What Pride Precedeth

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This past Sunday, I paid attention enough in Sunday School to learn something I had not previously noticed. Our text for the week was selections from the Book of Proverbs, and the teacher, although prepared, had a slightly different topic in mind than God apparently had for me. Due to my attentiveness however, I was able to notice and learn something I had always taken for granted and taken as an incorrect paraphrase of a concept that warrants further scrutiny.

For as much of my life as I can remember, I have been warned against pride. My maternal grandfather takes the warning so seriously that he reflects the fact that the scriptures always say or depict God and his people as 'pleased' and always uses that phrase when he speaks glowingly of our accomplishments. They say that pride cometh before the fall as a warning to those who parade what they have in front of us. However, that's not what the scripture actually says. I take this excerpt from the King James Version:

Proverbs 16:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs teaches us that "Pride cometh before destruction" which means that although it comes before the fall, it also preceeds something much more dire.

In the two years I've been on Facebook, I have been struck by the frequency with which those who parade what they have on there for all to see quickly and inexplicably lose it. Although absolutely giddy at the prospect of new prospects and opportunities, many of those are short lived, and many of those who do not lose what they gain are the ones who only surreptitiously and clandestinely notify others who do not inquire. As soon as they boast of what they have, it carries them onward to pride, which we learn from Proverbs preceeds destruction.

Cities have been leveled, Caesars have been assassinated, and armies have been defeated because of pride in their populace or leadership. They do not simply fizzle out, they usually explode in a gradiose display where they are obliterated in one fell swoop. Skywalker tells Palpatine that his overconfidence is his weakness, and in the same way people who parade around what they have and protrude their tongues in glee at what they have that you lack are most apt to lose it, and lose it spectacularly.

Pride goeth before destruction. Is pride bad? What is pride? Pride means literally enmity, which means the pitting of one against another. As soon as you gratify yourself at how you're better off, you are not, because the universe almost always brings those kind of people down to size. We are so incredibly impotent on this planet, that any presumption or pride on our part is a misapplication of credit to ourselves for things we ought to ascribe to the Almighty. At His will we live and move and even draw breath.

CS Lewis said two things about pride: "It is the comparison that makes us proud, the pleasure of appearing to be the best" and "Pride gets no satisfaction out of having anything, only out of having more of it than the next man." Appearance is an illusion. What we have today may be gone tomorrow. The economic malaise should have taught us at least that if nothing else. When things change from a means to an end, that is the end, and we have no more increase. When you are only interested in one-upmanship, you will always lose, because it's transitory. Remember that as soon as you appear to be the best or have more, you have become proud and you are then ripe for destruction. Inevitably, you will fall and fall hard.