Two Faces of Pride

"One's pride will bring him low,

but he who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor."

Prov. 29: 23

"Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool,

but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered."

Prov. 28: 26

In the past 24 hours, I have been asked twice to define "pride."  What does this look like?  How could you say I am proud?  Since I can see my sin, is it possible for me to remain proud?

Then, today's Proverbs concerning pride jumped off the page.  Pride is the topic for today.  I know this topic well, since I am an exceedingly prideful man.  I am so prideful, that even the last sentence sounds like pride.

So what is pride?  Is its opposite "a lowly spirit" as it says in the Proverbs?  Does this mean I must walk around depressed and moaning about my inability all the time?  I am not sure I want to do that.  So, what is pride?

Let me again quote from Henry Fairlie's The Seven Deadly Sins Today, 39-41.

"But a reasonable and justified self-esteem is not what is meant by the sin of Pride.  The first definition of pride in the dictionaries is of something unfitting.  'An inordinate self-esteem,' says Webster's, as also does the Oxford English Dictionary: 'an unreasonable conceit of superiority... an overweening opinion of one's own qualities.'  Its synonyms or near-synonyms are not attractive: vanity, vainglory, conceit, arrogance, egotism, boastfulness, self-glorification, selfishness, and many more, all of which we use as terms of reproach.  There is some cunning in the question, "Should we not be proud of ourselves?"  Even as it is so innocently put, there is already a note of vanity and self-satisfaction in it, and one feels that the Devil is there, alert as ever, making an opening for the real sin of Pride to enter.  

'Being proud of oneself' is often equated today with 'feeling good about oneself'; and feeling good about oneself is an altogether laudable ambition, but again only as long as one has adequate reasons for feeling good. ...

Pride is camel-nosed, as Angus Wilson has said.  It is also high-blown, puffed up, stuck-up, stiff-necked.  All of these are epithets, not only of superiority, but of aloofness.  The proud man sets himself up and, in doing so, sets himself apart."

Pride can have two distinct forms.  It can be the arrogant jerk who always has to tell you about herself.  It can be the selfish business man who makes all of life about himself.  It can be the person who refuses to listen to advice.  All of these folks may walk securely, feeling good about themselves, and being confident in their abilities.  This is not the point.  Their real sin is not competence, but their self-satisfaction and self-righteousness.  The center of their world is themselves.

Why is this important to recognize?  Because pride can also be depressed, self-loathing, and full of self-pity.  While people marked by these traits are not self-confident nor do they feel good about themselves, they are extremely self-centered and self-consumed.  Instead of talking about their achievements, they talk about their failures and struggles.  The center of their world is themselves.

As I see it, our greatest problem is that we do not recognize this sin within ourself.  We see it clearly within others, and it drives us crazy, but we have a hard to recognizing our own self-centered pride.

How do we escape the trap of self-concern and self-righteousness?  We must look for our validation and our righteousness from somewhere else.  It is found through confession of our sin against God and faith in Christ as our only hope.  

Augustine and the Roman Catholic tradition maintained that pride was the heart of all our sin and fallenness.  Martin Luther agreed, but he said the primary sin in our pride is that of unbelief.  Because we do not believe in Christ as our righteousness and life, we fill the void with something else.  Most of the time we do it with ourself.  Instead of claiming and living Christ's righteousness as ours, we trust in our self-righteousness.  Such misplaced trust leads to pride, which contaminates all of our life.

What about the depressed, self-loathing, self-pitying individual?  How do they trust themselves?

The key is that such a person does not trust or believe Christ's righteousness is for them.  They refuse to believe that Christ is enough.  In the name of supposed humility and recognition of their limitations, they pridefully dismiss that God loves them in Christ and that His power can transform them.

At its heart, all pride flows from our unbelief.  It is always ugly in the presence of a Holy God because His holiness reveals the folly of our unbelief and its resulting pride.

What can be done?  Repent of our unbelief, confess our misplaced pride, and believe in Christ as our righteousness, our transforming power, and our only hope.  Allow His grace to change our unbelieving hearts!