Quote of the Day!

"Knowledge may be power but wisdom is humility."

Well I made it up - but I bet Socrates would agree with me if he were alive today! I posted the other day about humanism and its various forms. While secular humanism stresses knowledge and power, classical and theistic humanism would stress wisdom and humility. While Socrates was all about wisdom, Christians are always about humility. And the two are rather linked. Socrates' wisdom was his humility. He knew that he did not know and, unlike the Pharisees of his day, he was humble enough to admit it. His Gospel was: "Know thyself" - and that was what classical humanism was all about. What am I as a human?

Among Christians, there was once a saint who was asked to name the four cardinal virtues. He responded: "humility, humility, humility, and humility." Wisdom and virtue are very important in Christianity - but humility also includes knowing that only in God can we find happiness and only by God's help (via grace) can we find Him.

Secular humanism, beginning especially in Machiavelli, teaches that virtue keeps us from getting what we want. Good guys finish last. Power combined with vice is needed to be successful. Descartes would give us the scientific method to have all the power we want through the knowledge of the world around us. Combine scientific knowledge, vice, and a secular humanist worldview and we have countries like communist Russia, spreading atheism and threatening the world with nuclear war.

While the threat of nuclear war with Russia is no more, the principles of secular humanism have unfortuneately spread. The cold war may be over but the war for men's souls has only begun. The key for victory: the wisdom of humility.

And don't forget for a minute that Jesus Christ is wisdom incarnate...