“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 55
As we consider our responsibilities in the business and professional world, we have to begin by distinguishing different kinds of professional or vocational arrogance. The first is arrogance of an anti-intellectual sort-driven by the egalitarian assumption that anyone can do anything if they spend a couple week-ends reading up on it on the Internet. But a couple articles under your belt, diagrams from Popular Mechanics, and tips from your mother-in-law do not equip you to do brain surgery in your basement. Unfortunately, this kind of “worldview” arrogance is frequently accompanied by an personal “aw, shucks” demeanor that doesn’t seem arrogant at all. But if a really nice guy, humble as anything in his demeanor, says that he knows how to repair your automobile, and he winds up destroying it, the fundamental problem is one of arrogance. This is because he refused to obey the Scriptures at a key place. No one should think more highly of their gifts and abilities than they ought to (Rom. 12:3).
But the second kind of arrogance is a temptation when someone is the best in the world at something, and he knows it. What he has mastered has taken him many arduous years of training, discipline, accountability, risk, and so on. He has made it to the top, and he knows all about it. This is a temptation common to CEOs, jet fighter pilots, neurosurgeons, and so on. Their temptation is to think that their position was something they achieved autonomously, and not as a gift from God. In either case, the arrogance is equally obnoxious.