Root Sins: Vanity, Pride & Sensuality
Ripping up sin by the root.
Years ago I did a Walking with Purpose bible study at my parish in Louisiana with some of the most amazing humans I’ve ever met.
In that study, Opening Your Heart, every few weeks there is a video that you watch in lieu of doing the study that week. We would snuggle up in our church coffee stop after it was closed, sip tea, and watch the videos. This one made me think SO much.
The gist of the whole study is working on the priorities in our life and opening up our heart to God to get those priorities right. To find out identity in Him and not our motherhood, our careers, our hobbies, anything.. outside of Him.
This video goes on to talk root sin. It’s so good, worth the listen.
“I don’t understand why I act the way I do. I don’t do the good I want to do, and I do the evil I hate.” - Romans 7:15
The 3 root sins are: sensuality, vanity, and pride.
It is important to remember that all of us struggle with all three of these root sins but if you allow yourself to meditate on these for a few days asking God to reveal to you what your most prominaten root sin is, He will. It will suck. Often the truth hurts. But it’s like cleaning out a wound. You must carve out the yuck, that hurts, in order to grow in holiness.
Pride
Someone who struggles with the root sin of pride will seek security and safety within herself. She doesn’t see things through anyone else’s point of view. Pride is the opposite of faith. Faith is seeing things through God’s point of view.
Read through these and see how many of them you can relate to:
You chase accomplishment at all costs.
You have control issues. After all, if you can control your life then you can keep yourself safe from physical and emotional stress. The opposite of this is to see that God is in control and that takes a lot of faith and trust in a living God that we cannot see and often cannot hear.
You put so much energy into being independent. If you live your life making sure you are completely independent of others, especially the Lord, then you likely struggle with pride.
If you struggle with pride, you will find it hard to look past the surface level of your actions. Most specifically that you will justify and rationalize your actions and sinfulness.
You might struggle with negativity and being judgmental of others.
Your prideful manifestations might show up as elf pity simply because when your root sin is pride Satan does all he can to not allow you to see outside yourself. Your focus is inward and it makes it very difficult to be grateful and see things from an eternal perspective.
If you struggle with pride you probably have a very difficult time submitting to authority especially, if you’re married, to the authority of your husband. Struggling to submit to a husband’s authority means that you likely struggle with submitting to the authority of God.
You might struggle with parent issues of abandonment or having to be independent at too young of an age.
Some symptoms of this root sin: arrogance, boasting, defensiveness, inability to say you are sorry, always trying to place the blame on someone else, presuming you’ll get to Heaven because you believe you’re a good person, anger when feeling disrespected, inflated view of your importance, gifts or abilities, perfectionism, talking too much/talking too much about yourself, devastation or anger when someone criticizes you, lack of compassion, inability to ask for forgiveness, giving your opinion when not asked, jealousy or envy, justifying your actions, attention seeking behavior.
In summary - you might struggle with pride if you find safety, security and your identity in what you accomplish, in your independence, success.
If you think you might struggle with pride as your root sin meditate on these 2 bible passages.
“Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk. 18:14b).
“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you” (1 Pet. 5:6; cf. Jms. 4:10).
Vanity
Someone who struggles with vanity seeks their security in other people, their love and affirmation instead of God.
You make choices and commit actions to be affirmed, noticed, praised, loved.
You have a deep fear of rejection.
You define yourself by how others perceive you. You want them to think you’re a great mother, homemaker, wife, friend, Christian, Catholic, American, party planner… the list goes on.
You let what other people think of you get in the way of accepting the love of Christ because you don’t love others for Christ sake but instead for how they might love you back.
You might struggle with intimate relationships because you feel that if someone really knew the core of who you were they wouldn’t like you.
You might have mommy/daddy issues; especially if you ever had to work for or felt like you have disappointed your parents you might seek that approval in friends, men, coworkers, or acquaintances.
You seek security and affirmation in relationships because that tells you that you are worthy of love.
Some symptoms of this root sin are: stage fright or anxiety when speaking publicly, gossiping, “stretching the truth”, spending too much time, energy and money on clothes, accessories, or your appearance, anger when you don’t feel appreciated, doing things so that others will appreciate you or acknowledge you, taking on too much, wanting your house to be just right, addiction to social media, always trying to appear like you have the perfect life, home, family, marriage, kids; being a people pleaser, changing your speech, words you use, and the way you talk when you’re around different people; anxiety about being a burden to others, inability to ask of help because you’re afraid what people will think of you.
Sensuality
In general, someone who struggles with sensuality places their security in the accumulations of things and in their feelings mostly manifesting as a lack of restraint as you chase the security of feeling good in the moment. A disordered attachment to comfort, ease, and pleasure.
