On the Irony of Christian Pride

Abstract: I argue that Christianity’s focus on the problem of pride commits its discourse to a paradoxical bind, and further that this paradox translates into certain contemporary secular politics. I conclude by asking what religious deliverance from the problem of pride might actually look like.

There is a deep and errant irony in the attempt of organized religion to suppress tenets of individual egoism and pride—especially in the Christian cosmology. The irony derives from the fact that one enters a religion, if not by birth, then almost certainly as an act of self-preservation/advancement, whether for secular reasons[1], or for more existential principles, e.g. as an honest effort to get into heaven, to fulfill a “calling,” or to pursue a new answer to a perennial question (the general “searcher” model)—no matter what, however, there is something irreducibly selfish about the religious convert. It is wrong to see the martyr as first an actor of the faith and only second as an individual attempting to win some eternal reward. In fact, the opposite is true: religion is an extension of the ego, and only hems in its regulation of pride insofar as the ego may be better preserved, pride sublimated into a more sanctioned and acceptable version of itself, or hidden behind the shield of a newly-accepted ethicism. At rock bottom, religion emanates from the ego[2] in order to create the conditions of homeness—this is why the worlds that are actually inaugurated by religious zealots are always infected with the biases and prejudices of their founders, and usually pervert the letter of the law through an exploitation of its spirit, here taken as an externalized and sanctioned proxy for the ego’s will; or, in other words, this is why the claims to a universal utopianism[3] so often end in persecutions and violence, as they use discourses and means of universalization to promote particular self-interests.[4] On a theoretical level, we might be able to remove these tools of universalization from their reduction to self-interest—but our cultural fear of totalitarianism and dictatorship has ironically not permitted effective questioning on this front, and has left us blind as to the real nature of this valence of self-love.[5] We have yet to develop a positive way of executing positive liberty.

When all is known—and all appears known in this age of digital globalization—all is forgiven.[6] The irony is this: in our thoroughly juridical culture, guilt is not guilt until proven so; but one cannot prove guilt conclusively in an age dominated by skepticism. Therefore all is always and already forgiven; the individual is naturally always and assumedly “off the hook” in the long-run and from the long-view—and what else are we left with today other than a long-view? And so, when the individual is already absolved, and the real fall, the real problem, the real point of decline is discovered to have begun long before he entered the stage (he a mere carrier of heritage, he a vessel of the “sins of his father”)—in the previous generation; in the generation before that; all the way back to the red apple and the fateful fall of Adam—what we see in this reliance on a deontological structuralism is the decline of Christianized guilt[7] and in its place the rise of secular determinism. What I mean by “secular determinism”: the idea of an absolvable sin, an absolution sans confession, since it is history/society/ones parents/the economic conditions that determined ones disposition, comportment, talent scheme, etc. The conditions that have determined one’s capacity for evil—or one’s capacity for righteousness—are the very conditions that absolve one of the deontological link of that would otherwise connect action with consequence. By separating the self from its own self-given constraints and commitments, the focus on structural conditions—what basically amounts to a watered-down and hammered-out Marxism—ironically transubstantiates pride itself; one does not need to be a Kantian to see how the deficit in a moral law-giving is not only permitted but encouraged within this conceptual schemata. If I am only responsible for my success, and not my failure; if only my acts of goodness count on my ledger-tally; if, in a secularized Calvinism, my “nurture” has been pre-given and pre-determined—here the space is opened for a truly powerful antinomean impulse to run free.

From this perspective, the alt-left and progressive movement more generally might be considered Christian not just from the angle of its appropriation of the discourses of puritan guilt[8], but equally from the angle of its hypersensitivity to the problem of pride. For the left, pride has received a most subtle expression as a Christian program: it operates as both the source of its political momentum as well as the image of its ultimate enemy, the target of its campaigns of purification. Compare this guilt/sensitivity to Gandhi and the hind swaraj, or Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr., for instance; these traditional theorists placed a high premium on self-reflection and rigorous self-development prior to entering space of politics and committing political acts, the idea being that only the blameless may act blamelessly. The type of purification demanded by the contemporary alt-left is altogether different and one of a partisan identification—it requires one to acquire and wear a particular political mask; it demands a political conversion rather than an ethical one. Or: it uses the ethical to the extent that it may impact the political. The work is not done prior to entering the space of politics, but rather done during and within politics itself. Here, too, I think of Weber and the problem of the “political attitude”: today, the question in part comes down to evaluating the “best attitude” the activist must now assume and how this might compare to the traditional politician.[9] How do we expect self-purification to interact with the political—and how is this interaction conducted under the aegis of Christianized pride?

This is all to explain why there are so few selfless, e.g. Christ-like, Christians: to be drawn to the faith, like a political movement, requires an original act of egoism, and to remain in a faith, like a political movement, means only: the ego is at home; the self has found a home; pride may express itself. Religion cannot fully commit to its war on the ego or on pride, lest it would have no followers—though these enemies must exist as perennial mainstays of the battle-banner. To this end, we must see pride/egoism as the great pharmakon of organized religion. To put this another way: has any soul ever converted for the sole purpose of martyrdom?—that is, has any person become a Christian in order not to save their own soul, but the soul of another? Perhaps more importantly: has any soul relinquished their Christianity—in order to become truly Christ-like?

