“Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

(Proverbs 16:18)

Do you know the most destructive force in all the world? I’ll give you a clue. The formula for this power was not written by Albert Einstein, neither was its practical implementation worked out at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Far more destructive in human life than atomic power, or hurricanes, cyclones, or earthquakes, or cancer, is PRIDE, human pride.

It was a wise old commentator who had seen a heap o’livin’ that said: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

People have always been interested in trying to discern the signs of the times, to interpret correctly the portents of coming events: to say, “Because the sun set clear this evening after a stormy day, tomorrow will be fair.” Or, “because the ground hog didn’t see his shadow on February 2^nd, spring is near.” But the sage of Proverbs after viewing a lot of life, said by divine inspiration, that the sure sign of coming destruction on the horizon of all human endeavors: in professional careers, in business corporations, in kingdoms, or cultures — is the sign of pride — “a high head and a haughty look.” “Pride goeth before destruction.” In fact, pride not only points the way, but pride precipitates destruction. Just look for signs of pride, for pride destroys.

But what does pride destroy? First of all, pride destroys the proud heart that harbors it. “Those whom the gods destroy, they first make mad,” and their madness takes the form of proud pretensions. They begin to think of themselves more highly than they ought to think. They see themselves in their own eyes as vastly superior to their fellows. They think of God not at all.

In the ancient Greek plays the source of tragedy was traced to ______, or “Pride”, that spiritual quality in man which prompted him to over-reach himself and the limits set to mortal existence, and then he fell in the destruction of an inevitable nemesis which overtook his pride.  But always the Greek tragedies put their finger on pride, _______, which went before the destruction.

During the early, disheartening days of the Second World War, when the armies of German tyranny were over-running one free country after another, I heard William Alexander Percy make a speech to the Rotary Club in Greenville, Mississippi, which struck a note of bright hope in that dark hour, which I shall never forget. Basing his talk on the classical Greek dramatists’ keen insight into the meaning of history, Percy pointed out that the law of ______ still held, that the Nazis’ pride in their Nordic supremacy, their doctrine of the Aryan Superman, and their blatant, cruel persecution of their Jewish citizens, was a sure sign that they were already marked for destruction, even in the hour of their greatest triumphs. Therefore, said Percy, we should take hope in the free nations, for pride always goeth before destruction, but we should also take warning in all our American preparations for our national defense to guard even our own hearts from over-weaning pride.

Young Benjamin Franklin, when he went to visit Cotton Mather, had an experience that illustrates the teaching of Proverbs. Franklin recounts the event in these words:

“Cotton Mather received me in his library and, on my taking leave, showed me a shorter way out of the house through a narrow passage which was crossed by a beam overhead. We were still talking as I withdrew — he, accompanying me from behind, when he said hastily, ‘Stoop, Stoop!’  I did not understand him, till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man that never missed any occasion of giving instructions, and upon this said to me: ‘You are young, and have the world before you.  Stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard bumps.’”

Yes, there are dangers always in carrying the head too high, both in relation to other people and in relation to God. For this reason the sages through the ages commend people who walk humbly with God, and who refuse to be haughty in spirit towards others. For always, pride goeth before destruction.

But pride destroys not only the proud person, it also causes the unity of human life to fail.  Is not this the clear teaching of the story of Babel’s building and blasting? In the early dawn of history men got together and said: “Come, let us make bricks and build us a tower that will reach even unto heaven, and make us a name for ourselves.” But God saw what they were doing, confused their speech so they could not understand one another. No longer could they work together. They were scattered abroad over the face of the earth and the tower was left unfinished.

Why did God confound their labors and why was Babel never built? Because these men were motivated by pride. They would build for their own glory rather than God’s. They said: “Come, let us build us a tower that will reach unto the sky, and make us a name for ourselves.”

Always, this is the nature of the people who cause the unity of human life to fail, those who build in their own pride for their own glory, rather than God’s: in professions, in careers, in estates, in kingdoms. Building Babel is a picture of what people have always been trying to do. They have thought that by their own devices they could reach the pinnacle of coveted importance and sit triumphantly on the top of their world.

But when people in the pride of their hearts look down upon any of their fellow human beings as too lowly, too uncouth, too poorly bred as to be worthy of association with them, then the chain of human relationship has been broken by their proud spirits and inevitably there comes in history the violent retaliation such as the atrocities of the French revolution, or the collapse of the Soviet empire, or the Tutu and Hutu genocides in Ruwanda and Zaire.

Pride destroys the unity of human life.

But most destructive of all, pride destroys the relationship between human beings and Almighty God. The sage of Proverbs says: not only, “Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall,” but also, “Everyone that is proud in heart is an abomination unto the Lord,” and, “A high look and a proud heart and the ploughing of the wicked is sin,” and “The Lord will destroy the house of the proud.”

