2/27/78 (See the Doctrine of Cosmic One)
A. Definition
. 1. Pride is the basic mental attitude sin. It is the quality of exaggerated self-esteem, conceit, subjective thinking, and arrogance.
2. It is lofty self respect. It is high esteem of oneself whether real or imagined.
3. Vanity is empty pride. Pride which has no attainments or possessions, but has excessive desire for attention, approval, and praise from others.
4. Words used for pride include conceit, egotism, haughtiness, vanity, arrogance, vain glory, superciliousness, megalomania, and pomposity. Arrogance is maximum pride.
B. Pride was both the original sin of Satan and the motivation for his fall, Isa 14:12-14.
1. “I will be like the Most High God.” Satan was the greatest creature ever to come from the hand of God. He had the greatest beauty, personality, and intelligence. He assumed he was as great as God. All arrogance assumes divine prerogatives. When you judge someone else, you assume the mental attitude of Satan. The desire to be well-thought of by others is subjective arrogant thinking.
2. Satan thought he could overthrow God. In his arrogance he didn’t understand the attributes of God. Ezek 28:14-17 emphasizes Satan’s pride and approbation lust. There never was equality in the angelic realm. Satan was the personal aid to Jesus Christ.
3. Satan was arrogant because of his beauty. Human arrogance is offset by the ability to think and to relate yourself to life. The soul is designed by God to offset arrogance. You have the ability to think and look at yourself without a thought about how good or bad you look.
4. Self-consciousness is not arrogance. Arrogance is subjective thinking related to self-consciousness of the soul. Satan corrupted his wisdom. We are all given a certain amount of wisdom or objectivity. It is destroyed by arrogance. Satan’s subjectivity destroyed his wisdom. Arrogance destroys outer beauty. This doesn’t mean ugly people aren’t arrogant.
C. Pride is a human sin.
1. Pride is the basic mental attitude sin, and as such, it attracts other mental sins. For example, the arrogant person always sees someone who has more of what makes the arrogant person arrogant, e.g., beauty, personality, or ability. This causes jealousy. These two mental sins always travel together. All arrogant people are jealous. Pressure put on arrogance causes jealousy to pop up.
2. Inevitably, this person will be petty in the area of his jealousy. If the arrogant person is petty, he also becomes vindictive. If vindictive, he becomes implacable. Arrogance, jealousy, pettiness, vindictiveness, and implacability go together. Arrogance never travels alone.
3. Arrogance demands total attention from everyone in the periphery. All arrogant people are totally different under pressure. They are weak people. Other mental attitude sins come up under pressure. Pride is the only disease which makes everyone sick except the one who has it.
4. In 1 Tim 3:6, the neophyte has blind arrogance. He is proud of his self-righteous virtuous life.
5. 1 Tim 6:3-4 teaches that those who reject doctrine are arrogant, and intrude with false doctrine.
6. 2 Tim 3:2 says that rejection of authority is a part of arrogance.
7. According to 1 Jn 2:15-16, to love the world means living in Satan’s cosmic system. Arrogance of life is love of the world or worldliness. If you think human good and evil, then you are worldly. You cannot have arrogance and function inside the divine dynasphere.
D. Pride is related to personal reversionism, Ps 10:2-4.
1. Spiritual bullying comes from arrogance. You assume that your norms and standards should be superimposed over others.
2. Pride in males is more obvious than in females. Women use their emotions, nagging, and crying to gain control of others.
3. Prov 16:18, “Pride precedes destruction, and before a fall, arrogance of spirit prevails.”
4. Arrogance will lead to a combination of punitive actions from God, along with much self-induced discipline. We make our own misery when we carry arrogance around.
5. Unbeliever reversionism related to pride is found in Rom 1:30.
6. Childhood arrogance comes from parents wanting to win the affection of their children rather than establishing their authority. They create monsters in their children. Many arrogant people had permissive parents. All self-centeredness is related to arrogance.
7. James 4:4-7, “God makes war against the arrogant.” Arrogance makes the believer the enemy of God. Humility is grace orientation. The arrogant person appoints himself God’s enemy. 8. 1 Pet 5:5-6. Arrogant believers seek to control others through pseudo-norms, taboos, being critical, maligning, etc.
