Pride is a touchy thing for us Christians. It has traditionally been identified as one of the seven deadly sins. Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride is not just a problem for religious people either. Bragging, arrogance, superciliousness – these are not traits we look for in friends nor are these the tendencies we welcome in the workplace.
And yet, what child doesn’t yearn to know that her parents are proud of her? Who would think that the satisfaction of surveying a job well done with pride in the accomplishment is a sign of sin? Isn’t it, rather, part of the joy we experience as co-creators with God?
Where is the line between healthy self-respect and vanity? How long is too long to stand before the mirror, fixing one’s hair or makeup? Do we need to set a timer? “Siri, stop my preening before I become vain.”
I practice my sermons. I do so in part, so I can better focus my meandering thoughts to address the issues raised in the scripture readings. I do so in part, so I don’t embarrass myself and to the extent that it’s possible, so I look reasonably intelligent and coherent. I think hard about these “Sips,” often erasing paragraphs and sentences that wander, changing a word here and a phrase there. I check the spelling and grammar. I enlist my live-in copy editor to check them before I publish them. Why? Because I want only my best work to be delivered to your inbox. (Yes, sadly, this is about as good as I get.) That’s driven by my respect for you and for the work God has given me to do, but it is also because it is demanded by my sense of pride. I would be ashamed to give you less than my best.
Notice, if you will, the relationship between pride and shame. They function as opposites, don’t they?
Just as there is healthy pride that impels us to live and work and groom ourselves in a way that befits respect for ourselves and others, there is healthy shame. When we are faithless to our true values, that is, when we violate our integrity, we rightly feel shame. In scripture, the first human couple feel shame after their sinful violation of God’s will. They feel exposed. They have revealed their willingness to violate a trusting relationship to satisfy a selfish desire. When we violate our core values, the first pain we feel comes from facing this truth about ourselves which we would rather not see. Having seen it in ourselves, our urge is to prevent this flaw from being seen by others. We cover up. We hide. We dissemble. We are ashamed.
The discomfort of our shame can lead us to alter our ways so that we can begin again to feel OK with ourselves and reveal ourselves to the world with greater ease and openness. No one likes the feeling of being ashamed. The healthy response to the uncomfortable feeling is to reassess our behavior and start acting less shamefully. We all know that some people tragically are able to ignore the signals that healthy shame sends. They act shamelessly. Shameless people spread chaos and misery wherever they go.
Healthy pride and healthy shame are like the stripes on the highway that define the lanes. They help us regulate our behavior within the boundaries that have been established for us.
There’s the rub. Most of the norms that serve as lane markers are social conventions. They often masquerade as moral absolutes, but they frequently are more cultural and conventional than universal and timeless absolutes.
My ruminations on pride and shame are prompted by the celebration of Pride Month. My journey to embracing LGBT pride began about 35 years ago. At the time I was a student pastor, still in seminary, when I had the privilege of making the acquaintance of Sam Loliger. Sam was an untiring, hope-filled, positive lay leader in the Western Area. Sam was smart and funny and kind and a great role model. Sam was also the first proudly, openly gay man I had ever known well enough to converse about the subject.
Because he was so open and unguarded, he allowed me in time to feel free to discuss my own conflicted feelings with him. One of our first talks about pride was prompted by my objection that he was more than open about his orientation; it occupied too prominent a part of his self-presentation. I argued that I didn’t advertise my heterosexuality and that gay assertiveness was likely losing friends rather than gaining greater acceptance. Sam took the time to help me see that my heterosexuality was advertised too – by my wedding band and casual references to my wife, by the listing of clergy spouses in the Area directory and by the many other ways in which the norms of the culture just took heterosexuality as unremarkable. More than that, the culture (and especially the majority of the church culture) did more than take heterosexuality as unremarkable; it declared it the only acceptable standard.
Eventually, he helped me see that his brave public openness and the pride he took in the loving relationship he shared with Don was a refusal to be ashamed. His pride was not vanity. His pride was not arrogance or pushiness. It was a refusal to be shamed for being who he was. It was a refusal to be ashamed of the love which he recognized as a gift of God which he shared with his partner (who was eventually able to become his lawful husband). He was unashamed of their love as a couple, a love that they did not merely spend on each other, but which together they shared with the world.
I think I am not all that unusual. A lot of straight people initially react to LGBT pride events with confusion. They don’t understand why they feel the need to be so “out there.” As a white, male, straight codger I am not pretending to speak for my gay friends. But I do think that what Sam taught me is important for us straight folks to hear. Pride celebrations are a public turning away from shame which was, and still is, imposed on LGBT people. Gay pride is reclaiming the truth of the inherent created goodness of all people. Pride refuses to accept the judgement that labels some people defective. Pride celebrations, at their best, celebrate the goodness of creation and the holiness of love.
And that kind of pride is surely not a sin.
Prayer: Author of love, you have gifted us with our emotions. Elation and fear; joy and pride; shame and guilt; anxiety and bliss, and everything in between; all are part of the language of the soul that you use to speak to us and which allow us to understand ourselves and our neighbors. You have made us for yourself just as we are. Help us to accept ourselves with an easy pride because we are your workmanship. Grant that we never stop you from continuing that work in our lives. Amen.