Check Your Vanity at the Door. In movies about the Old West, signs at saloon entrances informed patrons that they were required to “Check Your Guns at the Door”. This was thought to minimize the number of deaths that bar patrons would inflict on each other and, not uncoincidentally, ensure greater cash receipts due to fewer interruptions to the process by which monies were exchanged for temporary happiness.
To be pleasing to He Who so kindly and lovingly programmed us with all the capacities we have, we have to check our vanity at the door. When we try to appreciate Him for having chosen to have made and blessed us with all we have and are, we cannot be properly grateful without recognizing our own lack of ability to have given ourselves such gifts on our own. So, we check our vanity at the door.
The first of the Operating Instructions He provided tells us to “Have no Gods before Me.” The God we most frequently tend to put before Him is our self. “Self” will come up with all kinds of good reasons for us to elevate it to a more exalted status than it can, as a created creature, deserve. “Self”, we should say when feeling a temptation to think we’re important, “give thanks to He Who gave you these gifts. Don’t put us at risk of eternal pain for a few moments of undeserved pride.” So, we check our vanity at the door.
Vanity and Possessions My Binocular War.
Our vanity encourages us to accumulate things. We begin by wanting everything, but generally focus on “important collectibles” of some sort or another. Today, for instance, I have been given an opportunity to buy a pair of the largest binoculars ever made for nine thousand dollars. They were built by one of the world’s finest optical houses (it’s a sign that vanity is strong when we speak of things we want as having been made in “houses” rather than “factories”) for long-range military observation posts in the desert staffed by Israeli soldiers on the lookout for foreign infiltrators. These binoculars weigh 380 pounds, are about three feet long, and reported to be the finest, as well as the largest, optical binoculars ever made. The perfectly polished light-gathering lenses at the big end of the binoculars are as large as dinner plates.
If I buy them, they will go in a large conference room , there to be admired and looked through by office visitors. From the room’s windows, we can see a small, distant vista. There, vehicles several miles away can be seen driving across a bridge that traverses a large lake. Several times a week, a few hundred times a year, people visiting our office will look through the huge binoculars, make the necessary adjustments, and suddenly see the distant trucks and cars look as if they can be reached out and touched. Without exception, each and every one of them will say “Wow!”, and will leave our building with the positive impression that can only be gained by having done something about which they can tell others. “I have looked through the biggest pair of binoculars in the world, and they are absolutely amazing!”
Is that worth $9,000.00? “Most likely.”, I tell myself.
