Is Pride what separates us from God?

I'll preface this by saying that I am far from a theological expert; these are just thoughts I have after watching a video.

In our church small group we were watching a video from Abiding Life Ministries. The director, Mike Wells, says many interesting things, and I don’t completely agree with them all, but I think many good things can be extracted from his messages.

He said something of note: “Pride is what sends us to hell…not sin.”

Is this a correct statement? Yes and No. Technically, it is sin (and pride is a sin) that separates us from God. We break one letter of the law, we are deserving of damnation. However, God created a way out for us, and it's not like a loophole, it's that the punishment for breaking the law is satisfied through Christ’s death. Mike argued that it is pride that prevents us from accepting Christ. So, I guess it depends how you look at it. It is sin that got us in the mess in the first place, but it is pride that keeps us from accepting the way out. A guy in my small group stated. “It is as if you had a deadly sickness, and you had the pill that would cure you in your pocket, but you refuse to take it. Is it the sickness that kills you, or your refusal to take the pill?” I suppose you could argue either way.

Another thing to note is that pride played a role in original sin, or the fall of man. The typical interpretation of Satan's rebellion states that it was the pride of Satan that caused the rebellion in heaven, and it was the desire to be like God that caused Adam and Eve to eat the apple in the garden. Now, in the garden, there was also the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh, so pride may not be the source of all of man's sin.

The point was, that a threat in our spiritual life is not only sin, but our pride. Even if we are “holy” by some standard, we can still give the glory to ourselves, and not to God, which Mike argued was just as bad as sin.