[This is part 3 in a series on “pride” in the scriptures. See part one, two, four, five, six, seven, eight]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

I have already argued that “the proud” in the Bible necessarily refers to men who take political power for themselves, which is an act that is always an effort to make oneself into a “god” and substitute the rule of men for the sovereignty of God.

And when God tears down political systems and calls them proud, we are able to further establish the connection between pride and statism, for those who think their “American pride” is somehow exempt from God’s condemnation. God, for instance, says He will “end the pride of the mighty” (Ezekiel 7:24). He says He will (through the use of an evil state) “ravage the pride of Egypt” (Ezekiel 32:12). 

Since “the proud,” as we have argued, are those men who exalt themselves into positions of power which they created for themselves, it only makes sense that God tears them down: the powerful men of the world are in rebellion against God by attempting to be “gods” themselves. These system-makers who form “governments” are men who say, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). 

It is these “proud” men, i.e., the political ruler-gods who think they have a right to rob us and tell us what to do, who God’s judgment comes down on and which represent judgment themselves upon the people who trusted in them. Since statism is rebellion against God and an attempt to subvert the Kingdom of God, He punishes such sin by either allowing such evils as those systems will always bring to come down on us, or by sending other statists (the neighboring ones that supposedly justify “our” need for one) against us. When men fear “the Russians” or “the Chinese” so bad that they set up “governments” themselves to “defend” them against these made-up foreign “enemies,” God likes to send these very regimes—the Babylons and Egypts of the world—against a people who foolishly adopted the ways of their enemies themselves, rather than to rely on the Lord for protection (Ezekiel 28:7, 30:10-12, 30:24, 31:12). Such slavery by “government” is the punishment for the sin of statism, which idolizes these systems and trusts in them as “saviors.”

When men fear God, they don’t dare set up “States,” knowing what God does to these proud systems of men. God-fearing men trust in the Lord Himself to save us from our enemies.

The State is a curse to men, not a blessing to people. The men who have turned the State into a “divine institution” that God gave us to deal “criminal justice” against “the bad guys,” rather than an instrument of His judgment against a sinful people who chose kings to rule over them, are perverters of the scriptures or fools of some false preachers and prophets. On the contrary, the State is a curse from God upon sinful people who worship statist societies.

God’s salvation

Though the popular concept of ‘being saved’ is often thought of solely as “going to heaven when we die,” the salvation of God in the scriptures is very often centered around deliverance from statism, i.e., being freed from the men who call themselves “government.”

“I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6).

Many other verses in the Bible relate being “saved” to being saved from our enemies, i.e., from the wicked state rulers who have oppressed people throughout history and who found themselves oppressed by turning away from God and toward false gods (Deut 20:4; Neh 9:27; Psa 3:7, 6:4, 7:1, 37:40, 59:2, 72:4, 138:7; Proverbs 20:22; Isaiah 25:9, 33:22, 35:4, 37:20, 37:35, 38:20, 45:20, 46:7, 47:13, 47:15, 49:25, 59:1, 63:1; Luke 1:71, 74; etc).

Whereas ungodly men believe they need States to “save” them from other men, godly men see that we need God to save us from men who set up States. In the scriptures we read a lot about God saving His people from state plunderers and bringing them to a safe place. 

“I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites” (Exodus 3:8).

What God saves His obedient followers from is effectively the judgment He brings to the disobedient men who set up states and worship these false gods, i.e., the death, war, starvation, and great evils that come upon statist societies who, in their foolish pride, thought they could sustain these plunder systems forever. To be “saved from sin” should probably be conceived of as being saved from the consequences of sin, i.e., the inevitably plunderous results of sinfully setting up state systems. By turning to God, men no longer turn to evil governments to “save” them (i.e., destroy them).

It is these men—the false “saviors” of so-called “governments”—who are essentially “the proud.” It is they who are so full of themselves that they thought they could set up violent political systems to wield against those who don’t obey their man-made decrees, without paying a price for these evils themselves.

