Pride, Humility And Faith
PRIDE, HUMILITY AND FAITH
"THE POINT OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST IS THAT CHRIST TOOK ON THE SINS OF THE WORLD, SO THAT WHAT WE PUT
OUT DID NOT COME BACK TO US, AND THAT OUR SINFUL NATURE DOES NOT REAP THE OBVIOUS DEATH. THAT'S THE
POINT. IT SHOULD KEEP US HUMBLED… It'S NOT OUR OWN
GOOD WORKS THAT GET US THROUGH THE GATES OF
HEAVEN."
–Bono, lead singer U2
PRIDE, HUMILITY AND FAITH
.S. Lewis says that it is the pride of life that keeps us from knowing God. As he looked back upon his own life, he recognized that his great desire to be famous (pride) had been a major stumbling block in his coming to a life of faith. I also see this in the lives of so many men with whom I meet. On the other hand, it is humility that provides the eyes that allow us to see God.
If you will remember back in Chapter five I said that pride causes us to be independent from God. We think we can run our lives just fine without Him and achieve all our goals and prosperity on our own. Our prideful hearts cause us to believe that "I don't need God."
In these last two chapters, we will consider the relationship between humility and faith. This is the heart of Christianity, and it will determine how we relate to God and whether we will ever personally know Him.
PRIDE AND FAITH
A number of years ago I met with a man who was on a search for spiritual truth. We met several times and discussed a number of issues; in our last meeting, I very slowly and deliberately explained the Gospel message to him. He told me that he believed what I had told him was true. However, he made it clear that he did not want to be a Christian.
As I look back on that encounter, his reasoning was quite revealing. He explained to me that becoming a true follower of Christ would harm him socially and in his career. He was convinced that many of his friends would reject him and that he might be frowned upon in the business world. In the end, he rejected the truth of God because he feared what people would think of him. This is what pride will do to you, and I have seen it play out many times in people's life.
Blaise Pascal noticed a pattern in many of his intellectual friends. They had no interest in spiritual truth because they feared the opinions of their friends, and dreaded being labeled weak and religious. Pascal saw clearly how much they desired to court the favor of worldly, successful people. He saw right through them, recognizing that they were always posturing to create an image that they were strong and confident. He found it hard to believe that any sensible person would show no interest in the ultimate issues of life out of fear of what people would think of them. This is another example of pride being an obstacle to faith.
An author I have really grown to admire is Dr. Paul Vitz, a retired psychologist who taught at New York University. Vitz was an atheist until his mid-thirties, and in his book A Place for Truth, he shares some interesting insight on why he originally rejected God. He says,
The major reason for me wanting to become an atheist was that I desired to be accepted by the powerful and influential psychologists in my field. In particular I wanted to be accepted by my professors in graduate school. As a graduate student I was thoroughly socialized by the specific culture of academic psychology. My professors at Stanford, as much as they might disagree on psychological theory, were, as far as I could tell, united on really only two things: their intense personal ambition and their rejection of religion …
In this environment, just as I had learned how to dress like a college student by putting on the right clothes, I also learned to "think" like a proper psychologist by putting on the right—that is, atheistic—ideas and attitudes.
Do you hear what Dr. Vitz is saying? He desperately wanted to be accepted by his peers and professors. He is saying, "I feared their rejection and yearned for their approval so much so that I adopted their views, whether I believed them to be true or not." He reveals that this was the audience he was seeking to please. In effect, he allowed their opinions to set the boundaries of his own faith and beliefs. Pride is a huge obstacle to faith.
One of the great miracles in the Bible is in the book of John, when Jesus raises His friend Lazarus who had been dead for four days. If you read John chapters 11 and 12, you will recognize what an eruption it caused among the Jews and religious leaders. In John 12:42, it says even some of the
Jewish leaders believed but did not profess their belief openly for fear of being put out of the synagogue. However, in verse 43 you see the real reason. The text says "… for they loved the approval of man more than they loved the approval of God." What we do not realize is how our pride causes us to arrange our lives to meet the expectations and approval of others.
WHAT WE DO NOT REALIZE IS HOW OUR PRIDE CAUSES
US TO ARRANGE OUR LIVES TO MEET THE
EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS.
