Miscellaneous Musing #74: Pride Is Reason for Humility

Christian theologians hold pride to be a deadly sin—indeed, it’s considered to be paramount among the Seven Deadly Sins, as it is the one committed by Lucifer in becoming Satan—, yet we typically speak of it as if it were a positive quality, as in “We’re so proud of you!” or “Don’t you have any pride?” (This does not mean that it’s always bad to have anything that is ever called “pride”; sometimes, we’re just using the wrong word.  For example, it’s often said that somebody takes “pride in his work”.  I think that it’s legitimate for a person to be pleased or satisfied with what he has accomplished, and that only if his accomplishments give him too high an opinion of himself, especially if he believes that his accomplishments make him superior to others, does he become guilty of the sin of pride.)  Conversely, the world regards humiliation, that is to say, a cause of the Christian virtue humility, as necessarily destructive. (This paradox might be the best illustration of how thoroughly benighted our society is, if not for the increasing acceptance as normal of the psychological abnormalities homosexuality and “transgenderism”, and the correspondingly increasing intolerance of those who do not adhere to this viewpoint.)