P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

HUMBLE PIE FOR HOWARD

He was a man with talent . . . and the bad thing was, he knew it. People tuned in to Monday Night Football to hear him pontificate . . . and he knew that too. Underneath that bad toupee was a brilliant brain, and a Mr. Howard Cosell was well aware of his own brilliant brain. He had an ego that filled up ABC’s broadcasting booth on Monday nights, making it rather difficult for his co-anchors to squeeze into the same room with him. Even if you were a talented sportscaster in your own right, like Mr. Don Meredith, it just wasn’t very dandy having to play second banana to the great Cosell. In a respectful obituary back in 1995, writer James Campion alluded to Cosell’s “powerful ego a massive hammer swung sometimes with little control, if not definite, direction.”

But there was one kid who didn’t care about greatness or about ratings or about how wonderful Howard Cosell was – “a legend in his own mind.” One day in a restaurant, as The Great One was having his lunch and accepting the gushing comments of waitresses and passers-by, this little boy came over to Howard’s table. And even before he could say a word, ABC’s veteran spokesman picked up a menu, pulled a pen out of his pocket, signed it with a flourish, and handed it to the kid. And in a piping clear voice that echoed through the eating establishment and out into the street, this little boy said: “I don’t want your autograph. I came over here to borrow the ketchup!”

Isn’t that one of the five most wonderful stories you have ever heard? We all love anecdotes where that other person gets a pin poked in their bloated ego and they get reduced back down to normal size like the rest of us.

I think we’ve told before the story of a man who was attending a high-end $1000-a-plate dinner. And across the table from him was a little man of foreign extraction who looked as if he just got off the boat and was probably living in a hut someplace. So this tuxedo-clad guy, very condescendingly, leaned across the table and said to the visitor, “You lik-ee soup-ee?” The man, his mouth full of the soup-ee at that awkward moment, didn’t say anything, but nodded enthusiastically. A few minutes later, the emcee stood up and announced that the honored guest of the evening had five doctoral degrees, had written ten books, was a lecturer of great renown, winner of a Pulitzer, etc., etc. To our friend’s stunned surprise, the little man across the way stood up, proceeded to the platform, and delivered, in flawless English, a 90-minute dissertation on the heavy, complex scientific issues of the day. He wowed ‘em. He knocked ‘em dead. To thunderous applause, he left the dais, came back to the table, sat down, waited for the clapping to slowly fade into respectful silence – and then leaned over to say to our red-faced friend: “You lik-ee speech-ee?”

As the Good Book saith, “Pride goeth before a fall” . . . and what a delight to watch that fall, as long as it ain’t OUR fall. Going back to Howard Cosell, speaking of sports, we remember that footage: “The thrill of victory, and the agony of defeat,” and recall that defeat is anything but agony if it’s somebody else’s downfall and not our own.

Of course, the dilemma is this. Pride is a sin which is almost impossible to see in ourselves. In others, it jumps right off the page and shouts at you, but in yourself – no. Pride is that hidden enemy. All last week, we dropped in some wonderful excerpts from C. S. Lewis’ chapter, “The Great Sin,” and he observes, maybe from experience:

“There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”

We had a bit of fun last week with a humor column from Art Buchwald, going back to the decadent 60s. He wrote about how he and his wife used to go over to David Brinkley’s house to swim in his pool, and they had a really good time, but now, since he had his own pool, of course – such a major investment – he could hardly go over THERE anymore. Okay. In the very next paragraph, he veers in a new direction – now that he has a pool in his own backyard. “Boy, you really find out who your true friends are,” he writes. He had a buddy who worked at the Wall Street Journal. Phil. Really nice guy. He always came over to use the Buchwald pool, and they had a “wonderful, warm relationship.” All of a sudden, behind Buchwald’s back, Phil went out and had HIS own pool installed in his backyard. “He tried to pretend it was for the kids,” Buchwald writes, “but I knew it was done out of spite. Now he doesn’t come over anymore.” To add insult to injury, Phil invited Art over to HIS house for a swim. “You can imagine what I told him,” the columnist fumes, poison dripping from his pen. And of course – all in fun – we laugh over the fact that Buchwald can’t see in himself the very thing he thinks Phil has done to him. And friend, it’s no laughing matter that pride is always like that.

It’s one of the lesser-known stories coming from the book of Daniel, but tucked in between the fiery furnace and the lions’ den is a tale of pride and self-delusion. King Nebuchadnezzar is the Howard Cosell of Babylon, walking through the great Hanging Gardens and the royal palace and saying, “Boy, look at all this. I built all this myself. I did it my way. We get ratings on the Travel Network that beat Monday Night Football to smithereens! Am I good or what?”

And the prophet Daniel warns him, as he interpret’s Nebuchadnezzar’s “tree” vision: “You better lower your voice, Your Majesty. Give God glory instead of taking it to yourself.”
In the Message paraphrase the counsel goes like this:

“Make a clean break with your sins and start living for others. Quit your wicked life and look after the needs of the down-and-out.”

Well, as you probably know, the king spurned Daniel’s advice – which was really heaven’s divine suggestion. Daniel was just passing it along. And when the king continued to sing his arias of self-adoration, refusing to be humble, God came down and gave him something to be humble about. For seven years, Nebuchadnezzar had a mind that wasn’t filled with pride – he had a mind that wasn’t filled with anything. You talk about “The Madness of King George” – he completely lost his reason and crawled around in the hayfields behind the West Wing, soaked with dew and with his nails “like the claws of a bird.” The White House manicurist had to wait through seven Christmases before suddenly the royal monarch was given back his reason and restored to the throne. Interestingly, Nebuchadnezzar now tips his hat to heaven, and acknowledges that while he might be a king, there is someone on a higher throne who is the King OF kings.

“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and exalt and glorify the King of heaven,” he writes, “because everything HE does is right and all His ways are just.” And notice this: “And those who walk in PRIDE He is able to humble.”

That’s one powerful lesson we can learn about pride. Friend, it is such a deadly sin that God is going to do whatever He needs to do in order to rescue us from it. That isn’t to say that He enjoys going around saying “You lik-ee speech-ee,” or “I only wanted to borrow the ketchup, Cosell.” He doesn’t enjoy knocking us off our little pedestals, or seeing us tumble off that ski jump for “the agony of defeat.” But if a loving dose of humility now can save us from a destructive dose of hellfire in the final scene, then I think we can be thankful when God says to us in Isaiah 13:11:

“I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty, and will humble the pride of the ruthless.”

Or Isaiah 25:11:

“God will bring down their pride despite the cleverness of their hands.”

Or even right here in Daniel chapter four, where the Message paraphrase quietly observes:

“He knows how to turn a proud person into a humble man or woman.”

I think it’s a beautiful thing when God’s man or woman actually falls to their knees and invites God to keep them humble. In his 139th Psalm, King David does that when he says to his Maker:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.”

Are anxious thoughts and prideful thoughts the same? Well, maybe they are sometimes. We mentioned at the end of last week that to be secure in our position as God’s beloved children is to be relieved of all our anxiety, to be set free from the nervous treadmill of self-exaltation and the seeking of headlines.

And remember, God only pulls us off of our man-made throne, so that He can install us on our heavenly ones.