I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this in my life—you’ve probably heard it to: “All sins are equal! If you tell a lie, you’re just as bad as a murderer!” Really? Does anyone really believe that? Now, I know what that person means when they say something like that. What that person means is that we are all sinful human beings in need of salvation. Whether it is telling a lie or murdering someone, each sinful act points to the fact that each one of us is sinful.
But not all sins are equal. You are delusional if you think stealing a candy bar is just as heinous as murder. I think, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, saying “All sins are equal” really betrays the fact that we view God as the “giant hall-monitor in the sky” who has a ledger, and who puts a check-mark next to our name every time we sin. It doesn’t matter if it’s cutting out of work five minutes early or being a serial rapist—it’s the same check mark, the same sin…and you’re gonna get it, unless you grovel at his feet!
Well, such a mindset might haunt many of us who have grown up in strict Evangelical subcultures, but it isn’t true.
The Great Sin
The title of C.S. Lewis’ next chapter is “The Great Sin.” What is “the great sin”? It’s pride, the opposite of which is humility. Lewis points out that all the great teachers throughout Christian history have said the same thing: pride is the worst sin because it is pride that leads to every other vice. It is, as Lewis says, “the complete anti-God state of mind.”
Now, we all suffer from pride to a certain extent. Lewis offers a good test for us to see just how proud we are. He says, “Ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take notice of me, or patronize me, or show off?’”
Well, I don’t know about you, but that certainly can be an apt description of me quite often. Why is that?
It’s because pride, says Lewis, is at its root, competitive. He’s not saying competition (as in sports) is wrong, but he is saying that what makes pride so bad is that it wants to be better than others, it wants to be noticed more than others, it wants something just so you can’t have it. The example Lewis gives is that sometimes two men might be in competition for the love of the same woman, but the man eaten up with pride will go after the woman, not so much because he really loves her, but so that he can prove you to that he’s better than you.
Simply put, pride craves power and feeling superior to everyone. The proud man doesn’t long to be rich and clever; the proud man longs to be richer and more clever than you. That is why pride is such an anti-God state of mind. As Lewis states, “As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”
Pride…and the Religious
With that understanding of pride in place, Lewis then decides to make every religious person feel uncomfortable by stating something we all know all too well: “How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride say they believe in God and appear religious?”
Yes indeed, let’s be honest. Some of the most conceited, arrogant people we have come across in our lives are religious types, or more specifically, the people who go out of their way to tell you how religious they are. I won’t describe them for you—you probably already have some in mind. They are, for all practical purposes, modern day Pharisees who go out of their way to show everyone how humble and godly they are…maybe they’ll get a trophy!
In response to that, Lewis makes a very insightful point: if we ever start “feeling really good” about how religious we are, or more properly, how more religious we are than, you know…those Presbyterians!—then chances our it’s not God who is at work in us, but rather the Devil. The test to see if you are really in God’s presence, Lewis says, is that you simply forget about yourself altogether.
That’s the insidious thing about pride—it can weasel its way into everything: our relationships, sports, work, school, even our religious life. That’s why Lewis calls it a “spiritual cancer” that is capable of eating up the very possibility of love, contentment or common sense. That’s why it is important for us to constantly be on guard for pride.
That being said, Lewis makes one more important point. He starts the chapter by saying that the opposite of pride is humility—and that is, quite obviously what Christians should strive for. But we should probably get the common stereotype of humility out of our heads—you know what it is: if I’m humble that means I really think that I suck and am no good, and that everyone is better than me! No…that’s not humility. That’s someone in need of therapy, or a Tony Robbins seminar.
Lewis’ description of a truly humble person is not one who thinks himself to be a nobody. The truly humble person will simply appear to be “a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.”
Basically, if the proud man is someone who thinks he’s the center of the universe, the humble man, far from thinking himself somewhat of a “black hole” in the universe, simply accepts where he is in the universe, and enjoys God’s creation…the view is fine from where he is, thank you very much.
agreed.