E. Arrogance is related to national reversionism.
1. Pride is mentioned as the characteristic of national reversionism. Lev 26:19, “I will break down your pride of power.” The economy is destroyed to stop arrogance.
2. In 2 Chron 32:26, Hezekiah humbled the pride of his right lobe so that the wrath of Jehovah did not come on the Jews.
3. The Jews were destroyed because of national arrogance, Isa 9:9.
4. National pride is related to the fall of Moab, Isa 16:6.
5. Arrogance leads to a manifestation in boasting, Isa 28. Therefore, arrogance divorces the individual from reality. Discipline is the only way to bring that person or nation back to reality.
a. An example of this would be the woman who assumes that every male who smiles at her is in love with her. She begins to hallucinate that she is in love with someone. It becomes so real to her that she thinks it has actually happened. She is totally arrogant and divorced from reality.
b. The male just thinks everyone is in love with him. Even if he is rejected, he thinks the woman is only fighting her real feelings of love for him. He feeds his own ego on the compliments of others.
c. These kind of people become troublemakers in a local church because of their hallucinations.
6. Arrogance brings down the worst discipline from God and causes the greatest self-induced misery. Arrogant people can never get to reality.
7. Isa 28:1-3 describes the national pride of the Northern Kingdom prior to the fifth cycle of discipline. People drink to maintain their disassociation from reality. Arrogance produces divorcement from reality which is strengthened by a lot of drinking. When the Assyrians came along, they weren’t real to the Jews of the Northern Kingdom.
8. Arrogance results in hallucinating. Drugs can be used to maintain the hallucinations. God punishes this type of arrogance by bringing the person back to reality. The reality is too much for them psychologically.
9. In Ezek 7:10, the Jews were divorced from reality and not prepared to meet the enemy. Conceit breeds defeat. Arrogance makes people unprepared for battle.
10. Hos 7:10-14. People always run to someone else when they are about to be destroyed. The Jews were like fickle silly women. They only went to church to get God to prosper them economically. When they revolted against God, they were destroyed.
F. Pride related to God.
1. 1 Sam 2:3 says that when you judge, that’s arrogance. It is arrogance directed toward God, because only God has the prerogative of judgment. The same thing is true when you try to punish other believers. Arrogance toward God is blasphemy.
2. Hannah was arrogant and beautiful. She became jealous of the other wife. She was disciplined from her jealously. She recovered and became the mother of Samuel. She was determined to stay with the cure, Bible doctrine.
3. Pride rejects the principle that Jesus Christ controls history. When you start to fall apart, panic, or get upset because of historical catastrophe, this is a demonstration of arrogance because you are saying that Jesus Christ does not control history. You have to remember everyday that the Lord controls history, including all coming catastrophe. Arrogance makes you forget this, Dan 4:37.
4. The principle of pride related to Jesus Christ is found in the dissertation on blind arrogance, Mt 19:27-20:34.
G. Positive volition to doctrine insulates the soul from pride and at the same time roots out pride. 1. Arrogance is the cause of disease called pride. The manifestations of this disease are other mental attitude sins and verbal sins.
2. Only learning pertinent doctrine can make us aware of deep-seated pride. When you learn doctrine directed toward yourself, you react and resist if you are subjective. You must be objective about yourself when Bible doctrine is your focus.
3. Job 33:16-17 says that Bible doctrine is the only way to deal with the source of the disease.
4. Prov 8:13. An arrogant person can easily say untrue things about someone else because he is divorced from reality, and someone equally stupid will always believe him. People believe it because they don’t like the person who is being maligned, whether it is true or not. You believe what you want to believe.
5. Prov 11:2, “When pride comes, then comes dishonor.” You cannot function under integrity and be arrogant. Someone once said, “The Sicilian tyrants never devised a greater punishment than jealousy related to arrogance.”
H. Pride and Psychology.
1. Flaws can be real as failures of character, or pseudo, in which a person’s flair is mistaken for either arrogance or a flaw.
2. Hangups are an obstacle in the normal function of life related to arrogance. A hangup results in becoming snagged in some form of subjectivity or abnormal thinking. All hangups are related to or are manifestations of pride. Arrogance under pressure by thought or circumstance cause the hangups or real flaws to appear in the life.
3. Real flaws or hangups are the result of arrogance. Arrogance is a character weakness as well as a sin.
4. Two kinds of hangups exist as a manifestation of pride.
a. Blind hangups.
b. Known or perceptive arrogance.
