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Mark Coffey |
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Good morning. I’ve recently read a bestselling graphic novel about the life of the philosopher and Mathematician Bertrand Russell. Russell was convinced that intelligence could save mankind from itself. One quote attributed to Russell intrigues me especially. It’s his observation that “So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence”. He’s right. Yet as Russell himself readily acknowledged his hope that reason and logic could help us to behave decently was proven repeatedly in his life, to be ill-founded
The support of academics for the First World War caused me “to revise my views of human nature”, he wrote, “…I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found that not 10 per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.” In his love life too, Russell was to discover how unreasonable and contradictory he himself could be. When he began a second marriage to Dora Black, he insisted on a policy of openness as regards sexual partners. Yet when Dora had two children by extra-marital relationships, Russell reflected in his autobiography, “I found my capacity for forgiveness and what might be called Christian love was not equal to the demands I was making on it. Anyone else could have told me this in advance, but I was blinded by theory.”
I suspect if Jesus was to reply to Russell’s criticism that he had little praise for human intelligence, he would once more call upon the simplicity of a child as he did with his disciples. Perhaps suggesting that our greatest obstacle to peace, progress, and true wisdom, may have more to do with that most ungovernable human condition, pride.
Lord God, help us to grow in both intelligence and humility so to learn from our mistakes. Amen.