Humility

The Great Sin.
From Mere Christianity by C S Lewis

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. 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. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites 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.

Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, 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?' The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. 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. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competitive by its very nature - while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. 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. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride.

Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with œ10,000 a year anxious to get œ20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. œ10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride - the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. 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.

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to 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. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. 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: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. 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.

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled 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. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings:

(1) Pleasure in being praised is not 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. 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.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a child-like and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, still human. The real black, diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring. He says 'Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an integrated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals - or my artistic conscience - or the traditions of my family - or, in a word, because I'm That Kind of Chap. If the mob like it, let them. They're nothing to me.' In this way real thorough-going pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, 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.

(2) We say in English that a man is 'proud' of his son, or his father, or his school, or regiment, and it may be asked whether 'pride' in this sense is a sin. I think it depends on what, exactly, we mean by 'proud of'. Very often, in such sentences, the phrase 'is proud of' means 'has a warm-hearted admiration for'. Such an admiration is, of course, very far from being a sin. But it might, perhaps, mean that the person in question gives himself airs on the ground of his distinguished father, or because he belongs to a famous regiment. 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.

(3) We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity - as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that 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: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off - getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

(4) Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he 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. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. 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.

Reflection on Lent

Eddy Nubine on Sax

John Ortberg on Spiritual Gifts

SPIRITUAL GIFTS

by John Ortberg, circa 1994

Over the past 25 years or so, there has been a proliferation of materials on spiritual gifts. It turns out that the main reason it has been so hard to get people to volunteer for church work all these years is that people have been trying to work "outside their area of giftedness" (as if, for example, Michael Jordan should try to be a baseball player).

So, diagnosing your ministry potential has become a cottage industry. It started with a few simple inventories. Then the process got finessed and nuanced until today a small battery of trained consultants, theologians, and licensed mental health practitioners are required to help you identify your spiritual gift(s), personality temperament, passion, charismatic/non-charismatic tendencies, primary dysfunction in family of origin, and most flattering colors (winter, spring, summer, or fall) before you can sign up to serve donuts at the coffee hour. It requires more time and study than acquiring a D.Min. degree (although that places it in a broad and fertile category that would include getting a driver's license, getting a fishing license, and skimming the "Humor in Uniform" section in Reader's Digest).

Generally, I believe this emphasis on spiritual gift inventories to be a positive development. Just imagine what Augustine or Luther or St. Vitus ("creative communication") could have done if they'd have known their ministry profile.

But there are a few bugs that still need to be worked out. For one thing, the scoring has gotten too complicated. In fact, this led to a big argument at our church when the test was taken by a recovery group for Survivors of Ritual Abuse with Multiple Personality Disorder, and they wanted a separate temperament analysis for each personality.

The main problem is that people can go through this whole process and still not actually get involved. It is an attempt to get people to serve without resorting to guilt. This is a fundamental mistake. Guilt is the pastor's friend. If people weren't supposed to feel guilty, Hallmark wouldn't have invented Mother's Day.

But help is on the way. A thorough examination of the relevant Greek texts using redaction criticism, the partitive genitive, and the hortatory subjunctive reveals that there are really only seven main gifts listed in the New Testament.

Based on this research, you'll be glad to know, I have developed the Houts-Wagner Irretrievably Modified Gifts Inventory Color Me Beautiful Questionnaire. The primary advantage of this instrument is that finally we have gifts listed in categories that are practical for the contemporary church. Here they are:

7 TRUE SPIRITUAL GIFTS FOR TODAY'S CHURCH

1. Nursery Worker. This is based on Mark 10:14, "Suffer the little children to come to me." Anyone who believes this verse is or should be in the Bible has nursery-worker for his or her dominant gift.

2. Giving. This is the dominant gift for anybody who makes more money than I do. Michael Jordan, for example, would fit in this category if he came to my church. In fact, he's thinking about coming to my church, so he's asked me to tell everybody else's church to get off his back about it.

3. Criticism. Although not actually mentioned in the text, this is in fact the most widely practiced spiritual gift in the church today, so the academy has finally voted that it be officially recognized.

(A pastor friend was complaining that his church went through a long, exhausting process to draft a two-pronged vision statement "to reach the unchurched and build up believers" but kept maintaining traditions and services that didn't fit the vision statement in order to avoid criticism. I told him they just needed to add a third prong to their statement: "Placate the cranks." I offer this as a free, general suggestion. If you find yourself doing things that don't fit in your church's vision statement, just add the phrase "and placate the cranks" to the end of the document. You'll find that these words provide a rationale for pretty much everything your current vision statement doesn't cover. I'm thinking about becoming a church consultant.)

4. Amway. Discretion forbids me to say more.

5. Wedding Hostess. You don't really need the inventory for this one, since anyone with this gift could be identified blindfolded. These are people who in other life circumstances would have grown up to be General Patton or Turkish prison guards. In churches that are truly gift-based, the wedding hostess actually functions as senior pastor.

