President's Message

There’s that saying we all think we know. That famous saying we use to teach our children about humility, about celebrating the accomplishments of others and, for Christians, about not putting ourselves and our view of the world ahead of God’s. That ubiquitous saying that has made it from the bible on to the lips of seemingly every adult who witnesses a human failure occasioned by arrogance or willful ignorance.

This saying seems as perfect for teaching a life lesson as it is brief, “Pride goeth before the fall.”

…Except that is not how the saying actually goes…

Pride goes before destruction,

and a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

For such a short and common word, ‘Pride’ is surprisingly ambiguous. For example, do I risk “the fall” when I feel pride in my children’s successes or emotional growth from overcoming a personal challenge? Can we feel pride in our work to advance the Credit Union Advantage? Can we take pride in the service we give to helping the overlooked and underserved achieve financial well-being? Of course we can because that kind of pride derives from the humble place of celebrating the success of others, from rejecting the shame of failure and derision, and from respecting others and ourselves. That kind of pride does not, it appears, goeth before the fall.

A dangerous form of pride lives within all of us. Meaning ‘excessive self-esteem,’ the word pride first appeared in English during the late 14th century. It does not take much to see the failure, calamity, and injury that can come from overestimating one’s skills, accomplishments, and attributes. Perhaps the reason why “pride goeth before the fall” has made it into our collective lexicon is because it is just so darn easy to say.

Here is the problem: using the abbreviated version omits the most important word: ‘haughty.’ Stemming from the Latin word for “high,” the haughty person places themselves above others. In the Bible, the haughty people put themselves ahead of God. In the schoolyard, the haughty child appears mean, entitled, and unkind to others. In the verse from Proverbs, it is “haughty

spirit” that comes before the fall. At least according to the Brittanica Dictionary, ‘haughty’ is “having or showing the insulting attitude of people who think that they are better, smarter, or more important than other people.”

And that brings us to June. To Pride Month. To the one month a year many of us celebrate the people who have found themselves outside or on the margin of traditional, normative, sexual and gender identity. And here is where Pride’s ambiguity rears its ugly head.

We love labels and categories. We love to put things in neat boxes. But we failed here. We created a messy, rag-tag Alphabet Soup of letters -- LGBTQ …and there are even more than 5 other letters that could be in the acronym! To make matters even more complicated, we have begun to place a + at the end just to be sure we are inclusive of other identities yet to emerge into our collective consciousness. But somewhere in that messy mix of letters,

you will find me
you will find lifetime friends
you will find children
you will find leaders
you will find coworkers
you will find people wearing funny clothes or using unusual pronouns
you will find advocates
you will find athletes and artists …and even accountants
you will find some so scared and scarred they cannot admit it to their families or themselves

Perhaps the pride to be found in this month—perhaps the pride to be found in every day—is in celebrating the success of others, rejecting the shame of failure and derision, and respecting others and ourselves. These things fortify us, they do not destroy. Far from coming before a fall, these things lift us up.

As Always,

Bruce