Pride and arrogance, barriers to wisdom

Wisdom is so valuable. We all need it to succeed in life and to be healthy and safe. It guides us in our daily relationships and endeavors, our quest for truth, and our relationship with the Creator. But there are barriers to acquiring wisdom. Some are external such as a poor upbringing or a negative home environment. But most are internal, coming from within us—our own character. Pride and arrogance are by far the greatest of these. As humans, we all have pride, and some of us have arrogance.

Human pride 

The word pride can have a positive meaning such as the feeling of satisfaction that results from a rewarding achievement. It can also mean having a reasonable self-esteem or self-respect.  But in many contexts (especially the Bible), pride is thinking too highly of ourselves, our importance and abilities, or feeling we’re better than others.

Pride was the first sin, when the devil sought to elevate himself above the Creator (Isaiah 14:12-14, Luke 10:18). And everyone who is prideful takes after Lucifer’s lead. When we forget God and his authority, we’re tempted to believe we’re much higher than we are and then live accordingly. We start to compare ourselves with others we consider inferior without considering God who is much higher, leading to an inflated self-image.

Arrogance

Arrogance is an attitude of superiority shown by an overbearing manner or by presumptuous claims or assumptions (Merriam Webster). An arrogant person is egotistic and typically disregards the value and input of others.

Nabal (feature image) was an arrogant man who no one could talk to. David and his men were protecting his land at no cost (1 Samuel 25). And when David sent messengers to bless Nabal and ask for his favor and support, he hurled insults at them. Bloodshed was barely averted when Nabal’s wife Abigail gave a gift of food to David’s men.

Fruits of Pride

We all have a deep need to feel significant and to “matter.” But when we don’t experience the stable, constant love from God, we often fill that gap with an inflated self-image. Proud people often “have to be” proud to feel good about themselves. But there are many negative fruits of human pride:

• It leads us to believe that we are fully independent and invincible when we’re not.
• It keeps us from seeing the contributions, value, and perspectives of others.
• Pride gives us an inflated view of ourselves so that we can’t learn anything from others.
• It feeds selfish pursuits that create conflict and resentment.
• It alienates us from our Creator.

Scripture has a lot to say about pride:

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.  (Proverbs 11:2)

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.  (Proverbs 16:18)

God gave us intelligence to understand and navigate the world we live in. But none of us have unlimited intelligence. Our understanding is limited to the information and perspective we have before us. We can become self-important and think that we’re indispensable. But we need to see our abilities realistically, as Paul wrote regarding spiritual gifts:

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. (Romans 12:3)

Barriers to Wisdom Anchored in Pride or Arrogance

Intentional sin and rebellion

Sin and rebellion against God cloud our thinking and prevent us from making good decisions. People do the most irrational things when they are engaged in sin. Once we intentionally take a dark path, it’s hard to get off. People who fall into a life of sin entrench themselves into their behaviors. The only way off this path is sincere repentance.

Humans tend to justify their errant behavior, and to do so resort to faulty logic and deceptive arguments. “What I did wasn’t that bad.” This can start to affect other areas of our lives—when we use this logic in one area, we start to use it consistently. We eventually lose a love for what’s true and right and start to trivialize or even ridicule them. Or we deny we have a problem and refuse to seek help, common with those involved in substance abuse.

Selfish and prideful ambition

The prideful don’t pursue the common good but selfishly use others to promote themselves. Selfish ambition is the direct fruit of human pride. It causes conflict, disorder, and evil wherever it occurs:

But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such “wisdom” does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (James 3:14-16)

An arrogant person will ridicule or personally attack others to win an argument or influence an outcome. If they have authority over others, they may resort to silencing or threatening. In working out personal conflicts, compromise is sometimes the best solution to an impasse. But an arrogant person has lost the ability to compromise.

A prideful person with a weak self-image will resort to self-promotion and self-proving to validate their worth. But a wise person understands we all have equal worth before God, and resorts to God’s wisdom, which is peaceable and considerate:

But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.  (James 3:17-18)

Conceit 

Conceit is born from pride and arrogance. No one enjoys someone who is always “one-upping” others—always knowing more about a subject, always having a better story than anyone else, always claiming superiority in whatever is being done.  Proverbs makes a blunt statement about this:

Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. (Proverbs 26:12)

An arrogant person will sometimes use mockery to put down someone they disagree with.

The proud and arrogant person—“Mocker” is his name— behaves with insolent fury.  (Proverbs 21:24)

But when people resort to ridicule, it really shows their arguments are weak.

