(Just a heads up: I’m going to be posting roughly every other day from now on instead of every day. The next few months are pretty busy and I’ve realized that posting every day actually isn’t a must. So I’ll be posting about 3-4 times a week. 🙃)

A week-ish ago, I was asked if I had any experiences with arrogance in the church. I personally have not experienced it (or at least cannot remember it) in my own church’s pastors, but my parents have, and I have seen it in students or church-goers or online.

So, this post is going to be leaning more towards arrogance as a Christian versus in the church.

According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, this is what it means to be arrogant: having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities.

It’s pretty close to pride, right? Which, in case you didn’t know, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. (I’ll be making a post on that in a few days.) Many people have been arrogant at some point, right? Maybe it was about their skill or an achievement, or just their own amazingness.

Others are arrogant about their faith.

I’m going to break down this post into three sections: What does the Bible say about arrogance and what does it mean to be an arrogant Christian?

So first off—what does the Bible say about arrogance? I think this is the best place to start so we can determine it before we get into the Christian part of arrogance and signs of arrogance in your faith.

Well, there are many verses in Psalms about ‘the arrogant’ who harm, rebuke and mock the psalmist as well as disobeying and mocking God. (Psalm 119:85, Psalm 94:4, Psalm 5:5 are just a few examples.)

But then—in many of the letters in the New Testament—there is talk of arrogance or arrogant people who are broken away from God.

One that stands out to me is a verse in the eleventh chapter of Romans: ‘But they [unbelievers] were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. ‘
Romans 11:20 NIV

If you look at the context of this verse, it sounds like Paul is saying that these unbelievers had known God. But their faith weakened—they were arrogant and trusted in their own works rather than God’s power—and ‘were broken off.’

You can’t serve God and serve yourself.

If you read Psalms 75:4, Romans 1:29-30, Psalm 94:4, Proverbs 21:24, and James 4:16, (as well as other verses) you can see that often the word ‘boast’ or ‘pride’ are used in reference to the arrogant people, similar to what the definition from Merriam-Webster said.

Arrogance comes hand in hand with boastfulness and pride.

Now, let’s see what it means to be an arrogant Christian.

As I mentioned above, the unbelievers—who had possibly once known and believed in God—were arrogant. Meaning: they trusted in their own power instead of God’s power.

When you lose sight of the goodness of God, you become your own god.

To me, the word ‘arrogance’ is different than the word ‘pride.’ I personally see arrogance as a long lasting thing, whereas pride is more of an ‘in the moment’ thing. Of course, pride can last a long time, but I think that most people know when they are being prideful rather than knowing when they are being arrogant.

Arrogance often comes in this way: you begin prideful, people tell you this, but you are too prideful to acknowledge it and so you continue on your prideful path, which leads to arrogance.

But that’s just the way I see it.

Anyways—arrogance as a Christian is different than pride as a Christian. You refuse to listen to your spiritual mentors and are also setting a bad example for those who might look up to you as a spiritual mentor.

I was watching a video (I’m not going to explain it, it’s super long and complicated so you can just watch it yourself. It’s clean and fascinating!) and at one point, one of the men was talking about his ‘church.’ (Which he later addressed as a cult.)

He talked about the church’s pastor, who, after receiving tithes at church, would use that money and the resources and the people to buy himself a nice car, newest technology, and he even convinced them all to build him this really nice new house.

This man was an unfortunate example of an arrogant Christian and pastor. All while manipulating the congregation, he also was arrogant enough to convince everyone that he was the one they should be helping and giving frivolities to.

Arrogance as a Christian, I personally feel, is a very dangerous thing. Of course, this is something that can definitely be addressed! It’s not a ‘you do it once, you’re condemned forever’ mistake. ;)

I hope this made sense, and please take all my thoughts with a grain of salt! I’m still figuring all these things out myself.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!
~Willow <3