The Hydra of Pride ~ C.S. Lewis

In a very personal letter last century C.S Lewis reflected:

During my afternoon meditations I have found out ludicrous and terrible things about my own character. Sitting by, watching the rising thoughts to break their neck as they pop up, one learns to know the sort of thoughts that do come. And, will you believe it, one of every three is a thought of self-admiration: when everything else fails, having had its neck broken, up comes the thought:

"What an admirable fellow I am to have broken their necks!"

I catch myself posturing before the mirror each morning and then suddenly realize I am thinking how frightfully clever I will be teaching class this day.

I pretend I am remembering an evening of good fellowship... and all the time I am really remembering how good a fellow I am and how well I talked.

It's like fighting the hydra (you remember when you cut off one head another grew). There seems to be no end to it. Depth under depth of self-love.#

Is not the most wicked thing about pride - not just its existence but its troubling persistence?

Satan lost heaven because of his pride, and now pride keeps man from finding heaven.

It is only when a man gazes up to the suspended Jesus (often in the complete humility of brokenness) and not just into self's mirror that he flees down the road, having unlocked the jail to self.

Today's Soul Snippet:

The most fearsome thing to western man is being still.

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#From an unpublished letter of C.S.Lewis to Arthur Greeves, Jan.30, 1930 Wade Collection, Wheaton College with a SoulSupply edit.