God looks toward reversing the current situation, where evil men rule over the righteous, to an order where the wicked are torn down and the righteous are freed from oppression. We are promised in the scriptures that “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled” (Luke 14:11). God speaks of a day when “the proud look of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men brought low” (Isaiah 2:11). That is, when the prideful state rulers who have elevated themselves to positions of power will be completely torn down, and “the LORD alone will be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:11). 

God’s judgment on “the proud”

When God talks about destroying such political systems, which are necessarily always men who are raising themselves up as (false) gods, the scriptures usually mention that these men are proud. 

“For the Day of the LORD of Hosts will come against all the proud and lofty, against all that is exalted— it will be humbled, against all the cedars of Lebanon, lofty and lifted up, against all the oaks of Bashan, against all the tall mountains, against all the high hills, against every high tower, against every fortified wall, against every ship of Tarshish, and against every stately vessel. So the pride of man will be brought low, and the loftiness of men will be humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day, and the idols will vanish completely” (Isaiah 2:12-18).

“The proud”—the lofty, exalted, lifted-up men who tower and stand high above everyone else—are the state rulers (presidents, congressmen, etc) of the world, who God plans on crushing every time such systems are raised up, which are always done in rebellion to Him. It is men who set up violent plunder systems and call them “governments” that God is always looking at as a subject of His wrath and judgment of sin. God’s “eyes are on the haughty to bring them down” (2 Samuel 22:28). Amen! As God says through another prophet, after using one State to judge another,

“I will punish the king of Assyria for the fruit of his arrogant heart and the proud look in his eyes” (Isaiah 10:12).

God seeks to remove the proud men—i.e., state rulers who are currently ruling under the arrogant and prideful belief that no one can stop them—from our world. 

“‘For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace, when all the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble; the day is coming when I will set them ablaze,’ says the LORD of Hosts. ‘Not a root or branch will be left to them'” (Malachi 4:1).

It is always part of God’s great plan to destroy the men who (pridefully) raise themselves up as “governments” to rule over His people. God aims to destroy the prideful, patriotic belief that their tyrannical systems are unstoppable forces — that “we have the strongest military in the world” and “no one can stop us.” Statists, in their pride, forget the stopping-power of God when it comes to the imagined invincibility of their regimes. But God has other plans for those who say “this is the best country ever” or “our police officers are heroes.” State-worshipers are in for a nice surprise when they see what God has planned for their beloved political system of false saviors and heroes.

“The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth” (Isaiah 23:9).

We cannot reduce the understanding of “the proud,” whom God tears down, to be some overly self-obsessed individuals; the “Day of the Lord,” which has come many times in history against sinful (i.e., political) societies, doesn’t come to crush teenage girls who spend too much time in front of the mirror, as one would think if the sin of pride is reduced to individual narcissism. God comes to crush the proud state rulers who, in their loftiness and pride, have raised themselves up above everyone else as “the authorities.”

God is not just going around wrecking mere narcissists, as those who like to dumb-down His word might think, but the “proud” men who believe they have a right to rule over other people and those who proudly (“back the blue!”) support these systems and believe that their countries are forever. God’s Day of Reckoning is upon those who bear the sword of state power, who amass spoils through political robbery, who build up statist militaries, and who worship the gods of the State. 

The real feelings of “pride” are thus best exemplified in the feelings of power and prestige that one has when they’re ruling over other men. And so the Lord tears down these statists precisely to knock the pride out of them.

“I am planning against this nation a disaster from which you cannot free your necks. Then you will not walk so proudly, for it will be a time of calamity” (Micah 7:3).

Tearing down the prideful

Tearing down the prideful means that God brings human rulers down from their unjust, lofty, earthly thrones that they have set up in their rebellion to Him. It is the prideful statists—the foolish followers of state power as much as the rulers themselves—that God tears down. As we see in terms of God’s judgment against such a people, “the proud” are emphatically those who plunder other people through the “legal” means of so-called “governments” (e.g., politicians, police, etc). We are told, for instance, that God will “bring down their pride together with the spoils of their hands” (Isaiah 25:11). Evidently (if this wasn’t obvious from a discerning read of God’s word in the first place), “the proud” are men with spoils in their hands, e.g., tax revenues, court fines, traffic tickets, civil asset forfeitures, etc. 

