Life must have been difficult, up there on a stone pillar, 60 feet above the rest of humanity in a quest to find God.
For 36 years. All alone. Above the rest.
The tale of this now obscure but seemingly God-fearing man — known as St. Simeon Stylites — presents a fitting parable for the discussion of pride, believed by many, both ancient and modern, to be the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Sins. The comparison is one that Simeon would have shunned — yet it's difficult to decide whether he was a madman, a saint, a fame-seeker or a fanatic. Maybe a little of each.
Pillar-sitting wasn't his first masochistic quest for the divine, near Antioch during the fifth century. He once tied a rope around himself until his flesh rotted and teemed with worms, buried himself up to his neck for a few months, and lived in a small dome chained to an iron ball for 10 years. Acts of an ascetic penitent, or a self-righteous stunt man? How differently would he have expressed his devotion to God if no one was looking?
While outwardly determined to love God until it killed him, some believe Simeon inwardly rejected what Jesus said was the second great commandment — to love thy neighbor as thyself — by focusing exclusively on himself instead of others. It's hard to help people atop a perch.
That's the difficulty with pride: It can be both good and bad, healthy and sick, righteous and wicked — depending on your motive.
In fact, it's all about our motives, whether truly selfless or pretended so as a convenient facade for selfishness.
Take Lucifer, for example. Christian theologians have long speculated about a battle in heaven before mortals laid foot on Earth, and the discussion always turns to Lucifer's pride. Known as the "son of the morning" or the "bright morning star," he is referred to as heaven's second in command — the chief angel, as it were.
But second best wasn't good enough, and before long, an attempted coup was in the making. According to John Milton's epic, "Paradise Lost," a campaign began, filled with purportedly well-meaning rhetoric to set the stage for Lucifer to displace God. It ended badly for the wicked one, whose appeal to righteous motives drew away one-third of heaven's hosts, banished forever as fallen angels.
Ever looking to bolster his position, the devil puts the ultimately arrogant spin on his ouster, according to Milton: "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." In his own sphere, he could now be a cut above the rest of his minions — but never above God and his children. Thus, the eternal "weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth" experienced by the damned.
Christians believe the episode was the first known instance of sin — a proud desire to put oneself above God, to give in to selfish ambition, to elevate personal position above overarching responsibility for the collective good. Not coincidentally, according to Bible scholars, it was an appeal to pride that Lucifer used to tempt Adam and Eve, with a promise that they would become as gods if they partook of the forbidden fruit.
"Pride goeth before the fall," has become something of a cliche, but describes succinctly the Christian understanding of events both in heaven and on Earth.
Today, the discussion about the duality of pride is as much psychological as it is spiritual. Appeals to foster healthy self-esteem, self-love and and self-confidence encourage "good" pride that encourages reaching out to others, while trying to distinguish it from a selfish "bad" pride. Many acknowledge it can be tough to draw the line.
An article last month in the the American Psychological Association's "Monitor on Psychology" describes the work of two California researchers who are examining evidence they say shows pride "is something universal" that has "evolved" in humans as a way of maintaining social status, according to psychologist Jessica Tracy at the University of California, Davis.
She and colleague Richard Robins have "used a broad array of research methods to develop measures of pride and demystify its different faces," according to the article. Though pride isn't considered a "primary" emotion, the pair have identified a unique bodily expression of pride that includes a "happy smile and a unique posture," with head tilted back, chest puffed out and hands either on hips or raised in the air.
Picture a child scoring the winning goal at a soccer game. Few would argue that such a celebration isn't healthy or warranted. Because young children from an isolated African tribe were able to label the expression as one of pride, the researchers are studying whether the "pride expression" is universal or prescribed by different cultures. Their work suggests it is the same cross-culturally, "suggesting that it's part of humans' emotional equipment."
Researchers say that people who experience "good" pride "credit their behavior for a success while people who experience the ("bad" pride) credit themselves. It's the difference between saying, 'I played well because I practiced,' and saying 'I always play well because I'm great.' "
Tracy calls the first "achievement-oriented pride" that is associated with adaptive personality traits, and the second type "hubristic pride," associated with negative personality traits. "It looked like what you'd think of when you think of cocky and egotistical," she said.
From there, it's a slippery slope. Self-centeredness becomes selfishness, which creates a sense of entitlement in those who see others as simply a means to achieve their own ends — prestige, power and a sense of superiority, whether silent or spoken. "I'm worth it," and "I deserve it" become the rationale for consumption, with an eye toward accumulating things that are newer, costlier or better than the next guy.
At that point, enmity toward our fellowmen has become part of the equation, elevating self above others and diminishing them in the process. C.S. Lewis devoted an entire chapter to pride in his classic, "Mere Christianity," which notes that, "Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. ... It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone."
As a sense of self-satisfaction sets in and pride begins to take all the credit for personal achievements, a false sense of self follows. Overt concern with what others think encourages the pretense that says as long as people think you are good, you must be — like the apple whose facade appears desirable but is crawling inside with worms.
Christ reserved his sharpest criticism for the Pharisees, who were all show and little substance, according to Pastor Bernie Anderson of Wasatch Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church. "Pride creates a barrier to any type of relationship ... Even though God has given you a particular mission or understanding about your religious truth, that doesn't give you a right to look down on anyone else," he said.
Spiritual pride is particularly devastating, he said, because it's "hard for the person who has that pride in their heart to actually see it," and few truly prideful people accept someone else's viewpoint that they have a problem with pride, he said, pointing to Christ's confrontation with the Pharisees over the woman taken in adultery. His response — that those who were sinless should cast the first stone at her — both convicted and angered them, Pastor Anderson said, rather than creating a sense of humility.
Scriptural sanctions against being "double-minded" were well-known to Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who wrote, "Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real."
The late Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a former general authority in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, capsulized the crux of humility and selflessness as the antidote to pride this way: "As you submit your will to God, you are giving him the only thing you can actually give him that is really yours to give."
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com