I have been called arrogant a few times throughout my life, and I don’t take those charges lightly. When they were made I’m confident that there was some degree of truth to them and God knows I want to pursue humility and put all my pride to death, but I admit that I have a tendency to come off that way no matter how I might try. And make no mistake, this is not an attempt to absolve myself! Rather, what I want to point out here is that there is a kind of subtle insidious arrogance that often slips under the radar unnoticed because it acts hurt or feigns innocence or claims neutrality. This is something I have noticed recently and I want to bring it out into the light and examine it. But I’ll start off by confessing that I am openly and demonstrably arrogant quite often and that is something that I need continual repentance over.
I heard a friend recently define arrogance neatly, so I’ll steal his definition: arrogance is unearned confidence. It’s a failure to judge oneself soberly and rightly, assuming gifts and abilities and facts that aren’t there or haven’t been adequately proven.
There is nothing wrong with confidence in one’s abilities and giftings if you actual have those abilities and giftings and others can count on them to do what you claim you can and will do.
Neither is there anything lacking virtue in one who has confidence in facts that have reasonable proofs but cannot be proven absolutely to the subjective mind (as nothing can be). If this were not so, then all faith would be arrogance, since faith (according to Hebrews 11) is confidence in that which cannot be empirically proven, for which there is reasonable proof.
Blind faith should be considered arrogance because it is unearned confidence cloaked in bashful naïveté, but once one wrestles through the data and that faith is grounded in some objective evidence (though interpreted subjectively), it can’t be called arrogant because that confidence has been earned. This is why the Bible encourages Christians to seek assurance of salvation, by wrestling through the validity of the deity of Jesus, the atonement, the cross, the resurrection, the new birth, and all the other claims of Scripture that are of secondary importance.
Arrogance makes claims and assumes things it cannot back up. It writes checks it cannot cash. Most people quickly associate this with outspoken folks because their arrogance manifests itself most often and most visibly. But Good Ol’ Honest Abe Lincoln said it best when he plagiarized the book of Proverbs, “better to be thought a fool and remain silent than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt”. So there are arrogant fools like me who open their mouths and (if I might add to my list of arrogant assertions) there are arrogant fools who remain quiet and arrogant fools who remain quiet by virtue of being arrogant fools tend to do so out of cowardice, shame, fear of man, and false humility rather than wisdom stemming from the fear of God.
There are concealed forms of arrogance. For example, there are some who’s sole mantra is “tolerance”. They are not hard to find, you can spot them by the bumper stickers on their car proclaiming dogmatic pluralism with buzz words like “diversity”, “coexist”, and of course “tolerance”. And what is meant by that is rejection of all exclusive truth claims which don’t allow for their exclusive truth claim that all religions are essentially saying the same thing and we should all be agnostics so we can get along, because absolute truth doesn’t exist (which in their mind is an absolutely true statement) all claims to absolute truth that exclude other viewpoints are arrogant, except theirs, which happens to exclude all major religions. This is an assertion that has to be believed on blind faith, because any attempt to prove it would require the acknowledgement of objective truth.
Now, when I lay it out for you like this, it seems pretty obviously arrogant doesn’t it? But that’s not the way the proponents of “tolerance” present themselves at all. They sell themselves as the only truly compassionate and caring individuals on the planet, they are the enlightened sages who just want everybody to be nice to eachother. They picture themselves as the referee on the court calling fouls, not one of the players.
This, I find, is a common trait among all who participate in this kind of hidden arrogance. They instinctively know how to locate the escape hatch to any sort of confrontation and conviction of sin: go into the intellectual fetal position, curl up in an emotionally manipulative ball, and cry FOUL! All of the sudden, they avoid the stink and offense of their own sin by claiming to be the offended party. In their mind, they are not a rebel against God bent on destroying themselves and everyone else in their path, they are purely a victim and not at all the perpetrator of a crime. This is done in numerous ways; pretended ignorance, counteraccusation, blameshifting, partial confession, confessing some one elses sin, or changing the subject. But it is likely that anyone bold enough to press into the issue that leads to these measures will be painted as an arrogant jerk.
Perhaps it is more the case that all people are proud and arrogant as finite creatures who are constantly trying to go beyond their finitude. Maybe the worst kind of arrogance is the kind that acknowledges everyone elses more acutely than it’s own. Maybe none of us are entirely humble, none of us are purely victims, none of us are totally honest with ourselves and others.
If it be arrogant to have confidence about what is true then I am happy to arrogantly assert that, in fact, there is only one truly humble person, the God-man Jesus who as the Author of life submitted himself to die on a cross in our place for our sin in absolute humiliation, he is the only one who can be named a purely innocent victim, who himself is God’s honest truth made visible. I will arrogantly confess my own arrogance and need of Christ’s mercy to all. Christ earned this confidence for me, I did not earn it myself. Failure to admit this is the heart of true arrogance.
Everyday Christophany 