Proverbs 3:5
https://biblehub.com/proverbs/3-5.htm
4Then you will find favor and high regard in the sight of God and man.
5Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding;
6in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.…
Not, “He will make your paths proud”…
C.S.Lewis wrote about pride. This was eye-opening for me:
Pride and Humility
https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resour ... -humility/
C.S. Lewis, another top contender for having had the greatest impact for Christ in the twentieth century,
called pride “the great sin.” Every believer should read his chapter by that title in Mere Christianity.
There Lewis said,
According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride.
Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites 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…… it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.1
If this sounds like exaggeration, it will help us to know that Lewis is not simply giving us his private opinion but summarizing the thinking of great saints through the ages.
Augustine and Aquinas both taught that pride was the root of sin.2 Likewise Calvin, Luther, and many others.
Make no mistake about it: pride is the great sin. It is the devil’s most effective and destructive tool.
Why do the great spiritual leaders, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant alike, unite around this conviction?
Because it is so clearly and solidly taught in Scripture.
Pride first appears in the Bible in Genesis 3, where we see the devil, that “proud spirit” as John Donne described him, using pride as the avenue by which to seduce our first parents. Taking the form of a serpent, his approach was simple yet deadly. First, he arrogantly contradicted what God had said to Eve about eating the forbidden fruit and charged God with lying.
This shocking rejection of God’s word introduced Eve to the hitherto unknown possibility of unbelief and was intended to arouse doubt in her mind about the truthfulness and reliability of God. In the next breath, the devil drew her into deeper deception by contending that God’s reason for lying was to keep her from enjoying all the possibilities inherent in being Godlike. This clever ploy was aimed at undermining her confidence in the goodness and love of God and arousing the desire to become as God.
The desire to lift up and exalt ourselves beyond our place as God’s creature lies at the heart of pride.
As Eve in her now confused and deceived state of mind considered the possibilities, her desire to become Godlike grew stronger.
She began to look at the forbidden fruit in a new light, as something attractive to the eyes and pleasant to the touch.
Desire increased, giving rise to rationalization and a corresponding erosion of the will to resist and say no. ..
.. text continues.
For me, pride is “the great equalizer” on earth. None of us is exempt. No choice, crime or sin is exempt.
No flags, parades, promotion, legal protections, access to the public treasury, celebration. Not of any sin/carnal sin.
No need to name them (“mere flea bites in comparison”).
Pride is the deal breaker that should end the discussion before it begins. At the Moravian church and for all Christians.
No matter how well-intended, celebrating pride is a lie that should be feared.