You might struggle with materialism.
You might be a procrastinator.
You often experience intense laziness.
You binge watch TV, YouTube, etc.
You’re addicted to social media, video games, or screen time.
You make decisions focused on feelings, emotions - only doing what you should do when you feel like it.
You struggle with over indulgence: food, spending/shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.
You are a YOLO, living for today, in the moment kind of person who often regrets these decisions later.
You might struggle with parent issues of not being given strong boundaries and limits as a child.
Some symptoms of this root sin are: excessive bouts of binge watching, skipping church because you don’t feel like it, neglecting your chores or duties often, cursing, stealing, use of porn, doing immoral sexual acts, cutting corners, spending way too much time, energy and money in makeup, skincare, beauty products, clothing, plastic surgery or treatments, over consumption of alcohol, food, being addicted to sugar, addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Each of us suffer with all 3 of these root sins as a root to anything and everything else we do that betrays the love and mercy of God BUT when you dive deep you’ll find that you tend towards one more than the other.
Just like every 12 step program out there, if we don’t recognize we have a problem then we cannot fix it. We can’t seek to repair the damage and prevent the wrong from happening again if we don’t identify that anything wrong has happened.
The same is with sin.
I always just assumed I was prideful. I mean, all sin is rooted in pride. I know what is best. If I can plan for it then I can control it. Pride that I know better than God. Really all sin is rooted in that but if you dig deeper you can really pinpoint the motivation behind most of your sinful actions.
I can also see how I definitely am a sensual leaning sinner - I can be lazy. I struggle with addiction to one thing or another throughout my life
Yes. But.
Often I would show up in the confessional and confess the same crap: gossip, lack of priorities, social media addiction, overcommitting and then dropping essential balls in life (marriage, parenting, home, etc), anger at my kids and then get so mad at myself when I would commit the same sins over and over again.
Well, that’s because I was confessing the symptom sins, the sins that happen as a result of the root sin and not focusing on the root sin itself. It’s interesting to pray about your root sin because often a lot of the symptoms overlap but, if you allow Him, The Holy Spirit will reveal your motivation behind the symptoms of sin you’re experiencing.
Gossip, for me, is a vanity struggle because in the moment we care more about engaging with and entertaining or listening to others than standing our ground for the person who is being wronged. For others, gossip might be because it makes you feel good in the moment (sensuality) or because you like degrading others to exalt yourself (pride).
Social media addiction for me is fueled by vanity because I get dopamine hits from the likes, shares, and interactions I receive from strangers on the internet. So much so that it can interfere with the real life relationships with humans right in front of us. It’s my desire to receive appreciation and acclaim from others. Others might struggle with social media by scrolling and binging (sensuality) or by commenting and starting arguments to prove others wrong (pride).
Over committing and stretching myself too thin is a boundary issue rooted in vanity because I don’t want to let others down or disappoint them because we care more about what they would think of us for saying “no” than what the Lord or our family thinks and feels when we rightfully hold our boundaries.
Anger at my kids was most often because of a mess they made OR their behavior in public. Both of which I could see could be rooted in vanity - I care more that my home is clean for strangers to see and appreciate what a phenomenal housewife I am or that strangers in the grocery store see my perfect little saintly children and assume that I am just knocking the mom-game out of the park than I actually cared about making memories with my kids, allowing them to be kids, and using their poor choices as a teaching point vs just reacting angrily because I was embarrassed. Or, often it was because I felt I wasn’t being appreciated or respected.
So just to clarify.. because I always feel like I need to probably because I care WAY too much what other’s think of me. (Hi, vanity, is that you??)
I do NOT think that I am good looking or attractive, much at all. I don’t want to just bash myself especially because I have little girls but the vanity I struggle with is not in looks, it is in caring WAY too much what other’s think of me. THIS is that root sin of vanity. It’s not vanity like the world thinks - oh she has to have fancy hand bags, or makeup on constantly, or be super cute and fashionable type of vanity.
It is simply, caring WAY too much what other’s think and not placing the Lord’s judgement of us as the top priority. It is only when we place the Lord’s view of us as the center of our life because He wants deep, intimate love with you, is it then that we can turn over control of our lives and to surrender.
Once you realize what you root sin is you can ask the Holy Spirit to purify that from your soul. To root it out.
If you struggle with pride pray for the Lord to gift you humility, patience, and meekness.
If you struggle with vanity pray for the Lord to gift you humility, the ability to be generous without seeking recognition and modesty in words, actions, & deeds.
If you struggle with sensuality pray for the Lord to gift you temperance, fortitude, and generosity, and chastity.