“Pride”

Genesis 3:1-13

From the Prayer of Confession: We are misled by pride, for we see ourselves pure when we are stained, and great when we are small.

Dorothy Sayers: The devilish strategy of Pride is that it attacks us not on our weak points, but on our strong.

C. S. Lewis: … [pride] is the complete anti-God state of mind.”

From a character on “Homicide: Life on the Streets”: “I’m proud of my pride.”

Pogo: We have faults we have hardly used yet.

[prayer]

Imagine, if you will, Eve strolling through the Garden, minding her own business, happy just to be alive. Then from the bushes comes the lisping whisper of the serpent, “Psst, hey girlie, got a minute?” Having gotten her attention, he continues, “I see you’re not eating the fruit of one particular tree, why not?”

Eve says, “We can eat from any tree but that one. The Lord God has told us that, if we eat from it we will die.” The serpent replies, “Do you really believe that? God’s lying to you. That fruit won’t kill you; it will make you just like God. He’s just an old fuddy-duddy who’s jealous of his power and prerogatives. Doesn’t the fruit look good? It tastes even better than it looks. Go ahead; take a bite.”

“I don’t know,” says Eve. “It really does look good. I’m sure that it tastes good. Being God’s equal sounds nice; but I better not.” Says the serpent, “O go ahead; don’t be such a ‘fraidy cat. Try it; you’ll like it.”

And try it she did. Then she gave some to Adam. Nobody knows for sure what the fruit was, but my hunch is that it was a cucumber or a beet, because the human race has been in a pickle ever since!

Adam and Eve quickly learned that it was the serpent and not the Lord who was lying. They had been deceived into believing that they could be the equals of God, into believing that their disobedience would have no negative consequences. As soon as they’d eaten the fruit their lives were turned upside down. For the first time in history human beings experienced feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and alienation. They even put on clothes because each of them was embarrassed to be seen naked by the other. Along with the embarrassment probably came a sense of anxiety over having been so vulnerable to one another.

A little later they heard God walking in the garden. Like scared little children who’d disobeyed papa they tried to hide themselves from God. They knew they were in some big-time trouble. With a desperate sense of wishful naivete they hoped that God would somehow overlook them and their sin.

But God didn’t. He found them. Then he asked Adam why he was hiding. Adam admitted his shame-based fear and vulnerability. Then God asked the $64,000 question, “Did you eat the fruit that was forbidden to you?”

Then it got interesting. Adam’s response was, “The woman gave it to me. You know, Eve, that woman you gave me!” Thus began the blame game that humanity’s been playing ever since. He couldn’t just admit that he’d sinned. He had to pass the buck along to Eve. “She made me do it,” he said. “It’s her fault not mine. Maybe it’s your fault, Lord. You created her and gave her to me. You should have known that she was going to be trouble!”

Then Eve got into the act, falling back on humanity’s ultimate excuse. “The Devil made me do it! He tricked me. He lied to me. He twisted my arm until I ate that stupid old fruit. Don’t blame me. Blame him!”

The Devil never makes us do anything. He tempts us. He tries to seduce us. He makes promises he never intends to keep. Silver-tongued rogue that he is he tries to talk us into taking checks that can’t be cashed. Not by us. Not even by him.

Why do we keep listening to him? Why do we keep trying to cash his worthless checks, to trust his oh so transparently false promises? Pride. Thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought. Inordinate self-esteem. A rebellious sense of self-importance. Making ourselves the center of our world. To paraphrase an old quote, we like to think of ourselves as self-made creatures, and caught up in those thoughts we tend to worship our maker.

Back to Adam and Eve, what happened back there in the Garden? I like the answer provided by Sherrill Stevens in his commentary on Geneses: “[They] had convinced themselves that they would be better off as autonomous individuals than as creatures living in subordinate obedience to God. So they attempted to seize what did not belong them and to usurp the moral prerogative that belonged to God. They took flight into a foolish fantasy, imagining that they were as wise as God…”

That’s human pride in a nutshell, wanting to go our way instead of God’s. Thinking that we can rule ourselves and the world better than God can. Thinking we can expand our limits beyond those set by God. Believing that we’re above God’s rules.

Pride, humanity’s original sin. Pride, the sin that under girds the other six deadly sins, not to mention those faults Pogo reminded us we’ve hardly used. Pride, that dark part of ourselves that makes our greed greedier, our lust lustier, and our gluttony more gluttonous. Pride, the basis for the idolatry of the self that has run rampant through every culture in history, and is so especially rampant in modern America. Pride, a sin that besets individuals, societies, cultures, nations, and every human institution including the church.

And what has all this pride and self-worship gotten us? Nothing good. It got Adam and Eve kicked out of Paradise. It’s led to the despoiling of God’s good creation. It has alienated us from God and one another. It is the overriding cause of crime, bigotry, injustice, and violence. It is the primary reason for war, be it just or unjust, be its intentions honorable or dishonorable. Take pride out of the human equation and there would be no war – or crime or violence or injustice or bigotry. Take pride out of the human equation and there will be no more sloth, envy, anger, greed, gluttony, or lust.

God created us perfect but our pride led us to choose imperfection. God created a universe ruled by his “shalom,” his peace that passes all understanding, but our pride led us to disrupt that peace. God created us for goodness and righteousness but our pride led us into evil and unrighteousness. Pride has almost obliterated the image of God in us. Pride has twisted, corrupted, and almost destroyed the true humanity for which were created.

God created us to be in an intimate relationship with him but our pride has led us down a path of alienation from him. It is pride that leads us to sin. Ultimately, by the grace of God, it is our powerlessness over our sin that eventually leads us to cry out as did Paul in the seventh chapter of Romans, “Wretched [person] that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Who indeed? Jesus Christ, the One who was tempted but would not sin. Jesus Christ, the One who lived the perfect humanity that we cannot. Jesus Christ, who in an ultimate act of God’s love took our sins upon himself and died on a cross in our place. Jesus Christ, the One who taught and modeled humble obedience to God and an humble style of human interaction. In him there was no sin. Why? In him there was no pride. Incarnated in him was the grace and mercy of the God who is unwilling to stand idly by and let us pridefully destroy ourselves.

In the book The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome, it is Dr. H. Stephen Shoemaker’s hypothesis that every one of the seven deadly sins is “an obstacle to grace.” If so, pride is the greatest obstacle of all. To accept God’s grace we must humble ourselves before the Lord. Pride is the antithesis of humility. We cannot be proud and humble at the same time. We cannot indulge our pride and at the same time accept grace. Pride will not allow us to admit how far from God we have drifted; how much in need of his redeeming love we are. Pride won’t let us exchange God for self as the center of our world.

But grace is greater than pride. What the Devil has wrought in us God has undone in Jesus Christ. If we will heed his Word and follow the leading of his Spirit, we will be led to that above-mentioned place where the Apostle Paul found himself. We will find ourselves in that place where King David was led to humbly admit, “The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” There is no pride in than admission. There is only the humble acceptance of a grace that only God can give. Amen.