Reading: Helaman 6:1-20
So my personal rule is that I can only write based on what I was able to read for the day and 20 verses was all I could manage...but, was there meat in those twenty verses, sure there was!
The Nephites and Lamanites prosper and trade freely with each other and many years pass without serious contentions...until...
HELAMAN 6:17
17 For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the world that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain.
The people prosper in wealth and began to seek greater riches and puff themselves up in prideful gain which, of course, opens the door to subterfuge and covetousness. In the words of C. S. Lewis: "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. ... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone." (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, pp. 109-10.)
It is the comparison that makes you proud! Whether you have the means to increase yourself over those around you, and do for that purpose alone; or if you covet the wealth or power someone else may have and act upon those desires through murder, theft, or otherwise - these are the leeches of pride that latch upon man, sucking them down to destruction.
"Pride goeth before destruction." (Prov. 16:18.)
~Kipling
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