The Great Sin

Pride - The Great Sin

“We have become what evil wishes for us to be, and that is tortured and violent against ourselves or against others. And if we understand the work of the Gospel, it is that He looks in your eyes and He offers you the tender, clear knowledge of what you have done, who you have harmed, how you have harmed your own heart. And then what he offers is the promise of this, what the psalmist says in Psalm 139:17: ‘My thoughts about you are precious.’” - Dan Allender

 I’ll never forget the first time someone called out pride in my life.

I was with a small group of other believers, as iron was trying to sharpen iron, and I shared a reaction that I had to a certain situation that I knew was “off”. However, I could not put my finger on why I felt that way.  At that time, I did not have the understanding to see that it was pride. But when someone replied, “that’s pride”, no other words were needed for that to be my ah-moment, because she was right.

As I began to examine my actions from that new perspective, I could see just how obvious it was that my actions were being driven by pride. Why hadn’t I seen it before? That is the question that kept me up at night, because it seemed to fit. It was consistent with the feeling I couldn’t quite shake, which was that I had a blind spot, but try as I might, I couldn’t seem to figure out what I was not seeing.

Her words stung, but hearing the truth for the first time was a pivotal moment in my life, as it was the first time that I could actually see my pride for myself. I see now that if I had been studying His Word like I should, it would have been easier for me to spot. 

However, I’m here to tell you that eradicating pride from my life has not been easy, and I’m afraid God and I aren’t done just yet. 

Nonetheless, God has slowly moved me from rejoicing in someone’s failure, while taking pleasure in thinking or saying, “I told you so”, to being able to love someone through sacrifice, whether they “deserve it” or not. I see now that the truth is none of us deserve the Love of God, but that was a hard truth for me to see, especially when I believed that I was the best thing since sliced bread! 

I see now that God made me to be curious for a reason, and one of those reasons is so I wouldn’t walk away with ease from the concern he created in my mind. Of course, the need to know likely had something to do with my drive for perfection, as well, which I see now was just another way that pride was shaping literally every area of my life back then.

Because what really unnerved me the most was that I had missed it in the first place. But, I see now how God took that unhealthy drive in me, and used it for my good. 

It has been a long journey but for the past 10 years or so, God has been gently trying to get me to “beware lest you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.' [18] You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth . . .” Deuteronomy 8:17-18 ESV

I see now that I had become puffed up, but not by God nurturing me or feeding me.

I see now that out of all of the sins I’ve committed throughout my lifetime; it is my pride that has separated me from God the most. 

As determined as I was to fix it back then, that was nearly ten years ago, and pride and I are still doing our dance.

The truth is – I will be in a fight with my pride until the day I die, lest I forget that it was “through pride that the devil became the devil” (Lewis, 122), after all.

And I would also be remiss if I failed to recognize that Lewis also concluded that,

“Pride leads to every other vice”, and Pride “is the complete anti-God state of mind” (Lewis,122). Furthermore, pride is a sin that separates us from God. James 4:6 says “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” We distain seeing pride in others, and often call it out, but fail to recognize it in ourselves.

See, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next. Man” (Lewis, 122). Pride puts us in competition with others and entices us to boast of what we have accomplished or acquired. This is a direct contraction the Word of God. We find in James 1:17, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father…” Deuteronomy 8:18 says, “But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…” and Ecclesiastes 5:19 reminds us, “Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God.” Pride doesn’t just make us boasters of ourselves; it removes honor and glory from God and places it on man.

Looking back, I am now embarrassed about the way that I acted, because I can now see that was my pride speaking, and often times, way too loudly. I often find myself in a situation where I see someone else’s pride hanging out, and I’m reminded, we are all but mere humans, so who am I to judge. My job is to pray or ask God to reveal to me what I need to change about myself.

I’ve been re-reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, and in chapter 8, The Great Sin, I have been stopped me in my tracks, yet again. I can’t help but still recognize the sin of pride in myself. I also cannot unsee how Lewis perfectly describes the progression of what happens to men and women when we leave our pride unchecked. It’s everywhere, as pride has progressed in our society from vanity to diabolic pride.