Priest and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello provides a powerful analysis of our prideful condition:
Look at your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a stranglehold on you. See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every waking moment of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are living or dead. You live by their norms, conform to their standards, seek their company, desire their love, dread their ridicule, long for their applause, meekly submit to the guilt they lay upon you; you are terrified to go against the fashion in the way you dress or speak or act or even think.
Pride makes us weak and causes us to be duplicitous. It is hard to believe that we will allow other people's opinions of us determine the way we see ourselves and how we make decisions on issues with grave consequences.
When it gets right down to it, whose opinion of our lives counts the most? When you get to the end of your life, whose opinion will matter most? The answer to this question will ultimately determine whether pride or humility will rule in your heart.
WHO IS MY AUDIENCE?
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the expansion of the steel industry in America in the late 19th century. He is often identified as one of the wealthiest Americans who ever lived.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, but grew up in Pittsburgh. When he was a young boy, he found his mother one day weeping in despair. Young Andrew tried to console her and urged her not to cry. He confidently assured her that one day he would be wealthy and that they would ride in a fine coach pulled by four fine horses. His mother replied, "That will do no good over here if no one in Dunfermline can see us."
Andrew Carnegie made up his mind that day that he and his mother would one day make a grand entry into Dunfermline in a royal coach drawn by the finest horses so that the entire town could witness the event. He would show them. Making it big in Pittsburgh was not enough. He had to prove the family's success in front of their hometown audience.
A little over thirty years later, Andrew and his mother returned to Scotland. He had become one of the world's richest men. The trip had been long planned with his mother and a select group of their friends. There was an official parade with the climax of the day being Carnegie's bestowal of the funds for a new, beautiful library on the city of his birth. For he and his mother, this was a magnificent day of triumph. They both had longed to win the approval of an audience that they valued so much—the people of Dunfermline. Andrew Carnegie and his mother had shown them. Despite the initial success of the library, it was soon found to be too small and the layout unsuitable. Their initial prideful bequest turned sour.
Os Guinness, in his book, The Call, uses this story to help us understand the audience for whom we seek to perform. Have you ever thought about that? Guinness says,
Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have.
Here again you see how pride rears its ugly head in our lives. It is one thing to have certain aims and ambitions, but we somehow have come to believe that any of our achievements or accomplishments are worthless unless the audience we value the most knows about it. Most people live their entire
lives looking for ways to win the approval of their audience because it makes them feel like their lives are worthwhile and have significance.
The problem is, we have gotten this all wrong. Several years ago, popular author Donald Miller gave a lecture to a large group of students at Harvard, and he addressed this issue. This is what he said:
Human beings are wired so that they need some great authority outside themselves to tell him or her who they really are. But for many people that voice is not there, because their lives are not oriented towards God. When that is the case, the very first thing that will happen in their lives will be to question their worth and their value. Does my life really matter? And this is what causes us to begin to hide ourselves from others.
WE WERE DESIGNED TO LIVE SO THAT THE AUDIENCE
WE SEEK TO PLEASE FIRST IS GOD.
Miller goes on to say that he recognizes this to be true in the lives of everyone, including important people and famous celebrities. When he realized how we no longer look to God to give us our worth and significance, he understood why we are so addicted to the approval of others, particularly the audience we are trying to impress.
The problem is we are seeking to impress the wrong audience! We were designed to live so that the audience we seek to please first is God. Os Guinness puts it this way, "A life lived listening to the decisive call of God is a life lived before one audience that trumps all others—the Audience of One."
This is where humility begins. Getting this right changes everything.
THE LOOKING GLASS SELF
One of the best ways to understand this is to consider Charles Cooley's landmark theory called the "looking glass self." Cooley was a prominent sociologist who lived from 1864 to 1929. The "looking glass self" is a
human development theory that is timeless in its application to our lives. In its simplest form, the theory states:
A person gets his identity in life based on how the most important person in his life sees him.
For a young child, of course, it is the parent. We all know how important it is for parents to encourage and build up their children because we have such an impact on their sense of worth as they develop. However, as the child grows and becomes a teenager, the parents inevitably discover they are no longer their child's number one audience. Most parents, for better or for worse, have been almost completely replaced by their child's peer group. Most teenagers value their peers' opinions more than anything else, and most parents realize that peer pressure is a very powerful force in the lives of their teenage children.
For an adult, particularly an adult out in the workplace, the opinion valued the most will typically come from a colleague or peer. We greatly value what other men and women in the workplace and in the community think of us. They are our audience, and we perform for them. We yearn to hear their praise.
