“PRIDE IS THE MOTHER OF ALL SINS!” I am thinking it was one of the two President Roosevelts who said that, although I always get them confused. I mean really, two President Roosevelts? Just how common is that surname? In the same general category as Pendergrast, I’m guessing.

Anyway, back to the quote, it could also have been Eleanor Roosevelt who said it, or Geronimo or Tucker Carlson, though I’m thinking it wasn’t the latter. Or maybe nobody ever said it at all and I just imagined it because the truth is I can’t find it anywhere on the entire internet, BUT, to get back to the quote yet again, “PRIDE IS THE MOTHER OF ALL SINS!” does have a ring to it.

The thing is though, even if it preaches well in a sermon, I don’t think it is pride – the mother of all sins, I mean. Call me quirky but I think it’s something else. I think it’s blocking access to God.

If you think about it, Jesus spent a great deal of time excoriating people who created manmade laws that kept honest searchers from God. Even the most zealous gatekeepers of church doctrine would have to admit that that’s hardly an exaggeration.

I once heard a Franciscan priest say that all priests have a twofold task: bringing God to the people and bringing the people to God. No two people will experience God in the same way. We experience God and want others to do the same, an appropriate and noble desire. Yet we ought not to box God in by mapping our experience onto other people. Otherwise, Jesus might call us blind guides, or a generation of snakes, instead of the chosen generation of royal priests dear old St. Peter talks about in his much loved epistles.

Maybe one of the President Roosevelts was right, or Tucker Carlson, and pride is the mother of all sins. But if that’s true then blocking access to God is surely her primary handmaid. And really, aren’t they more or less the same thing, pride and the straightjacketing of God? When I insist that my understanding of how God moves is superior to someone else’s – isn’t that pretty much Exhibit A for pride?

Here’s a scandalous thought. What if the Spirit is more interested in our salvation and encountering of God than we are, and not only ours but everyone’s? John Calvin notwithstanding, what if God is perfectly capable of orchestrating encounters for all God’s creatures, and in the exact way that God wants to do it? The Bible says we do not know what we ought to pray for but the Spirit intercedes for us with wordless groans (Romans 8:26). If the Holy Spirit looks out for one person does it not follow that it is true for all people?

If I am honest, I have been pretty priggish and obtuse throughout my short and turbulent little life, yet I keep sensing deeply and repeatedly that God has not abandoned me. Here then is the assignment I am giving myself: have faith that God, whose explosive nature combines relentless love with uncontrollable mystery, will eventually meet and ravish each of God’s creatures in the entire Universe. No doubt, each meeting will be as unique as it is effective.

I can’t help thinking that if we really want to value what Jesus values then such an attitude is but our natural response, our mandate, and the only way to avoid committing the mother of all sins.