What is art? This is a question I was asked a lot in my art seminar class as a senior in high school. We would watch videos and view different artists processes and their reasoning for why carrying around a giant ball of their trash was an artistic rendering of the waste that one human can produce in a year. I learned that art is really difficult to define, rather than getting any real definition for it. For example, one day I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a video of a ballerina dancing en pointe.... On knives? Obviously, this was just clickbait… So I clicked, naturally.

Indeed, it was a ballerina with giant knives strapped to her pointe shoes, so that she was not only forced to dance on her tiptoes because of the nature of the pointe shoe, but she also had to balance on the tips of knives. Perhaps it’s also necessary that I mention she was dancing on top of a piano? Yes, this video exists, no it isn’t CGI, and no I didn’t watch it until the end because I got way too stressed out.

This situation, though it may be considered art, seemed to be a fitting analogy in my mind for pride. Consider this: life is already difficult all on it’s own. If you got just the standard free subscription to life, ads and all, you would still have trials. Life, then, is like ballet. It’s difficult and demanding and you always want to be the best and better. Now, being a member of this church, is like putting on pointe shoes, it’s next-level ballet, it’s what every ballerina aspires to. I consider the gospel in this way because I ultimately hope that one day everyone will want to be part of Christ’s gospel. A girl can dream. The gospel is like pointe shoes because it requires a higher standard. It requires more concentration on details that otherwise go unnoticed and unrecognized. When we are living the gospel, it’s Swan Lake on opening night. We’re working our hardest, we’re exhilarated by sharing the gospel with others and overall we’re just happy. Now, add in the knives. I say this as no condemnation to the ballerina in the video, it just works for my analogy. I feel that when we become prideful and begin to seek our own, we strap knives to our shoes and begin to dance this terrifying and precarious dance of thinking we know better than God. This isn’t a new thing to humanity, so before you go blaming the millennials for the pride cycle, let me remind you that we didn’t invent this wheel.

In Helaman, we are told the story of Samuel the Lamanite. But just before that story, there’s another story about Nephi--no not the first one--who is the prophet at that time and he asks the Lord to, instead of inflicting war upon the wicked Nephites, inflict famine. So, once the food starts running out, it’s basically doctrine that people will turn to God, no matter their spiritual level. In Helaman 11:8 they say to Nephi “behold, we know that thou art a man of God, and therefore cry unto the Lord our God that he turn away from us this famine, lest all the words which thou hast spoken concerning our destruction be fulfilled.” So, Nephi had told them before, if you do not repent, you will surely be destroyed, because you knew better and you’ve been warned. So, they naturally ignored him until there was no food, and then they decided it was time to start praying again. So, Nephi pled with the Lord on their behalf “O Lord, wilt thou turn away thine anger, and try again if they will serve thee? And if so, O Lord, thou canst bless them according to thy words which thou hast said.” (Helaman 11:16). So, the Lord, being His forgiving self, ended the famine and the Nephites began to prosper again. Then we read in Helaman 12:2 “Yea, and we may see at the very time when he doth prosper his people, yea, in the increase of their fields, their flocks and their herds, and in gold, and in silver, and in all manner of precious things of every kind and art; sparing their lives, and delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; softening the hearts of their enemies that they should not declare wars against them; yea, and in fine, doing all things for the welfare and happiness of his people; yea, then is the time that they do harden their hearts, and do forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One—yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity.” Yikes, we say, at that blatant pride. We shake our heads and say goodness those Nephites with their pride cycle!

As if we can’t relate to it ourselves. As if we do not strap knives to our shoes and dance the familiar dance of allowing “a little” sin. There’s a giant red flashing light that needs to go off in your brain when you start justifying things with “a little.” I’ll just have one, it’s not a problem, I just won’t do it ever again. Won’t you? It’s just a little, it’s only one, it’s not a big deal. Satan doesn’t toss you into the fire and brimstone all at once, he leads you “a little” at a time so that you can adjust to the heat. Mind the danger of “a little.”

Why? Because, we see in Helaman 12:3 “that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him.” I know this is true on a personal spiritual level because the hardest trials to get through were the ones I tried to get through on my own. Because I knew I had done wrong by God, and I was scared to repent. Repentance used to scare me a lot, because Satan got it in my head that trying the fix the problem was worse than letting the problem continue to exist. Logically, I recognize the faults in this argument, but Satan doesn’t need logic when he has our emotions in his grasp and our fears memorized. “O how foolish, and how vain, and how evil, and devilish, and how quick to do iniquity, and how slow to do good, are the children of men; yea, how quick to hearken unto the words of the evil one, and to set their hearts upon the vain things of the world!” (Helaman 12:4).

The fun part of the pride cycle is realizing that it doesn’t have to be a cycle. It’s taking control and deciding that you’re going to be quick to remember the Lord rather than quick to do iniquity. It’s choosing the harder right over the easier wrong every single day. It’s work; breaking habits takes time, recovering from addiction takes time, especially psychological addictions. But to be able to be free of a cycle, to be able to stare yourself in the mirror and think “I know you’re doing your best, and I’m happy with that” is without price. To know that you could stand before the Father Himself and say, “Father, I promise you I did my best, and when I didn’t I repented and tried harder” that is what I’m living for. I want my life to be Swan Lake on opening night. I want to feel alive and electric with the power of the Gospel and knowing I stand with the Creator. That I stand with Christ. I want to stop strapping knives to my shoes, I want to stop making it harder than it needs to be. I want my life to show that I am a disciple of Christ.

I pray that you do too, and I pray that you break the cycle.