Pride. It’s ugly, it’s toxic and it’s part of the human
condition. Whether humans are born with it or just pick it up along the way, there
is little doubt that pride walks along with us, climbs inside of us and so
often just takes the over controls and makes us a walking impersonator of
ourselves.
Pride is clever and crafty as it wears many faces and does
impressions of other attitudes and even virtues. Pride is so invisible at times
that it can be up and running without anyone detecting it for long stretches of
time – infection without detection.
If pride were not so much a stealthy, complex, and
perpetually reincarnating individual and social process, it might be easy to
quickly diagnose and treat. But the reality is that pride has no interest in
being diagnoses and treated, it has no interest in compromise, and it has no
interest in sharing. It is a relentless force that seeks to fill every single
little patch of real estate in your soul it can find. Any little crack where
humility has not filled, pride will occupy, take up residence, and defend as
its sovereign domain. Pride is nothing to be trifled with.
One of the great ruses of pride is to define itself in
obvious terms. Arrogance is a form of pride that is often obvious and overt,
but pride would like us all to believe that arrogance and pride are synonymous –
that arrogance is the only form of pride. Pride would like us to look at
overtly arrogant people and compare ourselves and find ourselves to be
something other, better than they are. Pride invites us to separate ourselves
from that overtly arrogant person and declare ourselves humble since we are not
like that arrogant person. That is a major win for pride. Any occasion that
results in some declaration of immunity to pride allows for the undetected
processes of pride to continue unfettered.
Pride, though it has its obvious and overt expressions, spends
most of its time behind the scenes and under the surface, carefully
constructing houses of cards that look and feel real, but in the end result in
seemingly irreversible devastation. Pride likes to hide and lurk
One of pride’s favorite ruses is false humility. With enough
practice, there are people who can simultaneously be consumed with and
controlled by pride and be regarded by friends, co-workers, and family members
as the most humble person I know.
When pride engages the power of the social system and event he culture to
perpetuate itself, it is almost impossible to detect. It is up to the prideful
person to do all the work of detection and remedy. And if detection and remedy
is initiated by the prideful individual, the social system around them will
actually work against the remedy. Why? Social systems do not like to change,
especially when the change feels like an indictment. In short, the prideful
individual who is seeking to change is essentially telling the social system that
you have supported and helped perpetuate my
prideful living. No one really wants to hear that, so they’ll usually
persist and dismiss that the person was ever prideful in the first place.
Another ruse of pride is internal defiance with external
compliance. Sometimes this process isn’t pride because it is a redemptive
subversion of oppressive forces, but much of the time it is simply just pride. This
process of pride can emerge in work, in family, in school, at church, with God or
in just about any situation when there is a power difference or intimate
relationship. In short, this manner of pride says you can compel me to change my behavior, but I will not soften my
heart.
Another of the many ruses of pride is depressed defiance.
There is a particularly clever strain of pride that leverages perceived
helplessness to gain, power, control, and even dominion. This manner of pride
can emerge when there is legitimate helplessness (this is distinguished from
resilience and resourcefulness), but does its best work when conceptual helplessness
transcends actual helplessness and it is the conceptual helplessness that is
acted on. It preys on the goodness of people to do for the individual what the individual
could do for themselves. In its most extreme form, it will lead the individual
to perpetrate on oneself and then endure dangerous suffering in order to
control others.
If pride is so clever, so stealthy, and so…intelligent, what
can a person do?
The first act of humility is to recognize one’s own
perpetual vulnerability to and propensity for pride. This is not easy; however,
working from the assumption that you are always at least vulnerable to some
form of pride is itself a very humble posture.
The second act of humility is to seek an ever increasing sensitivity
to pride, to be willing to detect its presence. Depending on comparison to
other people as a barometer of one’s own pride is too crude a measure. It is
unnecessary, but it may be a fair place to start. However, it is best to go
past comparison as quickly as possible as it has a whole set of built in
pitfalls. Introspection is important and necessary, but it, too, is likely to
be insufficient. Some other ingredients to getting better at detecting one’s
own pride includes having a small group of people (1-3 others) who you invite
to help you detect it, tell you when they detect it, and have zero judgment in
the manner in which they relate to you concerning pride. Another is to have an
external code for processing experiences. Some people use the wisdom of the
Bible to help them along. Submitting oneself to legitimate sources of wisdom
helps to make one sensitive to one’s own pride.
A third act of humility is to submit oneself to an authority
of some kind. Many people relate to God in this way. Having someone to whom you
consistently seek to show respect and honor allows for you to practice the kind
of humility with another that would work well in lots of relationships, even
people who are not an authority to you.
Pride is nasty. Pride is ubiquitous. The discipline of
humility is the kind of the medicine that remedies and extinguishes the scourge
of pride.
