SO GOOD QUOTES

There are various ways we feel confident.  Confidence can come from a sense of zeal, a feeling that we are doing something important—even if we don’t exactly know what we are doing.   Confidence can come from the thought that you know what God is doing in your life or in the lives of those around you.  It is a kind of figuring it out, a reduction to principles that can be applied to any situation.  This kind of knowledge, I think, is akin to the knowledge that St. Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, the knowledge that puffs up, as opposed to the love that builds up. Confidence can also come from a sense that we are right, that we know what is right to do and we are doing it. This, in my experience, is the most deceptive kind of confidence.  Feeling right is a dangerous feeling, for our right-ness (i.e. our “righteousness”) quickly becomes a idol with clay feet.  And feeling that we are right and being zealous at the same time is the most dangerous kind of confidence.

—Fr. Michael Gillis, Happy Ignorance With Peace