“The Joys and Sorrows of Pride”

delivered August 28, 2005
By Rev. Kimi Riegel at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Church

Wow, are you all lucky to have me as the minister of this church. I mean who else could do the job that I do for you. What would you do with out me? I know I’m not the best but I am the best for this job at this time. I hope you will understand my importance and tell me often or at least let me tell you.
Pride sounds pretty creepy doesn’t it?

Or at the very least it is annoying like those holiday letters:
"It's been a great year for the Lamplighters! Greg had been hoping for a promotion, but what a surprise when the CEO came to his desk and begged him to take over the company. The whole office chipped in and gave the family a week in Paris to celebrate. Wasn't that nice?
Of course Jeanne has been busy as well. You probably saw that news item about how she rescued a school bus full of children from a kidnapper, armed only with a plastic comb. Nice to think, too, that the poem she wrote for last year's holiday letter will be chiseled into the wall of the Library of Congress. The twins did so well at the state tap-dance championship that Spielberg is crafting a movie around them, while Greg Jr.'s science fair project was the topic of much excitement in the New England Journal of Medicine."

Pride. We hate it when we hear it. We can sympathize with the ancients who called Pride the chief Deadly Sin.
Every world religion has something negative to say about pride.
From the Buddhist Tradition "A questioner asked the Buddha: 'I would like to know about the state of peace, the state of solitude and of quiet detachment. How does a person become calm, independent, and not wanting to grasp at anything?' "'A person does this,' replied the Buddha, 'by eradicating the delusion of 'I am.' By being alert and attentive, he begins to let go of cravings as they arise. But whatever he begins to accomplish, he should beware of inner pride. He must avoid thinking of himself as better than another, or worse or equal, for that is all comparison and emphasizes the self.’”

For Buddhists enlightenment can not be reached if we allow our ego to compare ourselves to another. But interestingly it is the person who has attained some knowledge and made spiritual progress that is the most susceptible to the barrier of pride. It is easy if we have progressed down the path a bit to think we are better than others. Even if we compare ourselves and we come out worse it is no better than if we compare ourselves and always come out on top. Pride, which is in the comparing, emphasizes the self and that keeps us from growing beyond our ego.

Judaism also warns against taking too much pride in one's knowledge or wisdom. The Talmud teaches, "Who is a wise person? The one who learns from all people (Avot 4:1)." There is a story from the Jewish tradition that best illustrates this point.
“Once, during the High Holy Day services, the rabbi suddenly was possessed by a wave of mystical rapture, and threw himself onto the ground before the Ark and proclaimed, "Lord, I'm Nothing!" Seeing the rabbi in such a state, profoundly moved the cantor to have the same experience and he too, threw himself down before the Ark, proclaiming, ‘Lord, I'm Nothing!’ Then, way in the back of the synagogue, the janitor, threw himself to the ground, and he too shouted, ‘Lord, "I'm Nothing.’ Whereupon, the rabbi turned to the cantor and whispered, "Look who thinks he's Nothing." Once again it is the comparing of self to others that is the sin of pride.

Islam teaches that pride is what caused the downfall of the devil, when he refused to obey God's commandment to prostrate himself before Adam. This kind of pride, pride against Allah, is considered the worst type of pride, because it is essentially a rejection of the surrender to God’s will.

Pride is considered the foremost vice in Christianity, since it is contrary to love of God. It is putting oneself on the same or better plane than God. As Christian thinker and writer C.S. Lewis writes, "According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Rudeness, 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." (end quote) The devil would not bow before Adam thus his pride got him thrown out of heaven. It was Eve’s desire to be “like God” that caused her to listen to the serpent. From a Christian perspective it is pride that is the basic downfall of humanity.

But even in psychological circles pride is a danger sign. Karen Horney, a psychiatrist, writes of the development of pride as a coping mechanism to cover a basic lack or pain. When we are children there is always an anxiety about not having enough; love, attention, safety or other need. This anxiety she believed creates certain neurotic tendencies in all of us. In the case of pride we create an idealized self that provides the necessary fulfillment and integration we are missing. Pride is covering up for low self esteem at the very least and covering self contempt at its most intense. We search for glory often manufacturing it where it is not present. My prideful statements at the beginning of the sermon are perhaps a cover-up for not feeling as confident as I would like about my ministry.

But the most interesting analysis of pride that I found was in a critique, by Susan Nelson, of Reinhold Niebuhr’s concept of pride. Niebuhr is one of the foremost Christian theologians. He too defines sin as the most basic of sins. He views our struggle in life in a bipolar fashion. He believes we are stuck between our finitude and our freedom. We are on the one hand ultimately finite creatures and at the same time totally free. We spend our time vacillating between these often denying one or the other. The most basic sin then is the one that comes out of this most basic condition. Pride is the denial of our finitude, making us more God-like. Or, and this is the interesting one, it is also denial of our freedom. I understand pride as pretending we are not finite – see how great I am. But the other took me a while to grasp.

Imagine for a moment someone who is so dedicated to a cause or person. This individual gathers all their identity and sense of self worth from a devotion to something other than themselves. This is the ultimate in hiding and denying our freedom. It is the sin of pride because it is still the desire to deny some part of our true existence that of freedom. Remember for Niebuhr the basic sin, pride, denies the basic realities that of finitude and freedom.

