C.S. Lewis - The Great Sin

C.S. Lewis in his book "Mere Christianity" outlined what he called the Great Sin.  In today's world this is more true than ever.  It truly takes a measure of humility to realize that there is more to life than yourself and your earthly pursuits.  The following is a excerpt from C.S. Lewis's book and I think it well describes man's problem today. 

"I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals.  There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves.  I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards.  I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice.  And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others.  There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves.  And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is pride or self-conceit; and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called humility.
Pride leads to every other vice; it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

It is the comparison that makes you proud; the pleasure of being above the rest.  Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself.  Unless you know God as that — and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison — you do not know God at all.  As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity — as if God Himself was proud.  He is not in the least worried about His dignity.  The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself.  And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble — delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life.  He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible:  trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are.  To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert."

I urge everyone to get in touch with God and relieve the thirst inside of you.