The proud intellectual seeks knowledge about God, but he never knows God, because he cannot accept the mysteries that he is unable to fully comprehend.
Interpretation
Intellectual pursuit of knowledge may overlook the deeper mysteries of faith.
This quote suggests that an overemphasis on intellectual understanding can lead to a detachment from the spiritual and mysterious aspects of faith. While the proud intellectual may seek to acquire knowledge about the divine, their inability to embrace the incomprehensible nature of God prevents them from truly knowing Him.
In practice
During a sermon on the nature of faith.
I am not like a pebble on the beach - a grain of sand on the seashore or just one of millions of human beings past, present and future. No, I am a unique human being loved by God as if I were an only child - the only fruit of his creative powers.
I must not permit the evil capabilities of human nature to sour my faith in the tremendous good that is possible despite the frailty of that nature.
The sinner who suddenly realizes God's love for him and then looks at his rejection of that love feels a loss similar to the death of a loved one. A deep void is created in the soul and a loneliness akin to the agony of death.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.
Love has been defined, analyzed, explained and excused. It has been the cause of wars, feuds, heroism, martyrdom, inordinate passion, and beautiful friendships. It pulls two people of opposite temperaments together into a married state and permits them to live happily. It makes friends understand each other without the necessity of words.
If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.
Iβm me, and at the same time not me. Thatβs what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.
What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption?
Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house.
Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.
It would be misleading to say, 'I believe in the Force,' in the same sense that it would be misleading to say, 'I believe in the sun.' Give it whatever name you like - the Force, the Tao, the Holy Spirit, the Universal Mind - I see it in action everywhere I look, both in the world and in myself.
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