Loving A Hidden God
THE DARKNESS OF PRIDE
Some of the readings of sacred scripture (for example, John 14:6) are given to raise our spirits and prevent us from being broken by despair. Others (e.g. Ps 140:5 and Sir 9.13) were given to scare us and to save us from being blown away by pride. Indeed, to stay on that "middle way", that true, straight road that threads its way between the left hand of despair and the right hand of presumption, would be extremely difficult if Christ had not said to us "I am the way". (Jn 14.6) Sermon 142, 1.
Not to be aware of being in darkness is the most dangerous form of spiritual blindness. Such blindness prevents us from seeing whether we are indeed on the right path, the path that leads ultimately to the vision of God. Prideful blindness is not an inability to see anything at all. We may have 20-20 vision of the material world around us. What we cannot see is the condition of our own soul. We are like people who are color-blind, those who cannot see the brilliant pigments that paint the world and who live grey lives in the midst of abundant color.
Augustine likens pride to a terrible form of insanity in which the sick person does not even know that they are sick. The proud are like those under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs who live in a world of fantasy where they firmly believe that they are doing just fine. Speaking of those in the scripture narrative who thought they were better than Christ, Augustine told his people:
They had an inflated idea of themselves, believing that they had wonderful ideas and great virtue. They looked down on Christ because he spent time with and cured sinners. They were infected with pride and were thus worse off than those who were just sick. They were sick but thought that they were in good health. They were like those who have lost their minds through fever, dangerously and desperately ill but still convinced that they were the healthiest of all.
Sermon 175, 1-2.
There is much truth in Augustine's description. The proud truly have a terrible malady that manifests itself in different ways. Some will acknowledge the darkness in their lives but will not admit that it could possibly be their own fault: caused by their addiction to drugs or alcohol; caused by their own cruelty driving their loves away; caused by a profligate life-style that spawned their physical ills. They live in darkness and rail about the unfairness of it all, crying out to those around them:
My darkness is not my fault! It is God's fault or your fault or the fault of the dog! If God really was a God of love, he would not allow this to happen to me! How unfair is my darkness!
They are like those who jump off tall buildings (thinking perhaps that they are eagles or angels) and then complain that God does not seem interested in "lifting them up". In their pride they have jumped to a conclusion (in more ways than one), thinking that their deadly plummet into the abyss was not their own doing.
Others live in darkness but will not face up to its seriousness. They say:
Things are going along just fine with me. I am going through a dark-patch just now but it will work its way out.
They are convinced that they can overcome their period of darkness on their own. They have what Augustine calls "wrong-headed hope". Infected with this disorder, they believe that they have the power to discover the right path, that they have the power to convert themselves to a better life and that they have the power to choose when that conversion shall take place. As Augustine cautions such foolish souls that although it is true that God has promised that our dark past can be forgiven, he has not promised a "tomorrow" to ask for forgiveness. (Sermon 87, 11) To believe that you are without sin because you are above all laws, that you control morality, is certainly an aspect of pride. But so too is the belief that you are in control of your time, that you depend neither on other humans nor on God for your continued existence.
The insanity inherent in such proud conclusions seems evident and yet, when others try to place the truth of our confused and always contingent situation before us, we sometimes cry out in anger:
I need no help from you or anybody else, thank you very much! If people (and God) would just leave me alone, I will do just fine on my own!
Thus, when we are in the midst of our "terrible two's" (which sometimes extend into our golden years) we stamp our feet and scream when others try to get us to change our way of life. As adolescents we sometimes reject all advice on how to prepare for the years ahead. Young (and old) lovers sometimes love unwisely and will not listen to the evidence that their fiancee is somewhat disreputable. They say,
Well, I will change them. They will be different after I get through with them. My love for them will transform them, just you wait and see!
We ignore the testimony of history that no one yet has been able enlighten their shadiness.
And so it continues through life. When we lose a loved one, we reject any consolation from others saying: "I can get through this on my own" while at the same time not getting through very well at all. When we get sick, we will not take our medicine. When we are dying, we spend our last precious days denying it and generally making a jack-ass of ourselves, aggravating those who are only trying to be with us through our last days. In all such cases (and many others that each one can name for themselves) we are blinded by our pride. Like Adam before us, we pretend that we have eaten of the tree of knowledge and supped from the stream of invincibility, and are unwilling to accept any god beyond ourselves.
It is a sobering thought to realize that the blindness that comes with pride is not a new phenomenon. Darkness was present at the very dawn of creation. The words of Genesis are both powerful and somewhat frightening:
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss while a mighty wind swept over the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
Genesis, 1.1-2
Genesis tells us that both angels and humans were born into the light of God's presence but that they fell from that light into self-created darkness. In the midst of light they made themselves blind through the pride that made them forget their place in the universe. They had been created into a universe with a very definite order: God above, themselves in the middle, and material creation below. All they were asked to do was to respect that arrangement. As Augustine describes it:
When the first humans were created, they were placed in a paradise and given one special commandment. Its purpose was to remind them that they had indeed been made great but that there was one greater than they. Humans had the obligation to care for and rule creation and as long as they gave greater value to God above, their rule of that which was below them would be secure. But if they rejected God, they would become subject to the lure of what they had been meant to command.
