The Sin of Pride

During this Lenten season, our church is reading a booklet entitled A Wondrous Love.  It is a booklet of daily Lenten meditations and prayers.  The material is taken from the works of C. S. Lewis and Henri J. M. Nouwen.

These thoughts entitled "The Sin of Pride" are written by C. S. Lewis:

     According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is pride.  Unchastity, 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 mine.

     Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others.  In fact, if you want 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 show off?"  The point is that each person's pride is in competition with everyone else's 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... Pride is essentially competitive - it is competitive by its very nature - while the 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.

Very interesting........  Very challenging.......

                                                                                                      Love ya'll,
                                                                                                             Shelli

Humility does not mean thinking less of yourself than of other people,

nor does it mean having a low opinion of your own gifts.

It means freedom from thinking about yourself at all.

 ~William Temple

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

 ~Benjamin Franklin