In the coming epoch…[man] will have only two choices: to match the greatness of his power with the strength of his humanity, or to surrender his humanity to power and perish.
Romano Guardini, The End of the Modern World
We stand at a precipice in human history. Some say that the present day crisis in our civilization will be as transformational as that of the 16th century. Western Civilization is grasping for a direction to avoid collapse. We stand in a civilization with a century of disaster behind us and the future appears to be dark.
The modern world ended with the destruction of the world wars and the subsequent disillusionment. Man’s mastery of nature was used to destructive ends resulting in the deaths of millions. What emerged from the wreckage was a postmodern world marked by nihilism. The modern world disintegrated into a postmodern world that believes existence is meaningless.
Postmodern man believes and acts if God were dead. He decided if God is dead then he himself should become a god. This only exacerbates the crisis of our age. So humanity continues a quest for unlimited power without the benefit of moral standards by which to conduct itself.
The result is postmodern man attempting to even refute the biological facts of his existence. Man attempts to make himself a god and define his own existence. Man is a religious creature and will find someone to worship even if that someone is himself.
If human power and the lordship with stems from it are rooted in man’s likeness to God, then power is not man’s in his own right, autonomously, but only as a loan, in fief. Thus sovereignty becomes obedience, service. Service first of all, in the sense that sovereignty is to be exercised with respect for the truth of thing.
Romano Guardini
Man now believes he is a god without limitation. Proud and defiant he brings himself and his world to the brink of collapse. Power becomes a force of will of the few against the many. Ideology replaces morals and chaos replaces order. The question now is how humanity can survive when it eschews the very definitions of its existence?
The answer lies in Revelation. To begin anew, we must return to that which God himself showed as the starting point for salvation, God’s plan for humanity. We must begin with humility.
Christ was the ultimate embodiment of humility—the strength of humility, not weakness. The most powerful thing in the world is humility. It is a virtue that Satan cannot imitate. In the beginning, humans distorted God’s purpose for humanity being that man should live as a sovereign on earth, but always in service to God.
Throughout biblical history, we see the pride of man reaching for power to exceed the power of God. At the Incarnation, God sent his Son as a suffering Savior, the power of humility forever connecting heaven and earth; therein, also lies the answer to our present crisis.
Pride, distorting our conception of power, is countered by humbling ourselves and acknowledging that the only righteous power lies in our service to God. The renewal of our civilization begins in the same place that Our Savior began.
True Christian humility is a virtue of strength, not of weakness. In the original sense of the word, it is the strong, high minded, and bold, who dare to be humble. All creature humility has its origin in the act in which the Son of God became man.
Romano Guardini
Today we see the continued wiles of Satan in the quest for the absolute sovereignty of man disconnected from God. The Incarnation of Christ brings together heaven and earth which we try to separate by our own pride. We must rebuild our world in the same way that Christ’s incarnation redefined power at his birth. The Creator God humbled himself and became man, an act of love that we must model today.
How can we find our way in a world that threatens to destroy individual man and collectivize him; a world that seeks to obliterate the individual by labeling him by characteristics that he didn’t choose for himself, like sex and race; a world with power beyond the human capabilities to use them morally? The answer comes from Revelation and its truth which reveals to men that the use of power comes with responsibility that we cannot escape because we cannot separate our power from the power of the Creator who made us in His image.
Man may shuffle responsibility by attempting to embed it in organizations, committees, or governmental bureaucracies, but he cannot escape responsibility. The right use of power comes down to God and man’s use of power to serve Him. Only humility can make man realize that his responsibility is to use power in the service of God’s will.
We are not masters of the universe. God designates that man should live as his servant on earth to shape the world and use it to do His will. Any deviation from His plan for humanity will inevitably result in destruction through our own free will. We cannot rebuild civilization without individual humility. Humble, just souls create humble, just societies.
A respect for and return to tradition itself requires a measure of humility. Humility recognizes that generations before us had knowledge and wisdom that somehow we have lost in the present day.
Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We shoved wisdom from the past into dusty corners where it’s forgotten and neglected. We engage in contemporary snobbishness ignoring the wisdom of past ages leaving us in a void of intellectual poverty without a foundation on which to build anew.
Seek humility and you will find wisdom—the wisdom needed to rebuild the foundations of society. There can be no justice, peace, or wisdom without imitating the love of God who in his love for humanity humbled himself to become man through the Incarnation.
The salvation of our society will only occur with the salvation of the individual soul. We have been given an inspired handbook on the salvation of the individual soul. Let’s heed the words of the Great Commission and restore our world, one soul at a time.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.
Matthew 28:19-20
~Rae Carpenter
Yes, I've read quite a few books that he authored. His book Dynamics of World History influenced my thoughts a great deal.
Have you come across Harvard Prof Christopher Dawson's thesis that civilisations fall after they turn their back in religion?