility. Never tweet: “I’m humbled that I went to a party, and nobody noticed me.” Never tweet: “I’m humbled that I got fired for incompetence.”

#2) Use the word humbled when the word proud would be more accurate. For example: “Truly humbled to be keynote speaker at TedX East Hampton.” The key to humility display is to use self-effacement as a tool to maximize your self-promotion.

#3) Never use a pronoun. Start your tweets with “Humbled to be …” or “Honored to be …” This sends the message that you have only a few seconds to dash off this tweet, because you’re so busy and important.

We used to dance around our humblebragging, but now Brooks says “our [so-called] humility is explicit, assertive, direct, and unafraid. We blaze forth so much humility that it’s practically blinding. Humility is the new pride.”

A recent interview with actress Maria Fabriela de Faria, in Global Heroes from The Wall Street Journal, perfectly reveals our culture of self-centered individualism.

When asked, “What is one good choice that everyone can make to improve the world around them?” She answered, “Look for your own truth, LIVE your own truth instead of repeating anyone else’s.” She explained: “What’s crucial to me is to make my audience . . . [question] old beliefs.” She counsels her fans to engage in a daily practice of asking, “What do I need today?” because “the only person who will know what works for you, is you.”

Author Gad Saad is one of the leading voices exposing the harm and folly of political correctness in the US and Canada. In his most recent book, he explores the current futile practice known as “virtue signaling.” Most often on social media, people express moral outrage just by hash-tagging a cause and doing nothing else. Just one example is the #BringBackOurGirls, that was used by millions globally because of the kidnapping of Nigerian school girls by Boko Haram. The only thing that came out of all the virtue signaling was the feeding of one’s ego and the social message that they are progressive and a good person.

Saad gives an example of a public display of valor known as “costly signaling”:

The Sateré-Mawé, an indigenous Amazonian tribe, have a very powerful way of differentiating prospective warriors from their fake counterparts. They sedate bullet ants, whose sting is akin to being shot, and then weave them into leaf gloves. Initiates wear the gloves for several minutes and must withstand the stings of hundreds of these ants as they come out of their sedated torpor. One sting causes unimaginable pain, and yet the inductees must withstand the suffering with restrained dignity (they cannot holler).

One such ordeal would be sufficient to test anyone’s toughness, and yet the young men must endure this tribulation twenty separate times. If all it took to become a warrior was the completion of ten push-ups, nearly everyone could complete the task. ... (It is) a rite of passage that serves as an honest signal of toughness and courage, and you’ve solved the problem of identifying the fakers.

You can watch the YouTube video of the tribal ritual here.

The March/April 2016 issue of Psychology Today attempted to give readers several reasons to cultivate a sense of awe and wonder with their article "It's Not All About You!" The article mentioned the following secular sources about our need for awe and wonder:

• University of Pennsylvania researchers defined awe as the "emotion of self-transcendence, a feeling of admiration and elevation in the face of something greater than the self."
• A popular theoretical physicist wrote: "Awe gives you an existential shock. You realize that you are hardwired to be a little selfish, but you are also dependent on something bigger than yourself." Being enraptured is a way "to remove the tyranny of the ego."
• Therapist Robert Leahy, PhD writes: "Awe is the opposite of rumination. It clears away inner turmoil with a wave of outer immensity."
• Social scientists have found that when people experience a sense of awe, they feel more empathetic and more connected with others. One scientist concluded, "Wonder pulls us together—a counterforce to all that seems to be tearing us apart."
• The Wharton School of Business evaluated the New York Times' most emailed articles and found that the ones that evoked awe were the most shared.

On January 28, 1986, NASA was planning to launch the space shuttle Challenger from Kennedy Space Center—a mission that included a schoolteacher named Christa McAuliffe. The launch had already been delayed a few times. On the night before the new launch date, NASA held a long conference call with engineers from Morton-Thiokol, the contractor that built the Challenger's solid-rocket motors. Allan McDonald was one of the Thiokol engineers.

On the day of the launch it was unusually cold in Florida, which concerned McDonald because he feared that his company's o-ring seals in the Challenger's big joints wouldn't operate properly at that temperature. Since the boosters had never been tested below 53 degrees McDonald recommended the launch be postponed again.

But NASA officials overruled McDonald and requested that the "responsible Morton-Thiokol official" sign off on the decision to launch. McDonald refused to sign the request, but his boss did. The next morning McDonald—and millions of people around the globe—watched as a mere 73 seconds into the flight, the shuttle burst into flames.

