Outside Reading 2 : Mere Christianity - Tara Thompson

Lately I have been wondering a lot about pride. What is it to be prideful? Am i prideful, myself? I was really struggling with how I felt about it, and I wasn’t sure if I really understood what pride truly was. Then C.S. Lewis explained it to me in a matter of seconds, “pleasure in being praised is not pride”. What a relief! Maybe I’m not so prideful after all. I had been struggling with guilt a lot this past week because that was exactly what I thought pride was. C.S. Lewis goes along to say, “For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased something you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble beings when you pass from thinking, ‘I have pleased him, all is well,’ to thinking, ‘what a find 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”. So, it is okay to be happy when people are proud of you, and think that you did something to show the love of Christ because it isn’t just them you are pleasing, it’s God. “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;” how simply put, that is. Another thing to remember, is that whenever you do anything praise worthy, it is not of yourself, but of God. I don’t believe that I, myself, could do an ounce of good in this world if it weren’t for the love of Christ that pushes me towards good in such a harsh and sinful world. So really, there isn’t much anyone can be prideful of when they know that it is God working through them. Lewis also adds, “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.” How incredible is that. Pride is wrong because it keeps us from God, and God hates that because when we are far from Him we are not in reach of eternal happiness that He wants so badly for us to establish. I never thought of it like that, until now; God could care less if we thought we were the coolest people in the whole world, it just so happens that once we start believing in that, instead of in God, we are losing out on a world of love and joy that he so desperately wants us to take hold of.