Sermon 159B, 5
The condition of humans in the beginning of time was something like a servants who had a master above and other servants below. Their control over those whom they were meant to rule was immediately weakened by their disobedience to the master. Wishing to be more than they could be, they rejected the one rule imposed by God:
Pride was the sin that caused the angel Lucifer to fall from the heights and become the devil, Satan; and it was Satan who gave humans the same cup of pride to drink. He persuaded them to ignore God's command and to take to themselves God's authority over their lives. They had been made human; they wished to be divine. They reached out to clutch what they were not and lost what they were.
Sermon 340A, 1.
The story of the first humans fall from grace shows that the immoderate love of self at the root of pride inevitably affects relationships with those we love. The immediate consequence of their failure was not contrition but accusation. They began to blame others for their misfortune. As Genesis reports:
(God said to Adam) "You have eaten from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat"! The man replied, "The woman whom you put here with me ... she gave me the fruit from the tree, and so I ate it". The Lord God then asked the woman, "Why did you do such a thing"? The woman answered, "The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it".
Genesis, 3.11-13.
The unhappy scene (certainly not the most noble moment in human history) shows that even the love that unites human community can be destroyed by the power of pride. And no wonder! A person who believes that they are supreme in the universe is unlikely to reach out to anyone in love. Such a pseudo-superior human being can have a slave or a pet; it is hard to imagine them having a friend. Pride leads not to community but to isolation where the only person worth anything is "my own self". The proud close the door to all others, human or divine, and live in a solitary confinement of their own making. They not only reject God; they try to dominate everyone else. It is not enough for them to be equal to God; they must be better than and rule over all other humans. As Augustine describes them:
The proud are those who attribute to themselves the few good qualities they seem to possess and see no need for any divine mercy. Who are the proud? Those who, even though they may give God credit for their own virtue, at the same time consider themselves better than all others and mock them for not equaling their own noble deeds.
Commentary on Psalm 93, 15.The proud are those who desire to rule, not simply the beasts which they are supposed to rule, but human beings, neighbors, comrades, and companions who by that same divine law are equals. The proud person wants to operate on and control other people, considering it a more excellent undertaking than simply ruling over the material universe or controlling their body. It seems like poetic justice that those who wish to subordinate other humans frequently end up being able to control their own bodily urges only with difficulty and pain.
On Music, 6.13.41
The great paradox of pride is that its exorbitant attention to myself which is characteristic of pride can result in a loss of my self:
It looks at itself and becomes very pleased with itself. It becomes a lover of its own power. It has drawn away from God, and does not remain in itself, sliding down the slippery slope towards things outside. It forgets itself by loving the world. In a manner of speaking it loses itself and, since it does not even know how to look at its own actions, it justifies all its iniquities. It grows insolent and proud in its self-will and self-indulgence, in positions of rank and authority and wealth, in vain and empty power. If it ever could see itself as it really is, it would be horrified by the sight. It longed so desperately to be beautiful but now is forced to admit its ugliness. Having fled from itself with a splash and a bang, it now confronts its own reality with a sob and a whimper.
Sermon 142, # 3.
The reason why the flight from God becomes a flight from my self is because the place of God is deep within the my self. To escape God demands that I go out of my self, "to become empty, to be less and less". (On Music, 6.13.40) In the very act of "puffing my self up" I become empty. Perhaps Augustine's recurring stomach problems gave him the idea for this image of a sense of fullness in the midst of emptiness. There is a fullness that comes from eating too much, but there is also a fullness from eating too little or the wrong things. In this latter case, our emptiness becomes filled with gas, and we become swollen even though there is nothing of substance inside. Augustine suggests that such pretentious swelling of the self is the reason why the proud cannot get through the door to heaven. They are too swollen. They have puffed up their self beyond its natural size.
When you begin to consider it, such pride in self seems somewhat silly. As Augustine says, it is like a plume of smoke that has great bulk but little substance:
Who are the ones who fade away like smoke? Who can they be but the proud? Like smoke they exalt themselves to the skies but the higher they get the more they thin vanish. Smoke is denser when it is nearest to the ground. When does it thin out and vanish? When it has exalted itself. So too, when proud humans boost themselves up against God, they like smoke must fade away. They are like rising smoke: there is something you can see but there is nothing you can lay your hands on.
Sermon 22, 8.
And, like smoke, the more the proud inflate themselves, the closer they come to final dissolution.
Such prideful blindness of the spirit is a terrible disease but there is a cure, the medicine of humility. The dilemma is that in order to receive this healing draft, there must be some small crack in our pride, a crack through which we can begin to see that we are in darkness and need some help to come into the light. Put simply, we need the beginning of humility to see the need for it and that can only happen through the grace of God.