Self Love Will Kill You

Welcome to ClearCast. ClearCast is a ministry of Clearnote Church in West Indianapolis. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman. I'm here with our producer, Martin, and, of course, Pastor Dave. And today we're going to talk about pride. We want to talk about why you should see your own ego as your worst enemy. And our hope is that this episode will help you humble yourself so you can receive God's grace. So, Pastor Dave, why should we focus on pride? Whatever other sins you have, this is certainly one of them and at the top of the list. It's extraordinary to meet someone who's learned the grace of humility. I guess I just think that we're all proud out of the gate. It's just not a question in my mind. It also is the sort of sin that it affects. It's not isolated. It's connected to all your other sins.

process it sort of gives you a framework for processing if you're proud then you're going to process every comment every look every everything yeah in life in light of your own opinion of yourself and um scripture warns us you know not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought to and i think that that warning is um as apropos that just applies to all of us that were there you know even when i meet people who um Maybe you're melancholic by nature or self-deprecating, which you might think, oh, they're so humble. Oh, they're so meek. I'm like, their pride's just not the kind of pride that gets out in front of them and shows itself. But if you were to go to that melancholic person or that self-deprecating person and talk to them about their own life, their own desires, their own struggles, you'd find out pretty quickly that actually they think pretty highly of themselves.

They think they're better than the people who go around bragging. Yeah, well, see, now, whatever kind of pride I've got, it's not that kind. Yeah, at least I'm not as bad as those people. Yeah, I just have the kind that's just like, I think that's a proud man. Look right over there. We can see him across the parking lot. That's a proud thing he's doing. Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that pride is the sort of, it's the foundation of almost every other sin you can commit. I mean, you can even think about something like if you have a mom who yells at her kids, why is she yelling at her kids? It's probably because she thinks that she deserves to be treated better than they're treating her. That's the, like, I deserve better than this. You're not giving me this. And that's the thing that causes the anger that erupts in yelling. And you can do this over and over again with all sorts of different types of sins.

We're reading Anna Karenina right now, and one of the characters is – he's carrying on an affair and committing adultery against his wife. And he has decided that, well, I'm a strong, youthful man, and I deserve this. That's how he's rationalized it to himself is that he deserves it, and his wife really should be understanding. That, you know, this is just how the world works, and so she should understand it. And so there's so much pride at the root of the adultery. Doesn't the fact that pride is like a central sin go all the way back? I mean, it's in Scripture, but also we see it in church fathers like Augustine when he says his discussion of inordinate affections, like disordered, like that at the root of all of it is...

Our love of self comes before everything else. And however we can meet that central need for self-love, we'll do it if we need to put others down or whatever other sins we need to commit to prop ourselves up. Yeah, I think so. Where do you even begin with pride? It's hard to know how to talk about it. It's a sort of sin that people... It's not the sort of sin that people deny, but I also don't think it's the sort of sin that people understand. It's just like you'll cop to it and you're like, yeah, I'm proud. But in terms of actually seeing your pride, like in the moment, I think is a completely different skill or talent or gift. It's cultivated to be able to see when... Almost nobody ever sees their pride in the moment. Yeah, it's like... And I think some of the reason is...

I don't know how quite to say it. The impulse for self-preservation, I think, flows out of our pride. We're always thinking about, like you mentioned with Augustine and our inordinate lust and stuff. No one has to tell us to think about ourselves or how to get what we want or how to... make sure that our needs are met. I mean, even Paul reasons that way with husbands and Ephesians wives, for no one even hated their own flesh. Right. It's like... But nourisheth it and cherisheth it. Yeah. It's like, well, it's just taken for granted that you're going to attend to your own needs. You're going to. Philippians 2 tells us that we should have the attitude of Christ, that we put other people's needs and interests above our own. Right. And so it's just the sort of sin that's just baked into us.

