Pride: Man's Undoing

Mark Dunagan
11/13/16 - Sunday Evening

Pride: Man's Undoing

Many are familiar with Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling". This is of course not the only warning against arrogance in the Scriptures. Proverbs 29:23 adds "A man's pride will bring him low". Other English translations or paraphrases read, "A man's pride and sense of self-importance will ruin him" (Amplified). "Your pride can bring you down" (ERV). Seeing that there are so many warnings against becoming arrogant, it appears that over-confidence in our own wisdom and abilities is a common problem. In the Scriptures we even find that very faithful Kings such as Uzziah and Hezekiah were tripped up and acted foolishly because of a false feeling of self-importance (2 Chronicles 26:16; 32:25). Needless to say, Christians are not immune from becoming prideful and thus are also admonished to remain humble (James 4:6). 

Very Strong Warnings

Instead of simply advising, "Hey, you might want to avoid pride", our Creator condemns human arrogance in quite strong terms:

1. "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil; pride and arrogance and the evil way" (Proverbs 8:13).
2. "Haughty eyes and a proud heart, the lamp of the wicked is sin" (Proverbs 21:4).
3. "For from within, out of the heart of men proceed evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness" (Mark 7:21-22).
4. "God is opposed to the proud" (James 4:6).

Pride Can Undo Everything

The danger of pride is seen even from the very beginning during the first temptation in the Garden when Satan lured Eve into thinking that in eating of the forbidden fruit she would become "like God" (Genesis 3:5). How skilled our deceiver that he does not promise that Eve would become like him, for no one wants to be like Satan. Rather, He tempts Eve and the rest of us by falsely claiming that in sinning they will finally become what they want: the god over their own life. How countless the secular humanist's many voices in the past and in the present who arrogantly claim that not only can be become like God, but that we are indeed already gods. No wonder John warned about the "boastful pride of life" so prevalent in the world that is in rebellion to God (1 John 2:15-17). 

In Our Own Time

Back on January 1st, 2008 Oprah Winfrey on her XM Satellite Radio program began offering a program entitled, “A Course in Miracles”, a course that actually originated with Dr. Helen Schucman and Dr. William Thetford. In 1965 Schucman who was an associate professor at the Columbian Presbyterian Medical Center experienced a series of dreams. Soon after that she began to hear a voice that she identified as Jesus. She reported that she heard from the voice the words, “This is a course in miracles. Please take notes”. Between 1965 and 1972 she filled nearly thirty stenographic notebooks with words she claimed to have heard from the voice. Eventually, working with Dr. Thetford, this material became “The Course”. Since it first became available for sale in 1976, over 1.5 million copies have been sold. It is this course that was popularized by Oprah Winfrey in her interviews with Marianne Williamson, who is an author and minister in the Unity Church. Her earliest fame was for her talks on A Course in Miracles and her big break was when Oprah invited her on to The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss her first book, A Return to Love. This book is based on Williamson’s experiences in teaching A Course in Miracles, and thus it is fully labeled, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. Hence, the twenty million viewers who tuned in daily to the Oprah Winfrey Show and those who listened to her XM program were introduced to the concepts in the course.

The course itself is a series of mental exercises that one does for a few minutes each day over the course of a year. The course itself is made up of 365 statements with each one you are given a new statement to recite with a brief explanation. The course contains a lot of biblical terminology, words such as salvation, atonement, sin, Christ, heaven, the second coming and others are used, but with definitions that are not biblical. With the background of what Satan told Eve in the Garden, consider the following statements in the course:

# 35 “I am very holy”

The workbook says, “You are holy because your mind is part of God’s. And because you are holy, your sight must be holy as well. ‘Sinless’ means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless  or not. If your mind is part of God’s you must be sinless, or a part of His mind would be sinful”. This point is often stressed in the material, for example:

            # 38 “There is nothing my holiness cannot do”

“Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world… Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God… Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems”. “My Self is holy beyond all the thoughts of holiness of which I now conceive”. #252 The Son of God is my identity. #253 “My Self is ruler of the universe”: “It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden to myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept”. 

Such a claim fails to recognize, that even the true God does not receive everything He desires (1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), much less those in His creation. The Bible and even a cursory glimpse into reality make it clear that we are not sinless (Romans 3:12; 23) and we are only deceiving ourselves if we make such a claim (1 John 1:8-10) for who is or has ever met a single sinless person? Not only does the course claim we are sinless, it equally affirms, “You can never be deprived of your perfect holiness” (#41). By contrast, both in the people and in real life we see people who lose their holiness or who never obtain it (Hebrews 12:14-16; Revelation 3:4). If you are getting the idea that this course is teaching the old worn idea that we are “God”, you are right. There are a number of expressions that point to this false concept:

            # 70 “My salvation comes from me”: “Today’s idea places you in charge of the universe… All temptation is nothing more than some form of the basic temptation not to believe the idea for today. Salvation seems to come from anywhere except from you… When you realize that all guilt is solely an invention of your mind, you must also realize that guilt and salvation must be in the same place. In understanding this you are saved”.

You Will Be Like God?

In light of such boastful statements I can see why God selected a term rendered conceited in 1 Timothy 6:4, which literally means "to envelop in smoke" and thus describes the blindness caused when one is surrounded by smoke. Only someone who cannot see clearly would ever think they were God. What makes it obvious we and others are not God? Well, for starters:

1. We cannot solve our own problems by ourselves.
2. We do not have miraculous powers.
3. We die and get sick.
4. We cannot predict what will happen tomorrow, not to mention what is far into the future.
5. We can be deceived and fooled.

Manifestations of Pride

1. "I am comfortable, and I don't need God anymore": Deuteronomy 8:11
2. "Everything I have I have accomplished all by myself": Deuteronomy 8:14
3. "Who says that I can't offer that as worship? I can offer anything I desire in worship to God": 2 Chronicles 26:18
4. Anytime we opt for our sinful idea instead of what God advises in Scripture we are walking the path of pride, for we are in effect saying, "I know what my Creator says, but I have a better idea" or "I know that God says that what I want right now is off limits, but I believe in the long run it will make me happy". So anytime we opt for our sinful solution thinking, "I know better than anyone else what will make me happy", we are only setting up ourselves for a big fall.
5. We know more. Our culture reads what the Bible says about marriage, divorce, fornication, homosexuality, gender, parenting, and so on, and in pride asserts, "We know more about those topics. We understand gender issues and human sexuality at a much deeper level than ancient Biblical writers".
6. "We cannot be wrong. We are the experts. Just look at the results of our study."

Is It Any Wonder?

No wonder God is opposed to the proud and warns that pride will ruin a person. For what is going to happen in a person's life, in their relationships, and what sort of decisions will they be making when they adopt the attitude:

1. I don't need God.
2. I know it all; I don't need any advice: Psalm 131:1
3. I don't need the family of God for help and support.
4. I don't need Jesus and His blood. I don't need to be forgiven.
5. I do not sin.
6. I don't need to pray and be grateful for my blessings.

We are Not the First

We are not the first nation or culture to imagine we have so arrived that and have it so figured out, that we are ourselves are so awesome we've outgrown our need for a relationship with our Creator. Many other cultures thought this as well (Zechariah 9:6; Jeremiah 48:7; Hosea 13:6; Psalm 123:4). Let's instead choose to remain humble. While the world rushes forward in reckless and unfounded self-confidence relying upon its own wisdom, let us trust in God's eternal wisdom (Psalm 40:4), and avoid the fall that always results when mere men think that they have it figured out apart from Him.

Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.net
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net