Why humility matters.

Humility really needs a better press agent. Those people in our culture who might be in a position to promote it have for the most part long since decided that arrogance pays better. But like so many other Divine virtues, that’s sort of the point.

Humility comes from the premise that your ideas may be flawed because you are a sinful person in your very nature. Thus, you share them cautiously, carefully, and with an ear eager for criticism. But what happens when we don’t speak humbly?

Well, last week, an unstable man attempted to destroy the Discovery Channel headquarters because he believed they weren’t doing enough to stop the parasitic virus we call humanity. Who inspired him? Environmental activists former Vice President Al Gore and author Daniel Quinn. Are they at all to blame? Of course. Why? Because they have been consistently unhumble in their pronouncements regarding humankind and the earth.

Now, of course James Lee was an unstable person. But when unstable people act on the warnings of alarmists, those who used the most extreme language must bear some degree of blame for the evil done in the name of their ideas. To conclude otherwise is to deny any moral responsibility for what we say and how we say it.