The Deadliest Sin

The scriptures referred to are 2 Kings 5:1-15.

The Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, are the core of the Jewish faith. They contain 613 commandments. That's a lot. And obviously some are more important than others. You wouldn't put wearing clothes of mixed fibers on the same level as murder, nor gossip on the same level as idolatry. (Leviticus 19:16,19) So when a scholar asked Jesus which was the most important commandment, it was a genuine matter of debate. Jesus answered with the words of Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Listen, Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You must love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole being and all your strength!” That's the Shema, the central creed of Judaism. It is prayed by observant Jews in the morning and evening. It is supposed to be said by a Jew when dying. Herman Wouk, the author of The Caine Mutiny, was an Orthodox Jew and yet he was surprised when, as a huge wave almost washed him off the deck of the ship on which he served in World War II, he found himself automatically saying that prayer.

Everyone in his audience probably agreed with Jesus that the commandment to love God with all we are and all we have was the greatest. But Jesus, never one to do the expected, added a second commandment no one asked for: “love your neighbor as yourself.” This comes from Leviticus 19:18. Jesus then says that all that is contained in the Torah and the Prophets depend on these two commandments and that no other commandment is greater than these two. (Matthew 22:40; Mark 12:31) And indeed if you look at the Ten Commandments, the first 4 concern our conduct towards God and the last 6 concern our behavior towards other people.

A similar debate arose in early Christianity about which are the worst sins. Some came up with lists of 8 or 9 but it was Pope Gregory 1 who boiled it down into 7. They are traditionally given as pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth. I would update the seldom used word “wrath” to “rage” and the word “sloth” to “laziness” or “apathy.” The word “pride,” which has both good and bad connotations, I would update to “arrogance.” And that, the worst of the seven deadly sins, is what I would like to talk about today.

Arrogance is what we see in Naaman, the Syrian general, who comes to be healed by Elisha in today's Old Testament reading. When the prophet won't even come to the door but has his servant tell the general how to get cured, Naaman is outraged. He expected something different and insults Israel and its rivers.

We are told that Naaman was a great man. No doubt Naaman took all the credit for his military victory, though we are told that the Lord had given the victory to his nation. I'm not saying that Naaman had nothing to do with his success, but he couldn't have done it without having certain talents, like the ability to organize and command men, to strategize, and to quickly change that strategy if the situation shifts. Military experts like to say “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” It is a shortened version of an observation made by 19^th century German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke the Elder. His point is that you can't anticipate everything your enemy might do, or for that matter, what your allies will do. Add in weather and other factors over which you have no control and a good commander has to be able to think on his feet and improvise when necessary. You can't teach that. It is a gift. And all our talents and gifts come from God. Presumably Naaman had that talent.

But Naaman had a problem which he could not overcome: leprosy. And it bothered him. When I was a private duty nurse I was often assigned to wealthy men, because they could afford a private duty nurse. And I was surprised at how these men, who had built up large and successful companies, were brought low psychologically by their physical conditions. I came to realize that in chronic illness they were up against a problem that they could not defeat using the tools that had worked for them in business and finance. No amount of confidence or street smarts or negotiating skills or intimidation works against a disease. They felt that their bodies had betrayed them and they were dispirited.

But that didn't mean that these men were compliant with everything their doctor prescribed or that I, their nurse, was supposed to get them to do. An arrogant person feels he doesn't need anyone. He knows better than anyone else. He may listen to advice but he won't necessarily follow it if he simply feels differently about the matter. Many an otherwise smart person will get themselves into trouble by ignoring what experts tell them. Steve Jobs delayed surgery for 9 months trying to cure himself by going on a vegan diet, trying acupuncture, herbal remedies and other unproven treatments for cancer. He later regretted this when his health continued to deteriorate. Today we have people with no medical training throwing out everything science has learned about how to treat and fight diseases because internet influencers are telling them to try their own patented cures (which they will gladly sell you.) And these people are now controlling the NIH and CDC. Meanwhile childhood diseases we used to have under control are coming back with a vengeance. Already we are seeing deaths that were preventable.

As a nurse I have observed that people do not make major changes in their life until it becomes too painful to continue going on as they have been. In the verses inexplicably skipped in our lectionary reading we learn that Naaman went to his king who wrote a letter to the king of Israel explaining that Naaman was seeking a cure. So Naaman is not totally arrogant. When he got desperate enough, he sought help.

But when he doesn't get the personal service he expects from Elisha, he reverts to his arrogance. He says, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!” He goes off in a rage. In this, Naaman does something that arrogant people often do. It is not merely that they want something done, they expect it to be done in a certain way. They presume to tell the experts how to do their own jobs.