And we think, well, if I don't look out for myself, if I don't look out for my own interests, if I don't attend to my priorities, then no one will. Whether that's my spouse or my employer or my pastor or my whomever. No one else is going to pay attention, so I need to pay attention. I need to pay attention and care about getting what I want. And what's really at the root of that sort of thinking is a rejection of... of god's provision and his care and his attendance upon you you think well if i don't attend to it that no one else will so we we justify our pride that way well i have to think about my i have to be concerned about my own uh well-being because that's my job um but it's the sort of thing that scripture assumes you will do that is a part of you and actually warns of the danger that yeah that goes along with it there's um

There's a great line from Chesterton where he talks about how we always say this man or that man is going to be successful because he really believes in himself. And he just, he goes on this great rant where he says, you know, it's the losers and the... failures that are constantly convinced that the world is in the wrong and that their talent is just, their genius is unrecognized, that the people who most truly and deeply believe in themselves are all just literally insane. He says they're all in the asylum because they're convinced that they're right and the world is wrong. And what he does in that rant is just exposes how much inordinate pride is a weakness.

Because it leads us to a sense of blindness about our own failures and flaws. And this whole season we're talking about things we wish somebody had told us in our 20s. Yeah. So we're thinking about how young men are often more prone to that kind of pride and lack of self-knowledge. Yeah. That sometimes God uses the sanctification of... maturity and growth and age to help knock some of that out of us. Not all of it, but a little bit. I mean, maybe it's helpful to sort of describe, like, how do you identify pride? Like, how do you know when there's pride? The two things that come to my mind are, one, when things don't go your way, how do you respond?

Do you throw yourself a pity party or do you, or, you know, which I think is the common natural response. Right. That's not fair. It's sort of like, you know, what Chesterton was saying. He's like, you're willing to condemn the whole world rather than admit that you're wrong or that you're, that you failed or what have you. Yep. And it's just like, to what, to what lengths will you go to protect your own image of yourself? Right. And so what do you do? So how do you identify pride? Okay. How do you generally respond? when things don't go your way, when bad stuff happens, right? Like Job's wife, among a bunch of other things, was proud. Job, at the beginning, was humble. Shall we only accept good things from the hand of the Lord and not evil, not difficult? And so with all these words, Job didn't sin with his mouth. There was something remarkable in the humility before God in what Job said. Right.

And so how do you respond when bad stuff happens? Like if you're anticipating the bad stuff happening, if you're planning your next move for when the bad stuff happens, these are things that are downstream of pride. You're really trying to, you think it's really important that you get what you want. Another, maybe another measure, another mark of pride is how do you respond to correction or rebuke? Yeah. If you're immediately defensive when someone corrects you, we all have this sort of thing that wells up inside of us whenever someone tells us we're wrong or we didn't do a good job. It doesn't take your boss much actually to strike that nerve where he's like, hey, did you do this last week? And you're like, yeah, why? And it's like, there's your problem. It's showing. You're like, yeah, why? What's wrong? You're that quick. You're being defensive.

We all have that in us, and some of us will recognize it at that point and say, okay, maybe I screwed up. Maybe I thought I did a good job, but I didn't do a good job. Or maybe what I thought was a good job was not good enough for the people who relied on it. So how do you respond when you're being corrected? I think one of the marks of a Christian ought to be that they're teachable, which is just another way of saying that they're humble. That they're willing to be corrected to have other Christians get involved in their lives and say to them, I think this is not good. And for them to hear it and not say things like, oh, and then carry on with their lives without ever considering what was said to them by someone who loved them. Right. As I was prepping for this episode, let me share this. I was looking up some verses on the topic.

And so one of the first ones that jumped to mind was 1 Peter 5, which is, And what I haven't really thought about before is the two clauses, the clauses right before that. The first one is, And all of you close yourselves with humility. And so, The theme of the season is things I wish I'd known in my 20s. And so if you're in your 20s hearing this, this is especially for you, that clothing yourselves with humility is even more important and should be even more of a focus if you're young. And that one of the ways you're going to do that is going to be to be subject to your elders. Yeah, I think that's the hardest. It's very hard for young people.

