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The Valley of Vision, “Shortcomings”
My sin is to look on my faults and be discouraged,
or to look on my good and be puffed up (85).
Aaron Orendorff There are two sides to the sin called pride. On the one hand, there is blatant and overt pride: the belief that we are fundamentally “better than.” This sort of pride is easily identified; it is pride as we know it; pride in its most recognizable form; scarlet letter pride with an emblazoned, capital “P” painted across its chest.
But there is another form of pride that is much more subtle, much more insidious. While overt pride flourishes in the light, its underside hides in the dark. The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous tellingly calls this sin “pride in reverse.” Not that it is the opposite of pride (i.e., un-pride), but rather that it is pride run off in another direction. The motive and power are still the same, but its shape is different.
Reverse-pride wallows. It revels in self-pity. It moans of embarrassment and shame. Reverse-pride often feels like justice—particularly if we’re in the wrong or if we’ve legitimately messed-up—but it does nothing to bring us closer to God or other people. Reverse-pride is built on the assumption that I am the center of the world, that if I fail, the world will fail (or at least the small part of the world I’m desperately trying to rule and control).
Humility (that which is legitimately “un-pride”) begins not by degrading or devaluing ourselves, but by recognizing who we actually are: we are not God. God is God and the world (even our petty corner of it) is His, not ours. Humility aims to forget itself by refocusing its attention on God as God. It delights to see God made much of (whether through us or not). Humility brings freedom from the crushing self-centered weight of both success (“better than”) and failure.
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6 comments:
I couldn't agree more with your statements in this article. I find reverse-pride is a much more tempting, and often much more socially acceptable, version of pride. We have to realize that someone beating himself up unnecessarily is just as harmful as puffing oneself up unnecessarily.
I don’t agree at all. You sound ridiculous. My little boy who isn’t doing well in math and struggling to understand something that his class understands was told by his discouraging teacher that he has reverse pride because he thinks he’s not good at math. This thought process is dangerous and you shouldn’t be making up psychology terms whether you have a degree or not. Encouragement is what people mean
Encouragement is what people need!
Wow!! I never saw it like that. Cheers
Hmm - I think you are missing the point. You are angry at your child's tracher
If you have not worked the steps it's very hard to understand.
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