C.S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity:

Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

I’m sure that many in our day and state of mind will think that Lews is either misguided, exaggerated or both. We’re taught to have pride from the womb: pride of our family heritage, pride of our school, pride of our state, pride of our country, pride the brand of truck we drive (at least here in TX), pride of the sports team we watch. We value the “self-made” person. We’re even proud of the church we attend.

One of the most dangerous things about pride is that it is one of the few sins that blinds us to its presence. We know when we drink too much. We know when we speed in our cars. We know when we lust. But we rarely (at least initially) know when we are infected with pride. At least part of the reason for this is, as Lewis points out: “Pride is essentially competitive.” In other words, pride demonstrates itself by having more of something than someone else, doing something better than someone else. If everyone had the same thing, there would be no basis for pride. If everyone were equally talented, there would be no basis for pride. Pride is often focused on others, therefore we sometimes don’t realize its presence.

But there are other reasons why pride can be difficult to spot (and therefore so deadly). Pride can often appear religious. Pride can, in fact, help us overcome other sins, therefore appearing good. As Lewis argues:

Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect to make him behave decently; many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride.

Lewis laments: “It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life.” But this is quite often exactly what happens. Many pews are filled with people whose hearts are filled with pride and whose lives are filled with lists of rules and regulations and whose eyes glance in judgment. Legalism is one of the most deadly weapons in the arsenal of pride. Beware of any church that tells you you cannot be a member over something Scripture allows. Such churches, though thinking themselves the most holy have actually denied the Gospel by adding to it.

This is interesting, isn’t it that the ones who often come across as the most holy are in fact the worst off. These are often the ones who don’t fathom the depth of their own sin because, as Lewis points out, out of pride, they have been able to conquer many “weaker” sins that enslave so many, all the while being eaten from the inside out by the cancer of pride. As Lewis warns:

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty, object.

The only antidote is God. We must see God who who He truly is and only then will we see ourselves for who we truly are. Pride is the complete distortion of this, elevating self and lowering God (and others). Unless we understand that God is immeasurably greater than any of our aspirations we do not truly know Him. Unless we see Him “high and lifted up” with the refrain of “I am undone,” we do not know Him. It must bring a chill to our souls that there will be some who come to Christ at the Day of Judgment only to hear those eternally stinging words “Depart from Me for I never knew you” (Matthew 7:23).

We continually warn against the dangers out there. But I wonder how well we guard against the dangers in here?

• Read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• Read Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
• Read Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness by Andrew Murray

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