mine's better than yours

Lewis gets into an interesting subject today in A Year with C.S. Lewis.

He talks about how being proud of your ancestors or regiment is not a sin, as long as you just mean you have a good feeling about them.

But the thing we have to be careful of is taking this to an extreme. It's just fine to love your country and think it's great. It's a very different thing to look down on all of the other countries of the world because they're not yours. It's akin to thinking your school is better than other schools, and looking down on people who graduated from another one. Or thinking the way you do things is better than anyone else, and other people should just all be more like you.

This is pride. This is the thing that hurts us spiritually. This separates us from God. It does this in many ways, but probably the biggest way is that it makes it harder for us to love people. The way we love God, He tells us, is by loving His children. And if we're too busy looking down our noses at them to love them, then we have by definition pushed God away.

So let's love our countries, our schools, our teams. But let's keep it in perspective, and find things to love about other people's countries, schools, and teams, too. It will only make our lives richer, and it will help us love others.

God, thanks for helping us love each other.