Pride vs. Humility

Spiritual pride is the number one sin - the worst one - the great granddaddy sin of them all. It's the root cause of all your other sins. And it's the sin aimed at in the very first of the Ten Commandments: you shall have no other gods before me. And that gives us a hint as to a very closely related sin: idolatry. As John Calvin said, "Our hearts are idol factories." We can make an idol out of anything: drink, sex, ambition ... SELF.

Humility is the virtue opposed to pride. But what exactly is humility? Andrew Murray in his work on humility defined it as a "right view of God and a right view of self." When you see God as he has revealed himself in the Bible, and you see yourself as the rotten, stinking sinner we all are, you are getting humility.

There are not many books on humility; Murray is one. One of my previous pastors, Chris Hutchinson, wrote one. He found it hard to do. C. S. Lewis wrote about it some in Screwtape Letters.

As for pride, it's easier to find stuff on that. Here's a great, gigantic list of ways to be spiritually prideful. I certainly found myself a lot there. One I would add: if someone is trying to teach you something, but is not doing it EXACTLY the way you think it ought to be done, maybe that's a sign of pride. Does that person know the subject better than you? Then perhaps that person might have a clue as to how to teach it!

https://saddlebackleather.com/signs-of-pride