Pride and Arrogance

Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord. (Proverbs 16:4)

Have you noticed that when someone is blatantly proud and arrogant we typically become annoyed? We just don’t like it when others suggest that we are inferior to them in any way, but ironically our reaction to other’s pride is almost always based upon our own pride. If we better understood why God hates pride and arrogance so, we would realize that a more fitting and loving response to pride is compassion.

Early in my life I was a mason. I had a passion for the trade and loved to create masterpieces. My work was a great source of pride to me in that it was a testimony to what a man is able to do when he puts his mind to it. Once a work was completed, the only person experiencing the pride was me, and while my works are all over the Maryland and Northern Virginia countryside, no one knows that they are my works but me. And I probably couldn’t find the majority of them if I had to. It is good to take pride in our work. Others typically benefit from this form of pride, because good workmanship tends to last the longest and function the best. This form of pride appears to be a healthy and necessary motivating factor in our lives. Yet it is interesting that God speaks to even this form of pride when he gives instruction regarding how an altar should be constructed: “If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it.” God knows that it is our nature to more easily focus on and praise the work of the altar builder, which we see, rather than God, whom we cannot see.

If I had left plaques on each of my works identifying them as my work, another very different form of pride is manifest – a form that we tend to not really see for what it truly is. The focus is no longer the quality of the work but the one capable of such quality. This more spiritual form of pride stems from our sub-conscious desire to be noticed and praised above others, which should lead us to a startling truth: We wish to be esteemed because we lack self-esteem. Human pride then is a living paradox: We wish to be seen as a special somebody, because deep down inside we don’t truly believe that we are a special somebody. All of our lives we have been wrapping bandages of self-accomplishment and self-importance around our less visible insecure core. Pride betrays us by not revealing our strength but our weakness.

With all of this in mind, what then is the real sin in pride and arrogance? We obviously seek glory, which is God’s alone. But this conclusion is so abstract as to be difficult to remain mindful of. Beyond this primal and basic truth is a more personal and useful one: We have either forgotten or never realized who we are in the Kingdom of God. Our confidence is not in the Lord, but ourselves.

If we fully understand and embrace who we are in Christ Jesus, our feelings of insecurity and inadequacy lose validity. A place of prominence in the world is no longer so appealing to us. We find it more fitting to seek the low place at the table, as Jesus urges us to. Serving instead of desiring to be served becomes genuinely satisfying. Finally pride and arrogance are seen for what they truly are – an outer manifestation of inner torment, not conceit. Perhaps the single most important thing to understand is that God loves us so much that he cannot tolerate the harm that arrogance causes us and others. Jesus only lost his temper here on earth when he was dealing with arrogant men, who completely misrepresented God. The completed work of Jesus eliminates every valid source of pride. Our Great Shepherd is God’s and our only source of pride. Through this marvelous truth we can understand why God declares

Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord.