Harold Keller / L’Observateur / November 2, 1999

If humility is the key to success, why does society stress pride so much? Pride is the opposite of humility and before every great person’s fall, it was pride that was responsible.

I often heard it said that success ruins more people than failure. That’seasy to understand because success puffs up and pride enters. Defeatdeflates and makes one humble.

You might ask what motivated me to talk about this one vice called pride? First of all, I can relate to pride very much. I had enough of that in mylifetime and still have too much.

The other reason is the attitude I’ve observed of some candidates and supporters this past election. The losing teams have been humbled andsome winners have allowed pride, which is the enemy of greatest, to sneak in.

The best definition of pride I’ve ever heard is from Chuck Colson’s book, Born Again, and I quote: “There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or thatthey cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christianaccuse himself of this vice. There is no fault which we are moreunconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the morewe dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit. Pride leads to everyother vice. It is the complete anti-God state of mind.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 bringpeople together. You may find good fellowship and jokes and friendlinessamong drunken people or unchaste people. But Pride always means enmity- it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity toGod.

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 isalways looking down on things and people. And, of course, as long as youare looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

For Pride is spiritual cancer. It eats up the very possibility of love, orcontentment, or even common sense.”

Harold Keller is a regular columnist for L’Observateur.

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