And this all comes back to pride and ego. As Lewis put is, “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first—wanting to be at the centre—wanting to be God . . .”

We all suffer from pride, and it breeds many of the other vices: envy, anger, greed, and sometimes lust. None of us are free from it and yet, as Lewis writes, “everyone loathes [it] when he sees it in someone else; hardly . . . ever [imagining] that they are guilty themselves.”

In fact it was this very passage that first began to open my eyes to my need for Christ. After Tom Phillips read me these passages in his home in Boston in 1973, I saw key events of my life paraded before me as on a screen. From my choice to join the Marines, to cramming through law school nights, to marrying into the right family, to angling for my position as Special Counsel to the President, I had been driven out of pride. Even what looked like self-sacrifice to the outside world had been on pride’s behalf.

Not only was this devastatingly true in my own life it continues to plague the world in which we live. As Lewis goes on to say, “. . .it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together. . . .But Pride always means enmity.”