Pride of the Intellect vs. Humility of Faith

Pride of the Intellect The more I learn about philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology and the world in general, I get a kick out of it because I start to see stark patterns that connect everything- the simple and complex, the mundane and spectacular/dramatic, the basic and elaborate. I know what people want, I know the complexity of their motives, I see the pattern of history and current events, I see the game in social interactions, I see how biology manifests itself spiritually. I know by word the meaning of my life. It gives life a vibrancy that Dr. Jordan Peterson calls "high resolution." I once was blind now I can see. It gets intoxicating and overwhelming. You can apply it practically in your life. The danger is when you think you can manipulate reality to make it easier for you and you think you can get away with it. You can never get away with because there is no way of manipulating reality, you are not outside of reality, you are a part of it. What you are actually doing when you think you're manipulating reality is you are manipulating people who don't now as much as you. The Pride of the Intellect is a form of deception to others as well as yourself. Any time there is hubris, pride, dishonesty or cunning, there is the great deceiver, except, there is nothing great about the deceiver, he/ she at the core is petty and pathetic, sad that the world does not revolve around him/her. The more I know, the harder it is to have faith because if I already know something what need do I have of believing it? Yet, I do need to believe it. Faith is essential to knowing. "Faith is the reasoning of a religious mind." Bishop Robert Barron says it  is akin to faith being on the far side of understanding not on the low side. These are not just empty platitudes, struggle to understand this. This is what I mean: on a personal level, I apply what I know to my life. It works, like inputting commands on your computer but what I ind with this is that I have started to treat myself and other people as machines whose only necessities are plug-in solutions- even if I understand the complexity and am not applying a palliative solution. Of course, part of the problem is that no matter how much knowledge you can acquire, you cannot fool yourself to the idea that you know everything. Some thing is missing in simply knowing which is present having Faith, or perhaps the former has an insidious quality not present in Faith.Perhaps, simply knowing has Pride attached to it- a falling in love with its own creation- while Faith has Humility, When you try to warp reality with Pride, you corrupt what you know (you may end up mistrusting it or trusting it too much) because to know truth is to be in line with reality. Similar to what Renato M. Corona said the "the a closer a man'ts perception is to reality, the greater the man." (Veneration Without Understanding). You reject Truth when you try to betray reality, a grave sin. Conversely, Humility is to be in Truth. Like in Dante's Purgatorio, the sinners of Pride learn humility by carrying a large boulder that brings their face close to the dirt. Humility is to be down to Earth, close to reality.  

The Pride of the Intellect Pride, the Original Sin, has danger of falling in love with its own creation. The apotheosis of the things of God to god itself and therefore a great insult to the Divine. This kind of self deception cuts off our perception from reality, rejecting Truth and breaking friendship with God. Pride of the intellect is to be blinded by all that you can see. What is the antidote to the Pride of the Intellect? What now that we have eaten of the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and we are cast off the Gardens of Eden as we are made conscious b knowledge of Death The Tree of Life is red by Cherubim and flames of fire. There is no going back to naivete, we cannot un-know what we know already inasmuch as we cannot truly get rid of food we already partook of-its already in our blood in nutrient or toxin form.  So how do we live? how do we attain Life? Not through the Bliss of Ignorance (which we lost in Paradise) the Humility of Wisdom. Humility is not so impressed with the Self, it does not look so inward in itself putrefying in its own mucks, its not blind. It does see itself but it sees outward too- a wider scope. It knows its greatness and iniquities but is also painfully aware of the terrifying magnificence all around it. Wisdom knows the chaos of the unknown world and says that God must be ordered above it all. Knowing the chaos around and within we wrestle with divine and we burn. By the grace of God, we do not burn off the deadwood and take on new flesh for only the pure can see the face of God. We become fully alive.