“Pride tells us we deserve everything our eyes gaze upon and everything our hearts long for. . . . Pride is a seductive sin. Humility is God’s grace to overcome it. One of the greatest weapons we have to combat pride is prayer.”- Joel Muddamalle
“Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye?”- Matthew 5:3-4 (Christian Standard Bible)
Joel Muddamalle concludes Chapter 7 of The Hidden Peace with the observation that pride serves as a guide. A guide that promises to take you to paradise but deceitfully leads you into a prison. Because pride prevents you from seeing who you really are in the light of who God is. Thus, a seductive sin, pride, leads us into full-blown rebellion.
Most significantly, Jesus referred to this kind of debilitating pride in Matthew 7. In Matthew 7 Jesus addressed the judgment of others. Hence, we need humility as a limit to avoid curiosity moving us into pride.
Bernard of Clairvaux, a son of nobility in the 1100s, chose to become a monk. In Treatises II: Steps of Humility and Pride, he described Matthew 7. Bernard wrote:
“The heavy, thick beam in the eye is pride of heart. It is big but not strong, swollen, not solid. It blinds the eye of the mind and blots out the truth. While it is there you cannot see yourself as you really are, or even the ideal of what you should be, but what you would like to be.”
In conclusion, Joel views prayer as one of the greatest weapons we possess to combat pride. Because the height to which pride leads us equals the height from which we come crashing down. Pride tempts us to believe we represent the pinnacle of creation. Humility, however, reminds us that God loves and cherishes us. Thus, we carry the goodness of curiosity while staying within God’s limits.
Today’s question: How do you see pride as a seductive sin? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Living a life of humility”