PWJ: S1E21 – MC B3C8 – “The Great Sin”

Today we come to the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride, as well as its counterpart, my favourite virtue, humility.

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Episode 21: “The Great Sin” (Download)

— Show Notes —

• My outline for today’s chapter is available here. Unfortunately, there isn’t a C.S. Lewis Doodle for it.

• We recounted some of the adventures in our local C.S. Lewis book group. Some of the ladies were of the opinion that I’ve been too mean to Matt, particularly on the episode where Matt talks about The Notebook.

• Matt tried to massage my ego by talking about a talk I gave at a Theology On Tap: What does it mean to be a restless pilgrim?

• The Quote-of-the-week was from The Screwtape Letters, Lewis’ fictitious correspondence between two demons:

“Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact? All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove! I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride — pride at his own humility — will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt—and so on, through as many stages as you please. But don’t try this too long, for fear you awake his sense of humor and proportion, in which case he will merely laugh at you and go to bed”

– C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

• The Drink-of-the-week was Macallan 12. We toasted to the health of Brandon Vogt’s new son, the excellently named Gilbert Lewis Vogt.

• Pride is the sin we hate most in others…

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Both Matt and I thought Lewis was being a bit generous to Christians here.

• The centre of Christian morality isn’t sex, but pride:

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites 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 mind.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• If we want to know how prideful we are, Lewis presents a simple test:

…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 shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?”

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Pride is essentially competitive:

 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 gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Pride is often not identified and is instead mistaken for some other vice. Lewis gives two examples:

Greed: This will drive you to get more money, but there comes a point when you’ve got more than you could possibly ever want. It is at this point that pride takes over, driving you to be richer than some other rich man.

Lust: A woman who goes around collecting admirers may not be driven by lust, but simply by a desire by competitive desire.

Lewis sums up the competitive nature of pride thusly:

Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Good things can come out of other vices, such as camaraderie among a group of drunks, but Pride just can’t do that:

Pride always means enmity-it is enmity. 

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Pride not only separates man and man, but also man and God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that-and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison- you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. 

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• How is it that prideful people can also describe themselves as “very religious”? While we expect/hope religious people to hold to a higher moral standard, why should we be surprised when we find religious people with vices?

• Lewis says that the God which the prideful religious worship is imaginary:

They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• Jack gives us another test to see if we’re being prideful in this way:

Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good-above all, that we are better than someone else – I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

This is the source of a misquote, commonly attributed to Lewis, but which actually comes from a book by Rick Warren:

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”

– Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

However, this is not a quotation from Lewis, as detailed on EssentialCSLewis.com. Incidentally, the author of that website, William O’Flaherty, has just released a book called The Misquotable C.S. Lewis. He also wrote this article for Christianity Today on C.S. Lewis misquotes…

• Pride can be used to beat down lesser vices. This isn’t a good thing…

The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-con trolled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride-just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

• The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you….He says “Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything?

• Jack also says that there are many misconceptions concerning pride:

Misconception #1: Pride from being praised. Lewis says that it’s not necessarily pride:

The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says “Well done,” are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

The problem comes when you start to delight more in yourself than in the praise:

The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, “I have pleased him; all is well,” to thinking, “What a fine person I must be to have done it.” 

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

I told the story of the time Carly Simon wrote a song about me, and this got us talking about the movie our “Four Loves” group watched Valentine’s Week, How to lose a guy in ten days.

The real black, diabolical Pride comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you… the Proud man…says “Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? …the devil loves “curing” a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our Pride to cure our vanity; better the frying-pan than the fire.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Misconception #2: Pride of a father for a son, or a soldier for a regiment. Better than just being proud of yourself. If this simply means a warm-hearted admiration for something, it’s definitely not a sin. The problem comes when we start putting on airs, thinking ourselves better than others because of our connection to something great.

This would, clearly, be a fault; but even then, it would be better than being proud simply of himself. To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Misconception #3: God is worried about our pride because of His own dignity. Lewis says that the primary issue with pride is that it prevents us from coming to know Him.

[God] wants you to know Him; wants to give you Himself… if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Misconception #4: Humility doesn’t look like we expect:

[The humble man] will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)

Matt and I then discuss the book “David Copperfield” by the Nineteenth Century author Charles Dickens (and disassociate the book from the present-day magician of the same name). Dickens’ book contains a character called Uriah Heep who is always talking about how humble he is…

‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain’t for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!’ (17.54)

– David Copperfield

• Lewis concludes the chapter talking about how to grow in humility:

The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book III, Chapter 8)