As I am certain you are well aware, dear reader, cultural elites have declared that June shall be “Pride Month,” primarily to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and on and on (LGBTQ+) community. As you — or, at least, the elites — may not be aware, pride is considered the great sin in Christianity.
Don’t get me wrong, Christians oppose LGBT identities and lifestyles for good theological reasons. The Bible is clear that God made humans male and female (Genesis 1:27, Mark 10:6, Matthew 19:4) and that marriage is between one man and one woman (Genesis 2:24). Homosexual activity is consistently denounced as sinful (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13; Romans 1:18-32; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; 1 Timothy 1:8-10).
The LGBT activist movement aggressively attacks conservative Christians. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has branded conservative Christian nonprofits like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and FRC “hate groups” due to their beliefs on marriage and sexuality, listing them along with the Ku Klux Klan. ADF has won nine Supreme Court cases in seven years. A terrorist attempted to kill everyone in FRC, thanks to the SPLC’s “hate map.”
None of this means Christians should hate people who identify as LGBT — rather, we should treat them well, short of agreeing with their lifestyle. Christians are sinners, too, and we should never forget that we are saved by grace, not because we are superior to anyone else.
That is the central problem with having a whole month dedicated to “pride,” even if in name only. As C.S. Lewis explained in his masterful book Mere Christianity, pride is “the great sin.”
“Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind,” Lewis wrote. “I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?’ The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride.”
“Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity—it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God,” Lewis added. “In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all.”
The central message of Christianity involves the humility of Jesus Christ. After humans had rejected God, creating an unbridgeable gulf between creature and Creator, Jesus showed the ultimate example of humility:
Have this mind among you which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant and being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above all names, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:5-11)
Jesus, the Word of God who was with God the Father from the beginning (John 1), became a squalling baby, preached a message rejected by most of His contemporaries, and then died an excruciating and humiliating death on the Cross in order to reconcile sinful human beings with a perfect God.
Pride is the central sin that separates humans from God, while Jesus’s great humility is the central virtue that restored the breach.
If June is Pride Month, there should at least be one Humility Month.
Related: You’re LGBT? No One Cares Except the Left
Alternately, will there be other months dedicated to other sins? Perhaps December should be Greed Month, because so much Christmas-time spending may be driven by greed. Perhaps February should be Lust Month, because so much that passes for “love” in our culture is really shameless sexual desire. Perhaps November should be Envy Month, because so much politics is driven by envy. Since November is taken, October could be Gluttony Month, to account for the guzzling of candy on Halloween. That leaves May — the month of George Floyd’s death — as Anger Month, and September Sloth Month (in honor of Labor Day).
If you disagree with my taxonomy, give me better ideas in the comments.
