Mama said “do what you want; say prayers at night.”
And I’m saying them, ‘cause I’m so devout.

One Republic, “Love Runs Out”

[Dear Reader: This is the ninth in a series on the vices as the Desert Fathers understood them. If you haven’t already read them, please begin the series with parts one and two first.]

Each school year I introduce my new freshmen to the concept of the “Circus Poodle.” The circus poodle stands in contrast to the “Prisoner Serving Time,” who is the student doing the bare minimum to complete their degree, checking off the boxes that must be checked off and waiting out their four-year sentence before receiving their degree, having accumulated some debt and maybe some interesting trivia along the way but leaving more or less the same person as they arrived. The Prisoner is easy to identify—and perhaps a little too easy to judge.

The Circus Poodle is much harder to spot because, by so many of the metrics by which college students are judged, he or she looks to be doing fine. The Circus Poodle is the good student with faulty motivations. Circus Poodles do school well, and often reap all the honors and rewards and pomp and circumstance one can acquire in an academic environment: Dean’s List (as opposed to the “Registrar’s List” on which the Prisoner often finds himself), scholarships, lots of Latin at graduation, and plenty of people speaking well of them.

The problem isn’t the academic success; the problem is making recognition for academic success, rather than personal growth, the focus of one’s education. The Circus Poodle does everything you would want a student to do, but does it for the wrong reasons. The two hallmarks of the Circus Poodle are taking an A- as a personal insult, and sticking with what comes fairly easily to them. (On the Venn diagram, the overlap of those two circles is colored a deep, angry shade of purple and captioned “group projects.”) Circus Poodles are motivated by praise but stick to their strengths, and if their strengths are largely academic that is bad news for life outside of school. Because, like the Prisoner, the Circus Poodles leaves college more or less the same person they were when they got here.

The dangers facing the Prisoner Serving Time are obvious in his actions. But to understand the dangers facing the Circus Poodle, one must look deeply into his motivations.

You Can Not Take Your Pride

The word “pride” covers a lot of ground in English, which makes it difficult to approach the topic with precision and clarity. John Cassian tackles it in the final two books of his Institutes, casting light from varying angles on its different components. We’ll follow his thoughts on pride in its most ancient and dangerous form next blahg, but in this trip to the Desert we’ll focus on the category of pride he specifically identifies as kenodoxia. This Greek word, which modern translations variously render as “boastfulness” or “conceit” in Philippians 2:3 and Galatians 5:26, literally means “vain glory” (which, creating a compound out of the two words, is how the King James translates it). The idea here is a high sense of self-regard which is hollow or empty, lacking in any real support or substance. As with acedia, we are once again confronted with an increasingly archaic word for a significantly relevant concept. That’s because limiting kenodoxia to a simple translation of “vanity” or “conceit,” which are easy to see (and be annoyed) by in others, tempts me to let myself off the hook easily without confronting the poisonous root found in every human heart.

The danger of all forms of pride, including vainglory, is that they have a unique power to trip up more mature, spiritually-minded people that the baser vices such as lust or greed lack. Cassian observes that the baser vices, which primarily attack us via physical desires, are more easily avoided or overcome as we learn to desire and embrace their opposing virtues. With discipline and a growing love for what is truly good and from God, we will find that the temptations of gluttony, lust, and avarice weaken and that influence of anger, sadness, and acedia over our thoughts and desires lessens. Vainglory and pride, however, are not so easily beaten. “When [vainglory] has been thrown down it rises again to fight more violently, and when it is thought to be destroyed it recovers, all the more alive for having died” (Institutes XI.7).

Vainglory “is multiform, varied, and subtle,” according to Cassian (XI.1), avoiding detection by manifesting differently depending on the person and by morphing over time depending on maturity. A person who is unconcerned or immature spiritually may be brash and self-promoting, his vainglory obvious to almost anyone who cares to look. But pride is a special danger for spiritually serious people, because it uses a person’s noblest and highest desires against them. Other vices seek to keep us from spiritual-mindedness altogether and weaken when we “set our minds on things above, not on earthly things.” But pride does not weaken in this way.

Many Christians have tried to do the “right” things for reasons of vainglory. But this is a limited and flawed obedience that will never allow us to live in the fullness of grace.

In fact, it becomes an even greater danger: “When [vainglory] has struck the mind with carnal pride and been turned back by defensive resistance, it changes its previous garb and appearance, like the multiform evil that it is, and once again attempts to stab and slay its conqueror under the guise of virtue” (XI.2). Like a judo master, it seeks to turn your strengths into exploitable vulnerabilities. “Nor does this malady seek to hurt anyone except by way of his virtues, putting out dangerous stumbling blocks precisely where the rewards of life are gained” (XI.6).

Said simply, the temptation of vainglory for a spiritually maturing person is to think highly of yourself for your growing spiritual maturity. Cassian compares vainglory to a submerged rock, which a sailor with the wind at his back crashes into with no warning at all. Jesus used a different, even darker metaphor: whitewashed tombs (Matthew 23:27).

You Probably Think This Song Is About You

What makes kenodoxia such an imperceptible hazard is its essential quality, which is to be motivated by a desire for praise. And remember, vanity is “multiform” and adaptable and so, so sneaky. It may manifest itself as a desire to be flattered by people or even merely recognized by them, and I certainly like credit for my accomplishments as much as anybody else even if it embarrasses me to no end. But it may also appear as a desire to be rewarded by God for good deeds. And kenodoxia is all the more troublesome because it hides behind a camouflage of actions which appear outwardly good and may even bring a degree of real benefit.