When young men and women come of age in their parents' homes, and this is not original to me, I've heard other pastors talk about this, this is where I learned it, was that when they become of age, they become very critical of their parents. Yep. And they think everything, you know, when they're little, they think, oh, everything mom and dad does is right and good. And so they emulate it. And then they go through a season where they say, oh, everything mom and dad does is wrong. Mom and dad are dumb. Mom and dad don't know what. what time it is they their priorities are all out of whack and then the danger is that they would stay in that that's a proud place to be right for a young man or young woman to think of their parents as being foolish stupid um you know just having no wisdom at all and what you hope for is that that child will come under this instruction from peter

To clothe themselves with humility and to come to realize my parents are sinners and they did sin, but not everything they did was sin and not everything that they taught me was wrong. And there's a certain humility in being able to forgive your parents and the people that have sinned against you, have done wrong by you. But I don't think the proud person can ever forgive those who sinned against them because they just think, I don't do things like that. You know, I thank God that I'm not like these sinners. Yeah. I'm not like my parents. Yeah. And then they realized later on in life what everyone else around them recognized much earlier, which is. Exactly. You're a lot more like, you have sins too. And their sins don't make your sins okay. Right. And so, yeah, younger men, I mean, I remember when I was younger and getting married, I thought I knew all kinds of stuff.

I thought I had an answer to every gray area, every thorny, difficult thing. I thought, well, you just this and that. You just do that. You just figure this out. Well, that's just the answer. I don't know why all these other people are having so much trouble figuring this out. I got it all figured out. You don't need nuance when you're 25. No. You just, I mean, because you know everything. Right. And you don't. Yeah. And it's incredible how much you don't know. And as you get older, if God's kind to you, you'll see, you'll begin to see what an idiot you were. And if God's really kind, you'll have the awareness to say, man, I'm probably not as smart right now. Like, even the things that I hold to that I think are really, really consequential, really, really, like, I have no doubt in my mind that you're not, you're not. Chesterton's got a quote you might know about, the man who considers few things as a, how does he say it?

The Hobgoblin of Simple Minds. I don't remember the quote. I'd have to pull it up. Maybe you can put it up and put it in the sermon notes or in the show notes. But yeah, it's like life and people are so much more complex and it's pride that blinds you to that. You just think, oh, well, that's a simple question and here's a simple answer. And it's like, well, I'm glad it's simple for you. You'll find out in time it's not as simple as you started out thinking it was. Yeah, something I've thought about a lot with – I'm a financial advisor, and so I've spent years studying to learn to do this work. And I read all about it all the time, and there's a big licensing exam and a CFP exam that I had to go through. And so there will be times when my client asks a question, and it's – there's an unbridgeable chasm between us where there's no way I can just tell them all the things they would need to know to understand it the way I do. There is an element of, they're just going to have to trust me. And hopefully I can display enough expertise that they're going to do that. But at the end of the day, what I tell people when I'm sitting... Every now and again, I'll have a meeting where...

It's someone who doesn't have an advisor yet and they're thinking about hiring us. And I'll tell them, what you need to do is you need to find someone who you trust them to make good, wise choices with your investments and then trust them. Because if you're not going to do that, then you need to learn how to do my job, basically. Those are kind of the options. And there's a lot of overlap with that for younger men and older men. And I think about when... you're a kid like it would be terrible if an eight-year-old was trying to judge his parents parenting and and whatnot um and we can all see that but we have such a hard time when we're 25 or 28 years old like and there's a an older wiser man or a pastor or an elder saying to us no there's so much you don't understand um And I think we ought to be more mindful of the fact that the parent could never explain to the eight-year-old why they can't eat the food they want to eat or whatever it is. And we ought to be able to recognize that there's probably some of that dynamic going on with us in that the pastor or the elder can't bridge that chasm in a few minutes or even in an hour or two. We're just not going to understand. So we ought to be subject to our elders and not stand in judgment over them.

