Hardness of Heart

What we mean by pride, and how to open to love

Do you ever read a book, or watch some show or movie, and halfway through decide you don't really like it, but you're going to finish it anyway?

That was me recently with a fantasy series called The Divine Cities.

I got to the second book, and the quality started to go downhill a bit from the first. Nothing major, but enough for me to notice. Over time, I developed a background mental posture that slipped over me unnocited, where I eseentially decided I didn’t like the series anymore. I continued to read, now accompanied by this little voice in my head going, “Wow, what a dumb plot device,” or “Ugh, why would anyone write this character like that?”

At one point, I even started to picture myself looking up negative reviews after I finished! I imagined myself looking up a critique I had just thought of, then nodding along smugly and reveling in the feeling of being all fancy and smart and somehow better than the author. Presumably because myself and this random person on the internet agreed on some critical point of view about the book.

But at a certain point I stepped back and thought, why am I feeling this way? This book is actually pretty interesting, good enough that I'm still reading! That should be enough to keep me open minded, surely? As soon as I noticed the absurdity of my judgment, this mental posture just kind of… fell away.

Then, lo and behold, I started to enjoy the series quite a lot more again! I finished it, and found myself quite impressed.

It's the strangest thing. The whole experience makes me think of the phrase "hard of heart," wherein you pre-judge something, you decide it's bad but continue engaging with it. You harden up your heart, and don't let any new data impact you whatsoever. Simply form a negative view, and set it in stone.

This negative view can make you feel powerful, wise, better than the author of whichever book you’re reading, or better than the person you're talking to. But ultimately a hard heart also closes us off to experience, to possibility. We lose the ability to feel deeply, to have anything outside of us really touch our heart, and change us.

It reminds me of this quote from Herbert Spencer I picked up when I went to a few A.A. meetings a couple years back:

There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.

It doesn't exactly fit all situations, since in the example I gave above I started feeling contempt midway through my 'investigation' of the book series, but it gets the point across quite well.

I also think this 'contempt prior to investigation' is part of what Christians used to mean when they spoke about pride.

Semantic Drift of “Pride”

by Maxime Teppe, “Pride”

Nowadays, the word pride doesn't always quite get at this judgmental, hard-hearted view I described above.

Unfortunately, as Defender explains in this tweet, many of the modern disagreements around religion come down to semantic drift, or the meanings of words changing over time:

Perhaps pride isn’t the perfect word, but I believe you need some measure of pride to take the stance that something is bad, and have already judged it before any investigation. You're putting yourself above the thing-being-judged and knowing that the it has some sort of quality that justifies you holding it in contempt.

Yet this view isn't how I grew up thinking about the sin of pride, or hearing other Christians describing it. I'm not sure if it's my own personal bias coloring things, or that people genuinely have lost the understanding. Maybe a bit of both.

But in my experience when people talk about "pride" in Christian circles, it often seems to mean something more like "agency." If someone stands up for themselves, or wants to change their circumstance, or has a new idea for how one might improve things, they get labeled "prideful." It's almost used as more of a tool for social control that folks use to cut down any tall poppy growing above the rest, or to pull down any crabs close to escaping the bucket.

This usage of pride seems especially prevalent in the South of the U.S., where you often have the caricature of the Southern woman going "oh well Miss so-and-so thinks she's all that!" Oftentimes, this snarky response is used when someone tries to stand up for themselves against snide bullying, or judgment aimed at them. Again, it's an attempt to keep someone in their social place.

Unfortunately, that caricature isn't always far off the mark.

Yet I don't think that we necessarily need to be prideful when we're agentic, or ‘just doing things’ outside of the norm. Just because we want to try new ideas, or stand up for ourselves, or change something about our situation doesn't mean we're prideful. In fact, I'm convinced that God wants His children to do that more! Christ Himself lived as quite the rebel, after all. He didn't go around just blindly following the rules of social convention.

You notice this anti-agency stance as well if you read about the ascetics who claim things such as “nothing you do that’s good is from you - attribute it all to God.” Yes in a way that view can help us to cultivate humility, but in my opinion we are cooperating with God. We don’t exist as puppets that just let our own wills go limp, so that He can pull the strings. We exercise our own will, and do our best to align that to Him. It isn’t prideful to try and act in the world in a way which you believe God would want.

Our modern times probably aren't the only period in which Christian language has been co-opted for social control. In fact, it seems to be a perennial problem or theme within Christianity. Christ spent much of the Gospel condemning religious hypocrites in extremely harsh terms!

Unfortunately, it seems that we flawed humans just can't resist co-opting spiritual teachings in order to use for social control.

The Shuttering of Joy

That mental stance, of contempt prior to investigation, is quite familiar to me. Honestly, it stayed by my side throughout most of my youth, and early adult life.

I'm willing to bet I developed the habit of pre-judging people, and media I consumed as a defense mechanism. As a somewhat unpopular kid, I found out very quickly it was "cringe" to care about anything too much, to get enthusiastic about a piece of art, or too excited about a new friend. My buddy Orph explains this phenomenon well in his recent post, Cringe as Symbolic Violence:

Bourdieu defined “symbolic violence” as ~non-physical violence exerted through social interactions and norms that reinforce the values & hierarchies of a dominant group.

An overfunctioning cringe response is exactly that. A simulated authority figure enacting symbolic violence on your behalf. A deeply felt sensation of being judged, where you can feel your body tensing up to protect itself from said symbolic violence.

The simulated authority figure might manifest as the hypervigilant parent who taught the kid that enthusiasm was embarrassing, that vulnerability was weakness, or that standing out was dangerous. When you witness someone dancing freely at a party, or someone unselfconsciously pursuing a creative passion, the cringe you feel often echoes a childhood where such freedom was met with eye-rolls, criticism, or emotional withdrawal.

Somewhat ironically, the more we get judged, especially as children, the more likely we are to harden our hearts, and judge others in turn. We develop this internalized authority figure who shames us whenever we get too involved, or see something with the eyes of a child.

Incidentally, I think this internalized shame around enthusiasm goes a long way towards explaining why video games are so popular, especially amongst male youths. They act as an outlet for male enthusiasm, but in a private, contained environment where the likelihood for shame is far reduced than if a young man decided to try and do something serious in the ‘real world.’

Sadly, many people in the modern world (both Christians and atheists) seem to equate this shaming, internal authority figure as God. The story of the prodigal son should show us that the Father doesn't respond to any of our errors with shame, and instead loves us even if we've spent decades gambling away His fortune. Alas, a lifetime of cultural programming proves quite hard to overcome.

The most tragic part of all of this judgment and pride is that it doesn't only function to prevent us from feeling pain. When we close our hearts, we close the door to wonder. To joy. To relaxation, play, fun.

Worst of all, we close our hearts to love.

Yet while the situation I've painted so far might seem bleak, it doesn't necessarily have to be. We don't exactly live in a time of perfect spiritual understanding, but we do live in a time of unprecedented personal freedom. While shaming and judgment still haunt our culture, we now have the option to simply choose to associate more with those who are kind, loving, and willing to receive our open hearts with care instead of disdain.

I've seen the magic of this change of heart, this μετάνοια, or repentance, first hand. In fact, learning to drop my own judgment and see the world through the eyes of the heart was a huge step in overcoming my struggles with chronic pain.

While it may not be the easiest thing in the world to drop a life's habit of judgment and hard heartedness, I promise you it's worth it. I've only just begun on my end, but the fruits continue to amaze me with their sweetness.

If you're interested in trying to open your own heart, I wish you good luck, and Godspeed.