In America today, humility is widely regarded as a virtue. In connotation and denotation, humility is viewed as having a low view of one’s importance.
In contrast, pride is widely regard as a vice. Indeed, in Christian morality, pride is the worst of sins. But pride means “a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.” Why is this regarded as a bad thing?
Biblestudies.com offers an explanation:
What constitutes a “proud” person? The negative sense points to a sinful individual who shifts ultimate confidence from God to self. In the Wisdom literature, “the proud” are distinct from “the righteous” and “the humble.”
In other words, the proud person trusts the judgment of his own mind rather than the arbitrary edicts of God or His earthly spokesmen. And trusting one’s own mind, we are to believe, is a bad thing.
A culture that truly embraces humility–such as Europe during the Dark Ages–is a culture doomed to misery and suffering. Trusting in the edicts of God will not put food on the table, let alone provide us with automobiles, flat screen televisions, and smart phones.
Every step forward in human history occurred because some individual was willing to trust his own mind. The Founding Fathers trusted their own judgment, threw of England’s shackles, and created the greatest country in history. Thomas Edison trusted his own mind, rejected the conventional wisdom regarding incandescent lighting, and changed the world. The same is true of the countless men and women who have moved mankind forward by creating new values.
Those who reject pride as a virtue reject value creation because they reject the source of value creation–the reasoning human mind.