My freshman year at BYU, my Book of Mormon professor took a couple classes to warn us of the dangers of self-esteem. It’s been long enough that I don’t remember precisely how she got to self-esteem being a dangerous concept (except something something less than the dust of the earth). It was dumb and harmful, and I objected to it in class, though as an 18-year-old I didn’t have the language to articulate why it was stupid and harmful.[fn1]
While I’m not clear how she derived the idea that self-esteem was harmful, I wouldn’t be shocked if it found its roots in Pres. Benson’s infamous talk “Beware of Pride.”
In his talk, President Benson says that “[i]n the scriptures there is no such thing as righteous pride—it is always considered a sin.” He goes on to explain why pride is a literal “damning sin” and how to counteract its evil effects. And I can see a line from self-esteem to pride.
So are self-esteem, and pride, and Pride, and being Proud to Be an American inherently sinful?
Well, no. And I think Pres. Benson would agree with me on that. (I mean, I’d have to explain myself, but then I think he’d agree.) See, when you look for “pride” in the OED, you get twelve definitions. Some of them are obsolete, and some are irrelevant, but a large handful are relevant. And each has different meaning and connotation. So is something sinful just because it fits within one of a dozen definitions?
That would be absurd. Love them or hate them, but a pride of lions (definition 10) isn’t sinful just because the English language attaches the word “pride” to them.[fn2] Pride may be a sin, but it’s not a sin as a result of its nomenclature.
And the cool thing is, we don’t have to guess what Pres. Benson meant by “pride.” He defines his term within the talk itself! He mentions “self-centeredness, conceit, boastfulness, arrogance, or haughtiness” (roughly definitions 1(a) and 2), but, he says, those miss the core of sinful pride. Pride—the type of pride that is the universal sin and the great vice—is, at its center,
enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen. Enmity means “hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.” It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.
For much of the rest of the talk, Pres. Benson explains and gives examples of this enmity, of how it hurts us and our neighbors spiritually, and what we can do about it. And I agree! Enmity is bad. It’s sinful. It’s a universal sin that we need to actively rid ourselves of.
But enmity is not implicated in every definition of pride; in fact, it’s in opposition to several. Definition 3(a), for instance, is virtually the opposite of enmity:
A consciousness of what befits, is due to, or is worthy of oneself or one’s position; self-respect; self-esteem, esp. of a legitimate or healthy kind or degree.
This type of pride—self-esteem, if you will—is basically recognition of our inherent and eternal worth. Among other things, it embraces recognizing ourselves as children of a loving God.
Similarly, 6(a) defines “pride” as
A sense of confidence, self-respect, and solidarity as felt or publicly expressed by members of a group (typically one that has been socially marginalized) on the basis of their shared identity, history, and experience.
Again, this type of pride is the opposite of enmity—it’s solidarity with one’s neighbors.
Pres. Benson’s “Beware of Pride” was an important—and evergreen—talk. The enmity of pride is damaging and dangerous. But we do his warnings a disservice when we don’t actually look at what he means by pride and instead attach it to any English language usage of the word.
[fn1] It wasn’t limited to the religion department at BYU. At a stake conference after my mission, a stake president’s wife spoke about how her daughter had come home from school one day and mentioned self-esteem, and the stake president and his wife had explained how harmful the idea of self-esteem was.
[fn2] Though to be fair, you should probably also beware of a pride of lions, albeit for different reasons!
Photo by Leonard von Bibra on Unsplash