Pride's Beauty and Elitism

The British Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows cautions that this same dynamic holds true in terms of our motivation for prayer and religious practice. Again, sometimes our motivation has more to do with our own pride than with real faith and generosity. Thus, she writes: "The way we worry about spiritual failure, the inability to pray, distractions, ugly thoughts and temptations we can't get rid of..... it's not because God is defrauded, for he isn't, it's because we are not so beautiful as we would like to be."

"And pride, invariably, brings with it a harsh or condescending judgment on others. We see this later aspect, pride as a harsh or condescending judgment of others, most strongly perhaps in the peroid shortly after first conversion; when young lovers, recent religious converts, and neophytes in service and justice, still caught up in the emotional fervour of the honeymoon, think they alone know how to relate to one another, to Jesus, and to the world. Their fervour is admirable, but their pride and judgement of others invariably spawn and arrogance and elitism. But God and nature conspire together to ensure that the grind of the years will eventually restore humility."