Intellectual arrogance

Intellectually arrogant people use their knowledge to claim superiority over others. They typically confuse knowledge with wisdom and think that their abundance of knowledge makes them of superior intelligence and wisdom. This attitude can lead to poor judgment and costly mistakes they otherwise wouldn’t make. But knowledge is the raw material that wisdom uses to make good decisions—it’s not wisdom itself. Knowledge without love leads a condescending attitude:

… knowledge puffs up while love builds up.  (1 Corinthians 8:1)

Some people with advanced college degrees have known to become intellectually arrogant. They believe that because they have an advanced degree, they’re necessarily much smarter and wiser than others. They may also become pretentious and start to believe they can comment authoritatively on every subject. But higher-level academia commonly provides a very biased environment with regards to social, philosophical, and political beliefs. So, earning a PhD doesn’t make a person an unbiased expert on everything.

Having an abundance of resources online can also feed into intellectual arrogance. With so much information at one’s fingertips, it’s easy to feel like we know everything, and yet still be misled.

Overconfidence

Overconfidence is being unrealistically confident of our own abilities, opinions, and judgments. Excessive faith in ourselves leads us to ignoring the possibility we might be wrong. The classic example of overconfidence is when Peter swore to Jesus he was ready to die with him (Matthew 26:31-35) only to later deny Jesus three times (Matthew 26:69-75).

Overconfidence leads to a lack of objectivity and a narrow view of a problem to be solved. Many times, we were sure we were on the right path, but we didn’t have all the relevant information, or the information was just not available. We could’ve consulted more sources but, in our overconfidence, we didn’t want to take the time. Sometimes we’re most vulnerable to overconfidence when we have the least knowledge about something (Dunning-Kruger effect).

Overconfidence can also lead us into overestimating how other people agree with our beliefs or actions. But then we’re surprised and offended when we find out they actually don’t. According to psychologist Eva M. Krockow¹ overconfidence leads people to underestimate their own weaknesses and take disproportionately high risks. She lists 3 types of overconfidence:

• Believing you are better than others.
• Believing that you are better than you actually are.
• Having an exaggerated certainty that you are correct.

These describe a prideful person well. Overconfidence has led many into making serious mistakes:

…. overconfidence has been blamed for the sinking of the Titanic, the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the loss of Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 and the great recession that followed it, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Overconfidence may contribute to excessive rates of trading in the stock market, high rates of entrepreneurial failure, legal disputes, political partisanship, and even war.  (Don A. Moore PhD ²)

Forming an immediate judgment

It’s a human tendency to form an opinion or judgment right after hearing or reading something or talking to a person. Some people tend to believe the first source of information they read or hear without considering other sources. Psychologists call this anchoring bias. A prideful person may read only one article or book on a topic and then claim to have the definitive answer about it.

It’s also very common to form an opinion about a person based on our first impression or encounter. This impression defines our view of that person from then on. But this can be very unfair when that first impression is negative. This can lead to making a hasty generalization about someone based on a stereotype. And an arrogant person won’t care what effect their unfair judgments have on other people.

Sometimes this trait comes out in conversations—interrupting others before hearing them out. It’s especially foolish and disrespectful to form a judgment before someone has finished speaking:

To answer before listening—that is folly and shame. (Proverbs 18:13)

For some people, forming immediate judgments is their default method of determining truth. These people tend to be impatient but easily influenced and manipulated.

Strong emotions

We all know how strong emotions can affect our decisions. And strong negative emotions cloud our judgment in the midst of conflict, problem solving, or crisis. Excessive fear, worry, depression, or anger impede clear thinking. They steer us into unfruitful, unwise, or even dangerous paths.

Control over one’s emotions is a great asset in stressful situations where there’s a need for wisdom to solve a problem. But pride and arrogance incite emotional outbursts that poison group efforts and derail intelligent discussion. In that environment, others become afraid to contribute and tend to stay quiet, withholding information that could be useful.

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.  (Proverbs 15:1)

Pride always inhibits reasonable discussion, especially when opinions become personal and ideas are associated with one’s identity. People come to believe their identity is directly related to their intelligence, so an argument becomes a defense of one’s self-worth. They need to know that God loves and values them regardless of their intelligence.

Narrow focus

Having an overly narrow focus when solving a problem leads to bias and wrong conclusions. People can become obsessed with one component of a problem or issue and exclude all other facets or concerns that may be important. This limits their perspective and prevents understanding of other points of view or concerns. People also tend to give more weight to information that confirms what they already believe (confirmation bias).