Yeah, absolutely. I think we'll have our first live fact check. Is this the quote? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. It's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote. Ah, I'm an idiot. I pulled that up. Thank you. You're welcome. I wasn't remembering, but it does sound kind of buff, but it wasn't Chesterton. Nope, not that one. So, Pastor Dave, somebody who's listening to this, I think the tendency is for us to say, I'm not prideful. Actually, I think I'm horrible. I don't think too highly of myself because I actually think I'm a terrible person and no one should ever love me. And so what would you say to that person? Does that person still have a pride problem or do they have another problem where they actually – could that person maybe need to love themselves more?

Well, I think pride is thinking about yourself too much. What you think about yourself is not as much the concern. Whether you have really, really high thoughts of yourself or really, really low thoughts of yourself, a proud person is only concerned with themselves. That's all they think about. I would also say that the question I have for that person is, how do they respond when people agree with their self-assessment? Because I've known people that can run themselves down so hard, but the minute anybody says, yeah, you actually do have a lot of weaknesses and failures, the tables completely flip. My friend and I have discussed a particular person that I know, no one here knows, and hopefully no one on this podcast will ever get to know, but just somebody that has, they have a particular work that they've done.

And they will run down their ability and talent in that area just constantly. Like, I know I'm not very good at that at all. But the minute you say to them, hey, here's something you could do to try to do better at that. Like, you're right. You aren't as gifted in that as maybe you could be. But try this. Maybe you could do this and this work would help you. The person immediately starts backpedaling because what they're actually wanting is they're wanting their ego propped up because they don't want you to agree with them. They don't want you to say to you, yeah, not you're worthless, but yeah, you do have a lot of weaknesses and failures. Yeah, the opposite of, maybe it's helpful to think in terms of opposites. The opposite of pride is not tearing yourself down. That's not, like humility is it, is the opposite. And so the thing that comes through in your example, Martin, is that that person who's like, well, I'm terrible at this and I'm no good.

I'm a terrible, no good, very bad person. It's like, well, as soon as you say, they're like, you can't say that about me. And I'm like, well, but a humble person, like you think of David when he was, you know, after all of his sins and Absalom chased him out of the city, you know, and then I can never remember the guy's name. Shimei. Shimei comes out and is hurling abuse at him. And David's guy's like, you want us to go knock his head off? You know, we'll just run over there and knock his head off for you. And David's like, he's probably right. What are we going to say? And if he's wrong, like, then let the Lord deal with him. That was actually a humble response. Like, we're not told what Shimei said. We're not told whether he was right or whether he was wrong. We're just told that David was like, I've done so much wrong. Like, here I am being chased. Like, look what my son's doing back in the city. And here I am on the run. And this is what I, like, what do you want me to be proud of? Yeah. He even says, his statement is that the Lord has told him to curse.

So don't stop him right now. You know, that God would have to settle out the accounts in the end. Yeah. And so, I mean, that's a humble response. Yeah. That's a humble response. Something I think about, I've heard Pastor John MacArthur say that when people attack him, his policy is that he won't defend himself. And if it turns out that the person is attacking him unfairly, then Phil Johnson will defend him. And that's just what they do. And I think there's... I think there's some wisdom in that, in that if you are wanting to defend yourself, like a lot of times that's pride. Not always, but the person who always has an excuse, the person who always has a defense, they always have the reason that their situation, or you're, oh, you must not be understanding it correctly if you think I did the wrong thing. Yeah, that's a hard thing because I think in our day, like anyone who fights is, I think, The world sees anyone who fights as being a good thing. But Christians look and they say, well, anyone who fights is automatically proud. You shouldn't. But it takes real humility to fight sometimes. Right. Depending on what you're fighting about, we don't have time to go into an intricate example of when it would be appropriate versus when it wouldn't be. But I just want to say that sometimes fighting is the humble thing to do. Right. It's possible to be too proud to fight. Yeah. Yeah.