And, sadly, whether as a teenager or as an adult, we often unconsciously allow our audience to make the final verdict on the value of our lives. The reality, however, is that the verdict is not in because our performance is never over. No matter how much applause we received yesterday, we can't be certain we will receive it again tomorrow.
What do you think would happen to people if Jesus Christ became the most important person in their lives? What if Christ was the audience they sought to please most? How would it change them? I contend it would change them radically because Christ does not love and accept us based on our performance. He loves us because we are of such great value to Him.
C.S. Lewis truly understood his identity and who his true audience was. Armand Nicholi tells us that after Lewis became a Christian, he read the Bible voraciously, and it began to transform him. Nicholi shares:
As Lewis began to read the Old and New Testaments seriously, he noted a new method of establishing his identity, of coming to terms with his "real personality." This process, Lewis writes, involves losing
yourself in your relationship to the Creator. "Until you have given yourself up to Him," Lewis writes, "you will not have a real self."
Therein lies the solution to finding our true identity as people. What Lewis recognized is that if you are really going to find your life and live it to the fullest, you have to give up your life and surrender it to Christ. This surrender is the ultimate act of humility.
…IF YOU ARE REALLY GOING TO FIND YOUR LIFE AND
LIVE IT TO THE FULLEST, YOU HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR LIFE AND SURRENDER IT TO CHRIST. THIS SURRENDER
IS THE ULTIMATE ACT OF HUMILITY.
A PICTURE OF PRIDE AND HUMILITY
Probably the most well-known of all of Jesus' parables is found in Luke 15:11-32. It is known as the parable of the Prodigal Son, but in reality it is a parable about a loving father (who represents God) and two sons who represent the human race. In this simple story, you see how pride, humility, and coming to faith intersect. I will walk through the parable, making comments along the way.
A man had two sons and the younger son approached him and asked for the share of the estate that would one day be due him. Surprisingly, the father said yes. A few days later, the young son gathered all his wealth and possessions and traveled to a distant country. He then proceeded to squander his wealth on reckless and wild living.
This young son left his home looking for a better life, and he seemed to think he knew where to find it. He left with a real sense of freedom. I am sure he had the same attitude so many young people have today—they are bullet-proof and are going out to conquer the world.
Most significantly, he wanted to get away from his father's presence. The young son wanted his father's money and financial support but did not really want anything to do with his father. This is so true of us. We want the blessings of God—we just don't want God in our lives.
Spiritual pride is clearly present in the life of the young son. It is as if he wanted to prove to the world that he did not need his father and his father's love and, in essence, said, "I can make it on my own. I want to be fully independent and autonomous." Furthermore, he did not want to live under his father's authority; he wanted the freedom to live however he chose to live.
Unfortunately, this is the way we are with God. We arrogantly think we do not need Him and can live just fine without Him. We overlook the fact that we are weak, sinful human beings, and living in humble reliance upon Him is how we were designed to function best. It is too easy for us to see God's will as nothing more than a bunch of rules He has given us to regulate our lives. In reality, all of God's teaching and instruction is like an owner's manual for our lives, pointing to God's deliberate design for human life. When we follow the owner's manual, our lives flourish.
As the parable continues, the young son squandered everything he had and ended up with a job feeding pigs. No one was giving him anything. He was truly humbled, and I am sure he realized that he was not, in fact, bulletproof. His pursuit of the good life had broken down; and because his money was gone, no one around him seemed to really care.
The young son's arrogance blinded him to the realities of life. This is what pride does. Being humbled by his circumstances gave him the eyes to see. We are told in the text that he "came to his senses." He recognized how lost he was. I am sure he finally realized the cold hard fact that the world was not devoted to his happiness or well-being. He also recognized his true condition—he was dead and lost. This is the condition we find ourselves in when we are not walking in faith. Our pride causes us to think we know everything; we have life figured out. This is what this young son believed until he came to his senses.
The parable goes on to say that the son finally recognized his need for his father. He was now able to see clearly and realized there was someone who loved him and cared for his life. He knew his father at least would give him a job. However, in order to return to his father, he saw the need to do two essential things.
First, he recognized that he was a sinner and needed to confess his sins. The text says, "I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer
worthy to be called your son.'" The son recognized his need for his father's forgiveness. As you will recall, asking for forgiveness is a way we humble ourselves before God.
