How easily deceived we are by what we want to believe about ourselves! We are prone to flattery by the anyone who will tell us good things about ourselves. To resist the temptation to think well of ourselves is more than we can manage. We receive complements as true with very little attempt to prove their worth, and we exhibit this strong bias in favour of ourselves. As a result we build up all sorts of false confidences, and rely on what is in fact weak and incapable of supporting us. Edom said, ‘Who shall bring me down to the ground?’ and that is our reaction. Whether God warns us of the nature of life and eternity through some inner instinct, or whether we hear the plain declaration of God's holy word, the reaction is the same. It is to claw our way out of this vulnerability, to try to feel better and bigger about ourselves, to make ourselves feel secure. Oh, the whole of the human race – in our pride we look at our achievements, we make ourselves feel secure, and this is how we get out of this uncomfortable feeling that we are but men and women, and God is in his heaven, and our life is short, and one day we must face him.
That is the human race. If we feel vulnerable, if we feel there is a spiritual dimension and reality and a God who is holy, then we run to all kinds of other things to make us feel secure and better and healthy and wealthy and wise so that we are not troubled by these things. We shut them out and we won't think about them. That is exactly what was happening in Edom so long ago. And that was her response to her fear and to her insecurity. So we behave as though there is no health to lose, there is no end to life, there is not going to be any collapse one day of a godless society, there aren't going to be any consequences to pay for sin, and we push all these things aside.