I
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when they see it in someone else and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drinking, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. and the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride.Unchassity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti God state of mind.
Does this seem to be exaggerated? If so think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you wanted to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or patronise me, or show off? The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one elses pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree.Now what you want to get clear is that pride is essentially competitive-it is competitive by its very nature- while the other vices are competitive only , so to speak by accident. 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 more clever, 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 essntially competitve in a way the other vices are not.
The sexual impulse may drive two men into competitionif they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different women. 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.
Take it with money, Greed will certainy make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with 100,000 a year anxious to get 120,000 the next year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. 100,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride-the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and still more the wish for power. For, of course, power is what pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instincts: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid, It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity-it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but between man and God.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison, you do not know God at all.As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A prooud 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 worshipping an imaginary God, Another jesus, as paul put it. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are reakky all the time imagining how God approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to God and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow man.search the scriptures yourselves, examine your own selves. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world He had never known them. And any of us at any moment may be in this death trap of Pride.
Luckily we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good-above all, that we are better than someone else- I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you forget about yourself alltogether.
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre 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 straight 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 become 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.
Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings:
Pleasure in being praised is not pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says Well Done, are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted to please.The trouble begins when you pass from thinking,'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking. 'what a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonalble sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even a sort of humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admirations. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact still human. The real diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring, Hes says, 'Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an interated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals-or my artistic conscience-or the traditions of my family.
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be someone who lifts himself up and says look how humble I am.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I think I can tell you the first step. The first step is to realise that one is Proud. And a biggish step it is. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think your are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. anyways just some food for our thoughts. God Bless.
The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil is Pride.Unchassity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti God state of mind.
Does this seem to be exaggerated? If so think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you wanted to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or patronise me, or show off? The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one elses pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree.Now what you want to get clear is that pride is essentially competitive-it is competitive by its very nature- while the other vices are competitive only , so to speak by accident. 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 more clever, 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 essntially competitve in a way the other vices are not.
The sexual impulse may drive two men into competitionif they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different women. 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.
Take it with money, Greed will certainy make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with 100,000 a year anxious to get 120,000 the next year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. 100,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride-the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and still more the wish for power. For, of course, power is what pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instincts: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid, It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.
The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity-it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but between man and God.
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison, you do not know God at all.As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A prooud 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 worshipping an imaginary God, Another jesus, as paul put it. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are reakky all the time imagining how God approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to God and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow man.search the scriptures yourselves, examine your own selves. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world He had never known them. And any of us at any moment may be in this death trap of Pride.
Luckily we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good-above all, that we are better than someone else- I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you forget about yourself alltogether.
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre 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 straight 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 become 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.
Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings:
Pleasure in being praised is not pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says Well Done, are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted to please.The trouble begins when you pass from thinking,'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking. 'what a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonalble sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a childlike and even a sort of humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admirations. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact still human. The real diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring, Hes says, 'Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an interated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals-or my artistic conscience-or the traditions of my family.
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be someone who lifts himself up and says look how humble I am.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I think I can tell you the first step. The first step is to realise that one is Proud. And a biggish step it is. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think your are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed. anyways just some food for our thoughts. God Bless.