33. The greatest sin
33. THE GREATEST SIN
How was it possible for some of the angels to fall, if they were created in Heaven? What sin can exist in a pure spirit?
Only the sin of pride and envy can exist in an angel. . . . Augustine says that the devil is not a fornicator nor a drunkard nor anything of the like sort, yet he is proud and envious. . . . As to guilt, all sins are in the demons, since by leading men to sin they incur the guilt of all sins. But as to affection, only those sins can be in the demons which can belong to a spiritual nature. Now a spiritual nature cannot be affected by such pleasures as appertain to bodies, but only by such as are in keeping with spiritual things. . . . Under envy and pride as found in the demons are comprised all other sins derived from them (I,63,2).
It is said, in the person of the devil (Is 14:13-14): I will ascend into heaven . . . I will be like the Most High. And Augustine says that being inflated with pride, he wished to be called God (I,63,3).
Pride is the Devil’s sin. It is a purely spiritual sin.
Don’t seek “spirituality”. The Devil is a pure spirit. Cold spiritual sins are worse than hot carnal sins because there is more free will in them. When we lust we act like animals but when we hate or envy or, above all, have competitive pride and arrogance—e.g., when we sneer—we are acting like devils.
That is why humility, which opposes pride, is a prerequisite for salvation. Jesus warned the Pharisees they were heading for Hell because they didn’t have humility.
The only other sin that could have been part of the Devil’s fall is envy. Envy also does not require a body.
Envy is also the stupidest of all sins because it is the only sin that never once caused anyone even a false feeling of pleasure.
To avoid pride and envy, just remember God’s four-word summary of the Bible to St. Catherine: “I’m God; you’re not.” We forget the second point so easily that God has to make that reminder the very first and greatest commandment. How do we violate it if we are not polytheists? We are. The ancients worshipped thousands of gods but we worship millions of gods: ourselves.
To worship yourself is not to love yourself. It is to lack real, proper self-love. To love what is, what God created, and what we really are, is proper self-love. To want to be like God (the first temptation, in Eden: Gen 3:6) is to love what is not, what God did not make, and what we really are not.
We are commanded to “love your neighbor as yourself”, so we are therefore also implicitly commanded to love ourselves as our neighbor. We are not junk; we are the King’s kids.
Believing that is not pride. In fact, it’s part of humility. If we believe we’re apes, we will be proud, because we are very great apes, very good and smart and civilized apes. But if we believe we are made in the image of God, we will be humbled by our sins and follies, by our acting like apes when we are princes and princesses. Are we designed to be apes or saints? If apes, we are more than successes; if saints, we are more than failures. We are rebels.
By the way, beware the pride that masks as humility: “Look at me. How horribly evil I am!” Humility does not say “Look at me” at all.