When I was a teenager, I came up with a really corny joke. I’ve shared it with a few people. No one has suggested I begin a comedy career. Here’s the joke, and I make no promises that you will fall on the floor laughing.
Two doughnuts are talking on a street. As they talk, a pretzel walks by. The doughnuts and the pretzel acknowledge one another with head nods and “Good mornings,” and the pretzel walks on. After the pretzel is out of ear shot, one of the doughnuts turns to the other and says, “Don’t you just hate his ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude?”
Now that you’ve gathered yourself together and are able to finally contain the laughter, we move on.
For as long as people have sought to follow God, there are those who consider themselves better at it than most. They look down their noses at the less spiritual and have a deep disdain for those pathetic losers who don’t even pretend to know about God, much less follow Him.
There are those people, but most believers are not like that, right? After all, the Bible is very clear that we are to love one another and to support one another. Can one do that if he or she feels better than others?
An Example from the Bible
“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: “God, I thank You that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled and he who humbles himself will be exalted’” (Luke 18:9-14).
The parable is a simple but telling one. The religious snob stands before God and pretends to be giving God thanks, when in fact he’s bragging about himself to God. The Pharisee’s prayer is more a, “God, You’re lucky to have me” prayer. The tax collector, on the other hand, takes a humble pose and speaks humble words. Jesus’ point is that the tax collector is the one God heard and responded to.
Just about anyone who knows the Christian faith knows this parable, and it is one that is preached on more than once in a pulpit, I’m sure. Yet, there are those who are proud of their faith—they boast in their faith. They may couch it in a “bragging about God” way of speaking, but really it’s all about them. Sort of like the Pharisee’s prayer. “God I thank you” becomes a platform for talking one’s self up before God and man.
But Shouldn’t Believers Be Proud?
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9).
The entire Gospel can be boiled down to some very specific facts. Everyone has sinned against God. No one can do anything on their own to escape the fate of their sins. God, by His love that is beyond measure, took steps to restore a relationship between ourselves and Him. He sent Jesus, who taught us and demonstrated what it means to live in God’s will. Ultimately, Jesus paid the price for our sins by being crucified at Calvary. In the crucifixion, Jesus atones for the sins of the world. This gift of atonement is a gift of God that is received by faith in Him. It is a faith that grows out of an awareness of our sinfulness and our impossible plight. Recognizing that the only answer is to surrender to God’s mercy and grace that we find a new relationship with God.
There is nothing that we have done that allows us to say, “I got closer to God on my own.” We do not take the initiative—it is God’s Holy Spirit that convicts us and that draws us to Him. That’s why Paul wrote to the Ephesians that no one can boast as a result of their new relationship with God.
Pride is based around our personal accomplishments. We can brag about our home runs, the achieving of our career goals and other things we have done, but some things are beyond our control, beyond our ability other than to have been at the right place at the right time.
The Christian faith is one of humility and awareness. One of the great Christians, the apostle Paul, was keenly aware of his inability to earn God’s love. In writing about Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, Paul writes that Jesus appeared to Peter, then the other disciples, then to more than 500 brothers. Finally, Paul writes, “Last of all He appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles, and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. No, worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:8-10).
The idea that Paul, so vital a person in the spread of the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire in the early days of the church, should consider himself “abnormally born” and the “least of the apostles” is telling in some ways. But in other ways, it’s not.
Paul never had to look back too far to recall how he had once been a major opponent of Christ. He was zealous in his commitment to God as he had been taught, never realizing that the God he claimed to venerate was the same God who sent Jesus to die for him. This realization of how far God had brought him always kept him humble. He knew the dangers of the haughty spirit (cf. Philippians 3:2-11) and the need to discard the trappings of boastfulness.
The Downfall of Faith Pride
Let’s be honest. There are all sorts of things we pride ourselves in that we really have no right to take pride in. We’re proud when our sports team wins—even though we did nothing to help them win. We’re proud of our nation, our state, our town—even though almost all of us were born in these places (particularly nation) and really have done very little other than live as a good citizen.
A proud faith has a tendency to hold ourselves up in comparison to others who do not have the same faith, either as a believer or a non-believer. When we take pride in ourselves and our faith, we see ourselves as a cut above the rest, and that allows us to deem those not like us as less than us. It’s easy to look down on inferior things, and seeing “my faith” as superior allows me to see myself as superior. The superior person doesn’t need to take time to care for others or even show concern for others. Compassion dies as pride grows.
Faith pride prevents us from listening to others. If my faith is the only one, then what need to I have to listen to anyone else’s faith? What need to I have to even consider another Christian’s faith if it is even slightly different than my own? The sense of superiority cuts off communication. If I sneer at your beliefs, how can I hope to or expect to share my faith with you? No one wants to be patronized, and the superior faith of the Faith Pride is a condescending faith.
Seeing others as inferior produces in us one of two characteristics, neither of which is appealing or consistent with the faith of Christ. If I see someone who is inferior, either I see them as unworthy of my concern, or I see them as needing to become like me so they can become, not my equal, but my close to equal. For instance, the Faith Pride of European Americans toward the native people of the New World. Seeing the natives as “savages” or “heathen” gave us the sense that we had a duty to make them like us. We didn’t see the need to present the gospel to them and let them embrace it with their own understanding and making it a part of their social world. Instead, we insisted that they become European in all aspects—in their faith, their dress, their way of life. Learn our language, accept our customs, be like us.
The other approach is to say that those who are inferior will never be able to understand something so superior, therefore, there’s no need to waste our time telling them, teaching them, ministering to them. We want to close ourselves off from these lesser people, knowing they have nothing in common with us, and we certainly have nothing in common with them.
Conclusion
The tragedy of Faith Pride is that it fails to understand that Christ died for all, that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s expectations. The haughty Christian doesn’t see the world as a place where God’s grace can abound, but only as a place that is to be protected and preserved to conform to my interpretation of faith and community.
That may be someone’s faith, but it isn’t the Gospel.
© 2019 Glynn Beaty