shawnethomas

“Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, “That man will get on; he believes in himself.” And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written “Hanwell.”  [Hanwell was an insame asylum in Chesterton’s day] I said to him, “Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. “Yes, there are,” I retorted, “and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can’t act believe in themselves; and debtors who won’t pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness.” (G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Chapter II, “The Maniac”)

As is so often true, what the world seems to prize so greatly – self-confidence – can actually be a great liability.  Without the tinge of doubt that might lead one more timid to refrain from destructive behavior, or to seek wise counsel and direction, a foolish self-confidence can actually lead one headlong into error and destruction.  That is why Jesus said “Blessed are the poor in spirit” – those who realize they do NOT have the answers, do NOT have the resources, do NOT have that treasured-by-the-world “self-confidence” – because it is THEY who will admit their need and turn to God and find in Him what they could not attain on their own.  Jesus said in that famous opening verse of the Beatitudes that the poor in spirit would be blessed, “for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”  In other words, not only will you find asylums like Hanwell peopled by the self-confident, as Chesterton asserted, but there will also be a whole lot of  very “self-confident” individuals in hell.