We often remember the church father Augustine for his preconversion life of sexual sin—his illicit lover and his famous prayer (“Grant me chastity, but not yet”). But the more I read Confessions, the more I notice how pride runs just as deep and just as long, and arguably does more damage. Augustine describes his younger self as ambitious, obnoxious, always looking to be the center of attention, convinced that when he didn’t understand something, the fault must lie with the teacher or the text. “I was a top student in the school of rhetoric,” he wrote, “and I was glad and proud and blown up with arrogance.” He was proud of his pride.

I admit there’s a side of me that swells with patriotic fervor at the feats of American ingenuity. Take the engineering marvel of the Artemis II mission, or the stunning power and surgical precision of our military on display in recent months.

But I also shudder at the speeches of American leaders who boast of our military prowess, sometimes even invoking God’s name over rhetoric that rivals the self-assurance of ancient empires. That kind of hubris makes me think of the architects who declared the Titanic unsinkable.

Dare we test Almighty God? Have we put our trust in the strength of the military or the impressiveness of modern-day chariots? The apostle Peter tells us that God opposes the proud. Have we reckoned with the fact of that divine opposition?

I’m convinced we don’t take pride seriously as a sin—either in ourselves or in others. We live in a world overflowing with self-promotion, where arrogance is reframed as swagger and narcissism passes for self-confidence. We have lifted up leaders whose egos are so massive we no longer flinch at their self-aggrandizement. Boasting marks our culture today. It’s now normal.

Sin Behind So Many Sins

In evangelical circles, we tend to focus on sins that are easily spotted and categorized. Pride—because it’s harder to nail down, because it takes so many forms, because it stands behind so many other sins—often gets a pass.

No matter how entertaining we may find the braggadocious, pride remains a spiritual parasite. It attaches itself to greatness because that’s where it can do maximum damage, pushing us like Icarus toward the sun. Pascal called it “a strange monster, and a very plain aberration”—the signal that humans have fallen from their exalted perch and are clawing their way back.

The Psalms speak of this sin more than many of the ones we obsess over. Arrogance crowds out God (Ps. 10:4). The Lord rescues the humble and brings down the haughty (18:27). The psalmist prays for God to cut off “the tongue that speaks boastfully” (12:3). Wickedness is flattering ourselves in our own eyes (36:2). The Lord cannot endure “a proud look and an arrogant heart” (101:5). A holy and majestic God delights to notice the humble, and he takes note of the proud to repay and rebuke them (138:6; 119:21).

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