This trait may progress to the point that a person refuses to listen to other viewpoints. And ignoring everyone else’s concerns can certainly harm our relationships. We’re all familiar with pride and arrogance in politics. Politicians are known for listening only to special interest groups on an important issue and defiantly closing off input from other groups. Their resulting policies are then predictably biased and unfair.

An extremely narrow focus can grow into an unhealthy obsession, which can dominate one’s life and time.

Prideful allegiance to sources and personalities

Many people believe something is true or false based on who said it and not on reason. They have their favorite preacher, author, news source, or politician who they believe is always right (authority bias). They may have unswerving prideful devotion to them and believe them to be true no matter how unreasonable or outrageous, accepting their assumptions and worldview. At the same time, they can’t agree with anything stated by a preacher, politician, or even a parent they don’t like, no matter how true their statements.

These attitudes increase polarization in human interactions, personal and group discussions, discourse in the church, or society at large.  A preacher, politician, or political party may have some strong points and be right on many issues. But they can’t be right on every issue. Conversely, just because a person is wrong on one issue doesn’t make them wrong on every issue. Idolizing any human other than our Lord Jesus Christ is foolish and fleshly.

Most of us hold our biases unconsciously and use them almost without thinking. But they can all lead to pride which produces dissention and conflict.

Rejection of tradition for anything new

Tried and proven ideas and values become tradition for a reason—they work. It’s true some traditions are no longer meaningful because of the passage of time. But behind many others lie a core value or truth that has endured.

A prideful person may reject tradition outright because to them it means outdated and irrelevant. They might be trying to maintain a “progressive” identity to impress their peers. Also, accepting something “new” may allow them to feel superior to others who hold to traditional or conservative views. But in the process, they cut themselves off from centuries of practical wisdom.

Inability to admit error or failure

Pride and arrogance lead us into perhaps the worst condition of all: an inability to admit when we’re wrong.

Mockers resent correction, so they avoid the wise.  (Proverbs 15:12)

Not admitting error or failure has caused untold misery and conflict:

• A preacher who has taught something for many years and then is shown to be wrong. But to save face, he keeps teaching the error and attacks those who disagree.
• A professional that makes a design flaw in their work product that proves to be substandard or dangerous but refuses to take responsibility.
• A parent who disciplines their child unfairly or harshly and never apologizes. The child then holds a grudge for years.
• A doctor who misdiagnoses a patient resulting in harm but can’t admit the failure and puts blame elsewhere.
• Someone who abuses drugs but can’t admit they have a serious problem, refusing help from friends or family.

Always giving ourselves credit for our successes but blaming outside factors or other people for our failures is a form of pride (called self-serving bias). And the converse—always blaming other people for the bad things that happen to them—is judgmental.

The path of humility

We all have barriers that prevent us from acquiring wisdom. Are you a prideful or arrogant person? Pride and arrogance are sins against both God and others, so consider how you might change your attitude and behavior. Do you have biases that affect your judgment? If so, they probably impair your decisions and damage your relationships.

The safest and most godly path to take is that of humility. So, ask God to deliver you from your prideful behavior.

Stop thinking you know more than everyone else and be willing to learn from others. Understand your worth is the same as all other people. Stop forming premature judgments, give others the benefit of the doubt, and give grace to those you disagree with. Seek God and the wisdom found in his Word and submit yourself to it when you find that your thinking is wrong. Admit when you have a serious problem and be willing to seek help from others.

Finding our self-worth in God

Above all, realize that there’s an eternal and majestic Creator that is much greater than you but loves you firmly and unconditionally. This should humble us all. Someone who doesn’t know they are loved by God may lack self-esteem and a stable self-image to be humble. But a personal relationship with God can free us from the struggle of self-promotion and self-praise. Pride and arrogance will dissolve in the presence of the almighty Creator God and the sacrificial love of his Son Jesus Christ.

Junyu Zhang, PhD candidate in clinical psychology, contributed to this article.

References:

¹Eva M. Krockow PhD, There’s More Than One Kind of Overconfidence, Psychology Today, 10/17/19

²Don A. Moore PhD, Overconfidence, the mother of all biases, Psychology Today, 1/22/2018

Recommended reading regarding cognitive biases:

Kenneth Samples and Mark Perez, Clear Thinking in a Messy World, RTB Press, 2024

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