THE DEADLIEST SIN
By Fisher Humphreys
Pride and the Bible
The Bible says that God keeps aloof from people who are proud: “Though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly; but the haughty he perceives from far away” (Ps. 138:6). “Toward the scorners [God] is scornful, but to the humble he shows favor” (Pr. 3:34). This verse is quoted twice in the New Testament, once by James and once in 1 Peter.
The book of Proverbs emphasizes that eventually the proud get their comeuppance. “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18). “A person’s pride will bring humiliation, but one who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor” (Pr. 29:23).
The most vigorous condemnation of pride in the Bible is Mary’s Magnificat (Lk. 1:46-55). Mary praises God not only for lifting up people who are lowly but for humiliating people who are proud. The song reflects an ancient Jewish tradition that it is the downtrodden members of the covenant people who really love God.
Jesus obliquely condemned pride by praising its opposites: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. . . . Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth” (Mt. 5:3, 5). He urged his followers to follow his example by being givers rather than takers. When they quarreled about which of them would be greatest in the kingdom, he said, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:42-45).
The writers of the New Testament got the point. In their writings they uniformly resisted pride and selfishness in favor of humility and care for others.
Pride and the Church’s Teaching
The biblical condemnation of pride took root in the church and has been developed across the centuries. In the sixth century, Pope St. Gregory the Great developed a list of the seven deadly sins and listed pride as the deadliest.
Pride came to be understood as the cause of the fall of Satan. Satan was thought to have been a glorious angel who rebelled against God and was thrown down from heaven. Why? Because he did not want to let God be God. He wanted to be God. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan says: “Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.”
Martin Luther, commenting on Romans 5:4, wrote that human beings are naturally incurvatus a se, curved in on themselves. It is an image of self-destructiveness like that of a feral animal whose curved tusks continue to grow until they pierce the animal’s skull and kill it.
Theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich have added some distinctly modern insights to the tradition. For example, they point out that human beings who are finite and mortal nevertheless have the capacity to imagine what it would be like to be infinite and immortal. The gap between our actual condition and what we can imagine about ourselves generates existential anxiety. That anxiety gives rise to multiple sins, especially pride. It works like this: In order to alleviate our anxiety about our finitude and mortality, we deny them. We conduct our lives as if we are infinite and immortal.
Of course, this is irrational, since it’s obvious to everyone that we are finite and mortal. But we are so desperate to relieve our anxiety that we pretend we aren’t. We whistle when we walk by the cemetery. Creatures who have been made in God’s image attempt to be God. In the words of Tillich: “Man is tempted to make himself existentially the center of himself and his world.” This is the tragedy of human existence. It is why the Christian tradition says that pride is the worst sin of all.
Good Pride
Not all pride is sinful. Here are three examples of good pride. We should be proud of our grandchildren when they study hard and make good grades. We should be proud of our church and its ministries to people in need. We should be proud of our best accomplishments in life.
Pride of this kind has good effects. It can motivate our grandchildren to study. It can lead our churches to act with compassion and effectiveness. It is an incentive for each of us to strive to accomplish good things in life.
Even though this kind of pride is good, it does carry a risk, namely, that we come to value the things of which we’re proud more highly than we value God. We could treat our grandchildren as the most important thing in the world, thus making our family into an idol. We could treat our church as if it is the only good church around. We could look with contempt on people who do not accomplish as much with their lives as we have done with ours.
But simply taking pride in things such as our grandchildren, our church, and our accomplishments does not necessarily mean we have committed idolatry. With a moment’s reflection we can see that humble persons, humble Christians, can be proud of their grandchildren, their church and their own best accomplishments.
This leads to the question: How can we distinguish good pride from bad pride? It’s tricky, but here are some thoughts. Pride in the accomplishments of others is less likely to be sinful than pride in your own accomplishments. Your pride in your grandchildren’s hard work and good grades is good. You should have it, and you should tell your grandchildren you are proud of what they have achieved.
Also, pride in what you accomplish is less likely to be sinful than pride in yourself. If you are proud of having worked hard and made a good score on the Graduate Record Exam, that probably isn’t a sin. But if your GRE score makes you think you’re smarter than everybody else, and even that everybody else is stupid, your pride is sinful (as well as delusional).
Pride and Other People
When we are arrogant we attempt to put ourselves at the center of the universe. We try to displace God, and we try to displace others, from the center. We relate to others as if their lives do not matter. We may even be contemptuous of them. We use them. We manipulate them. We attempt to control them. We put them down. We keep them down.
