The Pitfalls of Pride

This year (2025), during the first weeks of February, the Daily Readings invite us to listen to, think about, and meditate on some of the oldest and best-known stories of our faith: The Story of Creation, The Fall of Man, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Great Flood, and the Tower of Babel. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” God’s pains-taking work resulted in a world of incredible beauty where Adam and Eve enjoyed a unique relationship with their Creator. “God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). It was Paradise.

The stories that follow, however, could be subtitled The Pitfalls of Pride. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve try to hide from God in the bushes and then blame their disobedience on each other. That was pride raising its ugly head for the first time. We see it again in Chapter 4, when Cain’s arrogance leads him to resentment, anger and violence. And we hear it in his indignant response to God: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). In Chapter 6, the people of Noah’s time had allowed their pride to lead them into every sort of evil, immoral, and scandalous behavior, so that, “the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth “ (Genesis 6:6).

Genesis 11 tells the story of the building of the Tower of Babel. Back when all the people of the world spoke the same language, they had a big plan: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:4). There it was again: their big plans were full of vanity and conceit. Once again, humanity was about to learn the pitfalls of pride. The story ends with the sad result that their pride produced: “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city” (Genesis 11:8). They gave up their plans and dreams. What began as an inventive, creative, and industrious enterprise had become a pile of rubble.

Amid all the corruption, violence, and arrogance described in the Book of Genesis, there was one bright spot. In the narrative of the Great Flood (which takes up four chapters, Gen 6-9), we are introduced to Noah and his family. Noah was already an old man when he was told by God to build a huge ark, but “Noah complied; he did just as God had commanded him” (Gen 6:22). And then it began to rain!

^“Higher and higher on the earth the waters swelled, until all the highest mountains under the heavens were submerged” (Gen 7:19). When the flood waters receded, God said, “Never again…. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen 8:21-22). Then God made this promise to Noah: “When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and every living creature…so that the waters will never again become a flood to destroy every mortal being” (Gen 9:14-15).

Although many of the stories of the Bible warn us of the pitfalls of pride, they also demonstrate God’s mercy and goodness and His loving concern for His children. All these centuries later, these old stories from the Book of Genesis, if we really think about them, can still be very powerful. Their message might even touch our hearts. And that can change the world.