Those of you over 50 years old…
need no introduction to this guy. Chances are you can recount the episode from which this picture was taken.
For the rest of you, this is a picture of “the Professor” character from the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” which premiered on CBS on September 26, 1964. Actor Russell Johnson portrayed Professor Roy Hinkley all three seasons the show aired and in subsequent sequels. He originally did not want the part (in what may have been a prideful moment, he was hoping for a show of his own) and admitted to having difficulty memorizing the lines with a lot of scientific words in them.
Several years ago I received an email that identified the characters on Gilligan’s Island with the seven deadly sins, just for fun. The Professor was chosen to represent the sin of PRIDE because he was a “know-it-all.”
Pride is a sin because it makes an idol of self.
1. The vicious vice of pride. (1 Cor. 8:1-3)
How can I identify a sinful degree of pride in myself? It is a matter of trust: do I trust God or self? Pride is putting trust in myself or any other worldly thing. It is a matter of love: do I love God first? Love of self is appropriate if we love God and others first. It is a matter of grace: do I try to earn favor? This can be subtle, but I believe that I can be worthy to enter heaven by being a good person, that is a form of pride.
Why is pride deadly? It is deadly because it can blind us to our need for God. If we don’t acknowledge our personal problem with sin and our need for Jesus Christ as Savior, we are dead in our sins and unsaved. Self-reliance can be a good thing except in spirituality. In spiritual matters we must rely on God.
The context of this verse is a “hot button” issue in the early church; whether or not it was appropriate to eat the meat of animals that had been slain as a sacrifice to an idol. Paul’s teaching on this issue reveals how pride can replace true spirituality. In his answer, Paul was inspired to make three points.
First, WE ALL HAVE KNOWLEDGE. That was Paul’s way of saying, “Everyone in the church has an opinion on this subject.” The question was, whose opinion was right?
Paul’s answer might be summarized as, “The person who relies on God’s wisdom than human knowledge.” The spiritually mature view is to not be legalistic because legalism is a religious form of pride. It puts human knowledge above spiritual revelation, and law above grace.
Second, love is better than knowledge. Paul wrote that KNOWLEDGE PUFFS UP - that is - it creates a pride. “Know-it-all” people and legalists have a toxic effect on relationships. LOVE is better because it BUILDS UP other people. People who have the love of the Lord have a positive effect on relationships.
KNOWLEDGE asks questions like…
What are my rights?
There are no exceptions - no need to pay attention to context - so, what does the law say?
How can I be vigilant to correct wrong-doing in others?
How do I need to exert my will?
LOVE asks questions like…
What is my responsibility?
What has God revealed to me?
What can I do to show God’s grace and promote spiritual maturity?
How can I help others to do God’s will?
Third, humility is best defined as accurate self-knowledge. This may sound shocking: self-reliance is the greatest enemy of faith because it encourages inaccurate self-knowledge.
People who are intellectually self-reliant are proud of their big brains. They tend to reject faith, tradition and Scripture because they’ve “figured it all out” and “know better.”
People who are materially self-reliant seek security from money in the bank or are materialistic in more subtle ways.
People who are physically self-reliant tend to emphasize experience and value excitement. They refute absolute truth and morality as it might limit on their freedom.
People who are spiritually self-reliant have made up their own faith; they see no problem with placing their hope in something that has no more authority than wishful thinking.
Humility is needed and none of these self-reliant people are humble because they fundamentally misperceive themselves. Accurate self-knowledge comes only in relationship with God. For example, every day we rely on a mirror to accurately view our appearance. In a similar but more important way, we need someone to reflect our true self back to us.
Apart from God, all we have are other people to be mirrors for us. There are at least two problems with depending on people to serve as our “character mirrors.”
No one else really knows us. They can’t know read minds and they have not lived all our life with us. God knows us better than we know ourselves and He has been with us all our lives.
The perspective of others is always heavily influenced by their own thoughts and experiences; they are incapable of being a truly accurate reflection. God IS the truth. He alone can truly reflect us.
So how do we access God’s perspective? Primarily, we gain God’s perspective through prayer, Scripture, and the Holy Spirit. Secondarily, we can gain God’s perspective through other believers who are spiritually maturing and speak through the Holy Spirit.
2. The vital virtue of humility. (Romans 12:3)
The context of this passage: in Romans 12, Paul reminded the church members that they were not separate bodies, but one. The individual believers, like organs in a body, must all function and function together for the health of the whole.
How am I to practice humility? Paul listed three specific requirements.
First, I must stand in God’s grace, not in my works. In the phrase, FOR BY THE GRACE GIVEN ME Paul identified the authority behind his words (God) and the source of his words (also God).
GRACE is God’s favor on undeserving people. Pride is a sin because it attempts to do away with GRACE, to make it unnecessary by redefining sin out of existence or at least making it unimportant.
Humility is a virtue because it admits to our complete dependence on God. You can’t have humility without GRACE.
Second, I must not think too highly of myself; no more than I OUGHT to. Humility is NOT making yourself a doormat. It has very little to do with passivity. Humility is knowing who you really are, as God has given you perspective to know yourself accurately.
Accurate self-knowledge will never lead to pride. It is never self-centered. Accurate self-knowledge is awareness of your strengths and weaknesses and a desire to live within them. Accurate self-knowledge does not deny ambition, but it tempers it. It is based on truth and is the most realistic view of self.
I must think of myself as God does. Because of GRACE, I see myself as a child of God. Thereby I can…
Third, exercise SOBER JUDGMENT. I can see good and evil in the world and react accordingly. I understand life IN THE MEASURE OF FAITH.
Notice FAITH too is God’s gift. FAITH is not something we make up to suit ourselves or to fit in with the crowd. FAITH is received. It must be sought and discovered. It is passed on and received.
Humility is vital because pride can blind us to our need for God. Pride replaces God with self. Pride leaves us dead in sin because if we don’t acknowledge our sin & our need for the Savior then we will never have faith.
Those of you under 50 years old…
know what this woman is doing.
For the rest of you, this gal is taking a “selfie” and she’s using a “selfie stick” and her smart phone to do it. She will post the self-portrait on a website called Instagram, where people typically draw attention to themselves.
A friend gave me a copy of a cartoon that identifies the seven deadly sins with websites, updating this list for modern times. Instagram is a photo and video-sharing website and app that began way back in 2010 and is owned by Facebook. As of September, 2017, Instagram had 800 million registered users and over 40 billion photos and videos have been uploaded to it. Instagram is criticized both for its censorship and its lack of censorship, proving again you can’t make everyone happy.
My point is not that users of Instagram are raging egomaniacs. Instead, I merely offer Instagram is a symbol of pride because it is a place where people show themselves to the world. However, the self they’re showing is possibly more flattering than accurate.
Pride is a sin because it makes an idol of self.
Our message is simple: avoid the vice of pride while practicing the virtue of humility. We prize independence and in politics and finances, that is a good thing. But in every other respect, dependence on God and interdependence among believers is the ideal. It is an ideal achieved by humility, not pride.