5. The symptoms of these hangups are called syndromes. Syndromes are symptoms typical of a condition. Syndromes are manifestations of pressure on some particular arrogance. 6. Hangups are a hindrance to learning Bible doctrine. Arrogance rejects the authority of the pastor. Men with hangups feel belittled by authoritative doctrinal teaching. Pride refuses to remain under the ministry of one’s right pastor. Arrogant people react to the message. Because they may have grown up in legalistic homes, they suffer from legalistic syndromes. They resent grace teaching.
7. The guilt syndrome is another symptom of the disease of pride. You react with guilt when something taught by doctrine applies especially to you. Your guilt complex surfaces because of your arrogance. All guilt is based on pride. No one has a guilt reaction without having arrogance somewhere in the soul.
8.
The emotional syndrome is manifest by holy-rollers. They are arrogant and hallucinate.
9. The inadequacy syndrome, the socialist syndrome, the liberal syndrome, the anti-semitic syndrome, and the anti-establishment syndrome are other symptoms of arrogance or pride.
I. The Anti-establishment Syndrome: Pride and the Laws of Divine Establishment, Rom 13:1-7. 1. In Mt 24:12 the term lawlessness refers to anti-establishment function. This is the arrogance which rejects authority in any phase of the laws of divine establishment. Rejection of any phase of establishment becomes a matter of arrogance.
2. Tyranny is born from pride. Bureaucrats tyrannize with arrogance.
3. Anti-establishment arrogance is manifest by women’s liberation, refusing military service, social welfare, socialism of any kind, communism, or willful violation of a known law of establishment. Those who are against the establishment never have anything better with which to replace the establishment.
J. Arrogance becomes a trigger mechanism for the function of evil.
1. Arrogance is often in a dormant form, becoming evident only when the individual is under pressure. Pressure on pride forces it to expand, suddenly releasing a chain reaction which creates a monster in the soul.
2. Since arrogance is an expanded opinion of self, it sits in the soul, content with the expanded image it has created. When pride is injured it contracts, forcing pressure to increase until there is a detonation of pride. Anything which compresses pride creates pressure that must explode.
3. Pride creates a maximum hypersensitivity in certain areas of the soul. Everyone’s sense of hypersensitivity is different.
4. A hangup is an obstacle in the normal function of life related to arrogance. A hangup is becoming snagged in some form of subjectivity or abnormality of the soul. Hangups are the hypersensitive areas of life, the highly vulnerable spots.
5. Syndromes are symptoms of hangups. For example, the liberal syndrome is often a symptom of the hangup of guilt because a person has more wealth than another person. Therefore, the liberal person who arrogantly feels guilty seeks to help those who are less fortunate, but only in order to ease his guilt.
6. Blind arrogance occurs in people who have arrogance which never shows until pressure is put on their area of hypersensitivity. Ultra-hypersensitivity tries to overthrow the authority of the pastor.
7. Pride can undergo a pressure activity which sets up the trigger mechanism, detonating the other mental attitude sins.
8. Hangups are areas where an individual’s pride is very vulnerable to attack, causing arrogance to start. If pride is attacked, it causes the trigger mechanism to detonate arrogance. Phil 1:15 states an example of this, “Certain ones on the one hand are making known the Christ, even because of jealousy and discord.”
9. Frustrated pride releases itself in mental attitude sins like jealousy, false motivation, the desire to hurt some authority, the function of evil, and the attempt to set up a system of discord. Paul faced this constantly with the Judaizers.
10. Dormant vulnerability is not a sin. These areas of hypersensitivity in the soul are only erased when the believer reaches maturity. Hypersensitivity is part of the human makeup. It merely triggers arrogance in the soul. If you are thoughtful, kind, and considerate, you will have some area of hypersensitivity. This is normal.
11. The abnormality comes when hypersensitivity reacts to some authority, some system of authority, some principle, or something said which offends him. The reaction always carries the sin of arrogance. For example, a woman scorned has just had an arrogant reaction to the hypersensitivity of all females. She reacts immediately. Her pride is compressed when the man who loves her rejects her. This causes the expansion of her pride and arrogance, which takes over her soul. Others do not see the pride, only the reaction of damaged arrogance. Therefore, they see bitterness, vindictiveness, implacability, and vengeance.
