Spiritual Cancer

...many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilbains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

- C. S. Lewis

I often get a sense that when I'm doing something well, there's some other part of me, or my life, or the task at hand that I've ignored and is completely falling to pieces. I am often on guard about appreciating something that I'm successful at, or enjoying the act of doing a good deed. I have this thought in the back of my mind, that I think is in Scripture somewhere, which says that when a man is confident that he's reached sure footing, he has reached the moment most likely for the ground to fall out from under him. This makes me hypervigilent. I fear self conceit; so much so that my especial dislike of it draws me into the opposite error of low self confidence. I wonder which is the worse? Surely it must be self conceit. Can't self conceit creep in to those who have low self confidence? Isn't telling me that I am very good for thinking myself lowly and others better than me a strong and stealthy weapon in self conceit's arsenal? I don't think myself better than others. I do think myself more capable at times, but I am humbled by the strengths and gifts of others every day. Being humbled and losing confidence in yourself is probably a strong preliminary tool of God's. He smashes our sense of confidence in ourselves alone, and shows us real confidence as we experience our true selves and our true abilities when tapped into Him and aligned with His will. Real self confidence builds from that base level because it is grounded in the ultimate Source of confidence. I don't think self conceit can survive alongside true self confidence. True self confidence is confidence in the Power that makes self possible at all.