A Modern Parable
A MODERN PARABLE
"TWO DIFFERENT CHARACTERS ARE PRESENTED TO OUR
EMULATION: THE ONE, OF PROUD AMBITION AND OSTENTATIOUS AVIDITY. THE OTHER, OF HUMBLE MODESTY AND EQUITABLE JUSTICE. TWO DIFFERENT MODELS, TWO DIFFERENT PICTURES, ARE HELD OUT TO US, ACCORDING TO WHICH WE MAY FASHION OUR OWN CHARACTER AND BEHAVIOR; THE ONE MORE GAUDY AND
GLITTERING IN ITS COLOURING; THE OTHER MORE CORRECT AND MORE EXQUISITELY BEAUTIFUL IN ITS
OUTLINE."
- Adam Smith, Scottish economist and author
A MODERN PARABLE
teven and Samuel Chamberlain were identical twin brothers, born in 1965. They grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and were inseparable. They both were serious students and great athletes. Steven was the quarterback on their high school football team, while Samuel was the team's star receiver. In the spring they both played baseball.
Though it was a difficult decision, they decided to attend different colleges. Steven enrolled at the University of North Carolina, and Samuel went to Wake Forest. The four years flew by and both young men flourished socially and academically. It was during their senior years that they both were notified that they had been accepted into the Vanderbilt School of Medicine. It was a dream come true.
Medical school was difficult and the hours were long, but the two brothers excelled in their school work and training. Steven Chamberlain became a well-known orthopedic surgeon and Samuel a very well-respected vascular surgeon. They both moved back to Memphis and began their medical practices. As the years went by they married, had children, and remained very close. Both of their families eventually moved to a very fine suburb called Mountain Ridge. The two families lived just down the street from each other. Life was good.
One day Steven received a call from one of his patients. This particular patient was a very distinguished realtor in their community, and he revealed to Steven, confidentially, that he had just been given the listing on a piece of the most coveted land in Mountain Ridge. It was one hundred acres of choice property on top of the small mountain for which the community was named.
Steven realized he could build his dream home on this property, and he would have an incredible view of the community below. It would be a showplace that everyone in Mountain Ridge could look up to and see. Within an hour, he had spoken to his wife and they made the offer at list price.
News that this choice piece of property had been sold spread quickly throughout the community. Everyone was curious to see the magnificent house that would be built upon the hill.
It took over two years for the house to be constructed; once it was finished, it was captivating, particularly at night when it was all lit up.
It was an 8,000 square foot house with seven bedrooms and ten bathrooms. It had an indoor and outdoor pool, tennis courts, and a stable for their daughter's horses. When the couple decided to have a big gala to allow people in the community to see their new home, everyone was anxious over whether they would be invited or not.
Every morning Steven woke up and walked out on one of his balconies with a cup of coffee and the Wall Street Journal in hand and looked down on the town below. Without realizing it, he gloated, knowing that he lived in the nicest home in Mountain Ridge and probably all of Memphis. He reasoned to himself that he had worked hard for it and therefore clearly deserved the beautiful place.
Also every morning, Samuel woke up down in the suburbs below. He too sipped on a cup of coffee on his modest backyard porch where he had a perfect view of his brother's beautiful home. He thought to himself, "That pompous, arrogant brother of mine. He is so full of himself." He thought about his own life and gloated over the fact that he had a much more modest lifestyle than his brother and could therefore give more money to the church and to charity. He also reflected on the fact that his children were not nearly as spoiled as his brother's, who were real brats. He was very proud of his wise choices and good works as he compared his life and family with those of his brother.
* * *
In this parable you find both of these brothers are guilty of pride. The first brother, Steven, was comparing his possession and material wealth to everyone else's in the community. It caused him to have a feeling of superiority over them.
He was guilty of what so many of us are guilty of—"conspicuous consumption," a term coined back in 1899 by Thorstein Veblen in his book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Conspicuous consumption is when you
buy something, not primarily for its usefulness, but for the way it makes you look in the eyes of others. Veblen shared the following message:
People above the line of base subsistence, in this age and all earlier ages, do not use the surplus, which society has given them, primarily for useful purposes. They do not seek to expand their own lives, to live more wisely, intelligently, understandingly, but to impress other people with the fact that they have a surplus … spending money, time and effort quite uselessly in the pleasurable business of inflating the ego.
Though we may not realize it, there is a psychological fulfillment that comes from being envied by others. Veblen contended that it is possible to persuade people to buy products that are not particularly superior in quality by heavily publicizing the fact that the products are expensive. And so he came up with the term conspicuous consumption, meaning that people buy costly items, not because they are of higher quality, but because the possession displays to others how rich the owners are.
Veblen shows us how pride is so often the motive behind our decision to make purchases that enable us to proclaim to the world we are wealthy. Steven was guilty of pride, and it was quite obvious, and the entire community could see it.
It is important to recognize that pride emanates from a multitude of sources: wealth, achievement, power, beauty, and knowledge. However, there is a pride that Reinhold Niebuhr believed is the most dangerous—the pride of virtue, or what the Bible calls self-righteousness. In the four Gospels, you see Jesus' most searing words aimed at the Pharisees and their self-righteousness. It is the one sin that quickly brings forth His anger.
THERE IS A PRIDE THAT REINHOLD NIEBUHR BELIEVED
IS THE MOST DANGEROUS—THE PRIDE OF VIRTUE, OR
WHAT THE BIBLE CALLS SELF-RIGHTOUSNESS.
