Pride is a slavery, and a killer in the end. It can justify any sin because it’s the reason behind human self-righteousness, which empowers us to act outside of what we would otherwise naturally do. It’s the basis of all man’s awkwardness, for lack of a better term, vis a vis the universe he lives in. It sets our standards too high for ourselves; Aquinas called it “inordinate self-love”, self-love being good and natural, with pride being a twisting or corruption-and
lessening-of that good. All evil is said to follow in the same manner, a detraction from or negation of some created good. And all evil is said to oppose
right reason in one manner or another even while it’s always committed in an attempt to obtain some perceived good. All wrong, it can be said, is done in the* name* of right.
And pride works both ways-our own pride can be a source of self-exaltation for us, or it can defeat us. We can be on the “giving” end of pride, as the dominator, the competitor, the one so sure of themselves and confident in their righteousness, consciously or not, that they don’t even question whether they have the right to control or condemn or manipulate or even behead another human being; humans are capable of way more ugliness than the most savage animal, especially in consideration of the fact that humans could at least* refrain *from such behavior if they so choose. Jesus, by contrast, in the ultimate act of humility and love, does the
opposite; He willfully
dies for us, offering His passion and life, the greatest good that can be offered. Sin/evil is completely overcome and vanquished by such an act, by such love.
We can also be on the “receiving” end of pride and sin, the one harmed by human meanness and abuse. And even there pride can rear its head-in
us; we want to slap back, or slip into anger/depression. Because even though the perpetrator has no right to do what they do, we first of all don’t necessarily know that. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we deserve their abuse; we’ve earned it. Our own pride is wounded in any case. If neither side had this quality, this disease, then its power would disappear. We might also just receive another person’s comment or action wrongly, due to our pride, even if they were coming from a completely innocent place-and from truth. We can still feel victimized or abused by being overly sensitive due to this human “anomaly” known as pride. Either way the world is broken, wrong in some basic way, and we’re all part of it. A major aspect of this wrongness, directly connected with pride, is the “distorted image of God” that man conceived of at the Fall, and which persists in us to this day, unless and until it’s overcome as we come to truly know Him for Who He is.
Anyway, the answer is humility, love, a turning to God and away from ourselves. But the world is always trying to tempt us back to our competitive and covetous and suspicious-and/or self-protecting and defensive mode. It’s never just “them out there” in any case; we participate; we have our own pride, our own concupiscence, our own desires- our own struggle with sin that’s mixed up in this whole affair. It’s a life-long testing and refining and growing process, especially as we continue to persevere, to find merit and worth underlying it all. But seeing the “game” for what it is in light of the gospel doesn’t mean we automatically win it -we’ll continue to struggle with being certain of whether its rules genuinely reflect the truth of the human condition to begin with; we struggle with whether or not we even
want to believe in this game since its purpose is to disinvolve us with the world that we want to fit into, whether or not man* is* truly out of communion with God to begin with, and in need of returning to it, to Him-whether or not God
actually exists, to put it another way.
Maybe there
is no such thing as original sin, maybe nothing wrong or broken with our world in some fundamental way even if our newspapers seem to indicate otherwise. But, again, to really *believe *in this brokenness means to turn away from self and the world and the exaltation we crave, and towards something higher than ourselves first of all. With that we begin to know that Someone’s ultimately in control-that justice will ultimately be done, that even though we must ‘see as through an obscure mirror’ in this life, walking by faith through an often frightening and misguided world that by no means places love and truth at the helm, we can still believe in the basic goodness of and order behind this universe. To the extent that
I’m my own standard for truth and righteousness, which is the way we’re born due to OS, then we must defend ourselves, our position, virtually to the death-for fear of being humiliated and rejected and lost, even if only in our own eyes. To the extent that God becomes our God instead, to the extent that
He’s the standard for truth and righteousness, we don’t need to defend ourselves so vehemently; we begin to defend Him, the Ultimate Truth, instead.
And doesn’t bring peace.