We tend to think that pride is as a matter of thinking more highly than we should about ourselves and that being humble is thinking less of ourselves. Both perceptions are wrong and are in fact dangerous and damaging. How can that be?
According to Tim Keller, the Bible says pride is “concentration on the self. Pride is absorption in self.” According to C.S. Lewis, “Pride is ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on self.”
Pride, you see, makes you concentrate on self so deeply that you only do things that make you feel good about yourself because you need respect, adulation or acclaim. Nothing is ever about the things that you are doing, because everything is about you.
Lust may cause you to desire to be with a beautiful woman but pride only focuses on how great you will feel when you have a woman no one else has. Pride finds no pleasure in the woman because it’s all about you. Relationships are about you. Jobs are about you. Everything is about you. It’s all about respect and approval.
C.S. Lewis says, “Pride turns everything into a means to an end. You never do anything for itself. It’s always a means to an end of earning respect and approval.” Lewis also says, “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, but only out of having more of it than the next person. People may think they are proud of being successful, or intelligent or good looking but they are not. When proud people are around other people with equal or more success, intelligence or good looks they lose all pleasure in them.”
Keller says, “Pride is always an endless ego calculation, always asking, “Am I getting the respect and appreciation that I deserve?”” Pride is always keeping score to see if it is getting the respect, adulation and credit it deserves for everything it has or does.” Pride is always asking, “How am I being regarded?, How does this make me look?, What are people saying about me?” Pride always asks, “What about me?, What about me?, What about me?”
You see then that there are two faces of pride. The one that we always recognize in everyone else is the arrogant, boastful, braggart who is always telling everyone how great he is. He is totally self absorbed and in his calculations he has determined that he is doing better than others and of course everyone needs to know because everything is about him. This is the superiority form of pride.
The other side of pride is the inferiority form of pride. This form of pride is also totally self absorbed but you are down on yourself, you don’t like how you look, you think you’re a failure, you don’t like yourself, you are very self conscious and you are always beating yourself up. You are doing all the calculations just like the arrogant man but in your evaluation you aren’t doing so well. No one is giving you the respect you deserve and ultimately you can think about nothing but yourself and just how pitiful you are.
The Bible says pride precedes a fall because both forms of pride are destructive. How you say? First pride makes you a fool by keeping you from ever learning from your mistakes. A proud heart is always justifying itself. No matter what happens, a relationship that breaks up, a job that is lost, a plan that fails is someone else’s fault or the circumstances, it’s never you. You justify yourself so you can’t learn from your mistakes.
Proud people don’t learn from criticism in particular because the superiority form of pride dismisses it or attacks the one who dares to be critical. To the inferiority form of pride criticism is devestating to the point that people are afraid to be honest with you. So you never learn anything.
Because you do not learn from your mistakes and you don’t listen to criticism you are a fool. You constantly make bad choices, you choose the wrong jobs, you choose the wrong friends, you continue to do things that are harmful, dangerous or just plain stupid. Why? Because the superiority form of pride makes you overestimate your gifts and intelligence while the inferiority form of pride makes you underestimate your gifts because you are always feeling down on yourself. The people you perceive as above you, you fear and find threatening because you resent them and the people you perceive as below you, you disdain and dismiss. You don’t learn from anyone. You are constantly making mistakes and wrong moves.
But pride doesn’t just make you a fool. It makes you evil. Pride is what made the devil the devil. Since St. Augustine, Christians have known that pride is not one sin among many, but is truly the root of all sin. “Pride is the hellish, putrid Petri dish from which all other sins grow.” Take bitterness and anger. It is impossible to stay angry and bitter with someone unless you feel superior to them. There is no bitterness without pride. “I would never do anything like that, or how could anyone treat me that way or say that about me?”
What about paralyzingly fear or worry? Pride says you must know how things will go in the future and you need to be in control. Pride says what if, what if and what must I do to prevent it? You are sure you know what’s best in the future and things must go that way. Arrogance says I know exactly how things must go. You can’t be intensely afraid about the future without a certain level of pride.
Pride also makes you opinionated. You are sure you are right and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. You want to destroy them because if they are right then you are wrong and you can’t be wrong because you are so superior to them. In the inferior form of pride to be wrong would be humiliating. So you see in either form of pride you only listen to people who agree with you and affirm you. It’s all about you.
The inferior form of pride can also make you indecisive because you are afraid to be criticized. You are afraid of making a wrong move and worried about how you will look. Pride makes you either too shy or too abrasive.
Racism, injustice and imperialism are all rooted in pride. Overreaching nationalism is caused by pride. The leading cause of murder is pride either by arrogant superiority or debilitating inferiority.
Pride not only makes you a fool, is harmful and evil. Pride is the one sin that hides itself. Keller says pride is “the carbon monoxide of sin – killing you without you being aware it is happening.” By definition, the more proud you are and the more trapped in its clutches, the less proud you think you are.
You know when you are breaking a commandment like adultery. You know when you are stealing. You don’t know when you are proud. No one ever comes to counseling because of a problem with pride. Joseph Epstein in his book on pride says “So many people hate snobs. Do you realize that you cannot really hate snobs unless you feel superior to snobs?” Which means that hating snobbery is a form of snobbery.
Sadly, being told to draw closer to God will not necessarily eliminate pride. Religiousity, that is reading the Bible more, praying more, worshiping more, doing more good works, even fasting more may help with many sins but so long as your focus is on you and what you are doing it will only enhance your pride. Satan’s greatest tool is keeping Christians focused on themselves and what they are accomplishing. He wants them to continue keeping score! Religiousity just makes pride worse.
As you read this post haven’t you been thinking about a couple of people that come to mind. That’s proof of pride in your heart. This post is about me. This post is about you. I am convicted to the core by everything I have written.
A truly humble person doesn’t think less of himself, he thinks of himself less. A truly humble person doesn’t feel superior to anyone because he is not keeping score. A truly humble person focuses on God and others and could build the greatest cathedral just because it was the right thing to do. He wouldn’t care who got the credit and would be just as thrilled with the finished product even if he hadn’t built it. Again I will repeat Keller’s comment – To be truly humble doesn’t mean to think less of yourself, it means to think of yourself less.
When you meet a truly humble person you will not think, “Wow, what a truly humble person.” You will probably think, “Wow, I just spent time with a person who really cared about me and what I had to say.” A truly humble person is settled in who He is in God because of Jesus’ finished work on the cross and God’s sovereign choice. A truly humble person doesn’t have to keep score because as Jesus said on the cross, “It is finished!”
Truly humble people listen well because they are not a set of beliefs or the smartest, strongest, or richest person in the room. They are a child of God by God’s mercy alone. A truly humble person knows that he is no better or worse than anyone else but he rests in the fact that he is complete in Christ.
A truly humble person knows the secret to living a life of contentment and joy. He knows that he is a child of God, holy (set apart) and pleasing (God delights in Him because he is God’s son) to God! He doesn’t have to earn appreciation or respect because he is loved unconditionally by the creator of the universe.
Php 2:1-11 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.