Self-righteousness is what Samuel is guilty of. It is important to notice how comparison is again at work. He compares himself to his brother who lives up on the hill. He compares their lifestyles and concludes that his is
morally superior, and naturally presumes that he is so much more righteous than his brother.
What I find to be so interesting is that through comparison, each of these men is guilty of pride. However, pride that results in conspicuous consumption is easy to detect when someone is trying to impress you. I remember a college classmate who rode the technology boom to great wealth. He built an unbelievably large, beautiful home. It was a real showplace. Several years later, he abruptly sold the house. The reason he gave: "I built this house for all the wrong reasons. I was trying to make a statement to the world that I was successful." He eventually saw the pride in his life.
The problem with self-righteousness is that it is so difficult to see because you are blinded by your own perceived goodness. In Samuel's mind, all he could see was the good he was doing. "I am living modestly; I am giving money away; I am doing so much good for the community, unlike my extravagant, pompous brother." This is a picture of putting yourself in the place of God as judge, and in the process you are blinded by your presumptuousness.
THE END OF THE STORY
Five years went by, and one day Samuel received a call from Steven. He immediately could tell that something was terribly wrong. His brother was weeping over the phone. Steven finally was able to get the words out, "My wife is having an affair and is leaving me. She is going to take me to the cleaners. We are going to have to put our property on the market." He was clearly devastated. After getting over the shock, Samuel remarked how sorry he was to hear the news and to let him know if there was anything he could do. He finished the conversation by telling his brother he would be praying for him.
As he hung up the phone, Samuel smiled. He was secretly rejoicing over his brother's misfortune. His first thought was that his brother was getting what he deserved because "God is opposed to the proud." Over the coming weeks and months, Samuel outwardly displayed sadness and grief over Steven's difficult circumstances. However, inwardly he reveled over his
brother's troubles, somehow believing he was personally being vindicated for living such a good and righteous life. This is pride.
* * *
The well-known Southern writer Walker Percy is known for his peculiar talent in exploring the deeper questions of modern life relating to our habits, our self-deceptiveness, our fears, and our complexity. In one of his books, a spoof of modern life, entitled Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book, Percy offers a humorous take on modern Western culture's obsession with pop psychology, which offers simple, untested answers to life's most difficult questions. In the book, Percy gives a number of multiple choice tests as a reflection of the self-help quizzes that are so popular in many successful consumer self-help books and magazines. The questions are full of moral challenges, often highlighted in humorous patterns, one of which I will paraphrase:
It is early morning and you are standing in front of your home, reading the headlines of the local newspaper. Your neighbor of five years, Charlie, comes out to get his paper. You look at him sympathetically— he doesn't take good care of himself and you know that he has been having severe chest pains and is facing coronary by-pass surgery. But he is not acting like a cardiac patient this morning!
He jogs over in his sweat pants, all smiles. He has triple good news! "My chest pains," he crows, "turned out to be nothing more than a hiatal hernia, nothing serious." He has also just gotten word of a great promotion he has received and that he and his family will soon be moving to a new home, which happens to be in a much more exclusive part of town. Then, after a pause, he warbles on, "Now I can afford to buy the lake house we have always dreamed of owning."
Once this news settles in, you respond, "That is great, Charlie. I'm very happy for you."
Now, please fill in the following multiple choice. There is only one correct answer to each question.
Question: Are you truly happy for Charlie?
a. Yes, you are thrilled for Charlie; you could not be any happier
for him and his family.
b. If the truth be known, you really don't feel so great about Charlie's news. It's good news for Charlie, certainly, but it's not good news for you.
Percy then gives the following directions:
If your answer to the question above is b, please specify the nature of your dissatisfaction. Do the following thought experiment—which of the following alternative scenarios concerning Charlie would make you feel better?
a. You go out to get your paper a few days later, and you hear from
another neighbor that Charlie has undergone a quadruple coronary bypass and may not make it.
b. Charlie does not have heart trouble, but he did not get his promotion.
c. As the two of you are standing in front of your homes, Charlie
has a heart attack, and you save his life by pounding his chest and giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, turning his triple good news into quadruple good news. How happy would that make you?
d. Charlie is dead.
Percy then asks:
Just how much good news about Charlie can you tolerate?
Percy uses this exercise to flush out the desires of the heart. He wants to show us how our pride causes us to consistently compare ourselves with others. I am reminded again of C.S. Lewis's words that pride is like a spiritual cancer that eats up the possibility of us ever being content with our lives. Percy shows us how the pride of our hearts is the reason for our discontentment.
THE DEVASTATION OF PRIDE
Over the years I have wondered what the ultimate extent of pride's devastation is to people's lives and relationships. In these first four chapters we have seen how its consequences can cascade through our lives. It creates incredible instability, fear, and weakness. Since we cannot detect pride in the depths of our hearts, we never really know what is wrong with us.
This is why humility is of great value. Stephen Covey said, "Humility truly is the mother of all virtues. It makes us a vessel, a vehicle, an agent instead of 'the source' or the principle. It unleashes all other learning, all growth and process." Humility is the place of growth and strength.
This is at the heart of life's greatest paradox. You would never expect the strongest, most influential, and most inspiring people to be humble. As author John Dickson has observed, you would never expect true greatness to go hand in hand with a virtue that, on its face, would appear to curb achievement and stifle your ability to influence. Yet, that is the great paradox. There is power in the humble life.