By Bob Sullivan
Many saints, theologians, and faithful disciples of Christ have told us that pride is the root of all sin.
St. Augustine identified pride as the cause of Satan’s fall from Heaven. Whether it is Augustine, Aquinas, G.K. Chesterton, or your grandmother, those who follow Christ know that pride separates us from our neighbor, and God.
Chapter 2 of the book of Isaiah says that the arrogance of man will be brought low and human pride humbled when the day of the Lord comes. Whether Isaiah refers to the New Covenant, the Second Coming, or some other event, it helps us to see that pride is not compatible with Christianity.
If Augustine is right (I think he is) and pride took down a powerful angel, how much easier can pride destroy a sinful human being like me?
Another extreme is shame. Shame can be very damaging to our faith, and to our mental and physical health. However, shame is not the opposite of pride. Humility is the opposite of pride. Evangelical Christian writer Rick Warren once wrote, “humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”
In other words, live for others. Giving your self to your spouse, your children, and those around you is humility if it is based in charity (love). This is simple, but not easy, and we all get it wrong at times. God’s mercy is greater than our worst failings, though.
Satan uses shame to accuse and defeat us, because shame makes us feel humiliated, worthless in God’s eye, defeated, guilty of the accusation we have leveled against ourself. Shame has the ability to override what we know and believe about the mercy of God and Christ’s triumph over evil.
St. John, the beloved apostle, wrote about this in Revelation 10:10-12.
“For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.
They triumphed over him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
because he knows that his time is short.”
You may have noticed that we live in a time of great division. Those who wish to destroy Christianity see this as the perfect opportunity. Christians know that the Church will not fail, due to a number of passages in the Bible and most famously Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:19. However, today’s problems still concern us because of another passage: “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.’” (Matthew 12:25)
Therefore, even though the Universal Church will not fail, division is still a powerful and effective force between individuals, family members, parishes, communities, and even entire nations. “Divide and conquer,” is basic military strategy because it works so well.
There are a number of celebrities, politicians, and social justice warriors who are saying they are ashamed of various things about themselves. If you type “ashamed to be” into your search engine of choice, you will be amazed to read the options. The first one to pop up is not “white,” “male,” or “Christian,” though those are in the top five. The top option is “human.” Because search engines rank search phrases based on numbers, this means that a lot of people are searching the internet by typing in “ashamed to be human.”
What does this say about us today? Some believe that Satan fell because he refused to worship the Incarnate God (God made man). If we are ashamed to be human, we are clay in Satan’s filthy hands. It basically says that Satan is on his “A” game and we are playing catch up.
While it is extremely disappointing to hear someone like John Brennan or Donald Sutherland say that they are ashamed to be a male, or to learn that Coca Cola is teaching their employees to be “less white,” the Christian response is the only way out of this.
As a white, Christian, male, (of one of the most disgusting segments of society these days if you accept what the media is selling), I cannot say that I’m proud to be a white, Christian, man. I cannot say that because these are simply innate genetic and spiritual realities. I can no more be proud of the pigment of my skin than I can be proud of the fact that I blink. However, I cannot say I am ashamed of these realities either.
Instead of pride, we are called to humility. And instead of feeling shame for something, especially something over which we have no control, we have to trust in God’s mercy.
The cure for pride is humility. The cure for shame is trust in God. Pride and shame shut everything down and cause fatal division. Humility and trust in God (a.k.a. faith) repair, restore, and renew all things.
If someone accuses you of something over which you have no control, such as your race, your parents, your biological sex, or many other things about you, the best response is one of humility and as St. Paul wrote in Galatians 5:6, faith working through love.
You might say, “I’m not proud of being anything, but I’m not ashamed of how I was created either. I have no control over that. I am grateful, and I trust in God and His abundant mercy offered to all of us.”
