January 18, the remedy for pride. Come now you who say, today or tomorrow we will go into such and

such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Yet you do not know what tomorrow

will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.

As it is, you boast in your arrogance.

All such boasting is evil.

James 4 13 through 16.

James is talking about pride and arrogance

and how they show up in subtle ways.

You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

When you take three categories of temptation to self-reliance, wisdom, power, riches, they form a powerful

inducement toward the ultimate form of pride, namely atheism.

The safest way for us to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us.

This is why the proud preoccupied themselves with looking down on others.

C.S. Lewis said,

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, mere Christianity.

But to preserve pride, it may be simpler just to proclaim there is nothing above to look at.

In pride of his face, the wicked does not seek him.

All his thoughts are, there is no God.

Psalm 10, verse 4.

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