Pride
II Chronicles 26:3-5, 15b-16
A politician attended a picnic with his constituents in his home district. He made the rounds visiting with people and then it was time to fill up his plate with lunch. He got his salad and side dishes and then went to the woman serving fried chicken. He asked, “Do you think I could get a second piece of friend chicken.” No sir. He was surprised to be turned down and so he asked, “Do you know who I am?” Yes, as a matter of fact I do. You’re the congressman for our district. She then asked, Do you know who I am? “No, I don’t” She said, “Well I am the chicken lady, so move on down the line.” Alexander Pope, the 18th century poet said, “Pride is the never failing voice of fools.” All of us have been fools at some point when it comes to pride.
Here’s the thing about the 7 Deadly sins: they all start with something that is good but then is taken in excess. Gluttony starts with eating which we need to do to survive. The desire to provide for ourselves and our family can become greed. Love and passion can become lust. Rest can become sloth and anger can become wrath. What makes these things sins is when they are taken into excess. I was at the gym and on the treadmill and the History Channel had a program on the 7 Deadly Sins and it closed with a quote from Hugh Hefner, I think somewhat facetiously, who said, “To live a good life means to live in moderation in everything.”
When it comes to pride, there is good pride. The Apostle Paul writes to the church at Corinth and says, “I often boast of you, I have great pride in you.” Paul had pride in all the churches he founded because of their faith and their growth. So being proud can’t always be bad. You are meant to be proud of your children when they do something well. They need that from you. And when it comes to our country, we are to look at the good things of it and be proud as a measure to continue to pursue those ideals. As a pastor, I am proud of you and what we have accomplished over the last four years and the amazing amount of growth and diversification we have been able to achieve for the kingdom of God. When you use your spiritual gifts and see the impact it has for the kingdom of God, you’re to be proud of that because it is a gift of God and it is God who’s able to accomplish that through you. But when people recognize your gifts, always give the credit to the giver, Almighty God, and glorify Him with it.
There is a good kind of pride but the problem is when this is not balanced by humility. Pride must be balanced with humility. You can be proud of your child and have a bumper sticker which reads, “My child is on the honor roll at...” Now if that is so you can show your child that you are proud of them, that’s good. But if it’s to show every other parent how much better your child is than theirs, that’s a problem. It’s all about your motive. We always need to carry ourselves as servants in the world and not to look at others as how they can serve us. In our own lives, whatever good we’ve done or pride we take in our work, ultimately we remember that it is God who gave us the capacity and the ability to do that. We celebrate what we have accomplished but we are also sure to give God all of the glory. So our pride always needs to be counterbalanced with an appropriate amount of humility.
When pride becomes a sin, it looks like several different things. The first is shaming other people and humiliating them to make yourself feel better or that you tried to make everybody else feel like they have to serve you because you are better than them. The second is when we try to outshine those around us or that you do outshine others but have pride in that. Third is narcissism which is when we become full of ourselves and trying to make the world revolve around us. A narcissist as a result can only really love themselves. This is what pride looks like when it becomes a deadly sin. The deadly sin will never be confused with encouraging your children, blessing other people, bragging about a congregation to them because in the end, what makes the sin deadly is that it makes us feel superior to everyone else.
There are two things which contribute to the rise of the deadly sin of pride in us. The first has to do with a low self-esteem. When we struggle with low self-esteem, we often make ourselves feel better at the expense of others. When we desperately crave the affirmation of other people. We begin to be willing to do anything at the expense of our morals, our faith just to get you to like me and affirm me. If your primary motive is to get other people’s affirmations, that can influence you to do the thing which will benefit you rather do the right thing. If you find yourself in seeking the affirmation of others so you can feel better about yourself, then you might find yourself a victim of the deadly sin of pride. The second is too high a self-esteem. If you’ve achieved some success and accomplishment in life and feel affirmed, you might begin to believe all the nice things people say about you. When that happens, you begin to believe you’re really somebody and then it’s OK to ask for the 2nd piece of chicken when you walk through the line. Or you begin to think that the rules don’t apply to you or that you don’t have to serve God when others have to. In the process, you forget that you are child, a sheep in his pasture.
What are some of the subtle ways pride seeps into our lies? Parker Palmer was offered a job at a university and was wrestling with whether or not to take the job. Parker decided to ask 12 friends to come together to think about whether he should take the job. They began asking him questions. One of them asked, “Parker, why would you want to become President of this college.” He started answering the question with all of the reasons he wouldn’t want to be the President. He said, “I didn’t ask you that. I asked you why you would like to become President of this college.” Parker said, “I know, I’m going to get to that” and then he continued to list the reasons why he should take the job. He said, “Parker, I don’t mean to be blunt but you’re avoiding my question. Why would you want to become President of this institution?” Parker writes, “This time I felt compelled to give the only answer I possessed, an answer that came from the very bottom of my barrel, an answer that appalled even me as I spoke it. ‘I guess what I would like most is getting my picture in the paper with the word ‘President’ underneath it. Though my answer was laughable, my mortal soul was at stake and they did not laugh at all. I went into a long and serious silence, a silence in which I could only sweat and inwardly groan. Finally my questioners broke the silence with a question that cracked all of us up and cracked me open: “Parker, he said, isn’t there an easier way to get your picture in the paper?” At that moment Parker Palmer realized this was not the thing for him to do and he was pursuing it for all of the wrong reasons. He turned it down knowing that it would be disastrous for him and particularly disastrous for the institution had he taken the job.
