As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
That raises a 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 worshiping 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 a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound’s worth of pride towards their fellow-men. C.S. Lewis
Well all seek worth and validation – purpose and importance. But all too often we settle for a cheapened version of these things by looking down on others. After all, if they are down there, then we are up here. And up here is where it’s at.
To look down on others, we must first convince ourselves that we are above them. And so we turn to the ego, that master of dualistic thinking, and resort to comparison.
We compare money and possessions. We compare age and appearance and reputation. We compare education and experience. We compare our family line and who we know in the community and beyond. And before realizing it, we’ve built our lives on comparison – on looking down on others. It gives us a smugness and false sense of importance so foundational to who we are that we can’t even see it.
This spurious sense of superiority we superimpose on our insecurities is called pride. It’s the first in the list of seven deadly sins. C.S. Lewis calls it the utmost evil.
It is this utmost evil called pride that we will explore today, from its subtle ability to infiltrate us unnoticed to its overwhelming power to destroy the very thing we thought it would safeguard: ourselves.
And, more importantly, we’ll discover what it takes to expose and eliminate the hidden shadow of pride that lurks within us. And as we will see, the solution to eradicating pride is a real cliff-hanger.
Source Scripture
Pride Comes Before a Fall: Luke 4:16-30
Connect
Twitter: @AwestruckPod
Email: info@awestruckpodcast.com
Extras
The Awestruck Podcast musical playlist
(Apple I Spotify)
What Jesus Read to the People of Nazareth: Isaiah 61:1
Sacred Scripture is like a Sword for the Heart: Hebrews 4:12
Sacred Scripture is Designed to Bring us Joy: John 5:39-40
Jeremiah Sees Sacred Scripture as a Feast: Jeremiah 15:16
Jesus Says Sacred Scripture Brings Joy: John 15:11