I am reminded here of Kierkegaard’s separation of the creation of Christendom, e.g. the conversion of paganism, and the maintenance of Christendom, e.g. the conversion of “Christians” into actual models of Christ. That there are two forms of conversion reserved for non-Christians and Christians suggests that different psychological makeups require different technologies of conversion; for Kierkegaard, Christendom stands as a cultural bulwark of empty sepulchers and false idols—he, too, is concerned with the problem of why there seem so few Christs in the Christian mainstay, and further how to address this problem through active conversion. In some sense, his answer comes down to the individual soul—a type of purging of illusions that announces the difference between ignorance and sin that mirrors the necessary bifurcation of conversion technologies.

I would argue that it is precisely the illusion of pride, or rather the illusion that there is no pride, that stands as perhaps the greatest pillar and threat to a Kierkegaardian rendition of “Christendom” (and, by proxy, the modern religious condition). I do not question whether sacrifice and charity are inherently bound to God’s goodness and totality; certainly and explicitly, they are. I do not question whether all activity conducted in true faith aims at the good; certainly and explicitly, it does. I do not question whether denial of God corrupts and pollutes the soul; certainly and explicitly, it does. I do not question why the “good,” in the Christian sense, divorces itself from consequence in order to strictly and openly affirm the love of Christ and the narrow way of God; certainly and explicitly, it has good reason to. Rather, the question on the table is the nature of this “good” and whether it is truly “good”; the question amounts to asking “what type type of moral psychology needs to be in place in order for this “good” to affirm itself and justify itself?”

This is, in some sense, a Nietzschean question that points to things like instincts, drives and sublimation—in a word, power—and the psychological components involved. Pursuing this line of critique is valuable, though not what interests me here; I rather would argue that some “true” good really is at stake, and that this “good” is more than a matter of mere ego. Or, rather, the question transforms into a vaguely Kantian one: does pursuing the good always and necessarily involve an act and expression of the ego? Is the good a type of superstructure built atop the base of pride? If in part fulfilling the will of God is the recognition of an obligation, then how does the act of martyrdom satisfy this obligation without the shadow of the ensuing gift of redemption? Does this gift of redemption not poison the act? Does it not turn the act from one that acts-in-itself to one that acts—to be redeemed?

The true martyr severs his link to god, a self-excommunication which stands as the Faustian bargain to save the other, whether it be a single other, a whole society, a whole world, and so forth. No gifts await the martyr; there is no recognition to be had. True martyrdom is the cancellation of its own promise: it is a sacrifice without return. If one were to barter one’s soul for another’s preservation, and barter not with God, but the devil—where would this soul, which gave up not material life, but all eternity in their sacrifice—end up? Would this soul count itself among his most favorite sheep? Would it stand condemned? The politicalization of this Faustian ethics would be something like Machiavelli’s notion that the ends justify the means along the threshold of the common good. It is a severe and harsh consequentialism that takes seriously the promise and curse of a full “deliverance.” What hero has been so poetic, so selfless, so endlessly giving—that they have given all not to be remembered, but to be forgotten?

The true Christ is locked in hell; the throne in heaven is manned by an imposter. Who among you is truly willing to give of themselves without the possibility of redemption? To meet the devil, to be tempted—and to give in, fully; to embrace, fully; to succumb, fully. But not for oneself. Beyond pride, beyond ego: the Grand Inquisitor was correct in his condemnation,[10] the real Christ would have immediately accepted the temptations and acquiesced to the Devil’s demands.[11] He would have taken the Devil’s offer at face-value; he would have ruled the kingdoms of the world and made man a home—he would have made man truly happy. He would have offered bread, both spiritual and material, in eternal abundance; he would have done this knowing that at the end of his reign there would be no heaven for him; he would leave the heaven he created on this earth to take his rightful place in hell. For he was tempted, and made his deal—and a contract is a contract, after all.

And yet this was not the case. The image of sacrifice embodied by Christ is the formal institutionalization of pride: the martyr sacrifices in the image of Christ, e.g. with the promise of redemption. How easy it is to deny a kingdom with the knowledge of another waiting to be gained; the judgment of God ensures that sacrifice is met with reward. And so pride is refolded, grounded, made central. Sacrifice this life and win eternal life—and so many Pascalian wagers and forms of logic surface in the wake. But what if this wasn’t the case—what if one knew only sacrifice? Here pride recedes behind the possibility of redemption; here man only knows how to give and does not seek to receive. Who among you would sacrifice yourself in this manner? Who among you loves this world so entirely that, in redeeming it, they would not fear the coming flames? Who among you would want to know self-cruelty like this? Who among you would willfully go to hell in order to save another—to trade your spot not with the hope of reclaiming it? What constitution was born to shoulder the impossible—to suffer so that others may live?

Heaven is over brimming with the prideful. Heaven is the state, the nationalism of pride. The true redeemers of this world rest amidst fire and brimstone—would we recognize our savior as he truly is, as the charred one, the embered one, the burned-over one? The false idol descends from heaven just as the true redeemer ascends from hell. And for me? All would be sacrificed, all would be redeemed—if only to know that she were happy.

[1] While a mediocre analyst in general, Susan Jacoby’s work is here applicable.

[2] See Feuerbach, Marx and Freud on this point.

[3] See Berlin and the critique of positive liberty.

[4] Schmitt on the problem of the sovereign.

[5] I take a great deal of the conceptual framework here from Rousseau’s notion of amour propre.

[6] See Heidegger on unconcealment; Weber and Habermas on the progressive rationalization of society; Ranciere on the distribution of the sensible.

[7] See Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity on this point.

[8] See Gottfried’s historical argument here; see, too, Foucault more generally.

[9] See Saul Alinsky on this problem; see, too Vijay Phulwani on Saul Alinsky.

[10] See Dostoevsky, The Brother’s Karamazov, “The Grand Inquisitor.”

[11] See Matthew 4:1-11.