So this is something new that I've decided to try for a while- I want to do a series of topical posts rather than pick something at random to talk about every time. In this way, I hope to bring a bit of focus to my own life as I try my best to research the topics before posting about them and hopefully it will result in you, the reader, getting more out of it. So over the course of the next few weeks I will be posting about various sins or vices- particularly ones that I struggle with myself and examining 1) what they are and 2) best practices on fighting them.
So without further ado, the first topic to cover is the sin of Pride. I decided to talk about it first because, as far as I have been able to discover, all of Christian teaching on the subject points to pride as being the greatest sin. This is hard for many people to imagine; no one is opposed to the idea of it being a bad thing, but the worst thing? Surely murder, or rape- something more measurable- would be the greatest sin right? And doesn't the Bible say something about the love of money being the root of all evil? So wouldn't the title go to greed then?
(Well actually the Bible says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil- pretty big difference.)
Before I go into what pride is, I want to make a few points about what it is not to clear up any misunderstandings as you read.
1) Pride is not taking pleasure in being praised. Being praised for doing something, or for possessing certain qualities is not sinful. A woman praised by her husband for her beauty or a child being praised by his father for scoring a goal in soccer are not in any way in sin when they feel good about the praise they are receiving. In fact, all Christians long to hear God say to them on the Final Day "well done, good and faithful servant." The trick is that the pleasure you receive in the praise lies not in what you are, but with the fact that you have rightly pleased someone that you wanted to please. When your focus ceases to be on the other person and begins to shift towards yourself, thinking "I deserve their praise" or "I'm so great to have done all these things", then you are being prideful.
2) Pride is not having admiration for something. When your parents tell you that they are "proud of you" for some accomplishment, they are not sinning. Nor is there anything wrong with taking pride in belonging to a certain school or team or what have you. The apostle Paul (who wrote a great deal of the New Testament) says in his letter to the Corinthian church that he "takes great pride in [them]." Pride rears its head when you stop being proud of the thing and start feeling superior to others because of your involvement in that thing. If your father is a famous something-or-other and you go around feeling special and telling everyone you can all about how great your father is compared to theirs, then you have crossed into the sin of Pride.
Now, the reason why Pride is considered the Great Sin is because pride is what leads to every other sin. It is, as C.S. Lewis notes, "the complete anti-God state of mind." He goes on to explain very well the nature of pride:
"Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive- it is competitive by its very nature- while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest."
That, of course, explains why it is a complete anti-God state of mind. God is, in every way imaginable, superior to you and I and to every man, woman, child, animal, or spirit that has ever existed. And yet Pride wants only to be better than someone or something else. Well, you can't do that with God- it's literally impossible. In order to know God at all, you must first come to the realization that you are absolutely nothing by comparison. That is why the proud can not know God. In fact, Proverbs states: "The Lord detests all the proud of heart. Be sure of this: they will not go unpunished." (Proverbs 16:5)
So, we have established that Pride is a bad thing. But the thing about pride is, it can be immensely difficult to detect in yourself, let alone root out. Because it is so deeply ingrained in our very natures, we sometimes do not even recognize right away that we are being prideful. Here are a couple of tests that I have found helpful in determining pride in my own heart:
1) First of all, if you don't think you're prideful, it means that you are very prideful.
2) Do you have a hard time accepting criticism? No one enjoys honest feedback about our faults-it hurts. But the difference between wisdom and pride is that wisdom honestly considers what is being said and doesn't get defensive. Pride will immediately get defensive and try and make excuses, distract from the issue by pointing out someone else's deficiencies, or simply refuse to acknowledge that the other person has anything worthy to say. Wise people actively seek honest feedback and assessment of their character on a regular basis (Proverbs 15:31, 10:17, 12:1) but proud people actively avoid it. Maybe you are even reading this post with a critical attitude, saying to yourself something along the lines of: "I bet Matt does all of these things himself! Who is he to tell me about my pride?" rather than honestly examining your own heart to determine if you are guilty or not (and here's a hint that may make it easier to swallow: every single one of us is guilty, including me. Including you.).
3) Do you have a pattern of lying? Maybe you don't tell really big lies, but you just tweak the facts a little bit to present yourself in a more favorable light. Do you make up stories for why you were late to work, or why you can't go out with a friend, or why you got a bad grade in a class? It's never your fault right? When we lie to make other people think more highly of us, we can be sure that pride is at work in our hearts. I admit that I do this one all the time.
4) Do you always have to add your two cents to a conversation? Some people are just more talkative than others, but some people want to be heard so much that they always have to say something. And why do they want to be heard? So that other people can hear them of course (what good would it do for them to just talk to the air?). They want everyone to know just how funny they can be, or just how knowledgeable they are, or just how many names they can drop in a single conversation. It all comes back to looking good in other people's eyes comparatively speaking.
I think it's even possible to be proud in the way we go about dealing with pride. I know for me at least, I often catch myself confessing to people "I know I have pride in my heart" as if the act of confession makes me somehow more humble than they are, thus really making me more proud in the end! It's so easy to slip into pride and false humility! How can we escape it?
I think that the best way...no, scratch that; the only way to combat pride is to do what I should be doing all the time anyway: focusing all my attention on Jesus. If pride is elevation of the self, then I must put myself to death! Once we have experienced the death of the natural sinful self and begin to let the Holy Spirit work in our hearts to give us new life, we will begin to be drawn into the life of Jesus. Pastor Mark Driscoll says this about humility:
"Humility is a byproduct of focusing our attention on Jesus. Then you grow in humility because, again- it's about knowing your place. You get to know Jesus and you say 'yeah, I really don't have anything to brag about. Jesus is my Lord and He is good to me and He saves me and salvation is a gift and I know my place; it's not seated on the throne, high and exalted. My place is before the throne, face on the ground, saying thanks.'"
If pride is the anti-God state of mind, then humility is the "God-state of mind'' so to speak. It all comes back to an acknowledgement of our own depravity and our helplessness to change by our own power. When we forget about ourselves completely and focus everything on getting to know God and be more like Jesus, then we will be transformed into humble people- not by our own power, but by the power of God the Holy Spirit working through us. And from that point, we may begin to interact properly with our fellow man, because knowing God means knowing and loving your fellow man, for He has commanded it. But now we love with a more humble love that sincerely seeks to put other's interests before our own (Philippians 2: 3-11). That's the power of God in us my friends!
One last thing to add. If you ever need to confront someone on their pride, do not approach them with a prideful attitude yourself! Pride is conflict by its very nature. If you know a proud brother or sister and feel like you need to approach them about it, be humble yourself: admit right from the start that you yourself are proud too and offer to explore humility together with them. For that is really my point in all of this: you are proud. I am proud. We are all proud. We all need the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus. The End.
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