After the accident, a review showed the cause of the explosion to be what McDonald had feared: the o-rings failed to hold their seal in the cold temperature. In other words, some people in the know had foreseen the exact cause of failure. So why, even with that warning, did NASA push on? Allen McDonald claims that NASA fell prey to the oldest and most basic sin—pride. McDonald said:

NASA [had become] too successful. They had gotten by for a quarter of a century and had never lost a single person going into space … And they had rescued the Apollo 13 halfway to the moon when part of the vehicle blew up. Seemed like it was an impossible task, but they did it. So how could this cold o-ring cause a problem when they had done so much over the past years to be successful? [All of this success] gives you a little bit of arrogance you shouldn't have … But they hadn't stumbled yet and they just pressed on.

[Americans] have tremendous faith in themselves. In 1950, the Gallup organization asked high school seniors, "Are you a very important person?" And at that point 12 percent said yes. They asked the same question in 2005 and 80 percent said, "Yes, I am a very important person." Time magazine asked Americans, "Are you in the top one percent of earners?" Nineteen percent of Americans are in the top 1 percent of earners. Americans score 25th in the world in math, but if you ask Americans, "Are you really good in math?" [they often say yes].

We are number-one in the world at thinking we are really good at math.

Writer and NPR commentator Heather King, a recovering alcoholic who has come to faith in Christ, reflected on her initial experience with the church:

My first impulse was to think, My God, I don't want to get sober (or in the case of the church, worship) with THESE nutcases! (or boring people, or people with different politics, taste in music, food, books, or whatever). Nothing shatters our egos like worshipping with people we did not hand-pick …. The humiliation of discovering that we are thrown in with extremely unpromising people!—people who are broken, misguided, wishy-washy, out for themselves. People who are … us.

But we don't come to church to be with people who are like us in the way we want them to be. We come because we have staked our souls on the fact that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and the church is the best place, the only place, to be while we all struggle to figure out what that means. We come because we'd be hard pressed to say which is the bigger of the two scandals of God: that he loves us—or that he loves everyone else.

In his book Humilitas, pastor John Dickson illustrates the beauty of humility in the life of Sir Edmund Hillary. In 1953 Hillary conquered Mount Everest with his Sherpa friend and guide, Tenzin Norgay. Consequently, in that same year Hillary was knighted; in 1985 he was made New Zealand's highest commissioner to India, Nepal, and Bangladesh; and in 1995 he received the British realm's highest award, the Order of the Gater (membership of which is limited to just twenty-four individuals). But despite Hilary's achievements and rewards, he maintained a humble outlook and a readiness to serve others.

John Dickson captures one story that reveals Sir Edmund's profound humility:

On one of his many trips back to the Himalayas he was spotted by a group of tourist climbers. They begged for a photo with the great man, and Hillary obliged. They handed him an ice pick so he would look the part and set up for the photograph. Just then another climber passed the group and, not recognizing the man at the centre, strode up to Hillary saying, "Excuse me, that's not how you hold an ice pick. Let me show you."

Everyone stood around in amazed silence as Hillary thanked the man, let him adjust the pick, and happily went on with the photograph.

It doesn't matter how experienced that other climber was; his greatness was diminished by this intrusive presumption. We are repelled by pride. Edmund Hillary's greatness, however, is somehow enhanced by this humility.

"Madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better. In madness, I thought I was the most important person of the world."

—John Nash, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician whose true-life struggle with schizophrenia was the basis of the movie A Beautiful Mind

A woman said to a guest at dinner, "We say grace at dinner each day to remind us around here that there is something bigger than our egos." Prayer can free us from the gravitational pull of our egos and remind us of the goodness and might of God. Prayer can move us from self-centered preoccupation to wonder and awe.

There is a famine of compassion and unselfish, lasting, growing, true love among human beings because of the blast of egotistic desire to have "rights" protected. In the midst of the famine, however, a true reality of living in the light of the first commandment would bring an outpouring of an endless supply of love. To love God with all one's heart is not to use up love, but to increase it continually.

If practiced to perfection, any virtue can become a vice. Prudence creates niggardliness; honesty, cruelty; self-respect, vainglory; knowledge, condescension; justice, heartlessness; temperance, aridity; chastity, barrenness. In fact, there is no virtue that is not potentially an idol capable of reducing its worshipers to abject solemnity. Which is why the angels are so chary of perfectionism.

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble. Pity is the capacity to enter into the pain of another in order to do something about it; self-pity is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality. Pity discovers the need in others for love and healing and then fashions speech and action that bring strength; self-pity reduces the universe to a personal wound that is displayed as proof of significance. Pity is adrenaline for acts of mercy; self-pity is a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.