Tuesday, January 17, 2006

pride

I'm slowly kicking into the groove of school. It is still extremely hard, because I'm not used to juggling work and play, but I'm getting there. Hopefully when school settles down by next wednesday, my brain will adjust accordingly and bring me back right on track. :)

I've shared with a brother in law (haha, a brother-in-christ who is in law school) about my struggles to keep up with the pressures of excelling amidst the shoals of intellectuals who seem to breeze through the curriculum with absolute ease. And I find that academically, it never fails to lower the value I place upon myself, and it is only with repeated reminders that I somehow manage to pull myself out of the bottomless pit of self-deprecation which I frequently find myself falling into. My dear brother then kindly zap a chapter from a book by CS Lewis called Mere Christianity to encourage me. I found it entirely enriching and an essential read for anyone who struggles with pride and self-esteem, something which I do too. Here's an excerpt:

The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men.

It is exceedingly provocative, and will no doubt, make one assess oneself in a highly critical and even, to a certain extent, self-disparaging manner. But I gladly take it, because it is only with the absence of rose-tinted glasses upon oneself that one can strive to eradicate the faults one has.

And after reading this single chapter by CS Lewis, my admiration for him as gone up several hundred notches. Heh. :P He has an amazing brain; his intelligence is mind-blowing. Whoa.

posted by solitude @ 5:41 PM Comments: 6