Image: Public Domain, Pixabay

I was thinking about something the other day. Why is it that Big religion teaches people that pride is a sin? They say never to have pride. I mulled it around in my head, and I have a theory.

I think they teach people that pride is a sin because if you’re proud, you feel good about yourself. If you feel good about yourself, you become a stronger person. If you’re a stronger person, you’ll be more capable of thinking for yourself and making your own decisions. If you think for yourself and make your own decisions, you might realize that Big Religion is bad for you. Having pride in yourself and your accomplishments makes you strong, and Big Religion wants you weak.

Taking pride in yourself and your accomplishments isn’t a bad thing. It can be taken to an extreme and become damaging, but anything taken to the extreme is harmful. That doesn’t mean you should negate it completely. You should feel good about yourself and the things you’ve accomplished. If you never felt good about yourself and the things you’ve done, you wouldn’t have any drive to do anything else. You’d just be a mindless automaton.

Unfortunately, that’s what the extremists of Big Religion want. They want to keep you mindless and compliant. They can control you that way. They want to kill your sense of self so you’ll do what they say. Don’t let them do that to you. Be proud of your accomplishments and be confident in yourself and what you can do. It makes you a stronger person and allows you to handle the world without needing someone else to tell you what to do all the time.

Briana Blair

Briana Blair is an author and artisan. She has published more then 30 books and thousands of articles across multiple sites. After practicing Paganism and witchcraft for 25 years, she's now on a journey as an atheist and skeptic. She's eclectic, unpredictable, and always evolving. Facebook - Twitter