Rereading Paradise Lost recently has encouraged me to think more about pride. Here’s an important observation: Pride is never used in a positive sense in the entire Bible. Not once.
We say things like “I’m proud of you!” and “I feel a sense of pride over what I’ve created.” We should be careful about this.
Pride distorts our internal heroic, causation, and victim stories. In league with Pride we resist changing our minds even with abundant evidence that we’re mistaken. Pride is a terrible burden we refuse to lay down. Pride has a loud voice but knows precisely when a whisper will accomplish its purpose. See a man who refuses to do the right thing? Scratch the surface to see the handiwork of Pride.
Pride, insecurity, and immaturity are root causes of our struggles to get along well with one another – as well as our capacity for self-sabotage. (I talked about this in my no-longer-available book, Ministering Effectively to Tough-to-Love People.) Understanding this is key to seeing below the surface behaviors to what’s really going on – both in yourself and in others.
