Tuesday, October 14, 2008

A Diseased Comparison

C.S Lewis pointed something interesting about pride. When people take pride in something about themselves (may it be power, wealth, fame or things of the similar sort), the pride is never place in the thing itself. That is to mean that fundamentally, they are not proud of the power they hold per say. Then he goes on to talk about the idea that pride is actually place in the fact that they have MORE power then the others. So to say, pride is basically comparison. It will always be better, richer, more powerful, more beautiful etc. If the problem is purely material in nature so to speak, it would go away if we make both people equally filthy rich, both equally powerful. Hence pride is in fact a diseased sort of comparison, and this also explains the other sins such as envy and ingratitude.

So why did God places the idea of comparison into our finite grey matter? I cannot really come to a conclusive answer but I believed He placed a few hints here and there in my head. The idea of comparison originally conceived to help our limited minds to understand the concepts of God. [...] God uses these comparisons to hint us of his existences and the descriptions of His characteristics. Comparisons are correctly used when they are used to compare things of man with God, and if we were to use it to compare things of man with the things of other men, it's little wonder why we turned out like this.

Be careful of the comparisons.

(From R3)

I was thinking... pride is at the heart of it all, SELF-centred. It dethrones God from the centre of everything we do, even our morals and ethics. Even in our desire to grow, the trap of falling into pride is so easy. We think it our right not to fall into sin - and when we sin, we become angry, because we can't accept the fact that we are actually capable of sinning (oh the horror! I sinned!).

Just a thought...

Edited:
Actually, pride can be described more accurately as independence from God and others.

No comments: