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The Great Sin | C. S. Lewis · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to the Deep Dive where we take your chosen material and
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  distill the key concepts, giving you a comprehensive
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  understanding without all the information overload.
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  So today's focus comes from a really a really crucial section
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  of CS Lewis's Mere Christianity. We're looking at his thoughts on
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  what he calls the great sin and this material, it really asks us
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  to reconsider, well, everything we think we know about moral
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  failings to sort of identify the one vice Lewis sees as the
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  essential evil. It's powerful source material
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  for sure, because Lewis just, he immediately throws out the usual
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  list of bad things. You know, he shifts the focus
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  away from the sins we can see easily, the ones tied to
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  appetite or, or physical things. And he puts a spotlight on
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  something much more internal, much more structural, and
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  because of that, much more deadly.
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  So I think our mission for this deep dive is to really get a
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  handle on why this specific vice is so destructive.
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  We need to figure out how it's different from other faults, and
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  maybe most critically, why it's so hard to spot in ourselves.
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  Right, that part is what he hits on 1st.
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  The fact that it's the one thing everyone loathes in other
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  people, but that almost no one outside of a Christian context
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  ever thinks they have. Not at all.
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  I mean, think about it, people will admit to being bad
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  tempered. They'll say oh, I have a short
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  fuse or, you know, I struggle with this or that appetite.
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  But you almost never hear someone say, you know, my
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  biggest problem is that I'm just incredibly proud there's this,
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  this perfect camouflage it has. It's a strange blind spot, isn't
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  it? So we're dealing with an
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  internal condition that resists its own diagnosis.
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  Lewis, of course, calls this vice pride, or self conceit, and
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  its opposite virtue is humility. But the scale of what he's
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  claiming here is it's huge. He's not just saying it's one of
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  the seven deadly sins. He's saying it sits at the
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  absolute center of Christian morality.
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  Yes, the mother sin, as you might call it.
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  And that's where the thinking gets really vital.
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  Because what Lewis is saying is if you managed to control your
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  lust or your greed or your anger, but you don't deal with
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  pride, well then you haven't really done anything as
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  spiritual value. The root is still there, just
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  waiting to sprout in new ways. OK, so let's get right into
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  that, because this is where his language can be, well, a little
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  shocking. He says flat out that things
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  like unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, they're flea bites
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  in comparison to pride. Why is such a stark comparison?
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  I mean, some of those sins cause immense visible damage.
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  How can you call them flea bites?
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  It's a rhetorical shock. I think he's trying to get us to
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  completely reorient our moral compass.
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  He's not saying the damage they cause is small.
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  What he's arguing is that those sins operate on, let's say, the
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  surface of our lives. They often come from our animal
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  nature, you know, misdirected desires, a loss of control.
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  They could ruin your life, absolutely, but they don't
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  necessarily attack the very core orientation of your soul toward
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  God. So it's a matter of origin.
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  Sins of the body are a failure to manage the created world, but
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  pride is a failure to acknowledge the Creator himself.
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  Precisely. That's why pride is the
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  essential vice for Lewis. It's the original sin itself.
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  He states it so clearly. It was through pride that the
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  devil became the devil. So he's positioning pride as the
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  first act of cosmic mutiny, the choice to put the self at the
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  center of reality where God should be.
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  And if you look at it that way as spiritual rebellion, then it
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  makes sense why he'd call it the complete anti God state of mind
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  rebellion is. Well, it's a total rejection of
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  authority. It's more than just rejection.
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  It's an attempt at replacement. Lewis argues that pride is
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  purely spiritual. It comes, he says, direct from
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  hell. Think about it this way.
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  Someone who struggles with gluttony is at least
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  acknowledging a need for something outside of themselves.
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  The food, the sensation, the desire is corrupted, sure, but
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  it's not entirely self generated.
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  Pride, on the other hand, needs nothing outside the self.
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  It's a self-contained arrogance. It's the desire to be
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  independent of God, to owe him nothing.
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  Which makes it so much more subtle and more deadly because
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  our usual defenses like self-control or discipline, they
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  might not work against it. They could even become tools of
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  pride. And that is such a critical
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  point. If you stop drinking because of
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  self respect, Lewis would say, you've just swapped one master
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  for another. You've fed your for pride, and
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  this creates what he calls the chain reaction.
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  Once that desire to be superior is in charge, every other
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  action, even good ones, gets filtered through it.
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  It produces jealousy, hatred, all the rest.
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  So the spiritual failure comes first, and it causes the moral
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  failure. OK, so if we all have this huge
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  blind spot, how on earth do we begin to figure out how proud we
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  are? Lewis gives us a really
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  practical test for it, doesn't he?
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  An external test for an internal problem.
