Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...C.S. Lewis on Pride

"It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. 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 -- just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense."

C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom...Cornelius Plantinga on Self-Centeredness

"A proud person tries to reinvent reality. He tries to redraw the borders of human behavior to suit himself, displacing God as the Lord and boundary keeper of life. At bottom, the fool is out of touch with reality. For, of course, our wills are not sovereign. We are not really our own centers, anchors, or lawgivers. We have not made ourselves, cannot keep ourselves, cannot ultimately oblige or forgive ourselves. The image of ourselves as center of the world is fantasy -- perhaps, in its sheer detachment from reality, even a form of madness. This is especially clear at the most ruinous levels of evil. Only a fool, Milton believed, would rise from the flaming ruins, look out across a 'dismal Situation waste and wild,' filled with 'huge affliction and dismay,' and declare: 'Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n.'"

Cornelius Plantinga Jr.
Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin

I Am Just Like Albert Pujols

The news I had been fearing came this morning: Albert Pujols, the premier baseball player of his generation, was leaving the St. Louis Cardinals, my St. Louis Cardinals, for the Los Angeles Angels. And why? Because they offered him somewhere in excess of $250 million dollars when the the Cardinals' offer was closer to $200 million.

Cardinal fans are passionate about baseball. The national media make much of (and I'm sure other teams' fans are tired of hearing about) the fact that Cardinal fans are "the best fans in baseball." I'll grant that it seems to be a pretty subjective designation, and I don't know what kind of barometer you might use to measure it. I can attest to this though: The spirits of an entire region invariably rise and fall with the performance of its baseball team.

I remember back in 1987 when the Cardinals lost first baseman Jack Clark to free agency the same week St. Louis lost our NFL team to Arizona. The newspaper ran a public opinion poll as to which was the more devastating loss, a first baseman leaving the baseball team or the ENTIRE football team leaving the city. Clark had only been in St. Louis for three years and was nowhere near the player Pujols is. He won in a landslide.

Anyway, as I've followed things on Facebook & Twitter, Cardinal fans are unsurprisingly distraught. Amidst their anguish, cries are arising over the unmitigated pride of Pujols. After all, isn't $200 million enough?

I too am saddened by the departure for a number of reasons. Not the least of these is the discussion it forces me to have this evening with a twelve year old son whose first words to me each day for the last month have been, "Any news on Pujols?"

This being said, I think to criticize Pujols for greed is a little off base. If anything, I think the operative sin here would not be greed, but pride. Ultimately, in his heart of hearts, my guess is that what Pujols wanted wasn't so much the extra $50 million, but the status that comes with having received such a large contract.

I am reminded of the words of C.S. Lewis from his book, Mere Christianity: 

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

Now, it's easy for me to be critical of the greedy man who wants another $50 million because I am not likely ever to find myself in such a situation.  But each day I am forced to do battle with my pride.  So as disappointed as I am that Pujols has left, I'm going to try to get my own pride issues taken care of before I start bashing him. And as soon as I think I've eliminated pride in my life, that will be the first indication I haven't.


***** CLARIFICATTION *****

There seems to be some confusion over what I was saying as some folks I have talked to thought that I was making precisely the opposite point I intended to make -- never a good thing for a communicator.

It was not my desire to suggest that Albert's decision was necessarily sinful. Rather, I was merely suggesting that it was my guess that whatever sin might be wrapped up in it would more likely be a sin of pride than of greed. As such, I hoped to demonstrate that we should probably refrain from being too critical of him as we all struggle with pride in its various manifestations. Hence the title of the post.

Wednesday's Words of Wisdom

"Spiritual pride is the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of Christianity. It is the chief inlet of smoke from the bottomless pit, to darken the mind and mislead the judgment. It is the main source of all the mischief the devil introduces, to clog and hinder a work of God.

"Spiritual pride tends to speak of other persons’ sins with bitterness or with laughter and levity and an air of contempt. But pure Christian humility rather tends either to be silent about these problems or to speak of them with grief and pity. Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others, but a humble Christian is most guarded about himself. He is as suspicious of nothing in the world as he is of his own heart. The proud person is apt to find fault with other believers, that they are low in grace, and to be much in observing how cold and dead they are and to be quick to note their deficiencies. But the humble Christian has so much to do at home and sees so much evil in his own heart and is so concerned about it that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts. He is apt to esteem others better than himself."

Jonathan Edwards

Lowliness vs. Entitlement

We are a people of entitlement. Look at and listen to advertisements and notice how frequently the phrase "you deserve" is used.  Christ calls us away from such a sense of entitlement and calls us instead to a life of humility. John Piper speaks beautifully to this point below. It is well worth the two or three minutes it will take to watch.



(HT: Matthew Robbins)

Beware the Pharisee Within

This morning I was reading through the parable of the pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9-14. In it Jesus speaks of two men who went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a pharisee, who had quite scrupulously attended to all of the finer points of the Law. As he prayed, he boasted about his personal piety and thanked God that he was not like other (sinful) men such as extortioners, adulterers, and even the tax collector.

Meanwhile, we are told that the tax collector would not even lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast in sorrow and cried out to God, “Be merciful to me, a sinner!” Jesus goes on to inform us that it was this man who went away justified and he concludes his story with this admonition: “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

So what was my reaction to this? My mind immediately went to some of the less than humble people I know, people who I think are like the pharisee. I prayed for them that God would change their hearts and help them to better understand their own sinfulness and, in light of that, that they might better understand the beauty of God’s grace.

Then I realized the irony of the situation. Here I was, essentially being the pharisee myself. My first response to one who sinfully thought of himself as being better than others was to sinfully think of myself as being better than others. How deeply rooted is my sinfulness, how utter and complete is my brokenness that upon reading the teachings of my Lord, my immediate response would be the exact opposite that it should be?

As embarrassing as it was, I am still thankful for these two points of takeaway I have from this experience:

1. May I always remember to apply the lessons I learn in Scripture first to myself.


2. Thanks be to God, whose grace is (somehow) greater than all my sin…even when I miserably fail to do number 1.