How many times have you made important decisions based on the impressions on other people and how it might feed your ego rather than asking if it was God’s will for your life, would benefit other people and would allow you to use your gifts best to accomplish God’s purpose for your life. Most times, it’s not that simple. Usually there are a mixed bag of motives. It’s extremely difficult if not impossible to exclude the ego from such decisions. But our hope and prayer should be that as we wrestle with all of these mixed motives, we can submit our need to feed our ego to our need to do God’s will.
We often seek to impress people in other ways: the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the homes or neighborhoods we live in, the accomplishments we achieve. We can even become spiritually proud over the depth of our faith, or our knowledge of the Bible or the positions in the church we hold. I have struggle with pride myself. I have been concerned about the clothes I wear, I have struggled with an appropriate response when people have said no to me, I have been concerned with what other people think, I have been immovable because I had to get my way, all of which points to my struggle with pride. When we grow spiritually, we become more like Jesus. But instead some of us become more like the world as we seek its approval rather than seeking to please an audience of one. How about you? Do you ever struggle with pride? Here’s what happens when we struggle with pride: nobody wants to be around you. Pride is deadly to companies, to nations, to churches and to relationships.
So how do we deal with the sin of pride? First, we have to recognize it. Second, you’ve got to humble yourself. “God humbles the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Proverbs If you become prideful, God will humble you. In pride, you can either humble yourself or God will do it for you. But if God does it, it’s much more painful. So the Scripture says, “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and in due time, He will lift you up.” This theme winds its way through the Scriptures. Jesus said, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first” and “the truly great among you will humble themselves.” We find this throughout the Scriptures when a king will get prideful and God humbles him. You can either humble yourself or let God do it for you.
Third, you’ve got to be in a right relationship with God. When you are in right relationship with God, it reminds us that we are creatures and God is the Creator. We are sheep and God is the shepherd. We are children and God is our heavenly Father. He is our Master and we are His servants. He is King and we are His subjects. When you recognize these things, there really is no room to be prideful for we recognize that all of life is a gift from God. One of the blessings that comes from attending worship each week is that it reminds us who God is and who we are and are not. You come here to sing praise to God and not to yourself. You spend time in confession and prayer. We don’t pray “Hallowed be my name, my kingdom come, my will be done on earth as it is in heaven” or “mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory” but rather, “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven….for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.” So the very act of worshipping can keep us from becoming prideful. But here’s the other thing. If you have a low self-esteem, you also realize that you are somebody of infinite worth whom the Creator loves. It is in Christ that we find mercy, grace and love filling our lives and our souls. And when you accomplish something great or a blessing comes your way, you then are able to say, “not to us O God but to thine be the glory.” That relationship and gratitude saves you from thinking it’s all about you.
Fourth, serve others. You can serve your neighbors and then talk bad about them because it makes you feel better. You can’t love your neighbor and then find ways to make them serve you all the time. The love the Scripture talks about is a sacrificial and self-giving love which puts the other person and their needs ahead of yourself. There’s no way you can live this out and think that the world revolves around you. Before this begins to take root in our hearts, we have to actively find ways to love and bless others. A large part of that has to do with serving people. Every one of us is a servant. That’s what God calls us to and to be. This is what Jesus taught the disciples at the Last Supper when he got down on his knees and began to wash the disciples feet. When he’s finished, he tells them, “This is what it means to be on be of my followers.”
Gary Morsch is the founder of Heart to Heart in Kansas City. As a physician, he has done magnificient work around the world taking medical supplies to low income people. Several years ago, he took a trip to Calcutta and Mother Theresa’s House for the Destitute Dying. He took 90 volunteers and 12 million dollars worth of medical supplies. As he made the trip, he thought to himself that a lot of these people don’t have to die. I can save their lives and maybe we can turn it from the House for the Destitute Dying to the House for the Hopeful Living. He was going to make that happen. When they arrived, Sister Priscilla began to assign everyone their tasks. As this was happening, Gary put his stethoscope around his neck to let Sister Priscilla know he was a doctor. Everyone got their assignment and Gary found he was the last person. And he said, “OK I am ready Sister Priscilla, what do you have for me to do?” She directed him to come with her. They went to the woman’s unit and didn’t stop to help anybody. They kept going and went to the men’s unit and he thought this is where he was going to begin to help. But they walked through that unit and he thought there must be people who are even more severely sick in need of help. But instead, they walk into the kitchen. He asks, “What do you need for me to do here?” She said, just follow me and they walk out the door and he sees a huge pile of putrefied trash. She hands him two plastic buckets and a shovel and saw, “What we need you to do is haul this garbage to the city dump just down the street two blocks away. You can’t miss it.” Then she smiles at him, turns and walks away. He standing there and thinking, “Did she not see my stethoscope. I’m a doctor! Doesn’t she understand what I can do with these hands? In a silent shock and a bit of self pity, he began wondering what does he do now. There was only one thing to do. So all day he carried bucketfuls of putrefied trash to the city dump and by the end of the day having moved that entire pile, he was a sweaty, sticking mess. He walked back into the building and saw this sign from Mother Theresa: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” He said, “At that moment, my heart wilted. On this day, Mother Theresa pierced the armor I had worked so hard to construct. And my life was changed by the act of hauling garbage down the street and becoming a servant for others in need.”
