How Pride Turns Us Into MONSTERS

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”  Proverbs 16:18

You guessed it: this is my Halloween post. It’s hard to drive around this time of year without thinking about ghosts, goblins, zombies, walking skeletons and the like.

My other excuse for doing a post about monsters, is that I keep running into monstrous behavior even among God’s regenerated people.

Here’s what I’m addressing: the power of the sin of pride to make us ugly and destructive. It’s monstrous. It’s hideous. It’s ugly. And it’s everywhere, including in my own heart.

Let’s flesh this out, starting with:

How pride makes monsters out of young and middle-aged people

I’m only going to use the word narcissism twice in this post (and that was the first one). The term is being used so often by so many these days, that many of you are probably weary of it. But I do need to point out that much of the behavior I’m describing would fall under the heading of the narcissistic personality disorder.

Now that I’ve used up my two uses of the word, we’ll leave it for others to overuse.

Here’s what I’ve seen, again and again, in churches – and schools and workplaces and neighborhoods – over several decades:  People who are so sensitive – that would be the word used by the individuals themselves – that they overreact dramatically, sometimes hysterically, sometimes aggressively, sometimes monstrously, to the slightest offense or perceived offense. 

Their pain is real. Their tears are real. But they are caused by errant, sinful, proud, self-at-the center-of-the-universe, thinking.

Long ago I sat down and thought this through with an open Bible. I found that there’s no Biblical category for people who are sensitive or hypersensitive in any sort of morally neutral fashion. The Biblically identified cause for the kind of reactions I’m describing is PRIDE.

And I’m assuming that you understand that God hates human pride; there’s no place for it. Anything good about me, anything good that I do, is a gift of God’s grace; period.

Of course our temperaments and our backgrounds affect the degree to which we are prone to this sin.  But it’s still sin, and as such, it is conquerable, because of our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection and because of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. My pride is my enemy, but it is an enemy I can conquer.

We’ve all known them. They are often perfectionists who apply their impossible standards to everyone they meet. You say “good morning” as warmly as you can, and they tell others that you looked at them in the wrong way and “violated their personal space.” They are oh-so-easily offended and oh-so-difficult to reconcile with. They are often pathologically serious and they can’t accept the possibility that maybe they actually did something wrong.

Even after you apologize for their unhealthy response to your innocent behavior – a bad decision, in my opinion – they may choose to never, ever forgive you. They’ll bring your offense with them to their graves.

When a sermon clearly identifies a sin which they need to repent of, they turn on the preacher with a vengeance. If you suggest, in what you think is a patient and loving manner, that perhaps they made a mistake, they are infuriated, in some cases becoming your enemy for life.

Their poor, beleaguered spouses are often intimidated into “supporting them” in dozens of situations in which they should be gently but firmly challenged.

I have likened some of these individuals to “emotional suicide bombers.” They walk into church with their explosive vests covered with a thin veneer of Christian “niceness,” but the slightest unwanted, verbal touch from anyone is enough to set them off.

How pride makes monsters out of older people

Obviously, the men and women described above need compassionate and firm handling by church leaders.  We will always have these folks around, and I insist that some of them are capable of being deeply and dramatically changed by our all-powerful God.

The “catch” of course, is their willingness to listen and humble themselves and to learn to perceive reality through the eyes of the healthy people who love them.

But of late, I’ve seen another version of this problem: older saints, many of whom have lived wonderful lives and done wonderful ministry in churches for decades, becoming pride-poisoned monsters in their old age.

The individual who opened my eyes to this was Judah’s King Hezekiah. The royal line of King David gave rise to this wonderful man, who had a great ministry as King for fourteen years.  But in reading the sad account of the ending of Hezekiah’s life from II Kings twenty, I was struck by the fact that, having heard that it was time for him to die, this previously God-fearing man, turned his face to the wall, wept bitterly and prayed pathetically for God to give him more time.

You probably know that God graciously granted Hezekiah’s request, only to see him ask for a sign that God would keep His word, foolishly display the wealth of his kingdom to the Babylonians, callously disregard God’s pronouncement of doom on his nation and father a terrible son named Manasseh. My burning question that morning was:  “Hezekiah, why did you respond to God’s good plan so poorly, making this foolish request and committing such tragic mistakes?”

The next day my reading schedule took me to the parallel account in II Chronicles thirty-two and in verse twenty-five I found my answer: PRIDE. The inspired writer, probably Ezra, nailed it. The mellow Hezekiah had been turned into a monster by his pride.

We’ve seen the pattern in the Bible repeatedly: A humble person is blessed powerfully by God, becomes proud, taking credit for what God had done, only to have God’s blessing removed and to fail miserably.

And then I realized that I had seen this many times in churches:

• The aged, accomplished, retired pastor who turned on me viciously when I presumed to make some changes in what had been “his church.”
• Another previously wonderful, retired pastor, who went from being my “buddy” to my enemy when I suggested, ever-so-gently and respectfully, that maybe he had been a little rough on the interim pastor who followed him.
• The well-respected, 70-something lady who had served so well for so long in a particular department of her church, who took to ungraciously interfering with younger leaders and responded with rage to the gentle entreaties she received from her church’s leaders.
• Sadly, I could cite many more examples like these.

I really, seriously, don’t want this to happen to me. “God, take me home quickly, if I become an old monster!”

I understand the temptation: As we age and step back from our ministries, we:

• Struggle mightily with having to give up the leadership authority we once enjoyed
• Received too much pleasure from accomplishing things which we can no longer accomplish
• Are forced to watch younger people making a mess (as we see it) of the great things we created
• Respond with frustration to our inability to accomplish as much as we used to (and remember where we left our car keys)
• Suffer the indignity of what I’m going to call “Christian agism,” a very real and ugly phenomenon: older saints being despised instead of honored.

But none of that is an excuse for behaving badly.

And in our latter years, we should know be well aware of – as Winston Churchill put it – our “many reasons for being humble.” It’s a huge relief to laugh about our “reasons for our humility” instead of angrily defending ourselves. After seventy, our tired hearts need the soul rest borne of meekness and humility (Matthew 11:28-30) more than ever.

As an anonymous and humble preacher once quipped, in response to the news that someone had been gossiping about him, “If she only knew me like I do, she could think of much worse things to say about me than that!”

I want to age like that guy, not like any of the pride-powered monsters I described above. In fact, I just heard about a book called “Unoffendable.”  That so well describes the kind of senior saint I want to be that I’m going to buy the book right now.

Should I get you a copy?

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I learn so much by way of your stories. If you’d like to tell me a story and receive some prayer in response, contact me at churchwhisperer@gmail.com. Let’s set something up.