Pride destroys the relationship between a man and his God, for the proud man trusts in himself instead of trusting in God. In fact, the very essence of pride is to make oneself the center of the universe, to usurp the place that belongs only to God. Jesus, in His parable of the praying Pharisee and the praying publican, clearly shows us that the proud heart, even if it considers itself a religious heart, can never know or approach God, while the humble heart, conscious of its many faults, has ready access to the eternal Father.

Pride keeps us from knowing God, from relying upon Him, from receiving from Him those spiritual resources each one of us needs for daily living. So pride goeth before not only the awful fall of insufficient spiritual resources for the day’s needs, but pride goes also before the dreadful plunge into the abyss of eternity, trusting in self rather than the divine Redeemer.

Yes, surely pride destroys. But who are the proud? Who is in danger of pride’s destruction? Are they only those who live in far away palaces and capitols and senate chambers? Oh, no. Why, you and I are in danger of pride’s destruction. We are the proud.

It is always so easy for us to see pride in others and so difficult to discern it in our own hearts.  Therein lies our greatest danger. The sensuous man knows his lusts, the violent man his temper, the dishonest man his thefts, but the proud heart is blinded to its own pretensions. Once I heard a very pompous speaker say over and over in his address: “Why, I’m just a humble preacher.”  Bertrand Russell truly observed: “Every man would like to be God, if it were possible, and not a few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.”

How then can we deal with this destroyer pride? Well, to be aware of its destructive power, is something.  If we know we have an enemy, and who he is, at least we are forewarned.

Then, too, to acknowledge the universal taint of pride, that the enemy is within our own breasts, surely that, too, is something.

But our supreme help, I believe, we will find in this: accepting our religion as the final battleground between God and human self-esteem.  Now, not everyone of us is looking upon our religious life in such terms. Some people are accustomed to using their religion as a pumping station to re-inflate their punctured ego. As the caste system of Hinduism, or the exalted higher moral degrees of ancient Pharisaism tended to fostering pride, so some folks would like to turn their churches into indignation meetings to view with alarm the degraded morality and the doctrinal heresy of others less righteous than themselves, and in so doing, become more and more puffed up with explosive pride.

But the supreme use that we can make of the religious offices of the church of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is as a battleground between God and our own self-esteem.

If we can use its songs and prayers of thanksgiving as our genuine praise to our creator, reminding ourselves of our creature-hood, lest we be tempted to say: “My power and the might of my hand hath gotten me my wealth, and health and blessedness.”

If we can in genuine contrition make confessions of our sins in the company of the redeemed, acknowledging: “We have done those things we ought not to have done, and we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.”

If we can use every moment of our worship experience in a sincere attempt to “cease from man”, as Isaiah says, and put all our trust and reliance upon the Eternal God, then we will be giving God a chance to shatter our self-esteem and destroy that destroyer Pride.

Scholem Asch in his great book on St. Paul, pictures a simple worship gathering of the small Christian community in Jerusalem shortly after the Lord’s ascension which should be very helpful to us. Simon Peter extends the invitation for others to join the company of disciples.

A short, heavy man in a rich garment with a ring on his finger approaches the inner circle and says to Simon: “I had a house and a field. I sold them, and here I lay the purse with the gold at the feet of the disciples.”

Simon answers: “No, my son, thou hast neither house nor field. Naked didst thou come forth from thy mother’s womb, and naked wilt thou return to the womb of the earth. And when the Lord will awaken thee to the resurrection, thou wilt come with neither house nor field, neither robe nor ring; thou wilt come only with thy good deeds, and they will clothe thee.”

Then a tall, powerful, half-naked man, who wearing a girdle of rope showed himself to be a day laborer, came forward saying: “I have no house, nor field, and I bring with me only my limbs and my naked body, and I lay these at the feet of the disciples that I may be accepted into the bond of the Messiah.”

“My son,” said Simon Peter, “neither thy body nor thy limbs are thine. Thou has borrowed them from the Creator of all the worlds for the time of thy sojourn upon earth. Canst thou make thy body whole again when it is broken by age or sickness? Canst thou put back a limb which has been cut off? Nothing is thine, all belongs to the Lord of the world.”

Then there came a crippled beggar, who crawled forward, supported by another cripple and said, “I have nothing at all save my sinful soul, which I lay at the feet of the disciples that I may be received into the covenant of the Messiah.”

“My son, my son,” said Simon, “Thou hast given more than all the others, for thou hast given that which is thine. For nothing is thine save thy soul and thy sins. Thy sin is forgiven thee through the death of the Lord. Thou are clean, my son. An acceptable sacrifice is thy soul unto God.”