Pride can be a good thing. I am the proud grandfather of two adorable boys, almost 5 and three months. I revel in watching them as they grow. I feel their love when they talk to me. And yes, the three-month-old talks. He has his own language, of course, which is impossible to translate. I am a proud person who has accomplished much in my life. I have five talented, successful children and a loving wife. Retirement from public school teaching is great.
What bothers me about pride is watching and listening to people who expound upon their accomplishments and declare that no one is a good as they are. Self-righteous, hypocritical snobs who declare they have the only right answers to questions which have no right answer. I must be careful so that I do not join that group. Hypocrisy abounds in our political season this year and whereas I do have my favorites in this state, other states will face a daunting task of sifting through the minutia of promises given but unfulfilled.
My father’s preached about the sin of pride in a sermon given in 1950 in Moscow, Idaho. I think it speaks to the challenge we all have when it comes to being human and mostly self-serving. When I think about pride and greed and the effects they have on us as a society, I know I have much to learn. Enjoy the words from 60 years ago which still ring true today.

The Sin of Pride
“God, I thank thee that I am not as other men are. Luke 18:11
In the Gospel for today Jesus tells a little story which must have shocked those who first heard it. We know it so well that it makes little impression on us. We expect no good of the Pharisees, and we know that Jesus was very friendly toward publicans and sinners. But the impression this story made upon those who first heard it was just the opposite, because the Pharisees were the best people of the time. They really were. They were not all hypocrites. Jesus never said they were. They were a good deal like the Puritans in New England. They sincerely wished to purify the Jewish religion, and to lift it to as a high a plan as possible. Jesus refused to join any of the parties into which the Jewish religion was divided — The Sadducees, who were quislings, who ran the Temple and robbed the people who worshipped there, and who were collaborationists with the Romans, the Zealots; who were terrorists, just like those in Palestine today, patriotic, but misguided; or the Essenes, who lived in the desert — apart from the life of the world. This may sound strange, but it is true, that the people whose views were nearest those of Jesus were Pharisees, that is the best of them. Therefore, this parable shocked all the people who heard it.
I think we can bet get the real effect of it by trying to imagine how Jesus might tell it if He were here today. I think He would say something like this. “One Sunday morning two men came to church. One of them was a vestryman, who walked up to his pew and knelt in prayer. He said a formal prayer, but what he was really thinking was this: ‘It is most gratifying to be an influential member of this parish and to have been able to do so much to help support it. I am thankful that because of my leadership the Every Member Canvas was so successful, and that because of my generous gift the people of parish were inspired to raise the salary of our rector. I certainly thank the Lord that I have been able to accomplish so much for His church, and that I have been strong enough to resist so many temptations to which others have yielded. Thank the Lord that I am not that man I just passed in the back pew. I wonder what he’s doing here anyhow. He’s a saloon-keeper and has a gambling-joint on the side. He’s been in jail at least once.’
The man in the back pew had not been to church since he sang in the choir many years ago. But he followed the service, and all through the service, there was just one thought in his mind, ‘O Lord, I have made a mess of my life. Please help me to be a better man.’
I tell you, God has more use for that man than for the man who had done so much for the church, and who was so well satisfied with himself.
Told this way, the parable is something of a shock, but no more so than it was when Jesus first told it. In saying that God was more pleased wit the publican than the Pharisee, it almost seemed, did it not, as if Jesus was condemning righteousness and praising sin.
But He did not mean to condemn the good deeds of the Pharisees nor to praise the sins of the publican. What wa wrong with the Pharisee was not his good deeds, but his attitude toward them, his complete satisfaction with them. And what were right with the publican were not his sins, but his attitude toward them. He wanted to confess them and get rid of them, and rise above them.
Pride is the greatest of all the sins because it is the most selfish. Like no other sin, it separates us from others and lifts us above them. Highway robbers, gamblers, drunkards, harlots, can enjoy their sins together, and share with each other the pleasure they get out of them. But the proud person cannot share his pride with others. No one would be proud of having a million dollars if everyone else had the same. No, the proud man glories in the fact that he has more than anyone else. He is proud because he thinks that he is a better man than anyone else. In school he is not proud because he is bright and has passed his examination with a good mark. He is proud because his is the smartest pupil in the class, or thinks he is.
And the proud person seldom realizes that he is committing this great sin. The Pharisee in the Temple or the proud man in the church thought they had good reason to be satisfied with themselves. But how we hate this pride, this conceit, when someone else has it. We come home from a party and complain that someone pushed himself forward and wanted to do all the talking. What really troubles us is that we wanted to be the center of things. We condemn the other man’s pride just because we ourselves have so much of it. We hate pride in others because it interferes with our own pride.
How can we be delivered from this great sin, the greatest sin because it separates us from our fellow men, because it leads us to despise them, to think that we are the center of the universe about which everything should turn.
The first step to true Christian humility is to realize that neither god nor the world owes us anything. As St. Paul so truly says, everything that we have was given to us. Instead of sitting down and glorying in the wonderful things that we have been able to accomplish, let us look at our inheritance, the teaching we have received from our parents, from our church, the numberless blessings that have come to us, and confess that we have not done one-half of what would have been possible if we had lived up to our opportunities.
There need be no morbid humiliation of ourselves. We do not need to call ourselves “vile earth and miserable sinners” No; we are children of God, which means that we belong to the Royal Family. We are a “chosen race, the royal priesthood, the consecrated nation, God’s own people.” But because we are that, we must not be proud of ourselves, and exalt ourselves above the less privileged. We are God’s chosen People, but for one reason, “That we may declare the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into His wonderful light.”
There are two helpful means of keeping ourselves humble. The first is to realize that everything we have, everything we have done, we owe in some measure to someone else. There are some foolish people who themselves “self-made men.” They are independent souls who say that they owe nothing to anyone. But let us sit down sometime and ask ourselves just how much we have done all by ourselves and how much was given to us. We may have certain natural gifts and talents. We owe those to our parents and our ancestors from whom we have some sort of an education.
Somebody besides ourselves taught us a good deal. And how about those experiences which some people call chance and others call the Providence of God, which have completely altered our lives? We happened to meet a man on a certain day who recommended us for a job, or who gave us an idea which we successfully worked out. No, once we start to analyze our loves, there is very little left of which we can say, “This I did all by myself, with help and advice from no one, and I alone deserve all the credit.
The second cure for pride is to remember how many souls there are greater, more worthy than we are, and how there is one great soul before whom we are but dust. The moment we begin to feel proud of ourselves, satisfied with what we have accomplished, let us stand beside Jesus Christ, and how we shrink. If we think that no one has suffered more bravely than we have all manner of trials and sacrifices, let us stand a moment beside the Cross of Calvary, and we dare not presume to call anything that we have suffered a Cross. If we think that we have stood up pretty bravely against misrepresentation and slander, let us stand a moment beside our Lord before Pilate. Whenever we are tempted to pride, we have about to stand beside the Master and we shall have to say, as Peter did, “I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
Pride is the greatest sin because it is the most selfish. It is the one sin which separates us from others and makes us despise them. It is the most dangerous sin because we so seldom recognize it ourselves, though we cannot stand it in others. The cure is to realize how small we are, how much we owe to God and to God’s children, and best of all, to stand at our full height beside Jesus Christ, and discover how very small we really are.
There isn’t a man living who can honestly thank God that he isn’t as other men are.
The Reverend Norman Stockwell August 20, 1950 – Moscow, Idaho