And so to be above it all. Yeah, that's true. And so it's difficult to sort out because it's not always wrong to fight or even to defend yourself. I mean, I've met pastors. I don't know. I really don't know if it's my pride or not, but I don't get as wound up about defending myself as some other men I know who are godly, who are much more likely to say, to take David's stance. And I'm like, maybe it's just, you're more humble than I am, but I don't like it when I, if, if someone's going is, is wrong and is attacking and causing harm, like you can say what you want about me, but if you, you know, to a certain extent, but if you start saying things about people that I love and that I care about, or you started doing them harm, like I'm likely to get upset about that and have something to say about it. And is that just, is that pride? I, I don't know. Yeah. I know I'm proud.

i hear it and things i say i'm i'm real good at boasting like but in a way that i don't maybe it's obvious to other people it's often apparent to me that i'm one of the things i'm saying it's to toot my own horn right and well i i would say just briefly to unpack when you're saying the difference between um sometimes people can be too proud to fight uh because sometimes the person reveals in that that they're only concerned for their own reputation and not about the thing that's being fought over. Does that make sense? So there should be a willingness, whether it's about your church, about doctrine, about Christianity, about your family, to be willing to stand up for those things, even if that puts you in uncomfortable and difficult situations. That's a little bit different than fighting for your own reputation, but there are times where when you're put in a position of responsibility as a father, as a husband, as a pastor,

or as a leader in a church, where you're put in a position where you need to stand up to defend the institution. And there are ways that that institution and you are kind of, your identities are intertwined. But that's the difference I see. Because that's, I think we could all agree there's a big difference between that and just defending your own perfection. Like the fact that anybody would say that I failed. How dare you? There's a difference between that and saying, I have failed, but that doesn't mean that you get to sit in the city of judgment. Right. Because that's harmful to others. Yeah. I mean, I think the place in scripture that's most helpful to me in sorting out that sort of pride is in Corinthians where Paul is defending his apostleship. That's good. And I mean, it's so intense. And he's defending himself. And you're like, is this guy really defending himself? And it's like...

Every once in a while, as you read those epistles, you see interspersed his love for the people who are caught in the middle. If you were to have many teachers in Christian, you would not have many fathers. But I became your father through the gospel. And it's like, oh, I don't think he's fighting for his own reputation among the Corinthians, but he's fighting for their souls. And that's actually a humble thing. And so in our day... If men fight, they're just seen as proud. And many times it is. And it's clearly an only pride. And sometimes it's a mixture of the two. Sometimes it's pride and sometimes it's not. And different bits and pieces of it. Yeah, I think about what Martin's saying, that a lot of the reason our country's in the state it's in is because so many Christians have decided that it's low status to...

engage in the quote-unquote culture war and so there's a whole host of issues they don't even touch because they think like quite frankly they think they're too good for it and i think we ought we ought to be careful have we have we masked our unfaithfulness to obey scripture and and confess it in like is is pride getting the best of us there when we won't find yeah and and the thing i mean when i think about what pride is and how to identify it and how to work on it. I just think, are you willing to be corrected? Are you willing to do what you're told? And do you trust God to raise you up? I can't remember where the passage is in scripture. It says that we should humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God. And in due time, he will raise you up. And it's like, are you willing to do that? Are you willing to work and in the shadows in such a in such a society that everything is to be visible everything is made even the food you eat you're supposed to take pictures of it yeah like are you willing to work faithfully and humbly in the shadows or do you have to receive your recognition um one of the things i often talk we one of the proverbs that often comes up in my house uh with my kids is that is uh let others praise you and not your own lips yeah

