Nothingman

It is summer time, and for me that means, camp season! One of my favorite aspects of camp is called team building, where we place an obstacle or challenge in front of a group of students and they must overcome it together as a team. For several years I have worked a station called "The Wall". It is exactly what it sounds like, a giant wall that they must get their entire team over. It stands just under 10' and it is formidable. So far, I have had only one team fail. The reason they failed was because of the one problem that we all have, pride.

C.S. Lewis says this about pride: 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 that they 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 Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. 


I have been talking about pride for several weeks. However, I believe that the greatest problem that we all have is pride. It is the reason we so desperately want to be successful, so that we can stand up tall, and say, "Behold my greatness! All tremble and despair, because you will never be as awesome as me!" It taints everything we do, our lives, our relationships, and our worship. We so bad want to be something, but in the end, we become nothing. 


Pride is the reason that relationships are torn apart. We rip and tear at each other as we claw our way to our own greatness. We use each other to get what we want, we trample on each other to get what we want, and we think only of ourselves. We want to be something, but in the end we are really nothing. The question is, how can we, as Christians, say that we follow Christ, and yet allow pride to run our lives? 


Lewis continues: 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 worshiping 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. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.


The reality is, only God is great. He will have none before him. Proverbs 16: 18 -19 says,
 ¹⁸ Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall. 
¹⁹ It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor
than to divide the spoil with the proud. 

In our vain efforts to become great, we will always fail, because God will always bring low the proud. In the end you will become nothing. But Jesus says, "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."


Again, I know that this seems opposite to the rest of the world, But if we try to make ourselves into something, we become nothing, yet if we make ourselves nothing, God will make us into something!


Pride is the greatest sin according to Lewis, and I tend to agree with him. Pride corrupts and spoils all aspects of life, and in the end it leads you to nothing but destruction.


May you realize that only God is great. And may you realize that in order for you to be great, you must first become nothing.
                                                                                                  Peace and Love,
                                                                                                                    Steve
If you want to read the entire article by Lewis, follow this link: 
http://www.btinternet.com/~a.ghinn/greatsin.htm