The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom - a podcast by Fr. John Arnold

What is a wise life? As Christianity has faded from the center to the margins in the West. The Nicene Creed is replaced with the simpler secular creed – I believe in myself. This affirmation—that you should believe in yourself as the ultimate source of meaning and value—is the secular colonization of the religious impulse. Everyone has to worship something or someone. You can’t make people not believe. The gods of illusion just redirect human belief. Believing in myself is celebrated on daytime TV, in inspirational books, and Disney movies. It is as if the garage door of unreality has forever closed off the minds of the self-believers to any real experience of transcendence. Since, there is nothing else to believe in beyond me, this pseudo wisdom goes, I might as well believe in myself. This is, of course, quite contrary to the biblical view of the human condition. Humility is to see oneself as you really are – mortal, limited, doubting and prone to self-destructive behavior. To proclaim the Gospel is to say to the unbelievers, baptized and unbaptized, the way out is to believe in Christ, not yourself. How is that working? Does it matter in the end? Yes it does.

Music by St. Mark Cantor by permission of One License, A-726294

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