Here I found the Enneagram most helpful! Just a short commercial; The Enneagram is a system that provides insight into human personality in a complete and truthful way. It was developed over centuries by mystics and psychologists. I will be teaching a course beginning in September on this ancient life changing system. This year’s course will focus on our relationships especially at work. (But back to the sermon.)

After reading about the denial of our basic freedom as a sin of pride I was confused. But pride is about being the best and knowing you are. The Enneagram helped me see that if you are a giver to the extreme, people are dependent on you. You are the best at giving. You become indispensable. You are the center of a universe and thus yes it is the sin of pride. It looks like altruistic giving but it is giving to get – pride. Pride in what we mean to others. It is pride in our significance even as we deny that we have any.

Susan Nelson offered the critique that Niebuhr down played this second part of the sin of pride. Even as he set it out he subsumed it under the real pride of denying our finitude. She went on to talk about how the ultimate goal in Christianity is to be self-sacrificing which leads quite naturally to the sin of pride. Thus here again it is those who are farthest down the path who are most susceptible to the sin of pride. Farthest down the path in terms of knowledge thus thinking they “know” or farthest down the path in terms of being self sacrificing like Jesus thus being the giver par excellence. Ms. Nelson discussed how women have especially been encouraged to be self sacrificing and thus are most inclined to denying their freedom - the giving part of the sin of pride.
The bottom line whether it is the pride of boastfulness or the pride of helpfulness we are all predisposed to one degree or another toward pride. I found a list of questions, which I have edited a bit, that we might ask ourselves to ascertain how prideful we are. I got this from a Yom Kippur sermon written by our foremost UU Buddhist writer that he gleaned from a Fundamentalist Christian website. (To be authentic to our path, we have to be willing to take wisdom where we find it.)

So, the checklist:
Do you often consider yourself better than others?
Do you almost always consider yourself right?
Do you often consider yourself worse or less than others?
Do you get very busy helping others?
Do you get angry when someone doesn’t agree with you?
Do you feel angry when someone doesn’t recognize your contributions?
Do you interrupt people in conversations to give your own comments?
Do you find yourself exhausted from all the directions in which you are pulled?
Do you enjoy being the life and center of attention at a party?
Do you enjoy being the most helpful person at an event?:
Do you enjoy talking about yourself in front of others?
Do you never talk about yourself only others?
Do you try to impress others?
Do you often criticize others?

When I asked myself these questions there were some real awakening moments. For instance my usual workout partner is out of town right now so there is a different gal working out in front of me. I found myself comparing my athletic ability to hers and feeling prideful in some ways and less so in others. The real value is not in how I am doing in comparison to her but how I am doing in comparison to my goals. One of the antidotes to pride seems to be to keep our eyes on our own goals and needs.

One writer defined zealots as prideful. They are people who have lost sight of the goal and so redouble their efforts. They are certain that through their own extraordinary efforts that some great thing will come to pass. Here again it is denial of our finitude that is the sin of pride.

Of course the business question hit home and hard. How often have I taken on too much just to get the recognition? How often have I taken a task because it will allow me to hide from my freedom? See how out of control my life is. I must be important. Yikes! This sin stuff is real!

William Ellery Channing, one of our UU saints, wrote that evil is separation from our God given relations. Sin is evil. Pride is sin. Pride creates profound separation from others. The real problem with sin, any sin is it keeps us separate from the relationship that could enrich our lives. We don’t like being around the “all sacrificing” individual, we don’t like reading about the glories of other families, we don’t like hearing from someone who always knows the right answer, we don’t like hearing how wonderful others are and its not healthy for us to be always comparing ourselves to others. Pride creates separation when what we are seeking is connection. But how do we rid ourselves of it?

Now for the paradox in the sermon which is what makes every UU minister grin and rub their hands together in glee. The antidote for the sin of pride is to focus on ourselves. And you thought that was the sin. The solution to pride is to stop comparing ourselves to others and find our own goals. It is to listen inside for our own needs. It is to stop being busy and out there all the time. It is to be aware of our finitude, we are limited creatures. It is to be attentive to our freedom and when we give it away.

This is where I believe the pride of the marginalized groups of society fit. The sin of pride is allowing others to define you thus giving away your freedom. When society says gays are evil the gift of pride (rather than the sin of pride) is in reclaiming our freedom to define ourselves. This is where the pride we try desperately to instill in our children fits. It is a self confidence that isn’t about comparing ourselves to the others on the team or in the classroom, but to our own standards. Frederick Mathews Green writes these can’t be standards that we have because of personal preference, he asks us to look to the many tyrants in the world who sleep well to understand that these standards must come from time honored values. How am I doing with honesty? How am I doing with kindness? Etc.

I think Unitarian Universalism as a faith tradition and as faith communities are often guilty of the sin of pride. After all our faith is the faith of doing. We are the ones championing the social causes. We are the ones who believe in salvation by doing. We are also fairly certain that ours is the best faith or at least the better faith. All the others are, so, well, ignorant of our truth. What if we focused on ourselves? Not in a navel gazing, do nothing sort of way, but in a how can we meet our own goals sort of way. How can we/I become better at honesty, openness, tolerance and acceptance? These final words from Judaism. Reflect upon three things, and you will not come within the power of sin: know from where you came, to where you are going, and before whom you will in future have to give account and reckoning.

Namaste.