In Which We Humble Ourselves Before God and Our Elders, Who
Exalt Us This week we shift our study of wisdom from the
“theological virtues” (faith, hope, and love) to what might be
called the “blessed virtues” from the Beatitudes. We will follow
Peter Kreeft (below) in contrasting them with the Seven Deadly
Sins, beginning with Humility vs. Pride: “Blessed are the poor
in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 5:3
In contrast, humility is recognizing the painful fact of our own
poverty of spirit, so that we empty ourselves in order to
receive our heavenly King. Read Proverbs 16. Why is Pride so
dangerous? Our chapter begins with Peter not lording it over his
readers as an apostle, but simply exhorting them as a “fellow
elder”: The crucial point Peter makes is that elders should
intrinsically want to serve. That is, they should not serve out
of either a sense of obligation or a desire for external rewards
— since the former leads to burnout, and the latter to
corruption [C.2]. Peter has clearly