The Competitive Nature of Pride

I ran across a little book (48 pages) written by Timothy Keller over the weekend, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. If you have a Kindle, it is well worth the $.99 and the hour that it will cost you to read it. A less convenient form, in .pdf, is available here.

One of the most profound points that he makes, which I believe he actually gleaned from C.S. Lewis, is that pride does not stand alone. Pride is always a result of envy. Here he quotes Lewis from Mere Christianity:

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next person. 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.

Keller goes on to expand on what Lewis stated:

In other words, we are only proud of being more successful, more intelligent or more good-looking than the next person, and when we are in the presence of someone who is more successful, intelligent and good-looking than we are, we lose all pleasure in what we had. That is because we really had no pleasure in it. We were proud of it.

For some reason this led my mind back to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, specifically the older brother’s response to the return of the younger. When he heard the news that his brother had returned, he was angry and refused to go into the house to celebrate. His pride prevented him from enjoying the festivities with the rest of the family, because he couldn’t enjoy the feast for what it was but despised it for what it represented to him – the acknowledgement of the father’s love for one who had not worked as hard or been as faithful as he had.

The father spoke to him in the way God often speaks to us, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” (Luke 15:31-32 ESV)  Though everything the father had was his, he had enjoyed none of it because he was focused on being the son with the ‘more substantial’ resume.

How subtle is Spiritual pride? Do we enjoy what God has given for the sake of enjoying it, or do we seek to use it to show some superiority over others? God has given us all things to enjoy, including himself, but our sin nature wants to turn even our relationship to him into some kind of one-upmanship. We are proud of our relationship to God. A relationship that was a gift in the first place, as Paul states - What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? (1 Corinthians 4:7 ESV)

This is why it is so important for Christ to be the substance of our lives. For us to recognize that the approval of others, even the approval of ourselves, counts for nothing. All that counts is that we have the approval of the Father, which we already have in Christ if we believe. Please do read this little book. It can have tremendous impact on the way you see yourself and your faith. That’s the gospel truth.

God Bless