C.S. Lewis began by explaining that vanity can be a form of pride, “that shows most on the surface, [but] is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault but a childlike and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows you are not completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, human.” (Lewis, 126)

As benign as vanity may sound, Lewis also explains that, “Pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.” (Lewis, 125)

To that end, Lewis goes on to describe the progression of sin from our human tendency to diabolical pride. I’ll admit – I had to look it up, but Oxford Dictionary defines diabolical as “characteristic of the Devil, or so evil as to be suggestive of the Devil”.  

With that in mind, C.S. Lewis wrote, “diabolical pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you”.  I don’t know about you, but Lewis’ words sure hit me square in the chest.

In fact, I walked around for years saying, “other people’s opinions of me don’t matter”. No don’t get me wrong; that statement may not be all together, “bad”, as it was also incredibly instrumental in helping me break free from other idols that I had set in my own life.  

However, as C.S. Lewis also explains, “the devil loves ‘curing’ a small fault by giving you a great one”, as Lewis warns, “We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our pride to cure our vanity, better the frying-pan than the fire.“ (Lewis, 127)

What does diabolical sin (or the frying-pan) look like, according to C.S. Lewis?

When I am rejected by another human being, I no longer feel dejected like someone who is vain. Instead, my prideful response is this, “Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? . . .I am an integrated, adult personality. All I have done has been to satisfy my own ideals – or my artistic conscience – or the traditions of my family – or, in a word, because I’m That Kind of Chap. If the mob like it, let them. They’re nothing to me.” (Lewis, 126)

Yet no matter how many times I have to beat down my pride, Lewis reminds me that humility is not something that God demands from me due to His own dignity – “as if God himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity.” (Lewis, 127) I should care more about what God thinks of me. Is he pleased with me? Am I in alignment with His will, or I am trying to align with other people are doing or what they have?

So, I should not avoid standing before God, because I am afraid that God will be offended by my pride, I should repent and just get myself in front of Him instead.

 Lewis reminds me that God’s point has always been for me to know God for myself, and if I really “get into any kind of touch with Him” I will, “in fact be humble, delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about [my] own dignity which has made [me] restless and unhappy all [my] life.”   

As Lewis explains, “In God I come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to myself.

Unless I know God as that—and, therefore, know myself as nothing in comparison—I do not know God at all. As long as I am proud, I cannot know God.

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as I am looking down, I cannot see something the God that is above me”. (Lewis,127)

Once I finally saw God for who He is, and who I really am in this world, a moment was possible where He convinced me to “take off a lot of the silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and strutting about like the little idiots that we are” (Lewis,128)

So, what is the first step in acquiring humility?  Lewis’s response to that question would be quite simple:

“If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think tell the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are vey conceited indeed.” (Lewis,128)

The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 5:6 to, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you” and in Micah 6:8 we are given these instructions,

 “He has told you, O man, what is good;    and what does the Lord require of youbut to do justice, and to love kindness,^[a]    and to walk humbly with your God?

One last thought, Lewis’ raised the “terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves, very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary god. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom god, but are really all the time imagining how he approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay pennyworth of imaginary humility to him and get out of it a pound’s worth of pride towards their fellow-men.”  (Lewis, 124)

Therefore, I must always be aware and take note that my trouble is just beginning, when I pass from thinking, “I have pleased him; all is well,” to thinking, “what a fine person I must be to have done it”. (Lewis, 126)

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” It is not our own good works or personalities or specialness that has placed a mark of goodness on our lives. The grace and mercy of God is the only thing holding us up and keeping us from destruction. There is nothing we can do to deserve His grace or his blessings. He gives it to us because he loves us and he is merciful, but if we start assigning ourselves partiality because of our works and not His mercy, we are in the danger zone.

Job 37:24 says, “Therefore men fear him;    he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.”

For His Kingdom, For His glory.

Citations

Lewis, C.C. “The Great Sin.” Mere Christianity, HarperCollins, Broadway, NY, 2001, pp. 121–128.