In other words, pride is intensively competitive. Pride makes us want to vanquish people. We want to win; but that’s not the worst of it. We want others to lose. A character in one of Iris Murdoch’s novels says, “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”
There are some areas of life where competition is a good thing. Two of these are athletics and economics. Obviously, athletes become better and better as a result of their competing with other athletes. They play to win, and that’s all right because everyone in the game has agreed to the competition, and they all know—or should know—that it’s only a game. The losers aren’t lesser persons—they’re just lesser players. That’s compatible with Christian teaching.
In economics, the most successful system by far is inherently competitive. Capitalism has generated more wealth than any other system in the history of the world, and it also has provided maximal freedom for citizens.
The problem with capitalism, of course, is that there are people who are unable to compete. Many countries, including our own, create social programs to try to insure that those who can’t compete successfully nevertheless have a decent life. For example, we provide public schools. We do this for the benefit of all children, and we do it also for the general welfare of the country. Public schools are socialistic rather than capitalistic. They and many other similar programs take the brutal edge off the competition inherent in capitalism.
In most of life other than economics and athletics, competition is bad for human beings. When a husband and wife compete against each other, their marriage is a disaster. When parents encourage their children to compete against each other, the family is in trouble. When friends compete against each other, they put their friendship at risk.
Competition in most areas of life is not compatible with living as Christians. When we compete, we want other people to fail, but when we follow Christ, we want other people to succeed. The satisfaction we feel when we succeed and others fail is incompatible with Jesus’ way of life. You can’t have it both ways. You either wish people well, or you compete with them; you can’t do both. Outside carefully confined areas of life, such as athletics and economics, competition is about sinful pride.
Three More Facts about Pride
I want now to mention three facts about pride, all of which can motivate us as we attempt to avoid pride in our own lives. First, while it’s easy for others to see pride in us, it’s difficult for us to see it in ourselves. If it’s so obvious to them, why not to us? I don’t know the answer. But recognizing this fact alerts us to the fact that it isn’t easy to avoid pride.
Second, pride is not a popular sin. When others see your pride, they don’t like it, and they don’t like you. Friends will join you in some sins. For example, they will join you in getting drunk and will enjoy the sin with you. But no one will join you in your pride. They will distance themselves from you when you are arrogant.
We hate others’ pride but not our own. We may not even recognize that we’re proud; but if we do, we don’t find our pride repellent the way others do. In fact, we are drawn to it. It feels good to think of ourselves as the center of the universe.
A third fact is one we moderns seem to be more aware of than ancient people were. We recognize today that many of the people who are boastful and arrogant are in fact not really proud of themselves at all. They are rather tormented by a sense of inadequacy. They brag and strut in order to cover up inner feelings of self-doubt and self-hatred. They can’t love their neighbors as themselves because they don’t love themselves. Most people who bully others are not brave; they’re cowards. Their bluster is to conceal from others that they’re really weak rather than strong. This is not to say that they don’t have any skills; they may have. But their bullying is motivated by a profound sense of inadequacy.
The Alternative to Pride
Now we turn to the Christian alternative to pride—namely, humility. You would think that, since people dislike pride, they would like humility, but they mostly don’t. In part this is because humility is misunderstood. People assume that a humble person is weak or servile. That’s not true. Jesus was humble, but he wasn’t weak and he certainly wasn’t servile.
People also assume that a humble person is ineffective. That’s not true, either. Humble people can be very effective. Some of them become splendid leaders. But they don’t lead by bullying. They lead by offering a vision, by inspiring others, and by persuading others to follow them.
Humility is not feelings of inferiority, either. It certainly is not a sense of self-hatred. Humble people don’t lack respect for themselves. They just have respect for others as well as for themselves.
Humility is respect for God and respect for other people. It is letting God be God. It is affirming the worth of other persons in addition to yourself. Humility is realistic. God is God, and we are not. Other people do have worth, not just ourselves. The eighth psalm says that God has made human beings a little lower than God. John says that God loves all human beings. The New Testament teaches that Christ gave his life for all human beings. For all these reasons human beings should be treated with respect. That is the meaning of humility.
The advantages of humility are great. It overcomes soul-destroying self-centeredness. It frees us from endless efforts to justify our own existence by competing with others. It makes possible authentic community, authentic friendships and authentic love. It delivers us from contributing to the endless barrage of petty criticism that characterizes the life of communities.
Conclusion
God has provided Christians with resources for the struggle against pride. At the top of the list of resources is the example of Jesus who, “though he was in the form of God . . . humbled himself and became obedient” (Phil. 2:6-8). Then there is the Spirit who lives within us and is working to produce the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. There is the church, a community where pride is condemned and humility is respected. There is the Bible which gives us a clear message about pride and humility. And there is a promise that Jesus made to us about humility and all other forms of goodness, both for ourselves and our world: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Mt. 5:6).
Fisher Humphreys is Professor of Divinity, Emeritus, of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama.
