Opposing Views On Pride In Mere Christianity By G. Lewis

In Mere Christianity, Lewis explains his view on pride as the greatest sin that has the potential to spawn other sins. Lewis’ view is that pride is comparative and competitive in nature, where a person separates themselves from others. His view of pride is that pride is the main reason for why people do not truly know God. While I do agree with Lewis’ characterization of pride, it only tells half of the story. Understanding of research that came out after Lewis’ time can help show that pride is not just top-down. Lewis described pride as self-conceit and the opposite of humility, which seems like a reasonable definition (Lewis 121). Pride, not to be confused with an excess of self-esteem, is the greatest vice. Self-esteem is a personal evaluation of the self-concept, where a high self-esteem can be held by an array of moralities. A person do practices charity regularly may have a high self-esteem, but so may a bully. Both a truly humble person and a truly prideful person may have a high self-esteem, but the security of the esteem is drastically different. Humility creates a vigorous

Upward comparisons are comparisons that one makes to people who are “above” or better than them, and downward comparisons are where one makes comparisons to people who are “below” or worse than them (Shawcroft et al.). An upward comparison would be someone saying “Their clothes are so much prettier than mine.”, and a downward comparison would be a person saying “My clothes are so much prettier than theirs.” Lewis shows an example of an upward comparison in the text when he says, “Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently”, where the boy would make an upward comparison and notice they are not being self-respectful (Lewis