Chris opens Psalm 149 with a confession: he hated math, got an English degree partly to avoid it, and yet found himself doing math in his free time — running the numbers on human overconfidence. Citing Gallup polls, GMO research, political science studies, and the jaw-dropping statistic that 75% of Americans believe they are the best person they know, he builds an ironclad mathematical case that a crisis of humility is at the root of most of our problems, spiritual and civic. He weaves in sayings from The Desert Fathers — including the devil's own admission to the monk Macarius that humility is the one weapon he cannot overcome — and ends with a personal gut-punch: calculating how many meals and how many lives (9, specifically) could be saved if he traded his expensive car payment for charity. The math, he says, does not require calculus — just the Lord

The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (Penguin Classics): Benedicta Ward: 9780140447316: Amazon.com: Books

I am using the RSV for the readings.

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