Monday 26 November 2007

Pride

I heard a few great quotes from CS Lewis over the weekend on pride.

Before becoming a Christian, I agreed with everyone (I thought) that pride was a good thing. "Show some pride" is often an encouragement/insult thrown at people. Taking pride in one's neighbourhood or country is seen as a good thing. But is it? I don't think so any more, and CS Lewis puts it much better than I ever could, so I'll give you those quotes, which come from one of the best book I've ever read, 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.

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 enmity to 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 proud 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.

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