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  He does. It's what you could call the
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  snub test. He tells us to ask ourselves,
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  how much do I dislike it when other people snub me or refuse
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  to take any notice of me or or patronize me or show off our
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  reaction when we feel ignored or diminished?
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  Lewis says. That's the most accurate gauge
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  of our own self conceit. OK, let's unpack that reaction.
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  Why do we feel that surge of anger when someone else gets the
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  attention we wanted? What's happening there?
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  It's because, as Lewis puts it, each person's pride is in
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  competition with everyone else's pride.
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  You're annoyed that someone else is the big noise because you
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  want it to be. You feel a loss of status, and
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  status is the currency that pride deals in.
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  If you genuinely didn't care about being the smartest or most
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  important person in the room, a snub wouldn't even register.
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  So this is what separates pride from everything else, this
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  competitive core, he says. It's competitive by its very
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  nature. It's not that it sometimes
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  causes competition. It is competition that's the
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  foundational piece. Pride gets no pleasure from just
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  having something. It only gets pleasure from
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  having more of it than the next person.
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  If you have a beautiful house, Pride doesn't care about the
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  architecture, it cares that your house is bigger or nicer than
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  your neighbors. So the thing itself, the house,
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  the talent, the money, it's almost beside the point.
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  The pleasure is in the gap, in being above the rest.
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  Yes, he makes it so clear. If everyone on earth were
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  certainly made equal in wealth, looks and talent, the proud
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  person would have absolutely nothing left to be proud about.
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  The game would be over. Wow.
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  So once competition is gone, pride is gone?
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  That's it. Yeah, this constant, restless
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  need for superiority is what makes it so different and what
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  makes it so destructive. So building on that, Lewis then
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  draws this really clear line in the sand between pride and the
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  other vices. He says other faults are
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  competitive only by accident, and this difference in their
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  basic structure is why he calls them flea bites.
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  They might lead to conflict sometimes, but that's not their
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  main purpose. Let's use his examples because
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  they really make it clear. The comparison between lust and
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  pride really isolates what's going on.
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  OK, so take lust. The sexual impulse might make
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  two men compete, but only if they both happen to want the
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  same person. It's accidental.
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  They could just as easily desire two different people and there
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  would be no competition at all. Their focus is on the object of
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  desire. Right, but the proud man, he
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  operates on a totally different level.
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  He might steal someone's partner just to prove he's the better
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  man. The partner in that case isn't
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  really a person to him. She's a trophy, a way to win.
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  Exactly. The pleasure isn't in the
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  relationship, it's in the act of winning the rivalry.
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  The competition is the whole point.
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  That reframed so many conflicts, doesn't it?
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  From office politics to relationships, it suggests we're
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  often not fighting over the thing itself, but over the
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  status that comes with winning the thing.
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  And he applies the same logic to wealth.
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  He contrasts greed and pride. Greed in its simple form, just
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  wants money for stuff. Better food, a nicer house, more
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  comfort. But there's a limit to that,
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  right? Lewis uses the example of a man
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  earning, say, £10,000 a year. Back then, that was enough for
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  every possible luxury. So greed should be satisfied at
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  that point. The appetite for pleasure is
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  full. The question is what makes that
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  man push to earn 20,000 or 100,000?
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  It can't be for more pleasure. He already has all that.
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  No, it's pride. The true enjoyment now comes
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  from the wish for control, for status.
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  The desire is to be richer than that other rich man.
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  It's about power and influence. The goal shifts from satisfying
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  the body to dominating other people.
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  That image he uses of wanting to move others about, like toy
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  soldiers? That's that's chilling.
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  And it applies to everything, not just money.
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  The intellectual who has to make everyone else feel stupid.
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  The person who must win every single argument.
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  The driving force is always the desire for control and
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  superiority. And because it's always
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  competitive, it can never rest. The moment you're #1 you're just
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  afraid of who's at #2 There's always a rival.
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  Which leads him to a devastating conclusion.
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  So many of the evils we blame on greed or selfishness are
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  actually at their root, caused by pride, because greed can in
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  theory, be satisfied, pride cannot.
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  Which means pride is by its very nature a source of misery and
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  division, far more than the simpler vices.
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  Absolutely. Pride always means enmity, he
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  says. It is enmity.
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  Other vices, like drunk of this, can sometimes even lead to a
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  kind of dark fellowship. People bond over their shared
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  weakness, but pride ensures conflict.
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  It guarantees it because it demands A hierarchy where you
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  have to be on top. It creates isolation.
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  And most importantly, it's not just enmity between people.
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  It creates enmity toward God. This is why it's the essential
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  vice for Lewis. This is the theological core.
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  Lewis argues that when you come before God, you encounter
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  something that is in every way immeasurably superior to
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  yourself. God is the ultimate, undeniable
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  competitor to the proud self. Very existence of God demands
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  that you give up your claim to be self-sufficient.
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  So a proud person literally cannot know God, because knowing
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  God requires looking up, acknowledging your dependence.
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  But the proud person is always looking down.
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  Right. They're looking down on things,
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  on people to judge and compare, and you can't see something that
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  is above you if you were always looking down.
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  It's a structural impossibility. Your whole spiritual posture is
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  wrong. The very first step of faith,
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  surrender, submission is the one thing a proud person refuses to
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  do. The great irony then is that the
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  person who wants to be seen is the ultimate success.
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  The one who is self-made is the one person who is incapable of
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  meeting the actual source of all reality and goodness.
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  Pride locks you out. OK, that inability to look up
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  raises a really difficult and frankly a very uncomfortable
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  question that Lewis tackles. How is it that we see people who
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  are obviously consumed by pride, arrogant, self-righteous who
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  also claim to be deeply religious?
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  If pride blocks God, how do they square that circle?
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  Lewis's answer is it's stark. He says they are worshipping an
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  imaginary God. They've constructed a God, maybe
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  not even consciously, who exists to confirm their own
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  superiority. They're using religion not to
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  submit to a creator, but to get leverage over other created
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  beings. It sounds like a kind of
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  spiritual transaction, a deal. It's a tragic trade off, he
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  says. They pay.
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  What is it? A penny worth of imaginary
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  humility to this phantom God. They might say, oh, I am nothing
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  before God, but in return they get a pound's worth of pride
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  towards their fellow men. They imagine this God approves
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  of them, thinks they're special, and ranks them higher than all
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  the ordinary people. So their religion becomes just
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  another tool for creating status, a way to feel superior.
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  And Louis gives us a really sharp way to test this in
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  ourselves. Anytime we find our religious
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  life making us feel good about ourselves, and especially making
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  us feel that we are better or smarter than someone else, we
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  could be certain that we're dealing with pride, not God.
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  Because true contact with God diminishes the self, it doesn't
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  inflate it. The real test of being in God's
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  presence, he says, is one of two things.
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  Either you forget about yourself entirely because you're so
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  caught up in his glory, or you see yourself for what you are, a
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  small dirty object in comparison to His perfection.
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  And Lewis actually prefers the first one for getting yourself
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  all together. It's a scary thought that the
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  worst of all vices can sneak right into the center of our
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  religious life. But then he takes it a step
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  further. He says the devil can actually
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  use pride to cure us of the simpler vices.
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  This is the spiritual cancer analogy.
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  It's just devastatingly accurate.
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  A man might overcome, say, cowardice, not out of love for
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  God, but by appealing to his dignity, to his self respect.
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  He thinks I'm too good for that sort of behavior.
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  It's beneath me. And Lewis says the devil just
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  laughs. He is perfectly happy to see
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  someone become outwardly moral and self controlled as long as
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  in the process he is setting up the dictatorship of pride inside
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  that person's soul. He's happy to trade a few
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  behavioral sins for the total corruption of the person's
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  spiritual orientation. The man becomes a respectable
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  shell, but his internal engine is now pure self glorification.
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  And that pride, that cancer, eats up the very possibility of
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  love or contentment, or even common sense.
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  Love requires seeing value in others.
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  Pride only sees them as a measuring stick.
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  Contentment requires rest. Pride demands endless striving.
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  So given how subtle and destructive this is, we have to
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  be really careful. Louis points out four common
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  misunderstandings about all this that we should probably walk
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  through. OK, let's take them one by one.
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  The first one is about enjoying praise versus being proud.
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  Where's the line? This is a big one for anyone who
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  does anything public or creative.
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  Right. Louis is clear that simply
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  enjoying praise is not pride, Not if your pleasure comes from
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  having pleased someone you rightly wanted to please, a
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  child, getting a pat on the back, or, you know, hearing well
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  done, good and faithful servant. The pleasure there is in the
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  connection, in the success of the ACT.
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  It's focused outward. So when does it become a
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  problem? When does it cross the line into
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  pride? The second your focus shifts
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  inward, you go from thinking, oh good, he liked it, to thinking,
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  what a fine person I must be to have done that.
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  The delight is no longer in the praise giver or the work, but in
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  yourself. That's the danger zone.
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  Which leads into his point about vanity.
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  He calls vanity the least bad kind of pride, which seems
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  backward. Why would constantly needing
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  applause be less dangerous? It's a brilliant insight into
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  human psychology. The vain person who is always
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  angling for compliments at least still values other people enough
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  to want their approval. They are still, in a way,
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  dependent on the community. They're still human.
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  They haven't become totally self-sufficient.
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  Exactly. The real, what he calls
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  diabolical pride, is when a person gets to a point where
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  they look down on others so much they don't care what anyone
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  thinks. They achieved a kind of
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  spiritual independence. They dismiss the rabble.