These political systems built by men are enemies of God’s Kingdom, which comes to replace the statist kingdoms of men, where “the prideful” rule over other men, who unfortunately, even as the victims of robbery, for the most part champion the right of the ruler to tread on them. 

“The pride of man will be brought low, and the loftiness of men will be humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day, and the idols will vanish completely” (Isaiah 2:17-18). 

God comes to burn flags, tear down presidents, smash militaries, and destroy all the things that foolish statist idolaters hold deep in their hearts. God comes to “break the arms of Pharaohs” (Ezekiel 30:24), to “disarm kings” (Isaiah 45:1), to “put an end to the hordes of Egypt” (Ezekiel 30:10), to “cast thrones to the ground” (Psalm 89:44), to throw both horses and their riders—the state militaries of the world—into the sea  (Exodus 15:19), etc. Praise God!

We are not hitting the nail on the head if we avoid including state worshiping and state power systems into the sin of pride. The real sin of pride, which God punishes, is the pride of statism. It is the proud, self-exalted rulers that God removes, who are ideologically and spiritually supported by the proud statist individuals who idolize them and apologize for their existence.

God’s judgment comes not just against some vaguely “proud” men, but precisely the people who exalt themselves to earthly power and reside in “white houses,” “governors mansions,” or nest up in castles in the tops of the mountains. Indeed, we read that “the Lord will destroy the house of the proud” (Proverbs 15:25). It is the oppressors (i.e., the state rulers) who God removes from their high post. 

“You save an afflicted people, but Your eyes are on the haughty to bring them down” ” (2 Samuel 22:28).

Far from God approving of patriotism as a supposedly exceptional form of pride, it is precisely this form of pride that God destroys. 

“For this is what the LORD says: The allies of Egypt will fall, and her proud strength will collapse. From Migdol to Syene they will fall by the sword within her, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 30:6).

When men believe in man-made systems of state power to “save” them and say “this is the best country ever” and “the most powerful military in the world,” God comes to prove their prideful faith in the State to be a grave error. 

“The young men of On and Pi-beseth will fall by the sword, and those cities will go into captivity. The day will be darkened in Tahpanhes when I break the yoke of Egypt and her proud strength comes to an end. A cloud will cover her, and her daughters will go into captivity. So I will execute judgment on Egypt, and they will know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 30:17-19). 

God, in His justice, cannot allow man’s rebellious political systems (a great source of pride) to stand. 

“I will make the land a desolate waste, and the pride of her strength will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will become desolate, so that no one will pass through” (Ezekiel 33:28).

Pride is almost always bound up with power when God’s word refers to it. His judgment comes down precisely to remove proud state rulers from power. The prophets are unmistakable here.

“I will visit the wickedness upon the world, and their iniquity upon the wicked, and I will cause the arrogancy of the proud to cease, and will cast down the pride of tyrants” (Isaiah 13:11).

As we see, “pride” is most often about political power as well as the self-righteous idea that “we” need rulers standing over us. By showing this connection between pride, power, and God’s judgment upon such systems, we have strengthened the case for Biblical pride being mostly about statism — the thing which most people have exempted from their understanding of pride. 

Conclusion

Those who are caught worshiping political systems, like the American one, are not only fools and idolaters, but will eventually have to watch their beloved systems fall apart. It’s already happening today, even though most have concluded that she deviated from her course and just needs to “get back to the constitution,” rather than what we see today being the necessary fulfillment of those sinfully sown seeds. 

Arguably, we should call upon God to end these prideful rulers who have gotten one over on us for so long, and repenting before Him that we will no longer worship man-gods who call themselves “the government.”

So long as we leave vengeance to the Lord and believe we are going to get out of our political enslavement through violent revolution, we would be in keeping with scripture to call to God to destroy our oppressors for us. Don’t let these tyrants get away with their schemes forever, Lord. 

“Unleash the fury of your wrath; look on every proud man and bring him low” (Job 40:11). Don’t let these men who perpetrated Operation Covid 19 with a smirk on their faces get away with it. “Look on every proud man and humble him; trample the wicked where they stand” (Job 40:12). Amen.