And I just say that to my kids when they're like, Daddy, Daddy, did you? And I'm so much better. It's like, let others pray. It may be that what they did was really awesome. Yeah. And so I just look at them and I say, let others praise you and not your own lips, man. James talks about that when he says, humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you in due time. But Philippians... he uses the same theme where he says, Jesus humbled himself, he became obedient to death, even the death of the cross, therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him a name above every name, that even Christ modeled for us that willingness to be humbled so that he can be exalted. And so long as we need to constantly defend our own name and push our own agenda and be seen as somebody, we constantly end up on the short end of the stick. Paul in

In Corinthians, it's so fascinating because when he does defend his apostleship, there's such a tongue-in-cheek irony the whole time when he keeps saying, you forced me to do this, and I appear as a fool, but I'm willing to appear as a fool. I'm willing to do the hard thing, which in this case was not defending himself, not being, quote-unquote, above the fray, but entering the fray for the good of the people and saying, you forced me to do this, and I'm gonna even be more insane and more crazy. And you all are wise. I'm the fool. He says that over and over again. It's such a fascinating passage of Paul demonstrating, as you're saying, the idea of defending the flock by defending his own apostleship for the good of souls, not for his own benefit, but for their benefit. Yeah. I think I would, you know, as I'm thinking about how to wrap this up, this idea of like, well, how do you know? Like, why should I fight my pride?

The things that have been sweetest for me to see for other people and experience in my own life is that when you are humble and God does lift you up and does give you something good, the clean conscience and the joy that you have in receiving it, it's just so sweet. Because you're like, I didn't go and wheedle and cajole and manipulate and plot and scheme. I trusted God and he gave me the desire of my heart. And you can receive it. as a gift from his hand and you don't have to wonder the rest of your life if like you're plotting and scheming are what got you there yeah um it's really freeing and liberating to um when you're humble when you know because then it's like oh well you can people can correct you and you're like okay yeah yeah allow the Lord to lift you up and then you can carry on with them in relationship and leading and uh in loving yeah

Because it's like, okay, well, we all screw these things up and we all have each other's back and we all correct each other. And so now we can carry on together. It's a really sweet brotherhood. Something, just a practical way to do that, I think, is to appreciate the good work that God is doing in the lives of other people and the good things that they've accomplished. I really, like, C.S. Lewis talks about this in, I think it's the Screwtape Letters, that A humble man is able to appreciate a great work of art by someone else just as much as if he had painted that. Yeah. It's mere Christianity. It's the idea of self-forgetfulness. Right. He says that the mark of humility is not necessarily thinking just low of ourselves but of thinking rightly about ourselves and then being able to not be so concerned about ourselves. Move on from yourself and not stay there. And so I think – If you're looking for a practical takeaway, then just thank God for what he's done in the lives of other people. Thank God for the things that other people are good at because that's the way to get away from wishing you were as good at that thing as they are. That's the way to get away from if someone else is being honored, wishing that you were being honored instead. It's just try to be truly grateful for what God has done for other people and actually serve them.

And look out for their needs and try to actually meet those. Because in doing so, you're able to shift the focus away from yourself and onto other people. And that's what humility in many cases means. Yeah. And I think you have to be – I was thinking about it when Martin was talking earlier about humility. And I was thinking of David dancing before the ark as it came into the city and how Michael was upstairs. Yeah. just despising him and that her pride, her dignity, her stateliness. And David's just like only concerned about the Lord. Yeah. And it was humble what he was doing. Right. And he said things that were really, you're like, David, seriously? Like, what if you did expose yourself? What if you do expose yourself again? And he's like, yeah, I'm not. I mean, those women are going to hold, those virgins are going to hold me in high esteem.

The Lord's pleased with what I'm doing. And if he's pleased, then that's really all I'm concerned about. But it's not him being pleased. Like, you'd just be crazy to think that he wouldn't have known his wife well enough to know that he was going to come home to a wife who was angry at him for embarrassing himself. And he just was like, you know, there's something more important than your sense of how things should be. Propriety. Yeah. And God honored him for it. Yeah.