When I was the production director and copywriter at a radio station here in the Keys, I once was told that the manager of a very fancy and expensive restaurant wanted us to create an ad to get the locals to eat there during the off-season. They wanted to announce, as a “local's special,” a dinner costing twice as much as the average meal at an ordinary restaurant. I tried to explain to the manager that this might be less than their normal price but it was still expensive. I suggested we instead frame it as a special price for special occasions and encourage locals who had never eaten there to take advantage of the offer to celebrate birthdays, anniversaries and such. “No,” the manager said. “We must call it a 'local's special'.” So we did the ad that way. A week later, when they realized it wasn't working, they called back and we did the ad the way I suggested. They knew how to run a restaurant; I knew how to advertise it.

Naaman, however, is not totally arrogant, as we said. His servants manage to calm him down and talk sense into him. They say that if the prophet had told him to do something difficult in order to be cured, he would have done it. What Elisha had told him to do was not hard at all. Give it a chance, they say. And it works. In the end Naaman is humble enough to stand before Elisha and acknowledge what God did for him.

Why is arrogance considered the worst of the seven deadly sins? Because it is, as C.S. Lewis said, the complete anti-God state of mind. The arrogant person feels he knows better than anyone else, and that includes God. So why do they need God? They might admit that they are not always be right but they are never wrong. And if somebody thinks that they know it all, they stop learning. They either already know everything, or what they don't know they deem unimportant. And once you stop learning, you stop thinking. Oh, they may encounter new information from time to time but their cognitive bias only allows them to take in what backs up their deeply held opinions. Anything that contradicts their beliefs is fake. They would rather believe that all the experts are lying to them than that they might be wrong.

You see arrogance everywhere, including on both sides of the religious divide. There are religious people who are always right on everything even though they cannot discern between which parts of their faith and practices come from the Bible, which come from tradition and which come from their culture. Like the commandments there is a hierarchy of values. Some beliefs and behaviors are essential, some are important but not strictly essential and some are neither. For these folks however all their beliefs and practices are like links in a chain; they are of all equal importance. But a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A lot of people raised as fundamentalists lose their faith when they discover that something they were taught was wrong and then their whole faith begins to come apart. Some of the most outspoken atheists were once such Christians.

But you see arrogance among atheists as well. They decry the “God of the gaps,” the argument that if science can't yet explain something, the only possible answer is God. They have a point. Yet they do the same thing. They confidently say that science will one day explain all those gaps. Atheists have faith, all right; they just place it in science.

That is, they place their faith in humans. Science is a human endeavor, which means it is not perfect. Scientists sometimes make mistakes and sometimes they even make things up to get grant money or further their careers. We are in the middle of a replication crisis in science. Scientists are having problems recreating a significant number of important studies from the past because they are not getting the same results. For instance, it looks like we have been pursuing the wrong treatments for Alzheimer's disease for decades because of a flawed study. We have to start over. Scientists are human and can have their own dogmas, which they will defend as fiercely as religious fundamentalists.

Plus there is the problem of what we will do when we get to the point that the human brain can no longer comprehend what we discover. If, as they hold, our brains evolved primarily to help us survive, it is remarkable that we understand so much that has no discernable survival value. Will our brains continue to understand the infinite number of things in our ever expanding universe? Should we shift our faith to computers, though they are the flawed products of flawed human minds? It all comes back to trusting human intelligence above everything else.

Finally, there is the logical problem of asserting there is no God. You can't prove a negative. You would have to know and examine all the data in the universe to rule out God's existence. Even Richard Dawkins was forced to admit that, strictly speaking, he can only be an agnostic, someone who says they don't know whether God exists or not. The person who says definitively that there is no God does in fact believe in a superior intelligent being: himself. As someone said, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

Arrogant people cause problems because they do not work well with others. Dealing with flawed individuals but seeing no flaws in themselves, arrogant people inevitably push people away, especially those who are experts and even friends who are trying to stop them from doing things that are stupid or wrong. Only the most craven yes-men will stick with the arrogant person. And because they will not contradict him, the arrogant person will inevitably make mistakes. And because they have ceased to learn anything or listen to others, they will double down on their mistakes and make bigger ones. Which is why dictatorships never last.

Humility is the opposite of arrogance. Contrary to popular opinion, humility is not thinking you are worthless; it is having a realistic perception of not only your strengths but also your weaknesses. It is being willing to admit your mistakes and apologize. It is being willing to ask for help. It's being able to appreciate the knowledge, skills and talents of others. It is being willing to learn.

A truly intelligent person is humble. He or she knows what has been securely established and what we still don't know. They are willing to listen to others and to learn. The word “disciple” means “student.” I have even learned from respected Bible scholars who are not believers. I have learned how to be a better Christian from believers with a lot less education than I. But I know for sure that Jesus Christ is God, the Father is God, the Holy Spirit is God and that God is one and God is love. And what's more, I know that I am not God.