The second realization the son comes to, is that in order to get back into right relationship with his father, he has to leave his wayward lifestyle and return home on his father's terms. He could not go back on his own terms. The son was leaving his old life for a new life.
This is what happens in the lives of so many people. They want to be a Christian but only on their own terms. A true believer is one who is willing to surrender their will to Christ and follow Him. It means turning our heart away from self and turning toward God. This surrender is at the core of repentance, and it requires us to humble ourselves before God.
C.S. Lewis says that what made atheism so attractive to him was that he could gratify his wishes and live however he pleased. This was true of the young son in the parable. However, when Lewis came to believe in God, and then recognized that Jesus was the Son of God who had died for his sins on the cross, it was only logical for him to surrender. It is like choosing to serve in the army of a powerful king. You do not negotiate with the king and tell him what you are willing to do. You bend your knee to him and serve him with your life.
Lewis says this in his book, Mere Christianity,
Now what was the sort of "hole" man had got himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realizing that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor—that is the only way out of our "hole." This process of surrender—this movement full speed astern is what Christians call repentance.
Lewis is saying that the arrogance of man insists, "I belong to myself and I will run the show." The Christian humbles himself and declares, "I surrender and I will follow you."
THE HOMECOMING
So the son returned home and was shocked at what awaited him.
And he got up and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him, and kissed him.
And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son."
But the father said to his slaves, "Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found." And they began to be merry.
As we examine the response of the father, we need to remember that it was he who let the son go his own way. God designed us to live in His presence, to know Him, to live under his authority and follow His plan for our lives— it is the concept of following the owner's manual, knowing it leads to our ultimate well-being. However, God will allow us to leave His presence, go to the distant land, and live however we choose. He will even allow us to self-destruct. However, He is always waiting for us to humble ourselves and return.
The parable ends with the older brother, who was faithfully working out in the field, hearing all the commotion of the party. He summoned one of the servants and asked what was going on. The servant told him, "Your brother has come home, and your father has killed the fatted calf because he has received him back safe and sound."
As you might imagine, the older son became angry and refused to join in the celebration. The father went out to plead with him, but he refused. The father's last words in the parable are: "We had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found."
The older son suffered from pride as well—the pride of selfrighteousness. He was very judgmental and experienced a joyless
obedience. He had no compassion for his younger brother, and he did not understand the father's forgiveness. How could he ever forgive him?
Henry Nouwen in his wonderful book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, lays out a wonderful contrast of the waywardness of the two brothers. He says,
Often we think about lostness in terms of actions that are quite visible, even spectacular. The younger son sinned in a way we can easily identify. His lostness is quite obvious. He misused his money, his time, his friends, his own body. What he did was wrong; not only his family and friends knew it, but he himself as well. He rebelled against morality and allowed himself to be swept away by his own lust and greed. There is something very clear-cut about his misbehavior. Then, having seen that all his wayward behavior led to nothing but misery, the younger son came to his senses, turned around, and asked for forgiveness. We have here a classical human failure, with a straightforward resolution. Quite easy to understand and sympathize with.
The lostness of the elder son, however, is much harder to identify. After all, he did all the right things. He was obedient, dutiful, lawabiding, and hardworking. People respected him, admired him, praised him, and likely considered him a model son. Outwardly, the elder son was faultless. But when confronted by his father's joy at the return of his younger brother, a dark power erupts in him and boils to the surface. Suddenly, there becomes glaringly visible a resentful, proud, unkind, selfish person, one that had remained deeply hidden, even though it had been growing stronger and more powerful over the years.
In this story, the celebration that is thrown is representative of heaven. And though it is just a parable, in the end the younger brother went into the celebration, and the older brother did not. The younger son has humbled himself, the older brother has not.
Tim Keller says that people who say, "I am a Christian, look at all my good works and accomplishments" do not realize they are spiritually lost. God is going to say to them, "But I never knew you …You don't know what the cross of Jesus means" (Matthew 7:21-23).
On the other hand, those who come and say, "Lord, I am a sinner; I repent; I need your grace; I have nothing to merit your favor" and pray for salvation in Jesus' name, will find salvation. This is what it means to be saved by grace through faith.
Keller says that is a picture of humility. He says that to not approach God with humility and contriteness can lead to eternal destruction. Humility is what connects you to God because God's plan of salvation is to lift up the humble.