6. Kitchen Hostess. This is to wedding hostess what minor leagues are to the majors: a place where promising rookies can get experience and fading veterans can enjoy a last fling at playing the game before it's time to hang up the spikes.

7. Helping People Discover Their Spiritual Gifts.

Holiness by Grace

Each year our church family reads a book together. We try to choose a book that is challenging and transforming.

This year we have chosen "Holiness by Grace"
One review reports:

" Be Holy, because I am holy." --1 Peter 1:16
How can God expect us to be as holy as he is? Isn't it unrealistic, given that he is infinitely pure and we are clearly imperfect? Such a standard seems either to ignore our frailty or to impose certain failure--until we understand how God views us. Then we are reminded that, thanks to what Christ accomplished on our behalf, our perfection is not the requirement for entering his kingdom. Yet that very grace still calls us to live righteously--for the sake of our well-being, yes, but most of all, because it glorifies God.

In this challenging yet heartwarming work, Bryan Chapell illustrates the principles of grace, the practices of faith, and the motives of love in living a life of holiness. You will journey through reassuring Scripture passages that show good works and obedience to be, not a means of establishing or maintaining salvation, but a grateful response to God's mercy. And in Bryan Chapell's encouraging words--drawn straight from the heart of God--you will understand that your holiness is not so much a matter of what you achieve as it is the grace that God provides. A grace so rich as to make the pursuit of his holiness your soul's deepest delight.

Creating Idols

My good friend Dr Black sent me this portion of his thesis, I think it is really helpful;

Sande has developed a model entitled, “The Progression of an Idol.” In this model he highlights four stages, through which our desires lead us into conflict not only with God but with others. It is important that we outline these stages:

Stage One: “I Desire.”

Sande contends that “conflict always begins with some kind of desire.”16 However the important point that he draws to our attention, is that conflict does not necessarily have to come from those desires that we might well classify as being “bad,” such as greed or vengeance or lust. Rather the point he wants to emphasize is that conflict can even come from those desires that we classify as being “good.” He writes,

Many desires are not wrong in and of themselves… If a good desire, such as wanting an intimate relationship with your spouse, is not being met, it is perfectly legitimate to talk about it with your spouse. As you talk, you may discover ways that both of you can help to fulfill each other in mutually beneficial ways … But what if your spouse persistently fails to meet a particular desire and is unwilling to discuss it further with you or anyone else? This is where you stand at a crossroad. On the one hand, you can trust God and seek your fulfillment in Him (Psalm 73:25). You can ask Him to help you to continue to grow and mature no matter what your spouse does (James 1:2-4). And you can continue to love your spouse and pray for God's sanctifying work in his or her life (1 John 4:19-21; Luke 6:27-28). If you follow this course, God promises to bless you and use your difficult situation to conform you to the likeness of Christ (Romans 8:28-29). On the other hand, you can dwell on your disappointment and allow it to control your life. At the very least, this will result in self-pity and bitterness toward your spouse. At worst, it can destroy your marriage.17

Stage Two: “I Demand.”

The writer postulates that a desire such as, “I work hard all week. Don't I deserve a little peace and quiet when I come home?” or “I only want what God commands: children who have learned to respect their parents and use their God-given gifts to the fullest”18 are perfectly legitimate desires. The problem however arises, at the point when we come to view the object of our desire as being essential to our well being. The desire to have something then becomes an absolute “must have.” Left unchecked, this initial desire grows so strong that it begins to control our thoughts and behavior. It has therefore become an “idol.” Sande comments,

Most of us think of an idol as a statue of wood, stone, or metal worshiped by pagan people. But the concept is much broader and far more personal than that. An idol is anything apart from God that we depend on to be happy, fulfilled, or secure. In biblical terms it is something other than God that we set our heart on (Luke 12:29), that motivates us (1 Corinthians 4:5), that masters and rules us (Psalm 119:133; Ephesians 5:5), or that we trust, fear, or serve (Isaiah 42:17; Matthew 6:24; Luke 12:4-5). In short, it is something we love and pursue in place of God (see Philippians 3:19). Given its controlling effect on our lives, an idol can also be referred to as a "false god" or a “functional god.”19

The point that Sande is emphasizing here is that idols do not necessarily arise only from bad desires, but from good ones as well. As an illustration of the point he has been making, the writer draws our attention to the example of marriage, where he contends that,

It is not unreasonable for a man to want a passionate sexual relationship with his wife, or for a wife to want open and honest communication with her husband … These are good desires, but if they turn into demands that must be met in order for either spouse to be satisfied and fulfilled, they result in bitterness, resentment, or self-pity that can destroy a marriage.20

The point is well made; that often it is not what we want, but rather how much we want it, that causes the problem.

