Get Over Yourself

I had a lot of favorite quotes from this Mere Christianity, so it was difficult for me to choose just one for this blog. Actually, I really wanted to do the whole chapter on Pride being the Great Sin. But since that isn't the purpose of this blog, I'm choosing one from that chapter:

"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 you see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether" (112). 

What I loved about this whole chapter is how much I can relate to it. Lewis talks about the nature of pride and how it basically causes all other sins. He also says that it is the one sin that every man is guilty of, and every man will hate it when he sees it in someone else. But unless a man is a follower of God he will never recognize it in himself. Even as a follower of God it can be difficult to recognize it in yourself. This is because when we are prideful we do not see ourselves as as the sinful beings we are, and our human nature likes that because it feels good. That is why Lewis suggests the test to ascertain whether we are being prideful that is found in my quote. 

C.S. Lewis suggests that one of the biggest and most dangerous sources of pride in the Christian life is the Christian life. In the process of striving to become the men and women God wants us to be, we begin to see ourselves as "better" than the rest of the men and women in the world. We see that we are starting to live "good" lives and as a result view ourselves as "good" people, or at least as more admirable than others. And in doing this we begin to see only ourselves and not God. When this happens, Lewis says, the devil is doing work on us, trying to make us more suitable for his use. And we certainly are, since that pride surely does not help the image Christianity has among non-believers. According to Lewis, this state of a sense of superiority is recognizable to Christians—that is, they can know it is happening by acknowledging that they do feel themselves being prideful. He counters that rather than viewing ourselves as better, we should not see ourselves at all when it comes to being in God's presence. When striving to live as God wants us to, we should not focus on ourselves and our accomplishments in the Christian life but rather on God and who He is. If we are at all a part of the focus, we should only be recognizing that in comparison to God we are simply an insignificant and filthy being.

I agree that it is very easy to become filled with pride while I am supposedly going about my Christian life. The best example I can think of for myself is in Christian behavior. I don't do a lot of the things that other students my age do, and because of that it's easy to see myself as above them. I can completely disregard them as people and only consider some of their more unfavorable actions. In doing this I elevate myself and only think about what I have done. This is the wrong view to have about life. Life is not about what I do that makes me "better" than other people. Rather, it is about what Christ has already done for me that makes it possible for me to live in relationship with Him. And when I am truly living in relationship with Christ, the relationship goes like this: He is the overwhelming majority of my life, with me being an irrelevant, soiled, little speck in the corner somewhere. It's not about me; I just need to get over myself.