Consequences Of Pride

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18).

Pride, the first-born son of hell, unclean and vile, is a ringleader and captain among iniquities, daring and God-defying sin. It has nothing lovely in it. Pride exalts it head, and seeks to honor itself; but it is of all things most despised. Pride wins no crown; men never honor it, not even the menial slaves of earth; for all men look down on the proud man, and think him less than themselves. It was pride that cast Lucifer from heaven and it was pride that cost our first parents (Adam and Eve) their place in Paradise. Pride is the first sin to enter a man’s heart and the last to leave. No sin is more offensive to God than the sin of pride.

Do you generally think your way is the right way, the only way, or the best way? Do you look down on those who are less educated, less affluent, less refined, or less successful than yourself? That is Pride.

CONSEQUENCES OF PRIDE

1. PRIDE LEADS TO CALAMITY

“Pride goes before destruction,” says the sage, “and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18). Proud people spread calamity by overestimating their abilities, setting unrealistic goals, refusing to respect appropriate limits, and pushing themselves too hard. Ambitious pastors lead churches into fiscal disaster, and athletes over train and sustain career-ending injuries. Pride also leads to “spectacularly bad judgments” because proud people pursue their grandiose goals without adequate planning or resources. People convinced of their own brilliance are sure to make stupid mistakes. A successful business person who ignore standard business practices, thinking he’s a financial genius, stands on the precipice of disaster “The wise are cautious and turn away from evil,” says the Bible, “but the fool throws off restraint and is careless” (Proverbs 14:16).

The fall of the proud is often ascribed in the Bible to divine judgment:

• The proud Persian courtier Haman was hung from the very gallows he had built for the execution of Mordecai—a man who had infuriated Haman by refusing to do obeisance (Esther 7:9-10).

• Nebuchadnezzar exulted in his own glory and was rewarded with madness. He did not return to his throne until he “learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals and gives it to who he will” (Daniel 4:30-33).

• King Sennacherib boasted of his might and defied God—and shortly thereafter was murdered by his sons

(2 Kings 19:1-37).

• Herod was lauded as a god, but he was struck down by an angel “because he had not given glory to God” (Acts 12:20-21).

• The psalmist declared that God had placed the proud on slippery ground: even at the height of their prosperity and earthly security, they are never far from ruin (Psalm 73:4-20).

• A day is coming, said Isaiah, when “the haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone will be humbled” (Isaiah 2:11).

2. SELF-CONTEMPT AND SELF- PITY

Although pride is a self-expansive vice, it sometimes plunges people into periods of self-contempt and self-pity. People who think poorly of themselves, of low self-esteem, will often compensate by creating an imaginary self—an “ideal self” thought to possess prized attributes like brilliance, beauty, skill, virtue, or the like. Individuals naturally seek to create an ideal self that they themselves find believable. A plain girl, for example, will be more likely to imagine herself to be an unrecognized genius or a saint than a beauty. Whatever the precise character of the idealized self, its purpose always remains the same: to bolster a fragile self-esteem. However, no matter how firmly a person identifies with her idealized self, reality has a way of spoiling the fantasy.

A “saint” may get caught in a lie. Failure to measure up to the idealized self can sometimes cause a person’s psychological defenses to collapse. This will then swing from grandiosity to self-loathing and self-pity. To recover her self-esteem, the proud person will attempt to excuse her failure by claiming that success was impossible because of some circumstance beyond her control: the failure did not really “count.”. When face-saving excuses portray the self as a victim, pride expresses itself as self-pity. Self-pity usually leads to depression. The depression will tend to persist because it serves a pride-saving strategy that the individual is loath to acknowledge or surrender. Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering. The prophet Jonah felt sorry for himself when God showed mercy to sinners (Jonah 4:1-3).

3. PRIDE UNDERMINES COMMUNITY

Community consists in people living with one another interdependently and with mutual concern. Individuals in a crowd may share nothing but proximity, but individuals in a community have “the same care one for another” (1 Cor. 12:25). The proud, however, are too self-absorbed to empathize with other people. They tend to see others, not as independent persons of worth, but as extensions of themselves. Accordingly, they think nothing of asserting their wants against the legitimate needs of family and friends. Conflict ensues. Resentments and recriminations get stirred up on every side. The proud are too competitive to live peaceably with others. By seeking first place, they promote quarrels, resentments, envy, and backbiting. We see this in the church at Corinth. Pride had inspired the Corinthians to form cliques around various leaders; and these cliques competed with one another for control and prestige. The proud show contempt toward those they regard as their inferiors. Jesus unmasked a religious form of this attitude when he aimed a parable at those “who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt” (Luke 18:9-14).