Stage Three: “I Judge.”

When people fail to live up to our expectations and fail to meet our desires, we criticize and condemn them. Having made the point that it is not inherently wrong to judge people within certain limits, Sande emphasizes the reality of this third stage when he writes,

We cross the line, however, when we begin to sinfully judge others, which is characterized by a feeling of superiority, indignation, condemnation, bitterness, or resentment. Sinful judging often involves speculating on others' motives. Most of all, it reveals the absence of a genuine love and concern toward them. When these attitudes are present, our judging has crossed the line and we are playing God.21

The danger at this stage is that this high degree of expectancy and accompanying judgment is more often than not, specifically focused on those with whom we have meaningful relationships, for example, our spouses, children, relatives, close friends or even members of our local congregation. Sande again helps us see the incipient dangers when he warns,

Expectations are not inherently bad. It is good to hope for the best in others and reasonable to anticipate receiving understanding and support from those who are closest to us. But if we are not careful, these expectations can become conditions and standards that we use to judge others. Instead of giving people room for independence, disagreement, or failure, we rigidly impose our expectations on them. In effect, we expect them to give allegiance to our idols. When they refuse to do so, we condemn them in our hearts and with our words, and our conflicts with them take on a heightened intensity.22

Stage Four: “I Punish.”

Sande succinctly comments, “Idols always demand sacrifices. When others fail to satisfy our demands and expectations, our idols demand that they should suffer. Whether deliberately or unconsciously, we will find ways to hurt or punish people so they will give in to our desires.”23 Such punishment manifests itself in a myriad of ways, for example; reacting in overt anger; using hurtful words to inflict pain on those who have failed to meet our expectations; pouting and strumping; even physical violence. Sande, makes the point that as we grow in our faith, most of us tend to move away from such overt displays of punishment. However, because idols are reluctant to loosen their grip on our lives, it is almost as though they then change strategy. Choosing to be less overt and seeking to camouflage their presence, they are still as devastating in their ultimate goal,

Our idols do not give up their influence easily, and they often lead us to develop more subtle means of punishing those who do not serve them. Withdrawal from a relationship is a common way to hurt others. This may include a subtle coolness toward the other person, withholding affection or physical contact, being sad or gloomy, refusing to look someone in the eye, or even abandoning the relationship altogether. Sending subtle, unpleasant cues over a long period of time is an age-old method of inflicting punishment.24

In conclusion, from the perspective of our aim of education we have learned that at the center of both history and our own personal lives, we discover conflict. There is an inextricable link between the conflict from without and the conflict from within.

From the external perspective, Christians are caught up in the cosmic clash between the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Believers are called to spiritual warfare against Satan who actively seeks to sow his seeds of dissension and conflict within the local church. From our examination of the biblical material we must concede that education is but the first step in addressing this matter. Christians not only need to be informed about spiritual warfare, they need to be encouraged to respond to the reality of this cosmic struggle. Likewise, congregational leadership must not only give assent to the theory, but in practical terms must acknowledge and respond to the truth the Word of God teaches—that where there is conflict within a congregation, then the devil is at work. Leadership must publically acknowledge this fact and look to develop or introduce ways and means to enforce a unified response to this reality. Clearly much further thought can be given to the specifics of such a response, particular to the situation a congregation is facing.

If the peace of the Church is being attacked from without, then what we have also learned is that the peace is also being attacked from within by the sarx. There is no peace on earth, because two opposing kingdoms clash deep within the human soul—the exaltation of God versus the exaltation of self. It is important that we never lose sight of the fact that it is not a conflict between religious people and irreligious people, but rather between God-exalting people and self-exalting people. As we have noted from our study of James 4:1-3, the heart of the issue, is the issue of the heart. James teaches us that the root cause of conflict is unmet desires in our hearts. When we want something and feel that we will not be satisfied unless we get it, that desire starts to control us. If others fail to meet our desires, we sometimes condemn them in our hearts and ultimately we end up in a vicious downward spiral where we fight hard to get our own way. Of course we do well to remember that James was but making specific application of the principle that Jesus taught, that “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander” (Matt. 15:19).

If we have labored this point we have done so because it is a fundamentally important truth to be grasped that pervades most areas of Christian truth and discipleship and none more so that in the area of our examination of conflict. As we will see in greater detail in a later chapter, many writers in the area of conflict, tend to downplay the biblical concept of the nature of sin, preferring instead to argue that if conflict exists then it does so as a direct result of external circumstances, such as dysfunctional congregational family systems or poor leadership, rather than being a direct manifestation of that which is basically and universally wrong within—sin. Subsequently their attempts to deal with conflict are built upon the shaky foundation of “baptized” secular methodologies and therefore they end up seeking to address, manage or resolve what we might call the “presenting issues” rather than dealing with the root heart issues.