Why Pride Is the Worst | The Seven Deadly Sins | PRIDE
Of all angels, Lucifer was the most magnificent God had created. Aware of his beauty, brilliance, and many qualities, Lucifer felt elevated above the other angels and, at some point, even above God. He wanted to be like God, so he created a throne for himself above the stars and convinced a third of the angelic beings to join his side and take over Heaven. But Lucifer lost the war and was banished from Heaven, cast down to Hell. God transformed Lucifer’s beauty – the trait he admired most about himself – into ugliness, and thus the once so-handsome angel became the vile, wrathful creature we know as Satan.
Lucifer had fallen for the worst of sins, pride, which led to his inflated sense of self-importance, power, and entitlement. In the thirteenth century, theologian Thomas Aquinas elaborated on what he called the “capital sins” in his Summa Theologiae, in which he considered the sin of “pride” the worst of all sins. Through pride, one becomes susceptible to the other six sins. Pride, therefore, is the instigator, the gateway drug to evil.
However, nowadays, many people seem to encourage pride. We celebrate those boasting of their accomplishments, and social media is full of individuals who continuously post about their extraordinary lives. And we’re not just proud of our achievements: we’re also proud of where we’re from, what nationality is in our passport, how we look, what skin color, and even what gender we have. But how and why is such pride bad exactly? And aren’t there good forms of pride, then?
The Seven Deadly Sins is a Christian concept that presents humanity with seven immoral acts: seven transgressions against the divine, oneself, and the world around us. The idea of the Seven Deadly Sins came to fruition when the desert father Evagrius Ponticus listed the “eight evil thoughts:” gluttony, lust, avarice, anger, sloth, sadness, vainglory, and pride, but it had Greek and Roman precedents, specifically the ethics of Aristotle.
In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I revised Evagrius’ list and turned it into the list of sins we know: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. This video series explores the Seven Deadly Sins as a Christian concept and beyond. What’s so bad about these sins? How do they apply to present-day life and society, and how can they influence our well-being and the well-being of those around us? And can non-Christians benefit from this concept?
This essay delves into the mother of all sin: pride. When prideful, we take satisfaction in a supposed elevated and preferable position compared to others. We feel better than others, as individuals or as groups, because of specific characteristics and accomplishments. We might feel this way because of the ethnic group we belong to, the country we’re born in, or even the gender we identify with. On the surface, pride doesn’t seem so bad. But many Christians believe pride is very dangerous and a pathway to evil.
"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall," says the Bible. Let’s first briefly explore some Christian views and examples of pride. As we’ve seen in the story of Lucifer, pride leads to one’s downfall, according to Christianity. The central idea behind the danger of pride seems to be that we are not greater than God, and as soon as we try to be above him, we get in trouble.
An example of this we see in the story of Adam and Eve, in which the same fallen angel, Lucifer (now the fully-fledged Satan), disguised as a snake, convinced Eve that she could be like God if she ate the forbidden fruit. One interpretation of this story is that Satan tempted Eve by evoking her sense of pride (through the disobedience of God): she assumed that she knew better than him and was supposed to be like him instead of serving him.
From a Christian point of view, when we’re prideful, we believe we’re self-sufficient, as in, we don’t need God and can live without him. We think our accomplishments are our own doing, while they’re actually the work of God, like the proud Pharaoh of...