12. Injured pride is like nuclear fission. Jealousy and other mental attitude sins are released, causing believers to become monsters. This is why people are motivated to retaliation and vengeance, why reversionists are motivated to do good deeds, why people change jobs, and why people want to “show” someone else.
13. This pattern brings about self-induced misery, destroys capacity for life and sex, and causes lack of appreciation for others. There is no deliverance apart from advance to maturity for the believer, and recognition of establishment authority for the unbeliever.
14. If this pattern continues, a psychopathic personality will result.
K. Pride and the Psychopathic Personality.
1. Psychopathology is a disease of the emotions. We call it emotional revolt of the soul. The normal mature person controls his emotional life by his intellect. Normally the right lobe of the soul controls the emotions. In this way the emotional life blends perfectly with the intellectual life.
2. In the psychopathic personality, the normal subordination of the emotions to the right lobe of the soul is not present. This deficiency becomes the trigger mechanism of hypersensitivity, the arrogant reaction which produces mental, verbal, or overt sins. In neurosis, the emotions also control the soul.
3. There are three characteristics of the psychopathic personality.
a. Imbalance is operation overthink or subjectivity.
b. Instability in thinking.
c. Arrogance. We have Bible doctrine to control our emotional life. The action of regulating the emotions and keeping them under control demands something of great strength in the right lobe. This is where the believer with Bible doctrine has a great advantage.
4. The psychopath lacks the ability to evaluate what is real and what is not. He is totally divorced from reality. He lacks the ability to realistically evaluate the object of his/her emotional reactions. This drive toward a false object becomes so intense that reason no longer governs the actions of the individual.
5. The psychopath loses all objectivity and all ability to reason. He pursues a false object with pseudo-love fanaticism. The person with this hypersensitivity assumes the wildest things and thinks they are real. This is the imbalance with leads to instability. He becomes an emotional wreck. Then he does something to communicate this to the object of his hallucination. When he does, the object, being caught by surprise, often reacts in anger, or indignation, or rejection. 6. The psychopath now has a hypersensitive reaction which leads to double unreality. This is when the psychopathic personality really begins and when spiritual attention will no longer help. Now the person needs medical attention. These people become vicious, evil people without really intending to be. (Normal daydreaming is not psychopathic hallucination.)
7. When the intellect controls the emotions, it gives stability to the life. But the psychopathic person, in pursuit of his false object by his purely emotional thinking, can change from a violent love response to a person with unreasonable hatred.
8. Psychopaths aren’t capable of taking in doctrine. They need medical help before they have the ability to even listen to doctrine. One minute they are all for you, and the next minute they hate you.
9. The psychopath with his incapacity for true love becomes preoccupied with self-gratification, auto-hedonism, and anything related to emotional stimulation. He loses all reason and has no restraint of any kind. Sexual criminals are an example of this.
10. The true psychopath relates everything to himself. When he loves, it is for his own sake. It lasts only as long as it is to his advantage and there is no reaction in any of his areas of hypersensitivity.
11. A psychopath can be extremely pious, but his right lobe is closed by emotional revolt of the soul. He can parrot doctrine back to you, but it is all gnosis doctrine that has not been transferred. His spiritual life is really determined by his emotional desires related to lust.
12. There are five types of psychopathic personalities.
a. Hysterical psychopath, e.g., holy rollers.
b. Pathological liar.
c. An amoral psychopath loves everyone and is a “grace” person.
d. Sexual psychopath, e.g., rapist.
e. A fanatical psychopath is very ascetic and legalistic.
L. The Arrogant and the Inadequate.
1. This is a mutual admiration society. X equals the arrogant person; Y equals the inadequate person; Z equals the object which pulls them together.
2. Y is a reactor. He has reacted to something because of his arrogance. X is an aggressor with his pride. They are antithetical personalities which both despise Z.
3. Therefore, X and Y form a mutual admiration society to get rid of or to get even with Z. They only come to the surface when acting in the field of vindictiveness.
4. When the society of a nation is subjective, most social life is based on mutual admiration societies getting together. Mutual admiration societies are always the source of conspiracy against systems of authority. Their common antagonisms keep them together.
5. X flatters all the Ys who are inadequate and susceptible to flattery. X keeps them under control while trying to get rid of Z, the authority.