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  They say they only act to satisfy their own ideals, their
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  own conscience. They've become a law unto
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  themselves. And that's why he says it's
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  better the frying pan than the fire.
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  Don't use that kind of deep pride to cure simple vanity.
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  Right, you'd be trading a shallow problem for a much, much
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  deeper 1. OK, the second misunderstanding.
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  Being proud of someone else, like your son or your family.
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  Lewis says that most of the time this phrase just means I have a
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  warm hearted admiration for them.
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  And admiration for something outside yourself is not a sin,
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  it's a good thing. The problem comes when you use
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  their accomplishments to make yourself feel superior.
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  Yes, when you start giving yourself airs because of your
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  famous relative, but even then, Lewis says.
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  It's a lesser fault than being proud just of yourself.
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  Why is that? Because loving or admiring
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  anything, anything at all, outside of yourself is one step
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  away from total spiritual ruin. Your focus is at least partially
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  outward, not completely locked on the shrine of your own ego.
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  OK, that brings us to the third misunderstanding, and this one
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  is key for the theology of it all.
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  Why does God demand humility in the first place?
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  A lot of people see it as God being offended, like a king
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  whose dignity has been slighted. Right, as if God himself we're
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  proud, Lewis says. That's just us projecting our
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  own pride onto God. God is not worried about his
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  dignity. The true goal is for our sake,
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  not his. God wants us to know him.
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  He wants to give us himself. And since he is reality itself,
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  and we are, well, we're not, any genuine contact with him will
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  automatically produce humility. It's a consequence, not a rule.
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  So humility isn't a burden to carry.
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  It's what happens naturally when we stop believing our own hype,
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  when we see reality clearly. And it's meant to be an infinite
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  relief, a comfort. Lewis argues that we spend our
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  lives being restless and anxious trying to prop up this silly,
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  fragile dignity we've invented for ourselves.
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  And that is exhausting. Always competing, always
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  comparing. It's the burden of maintaining a
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  false self, Louis pictures. God is trying to help us take
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  off this silly, ugly, fancy dress we're all strutting around
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  in. Getting rid of that false self,
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  he says, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.
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  Humility is freedom from the job of being your own God.
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  That's a powerful way to look at it.
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  It completely flips the idea of humility as weakness.
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  And that leads right into the 4th misunderstanding what a
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  truly humble person actually looks like.
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  Right, it's not the smarmy, greasy person who is always
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  saying, oh I'm nobody. No, that's often just pride
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  fishing for compliments. It's still all about them, Lewis
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  says the genuinely humble person probably won't be thinking about
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  humility at all. He'll just seem like a cheerful,
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  intelligent person who takes a real interest in what you have
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  to say. He's not thinking about himself.
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  His focus is outward. And if you happen to dislike
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  him, Lewis suggests it might be because you envy how easily he
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  enjoys life free from that constant need to compete.
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  So we've established how insidious pride is and how it's
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  basically invisible to the person who has it.
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  Where do we even start? How do you begin to acquire
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  humility? Lewis gives a very clear, very
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  simple first step. The first step is just to
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  realize that one is proud. He calls it a biggish step, and
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  he says nothing can be done before it.
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  You have to admit you have the disease before you can seek the
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  cure. And then he ends with that
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  perfect paradoxical warning that brings it all back to the start.
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  He says if you think you are not conceited, it means you are very
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  conceited indeed. And facing that paradox, I
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  think, is where the journey has to begin.
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  Realizing just how far gone we are is the first painful step
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  toward freedom. So we've really unpacked Lewis's
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  argument that pride is the essential evil, that it's
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  competitive by its very nature and the source of our enmity
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  with each other and with God. We've seen why he considers
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  other sins flea bites in comparison, and also the the
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  relief that true humility is supposed to bring.
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  Liberation from the endless job of self promotion.
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  What's so arresting about it is the total reframing of the moral
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  life. It calls us to not just watch
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  our behavior, but to constantly audit the deep spiritual
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  orientation of our hearts, that core resistance to God that
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  keeps us from seeing reality because we're too busy looking
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  down. And that idea that our own sense
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  of goodness might just be the camouflage for our deepest sin,
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  that's the real challenge here. We appreciate you sending us
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  this material for today's Deep Dive.
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  So this raises a final question for you, the listener, to think
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  about. If Lewis is right that pride
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  works primarily through comparison and our modern world,
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  especially with social media, is a non-stop engine of comparison,
• 19:03
  comparing our looks, our wealth, our success, even our curated
• 19:07
  virtue against millions of others.
• 19:09
  Does all that external pressure make this first essential step
• 19:12
  of humility even harder today than it was when Lewis wrote
• 19:16
  these words? That is certainly something to
• 19:18
  grapple with. Join us next time for another
• 19:20
  duck dive.