Overcoming Pride

“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.” Thus wrote the wise man centuries ago, and his words are as true to-day as when he first uttered them. Although throughout the ages right-minded men have condemned pride, and although its wrong as well as its foolishness has been proved times without number, it still frequently seems to flourish with great abandon. Men still appear blind to its evil nature, and still go on fashioning within its deceptive allurements the pitfalls which will later inevitably cast them into direful distress and difficulties. Again hear Solomon: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

Now so subtle is this crafty sin of pride that men may go on for long years suffering from its betrayal before they awaken to its falsities and begin to reach out for the spiritual understanding of humility which alone can deliver them from pride’s snares and their fatal consequences. Even though Christian Science in its revelation of true humility exposes every least claim of this evil, and teaches how to overcome it with the might of true meekness,—in spite of the fact that every serpent of pride’s creating is thus brought out from under cover,—it demands utmost honesty on the student’s part if he is to cease speedily from cherishing the false tendencies which pride presents in the name of human good.

While pride often parades with its arrogant flowering of self-esteem, vanity, self-conceit, egotism, haughtiness, self-will, self-justification, self-love, even the students of Christian Science are sometimes found excusing these blossomings rather than attacking them with the humility and courage which are needed to dig out their root, so that no least shoot shall be left to spring forth and send out its poison.

Perhaps no statement of Mrs. Eddy is more replete with helpful meaning than the one she makes in “Miscellaneous Writings” (p. 224) where she says, “It is our pride that makes another’s criticism rankle, our self-will that makes another’s deed offensive, our egotism that feels hurt by another’s self-assertion.” Our Leader definitely speaks of pride in the one instance; but it is easy to see that self-will and egotism also partake of the same quality in the other instances she names. Indeed, pride is often the tendency which prevents us from recognizing the mistaken nature of self-will, self-love, self-justification—yes, of all selfishness. There is nothing more dulling to spiritual vision, there is nothing more deterrent to the humility which delivers from all evil, than the pride which boasts itself of personal goodness, personal prowess, personal sense, personal opinion.

Christian Science teaches that God alone is the source of all good; it shows distinctly that to Him belong all “the kingdom, and the power, and the glory”—that since He is the only cause, even the reflection of any good is but effect, and therefore can claim nothing for itself apart from Him. Then, where does pride find any excuse for being? Pride always demands recognition for itself and itself alone, and so is totally contrary to the humility which only can express the might of God. When one has divested himself of pride, the recognition of the glory of God and His creation flows into consciousness and the might and joy of reflected good become one’s rightful possession.

On page 356 of “Miscellaneous Writings” Mrs. Eddy tells us “one can never go up, until one has gone down in his own esteem.” Who, then, would not hasten to acknowledge the falsity of every prideful tendency, that he might the sooner lay hold of the power which lifts him to the understanding of true being? How often must our repentant sense kneel before God in deepest sorrow for pride’s arrogance—that arrogance which is the basic error in such a multitude of our problems, that arrogance which adulterates so many of our would-be valiant attempts to serve our God and our neighbor—ere we can forsake forever the human beliefs which claim to constitute our human selfhood!

But oh, the joy which comes with the acknowledgment of every wrong which Science uncovers in our thinking and our living! With pride laid low, how our hearts lift themselves in humble gratitude for Truth, the great deliverer, and how we press on to the proofs which the might of true humility pours into our waiting thought!