Pride: The Source of All Sin (Part I of II)

The English pop-music group, The Beatles, has long been considered one of the most popular entertainment acts of all time.

But in 1966, bitter controversy was swirling around the fab four, as the Beatles were called back then. John Lennon, the unofficial leader of the group, had declared the Beatles more popular, more important, than Jesus Christ. Only after relentless criticism did Lennon half-heartedly apologize; but any casual observer to the whole affair could easily see the insincerity of the apology. John Lennon honestly believed the Beatles were more influential than Jesus and it appears he took this conceit to his unfortunate premature grave.

An admirer once asked the late Leonard Bernstein, celebrated orchestra conductor, what was the hardest instrument to play. Bernstein replied without hesitation: “Second fiddle. I can always get plenty of first violinists, but to find one who plays second violin with as much enthusiasm or second French horn or second flute, now that’s a problem. And yet if no one plays second, we have no harmony.”

None of us wants to play second fiddle. One of Teddy Roosevelt’s children said of him: “Father always wanted to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.” None of us wants to play second fiddle. But I believe the sin that God hates the most because all other sin flows from it is pride.

Proverbs 6:16-17A, These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look (haughty eyes)...

Proverbs 16:5, Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Be sure of this: The proud will not go unpunished.

Pride is amnesia of the soul. It is forgetting God. Pride is acting as though we have no need of God. Pride is not merely an inflated ego; it is an inflated soul.

Pride is arrogance toward God. Without a doubt, arrogance is a good word for pride; its root is in the verb “to arrogate”, which means to claim for ourselves what is not rightly ours (“false pride”).

Pride is number one on God’s hate list because all other sin flows from pride. Envy, Anger. Greed. Lust. Unbridled ambition. Ingratitude. Whatever the sin may be, all find their root in pride, this “mother and queen of all vices” (Gregory the Great).

Proverbs 16:18, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit (puffed-up spirit) before a fall.

C.S. Lewis -- “Pride leads to every other vise; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.”