This is more than a bit hard to get straight in our heads, because reward is precisely how we first learn the difference between right and wrong in the first place. Obey, candy; disobey, spanking. At first we learn to do the right thing not because we love doing the right thing but because we like the benefits of doing the right thing. That’s fine for children—but we must grow beyond the love of reward to the love of the good itself for its own sake. If reward is our motivation, rather than love of the good, any “good” we do is undercut just as a sinkhole opening under a house. This was the point Jesus made to the Pharisees as he blistered them in Matthew 23: cleaning “the outside of the cup and plate” had no value when “inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.”

The Pharisees could not see the problem because their focus was on actions and outward appearances—just as ours often are. This traps us in vainglorious attitudes and behaviors because we don’t even realize there is a problem. In his Conferences, Cassian recalls Abba Serapion’s observations about how monks often overcame lust (not just in physical deed but in thought as well) by means vainglory. Pride—a desire to think well of themselves, be thought well of by others, and even to be thought well of by God, all as a result of their virtue—was the primary motivation that drove them to overcome this most shame-inducing vice. That may work for a while, said Abba Serapion, but he compared the results of this strategy to Nebuchadnezzar freeing Judah from the clutches of Pharaoh Neco only to hold the children of Israel captive in an even more distant land. Escape from Babylon was more difficult than escape from occupation in one’s own country (Conferences V.12.4).

Many Christians (and I include myself here for much of my adult life) have tried to do the “right” things for reasons of vainglory. But this is a limited and flawed obedience that will never allow us to live in the fullness of grace. It is completely insufficient, but that’s not even the worst part. This is how Pharisees are made and nurtured.

I suppose there are two ways a Christian could respond to this. One is to despair that we can do anything right and just give up. This is an understandable response. And it is even half-correct, though still thoroughly wrong. The other is to despair that we can do anything right, and throw ourselves wholly on the grace of God. Can I tell you how liberating this second response is? It doesn’t lessen my desire to get life right and to live a life of Christlike virtue in the slightest. But what it does do is relieve me of the expectations and perfections that I otherwise unrealistically demand of myself. It focuses me on my inner life, and focuses on my prayers on the reformation of my thoughts and desires. And it treats each of my many failures and just another opportunity to accept my finitude, to repent, and to return by God’s grace to the virtues.

Casting Down My Golden Crown

The challenge, of course, is that vainglory seeks to nurture—but misdirect!—any hunger we have for virtue. We find vainglory “mingled with the virtues” as it “deceives the unthinking and the incautious” (Institutes XI.9). It seeks to hijack the pursuit of virtue and redirect it to subtly self-exalting ends. Victory over and freedom from other vices can actually fuel a dangerous, self-satisfied vainglory in us if we are not careful; “The more forcefully it has been struck the more vehemently does it wage its assault in the very pride of victory. Such is the enemy’s clever subtlety that it causes the soldier of Christ, whom he could not overcome with hostile arms, to fall by his own weapons” (Institutes XI.7).

What especially concerns me as I read this stuff is Abba Serapion’s assertion (and I do not doubt him on this) that vainglory and pride explode into strength when the other passions are overcome. What convicts me is that he (and the other abbas) are very clear that all the vices, including vainglory, are overcome only with the Lord’s help, and that we do not deserve credit for having overcome them simply because we made the choice to seek Christlikeness. That choice is assisted by God’s grace—we shall not concern ourselves here about how and to what degree—and therein lies the only credit to be granted (Conferences V.15). Embedded in the celebration of having overcome other vices (especially when one has been enslaved to them for so long) are the seeds of taking credit for having overcome them, and losing sight of grace to the degree that we can no longer sympathize with others for whom we should have the greatest sympathy. It’s very frightening to me, because I can see how seductive that thinking is. I have only fallen into it more times than I can count myself.

“The more forcefully [vainglory] has been struck the more vehemently does it wage its assault in the very pride of victory. Such is the enemy’s clever subtlety that it causes the soldier of Christ, whom he could not overcome with hostile arms, to fall by his own weapons.”

John Cassian

All this admittedly sounds pretty bad. But let’s remember that the very reason we consider these vices is to become thinking and cautious, more aware of what the vices are, what they do, and how—by God’s grace—we can respond to them in a “God-ward” direction. For me, leaning this stuff has not opened up new opportunities for self-loathing and depression; it has actually taught me to focus my prayer on the level of my my thoughts and motives—not my actions!—and to rest in God’s grace. It has forced me to recognize both my complete helplessness and also the help I have been promised by the blood of Christ and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit for the glory of God alone. That has been liberating; it is gradually fraying the leash on this Circus Poodle.

A closing thought, on the subject of motivation and how it relates to vainglory. Cassian relays a teaching on Matthew 6:19-21 (“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth…for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”) from another Desert Father that I find fascinating. While not disputing the application of this passage to material possessions that I (and probably most Christians) have generally held, Abba Moses encouraged Cassian and a friend to consider its spiritual ramifications: “For whenever we do anything with a view to human glory we know that we are, as the Lord says, laying up for ourselves treasure on earth” that will rot, rust, or be devoured as surely as any possession made of wood, metal, or cloth (Conferences I.22). Our attitude towards material possessions matters, of course, and Jesus said much about them in Matthew 6, but when he declared this he had also just concluded warnings about fasting or giving alms for self-glorifying reasons. So both from our actions but also our motivations, let us lay up our treasures in heaven, “where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

Next blahg, we will turn to another form of pride that is at least as toxic, if not more so. In fact, the last of the eight vices is the Original Sin.

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