Pride Is Essentially Comparison

I received this quote to read during a Sunday School lesson, and found it quite interesting.  I thought I'd share.

"Pride is an attitude that commences with personal comparisons with others and leads to demeaning thoughts or oppressive actions directed at other sons and daughters of God.  The pride of self-satisfaction imposes its primary effects upon the one who is proud.  His attitude blocks his own progress.  In contrast, the pride of comparison is pernicious because of its tendency to the oppression of others.  C.S. Lewis described the pride of comparison when he said, "Pride is essentially competitive... Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man... It is the comparison that makes you proud:  the pleasure of being above the rest."  Lewis called pride "the utmost evil" and "the complete anti-God state of min," because this kind of comparison leads men to enmity and oppression and every other kind of evil.  This insightful Christina saw that every person should look up to God as "immeasurably superior" to him or her.  Lewis continued, "Unless you know God as that [immeasurably superior], and therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison you do not know God at all  As long as you a re proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."