Pride: Necessary or Evil?
Two letters from two sides of the shoulder.
Dear readers,
Ah, yes, pride: the mortal sin. No, I’m not talking about thinking too highly of myself. I mean the terrible notion that I, a measly human, can so dare to be judge and jury over the choices I make in my life.
Many point to pride or the “Übermensch mentality” as being a deadly or fatal sin. There are two lines of argument for this: humans cannot live pridefully without abhorrent consequences, and pride is a contradiction because it is an escape from truth itself.
To address the first point, there is an argument that since someone like Raskolnikov1 drove himself to self-destruction when he trusted his pride over his conscience, this proves that pride can only lead a human into darkness. But this argument is wrong. I can grant that it is a fact of human psychology that humans cannot avoid their conscience. I can even grant that excessive pride leads to harmful psychological effects. But this certainly does not prove that we as humans must live our lives enslaved towards an abstract notion of humility. Raskolnikov suffered extreme torment after he killed the pawnbroker. It completely tore him apart mentally. But I do not believe for a second that he wouldn’t have suffered even more torment had he, as a free spirit, simply enslaved himself and suppressed any desire to even try out an alternative lifestyle, considering such a thing to be deviant and moving towards darkness. One could argue that he f****d around and found out, thereby proving the whole Christian point in the first place. But the very fact that he came to understand what worked for him demonstrates the necessity of the pride mentality anyway. At the end of the day, as a human, he understood what was best for him by making his own choices and assessing them. It wasn’t because he realized that it was God’s will and then robotically changed his heart.
Everybody, whether they are a Christian or not, finds themselves equally enslaved to their pride because the only reason they trust in God in the first place is because they make the individual decision based on what they believe is best for themselves. Also, to even understand that his own prideful actions were wrong, Raskolnikov had to escape the shackles of faith: God’s existential blackmail. He wasn’t lectured by someone to avoid pride, nor did he take the leap of faith and blindly trust God. Had he done so, he would be stuck in existential agony. If Raskolnikov was stuck in the loop of shame over sin and doubt, his understanding of right and wrong would have been defective. Then, one Christian might say that questioning of this nature is alright so long as you eventually end up surrendering to God. But this is masqueraded freedom. How free of a choice is it if there’s only one acceptable outcome? Sure you have free will, but if you choose Outcome A, you’re fine and if you choose Outcome B, you’re screwed. Why would God enslave us to such a dead-end life? At the end of the day, if God is omnipotent, he designed this very structure.
To address the second point, if it really is true that truth is so constant and objective, then why does God even create free humans in the first place? It seems like deterministic or legalistic religions (hyper-Calvinism, Islam, Judaism) are far more efficient in getting humans to come towards objective truth. Creating a world where humans are free but in reality enslaved, and they don’t realize it, seems absolutely awful. Hey, human! You can choose light or darkness. You’re totally free! But if you choose darkness, you’re screwed. But you did it to yourself, so I can shift the blame.
I know someone will inevitably come to me and say it’s your pride that makes you write this pro-pride polemic. To which I say, this is the existential hole, circularity, loop, abyss, contradiction that I despise and which creates unimaginable angst and confusion.
The very contradiction is that faith, despite supposedly being about self-surrender, entirely requires pride to function. How else can you trust yourself enough to make such an important decision?
Sincerely,
Gregorio the Polemic
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Dear individual who curiously shares my name,
You claim that God enslaves you by forcing you to take the path of humility and avoid pride. But, say you were to be on the edge of a cliff, and you were curious as to what would happen if you jumped. I come up to you and say: “Don’t do that. If you jump, you will die or get severely injured. But if you come with me, you will survive and everything will be fine (at least for now).”
Now, you may argue that I am an outside observer and I didn’t design the natural shape of the cliff myself.
Fair, but suppose I did design the cliff. I may have designed that cliff in such a way for a wide variety of reasons: to protect the coast, preserve biodiversity, serve as a beautiful landscape, etc. As a consequence of these good things, people may indeed see the cliff as a worthy place for jumping. But I would still warn anyone that did want to jump not to do so. It would objectively lead to a worse outcome.
The same is true for pride. Do we know why God invented pride? No, not entirely. It is a divine mystery (at least somewhat from our perspective). But we can also be sure that trying to eliminate pride as much as possible is ideal for our souls.
When a person doesn’t exercise and eats junk, their body begins to degrade in quality. The proper way to fix this is through eating healthy, macronutrient-balanced, micronutrient-filled food, a weightlifting routine, and some form of cardio. Taking these steps ensures that one’s body is strong and in good function.
When a person spends their days mindlessly scrolling and not putting their brain to work, their mind begins to degrade in quality. The proper fix for this is exercise of the mind by putting it to work to solve difficult problems routinely.
Similarly, when a person spends their time drowning in pride, narcissism, and rejecting the Holy Spirit in order to wallow in their carnality, their spirit begins to degrade.
These are objective truths about the mind, body, and soul. Faith may paradoxically require self-trust to cure self-trust, just as poison is sometimes used to cure poison.
I can concede that I don’t have a full understanding of why God has designed these systems in such a way. I suspect that it may have to do with the fact that good is only truly good when it can withstand evil and temptation, similar to how many of faith have addressed the problem of evil. Faith only becomes meaningful in the face of despair.
Still, one can be certain that a design exists without being fully certain why the creator made it so.
Sincerely,
St. Gregory the Illuminator
In Crime and Punishment, the protagonist Rodion Raskolnikov is a poor, young man who murders a detested old pawnbroker to test a Napoleonic idea: that some individuals can transcend conventional morality and override their conscience. However, during and after the crime, he is tormented by feelings of guilt and shame, eventually turning himself over to the police and repenting to God.