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Viral Pride

By Phillip Ross

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Published: 23Jul2009
Word count: 946
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The corrupt leaders of the Corinthian church boasted about the very thing that corrupted them. Paul called them "puffed up" in 1 Corinthians 5:2. He repeated the charge in verse 6 by telling them that their "boasting is not good." Their main problem was not the outright sin, though it was a very heinous sin. Rather, their main problem was their pride that kept them from repentance. God can forgive every sin, except the pride that keeps a person from coming to God for forgiveness.

Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said that pride or "inordinate self-love is the cause of every sin (1,77) ... the root of pride is found to consist in man not being, in some way, subject to God and His rule." Pride is one of the classic Seven Deadly Sins. Pride not only gives birth to other sins, but even more deadly, it often keeps people from turning to God for forgiveness and repentance. Paul was suggesting that the Corinthian pride in their church, in its success and affluence, interfered with their exercise of humility. Proverbs 3:34 tells us that God is stern in dealing with the arrogant, but to the humble He shows kindness.

Pride is built on spiritual blindness. How so? To encounter God is to encounter our own frailty and sinfulness in the same way that a well-lit bathroom mirror shows the flaws in our complexion. Like Oedipus, we are driven to gouge out our eyes at the sight of our own wretchedness and wander away from our heavenly home, ashamed but unwilling to admit our shame. But unlike Oedipus, we build up lots of illusions about who we are and what we are about. We have a false understanding of ourselves.

We busy ourselves with career, family -- even church work -- thinking we are being driven by a strong work ethic, high moral values or the fire of the Holy Spirit. But too often, we are turning away from God by turning away from ourselves, by not seeing ourselves truthfully. Everyone else can see that we are putting on a show, but we can't see it. There's a log in our eye. We are blinded by the glare of our own pride. Coworkers may dislike us (we rationalize that they are just jealous), our children may self-destruct or leave us (we rationalize that they are ungrateful), and we may never truly pray but only stand in the presence of a god we have created to make ourselves feel better. And in the midst of it all we adamantly refuse to see what is before our very eyes.

Because humility is the opposite of pride, it serves as a kind of antidote to keep pride in check, to keep the infection of pride from giving birth to more sin. Pride is a kind of spiritual virus. Paul refers to it as leaven. Leaven is what you put in bread to make it rise or puff up. Leaven causes fermentation, which produces gas, which causes the bread to expand. Fermentation causes organic things to break down. It is a kind of rot.

Paul alludes to all of this in his single question, "Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" (1 Corinthians 5:6). Leaven spreads through a loaf of bread like a virus. A little leaven will effect the whole loaf. Paul doesn't use the word "virus," it was not available to him or to the Greek language. Virus is a discovery of modern science -- not that science invented the virus. Rather, science invented the technology which allowed us to identify the reality and function of viruses. Viruses have always been around (at least since the Flood), but prior to the development of modern science we didn't have the tools to see them or analyze them. Earlier generations called them diseases or illnesses of various kinds. Nonetheless, the analogy remains: pride is a disease.

As with any disease there are two primary concerns: 1) containment, and 2) cure. A disease must be contained to keep it from spreading to other people, and most often disease is spread through contact or proximity. Once it is contained, it must be cured.

Not only will a disease effect one's whole body, but it will effect one's family and friends if we are not careful. Paul's point was that pride is contagious just like diseases are contagious. Just like leaven effects the whole loaf, so the contagious disease of pride can effect the whole body of Christ, the church. The disease of pride must be contained just as a contagious disease must be contained to keep it from spreading. The person who is ill must be isolated from other healthy people to eliminate or reduce the possibility of contaminating others.

The problem today is not keeping people from the pride virus because virtually everyone has it. The problem today is finding the cure. And again, the key to the cure is like the key to contagion -- contact. Remember the woman with the twelve-year blood flow problem who snuck up behind Jesus and touched His robe (Matthew 9:20-22)? She was cured by the Master's touch.

Usually when a contaminated thing touches a clean thing the clean thing gets contaminated. But Jesus reverses the process. When a contaminated thing touches Jesus, it is made clean. This is an example of how the gospel reverses things. Christ turns the world upside down and inside out. The difficulty with regard to pride is that it will not allow itself to get near to the Lord because pride is destroyed by humility. And pride refused to die the death of baptism (Romans 6:4). It can't because if it does, it won't be pride anymore.

Phillip A. Ross has been a pastor for over 25 years and is the author of many Christian books. He founded http://www.Pilgrim-Platform.org in 1998, which documents the church's fall from historic Christianity. He published an exposition First Corinthians that demonstrates Paul's opposition to worldly Christianity. Ross recounts how Paul turned the world upside down in his book, Arsy Varsy -- Reclaiming the Gospel in First Corinthians.

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