The Two Standards, part 1

When Jesus answers to Satan, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”, (Lk 4:4 and Mt 4:4, cf. Dt 8:3) it means that he chose to renounce the immediate gratification in order to follow what God’s will was for him. - The Two Standards meditation, 140-142. First Part: The Standard of Satan, the “values” he uses to deceive and seduce all of us

I am not so good at making this choice consistently. I do it pretty well for the bigger things, but there are areas of purity that I miss out on because I indulge in immediately gratifying thoughts instead.

The second temptation of Jesus is to let the power principle dominate his life. The search for power, personal prestige and status, the exploitation of others in order to gain these, and the allure of “honor” is so much widespread phenomenon that Alfred Adler in his “individual psychology” asserted it as the basic drive in life. Although a certain level of self-esteem is necessary for a healthy psyche, the temptation of the power drive misleads us to seek status and honor directly, and the price to pay for it is in destroyed relationships, falsity and deceit. - ibid.

There can be a tricky balance between setting appropriate boundaries for ourselves and trying to exercise power over the lives of others. Sometimes the people around us can feel that we are imposing boundaries or values on them when we are really only setting them for ourselves. It's an important distinction. To keep from being taken advantage of in an unhealthy way, I must sometimes prevent another from taking unhealthy advantage of me. That can feel to them as if I am trying to make a decision for them that they do not wish to make for themselves, when in truth I am truly only making a decision about what is healthy for me. It is important, when we are on the other side of such a decision, not to allow our own wishes to outweigh our respect for the other person by acting in a dishonest way in order to coerce a decision in line with our own wishes. This is especially hard when we feel that we need our lives to be different from how they actually are.

Viktor Frankl pointed out many times that there are several things, like joy and happiness that cannot be willed directly but should come as a by-product of one’s deeds. As the pursuit of happiness does not lead to its fulfillment so is it with the power drive. - ibid.

I've been thinking about this lately. In fact, I have long been convinced that the single greatest obstacle to finding happiness is to pursue it directly. Matthew Kelly propounds that we maximize our happiness by becoming the best version of ourselves, by making physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy choices rather than pursuing happiness for its own sake.

The third temptation of Jesus as Robert C. Leslie points out is to escape from personal responsibility, which is a manifestation of self-sufficiency and pride. Harder to recognize than the other two this temptation is permeating our culture on personal and societal level. It works through the dominance of psychological and sociological determinism. We can excuse our behavior endlessly by past traumas and by what others did or did not. - ibid.

There is so much in these few sentences. First of all, I'm pretty sure that I've never thought of the third temptation quite in these terms, but this makes perfect sense. Jesus is tempted to escape the consequences of a personal decision. The one thing that I am pleased about concerning my initial experience with therapy is that, while I needed to learn the effect that my childhood abuse had on my adulthood decision making, I recognized from the beginning that I was responsible for my choices. No matter how many men may have sexually abused me when I was a kid, I knew that I was responsible for my own adult actions. But this temptation remains so very present in how we respond to stimuli around us, as it is so easy to feel that we have been provoked into our choices.

In reality the future does not depend so much on past experiences as on our conscious decisions in the present. - ibid.

Yes!! Now, it is true that our past may have trained us to make decisions in a way that does not maximize our future growth, but we have the power to recognize that and learn to make our decisions in a different way. But let's say, for instance, that I recognize that I have a tendency to try to fix things for those around me. It does no good to recognize that trait in myself unless I recognize when I am doing that at the expense of others.

Responsibility is an indelible characteristic of human existence and it means that we ought to give a response or an answer for our acts in front of our conscience. In religious terms, we are created beings and we are not self-sufficient but our life is constant gift from God whose creative love we respond to with our existence, choices and acts. - ibid.

Yes, all of our life is our response to God's creative love, in one way or another. I must choose to respond in ways that draw me more deeply into that love, believing that God's plan for my life is more trustworthy than my own wishes, which are subtly tainted by the influence of the standard of Satan in my life and on the world around me.

Okay I haven't even started looking at the reflection on Jesus' standard, but there is just so much in here! The really should have made this initial meditation part of a longer step; one week was just not enough to cover this along with six individual session readings. On the other hand, they do revisit it twice in short order.