More follow up

Or: An area of weakness, humble faith, and fear of failure

One of the realities that Neal Lozano describes concerning deliverance, in the context of the Unbound model but also of deliverance in general, is that it "moves us from an area of bondage to an area of weakness." He says that this sounds bad, and he's right, it does, and he's right again: it isn't. When we know we are weak and we depend on Christ in those areas, then we are actually strong.

When we've struggled in an area for decades of our life, it can be a challenge to have faith that God will really provide victory in the long term. This is an additional reason why faith (along with repentance) is the first key to spiritual freedom: we must believe that God loves us and wants us to know the victory He has won for us. But this victory is different from everything we have learned about winning in our physical and professional lives. We learn that we are victorious when we work harder than our opponents and make our own skills stronger than theirs. It's Fr. Spitzer's "comparative identity" again: we know most of our victories in comparison to others' defeats. (I suppose that this previous post contains my best description of Fr. Spitzer's concept.) Our pride can come into play here, too: most of us want the affirmation that comes from knowing that we have accomplished what we set out to do.

Conversely, we may also need to renounce the spirit of fear - fear of failure - that can further complicate the dynamics of any area of our lives over which we have struggled unsuccessfully. Yielding to this fear can provide an entryway for a spirit of anxiety in our lives, as well. All of these things can be ours to deal with in the flesh, but they can also have a spiritual element that comes to inhabit them and hold us in bondage to our shortcomings. As I write about this, I feel the tension at the base of my skull building, confirming that these weaknesses and spiritual influences have been at work in my life for decades. And now I also recognize them as the schemes of my adversary to keep me from living in the power of Jesus' cross and resurrection in this area of my life.

When I trust that it is better to allow God's victory to have its way in my life than it would be to have any victory on my own, and I truly believe in God who truly wants me to know the joy of leaning on Him each step of the way, then in the Name of Jesus I can renounce the spirits of pride, doubt, fear, anxiety, and impurity, break the hold they have had over my life, and command them to go, and they have no choice but to leave, because I have both revoked the authority I may have previously given them to stay and embraced Jesus' authority over them, under which I am now living.

It may take some time for my own behavioral habit or tendency to fade, but as I turn to God in these moments of temptation, I trust that I will find that His strength will overcome my weakness. Indeed, I must never long for the day when I don't need Him for victory in this area, but rather desire to be more dependent on Him rather than more independent. In this way, I will develop a different habit and tendency to replace the one to which I have been bound for so long, which is a mere side effect of the greater gift of walking more closely with the One who loves me perfectly.

Unworthy

In his long journey home, the Prodigal faces a hard truth - he is not worthy to be called his father's son [ . . . ] We distance ourselves from the Prodigal to avoid the risk he is taking. Our hearts protest: "No, I am worthy. I deserve better. I work hard. I am a good person - at least, I'm better than most . . . . The gatekeeper will have to let me in to the Father . . . . Surely I am good enough to get into heaven. We argue our case, justifying ourselves by excusing our failures and pleading our successes. We try to earn the love we are afraid to ask for. - Neal Lozano, Abba's Heart

Yes, this is Fr. Spitzer's "comparative identity" at work again. Only by receiving the mercy and grace that are freely offered us do we stop comparing ourselves to others and become vessels of God's love in their lives, too.

There is no more undeserving Prodigal than me. I used to say that with a harsh spirit of judgment toward myself, but now it is just an honest and grateful recognition of God's love and a desire that all should know it.

Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Teaches the Way - Arriving to a Decision (cont.)(step17), session 6

"Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?" - Mt 7: 1-3

I think these verses are usually either ignored or misapplied.

They are ignored by those of us who insist on applying a standard to others to which we ourselves refuse to - are are unable to - comply. So many Christians are appalled by the way that non-Christians live, while ourselves continuing to ignore Jesus' teaching in some area of our lives. We think that our perceived righteousness is the result of our own virtue, rather than recognizing that any holiness in which we walk has been given us by God and is a matter of his goodness rather than our own. Perhaps we often do this as we remain stuck in (Fr. Spitzer's) comparative identity mode, and need the confirmation that we are better than others in order to feel good about ourselves. Regardless of why, we often ignore Jesus' instruction not to judge, and it takes a great effort to overcome the inertia of looking through the lens of comparativism.  Fortunately, Jesus has completed that effort, and when we meet him in the honest recognition of our own sinfulness and our utter dependence on him, we become equipped to stop judging others and begin loving them more as he does.

But the misapplication of this verse is that we often conclude that we should not ever bother ourselves with the speck in our brother's eye.

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. - Mt 7: 5

So there are two aspects of this: we must first understand that the speck in our brother's eye is a speck, and not try to make it into a log. But we should also remember this: a speck in the eye is troublesome, and ought not to be ignored. It can only be addressed in context, though. I can't lecture my brother about his speck while ignoring my own log, as if clearing my brother's eye were my job because of my lofty standing over him. I can't be superior to my brother; I can only hope to walk alongside him.

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you . . . . If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! - Mt 7: 7.11

This relates back to recent thoughts about trusting in God to provide for our every need, even those for which we struggle to see his providence before it comes to fruition. But it also serves as a nice reminder against those who suggest that "hey, we're all basically good!" No, we're all basically not; we all need a savior, and this is the one need for which God has already provided for all of us. Our eternal needs are always the context in which God provides for our temporal needs.

Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Teaches the Way - Arriving to a Decision (cont.)(step17), session 3

The scripture passages for today's session consists of several verses from the next chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, Mt 6:3-5, 19-21, and 24. Unlike the previous session, most of the intervening verses aren't skipped entirely but are included in subsequent sessions, so I don't feel as if I need to fill in any of that valuable content now. I am beginning with verse 1, though, rather than verse 3, as these first two verses provide context and are not covered in other sessions.

Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. - Mt 6: 1

If I were a better follower of Christ, this would be the chief reason I don't post links to my blog posts more often on FB. Instead it's more a matter of being careful how much of myself I put in the face of everyone who knows me. There are parts of my makeup and my past - more than just that chief thing, really - that I worry about being judged for, and I'm still trying to follow Fr. Matthew Kelty's advice to me to not burden most people with what they would take on as an obligation to forgive me for who I am and the things I have done.

It would be better if my reason for not sharing links to my blog on FB would be more in line with Jesus' admonition here. Part of me still wants to be special, to have some insight from the Holy Spirit that helps others have a deeper relationship with God, as if such any such insight would be of me instead of from God. This would validate my existence, right?

But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, - Mt 6: 3

I'm reminded of one of the first phrases from the wonderful Litany of Humility: From the desire to be esteemed, deliver me, Jesus. We so long to be thought well of. I think this is part of the "comparative identity" that Fr. Spitzer spoke of with such insight: we draw so much of our self-image in comparison with others, and having others think well of us validates our judgment. God is calling us to a different approach, and we need to be careful not to allow this to become a variation on the other one, something like saying to ourselves, "Oh, look what good I am doing in secret!" 

(I believe my Lenten journey would be well served by praying this Litany daily. It's pretty clear that the concern I mentioned after quoting Mt 6: 1 above is an example of the desire of being approved.)

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. - Mt 6: 20-21

It can be such a challenge for us to allow God himself to be our treasure, yet he is a treasure that can never be exhausted, and his love infinitely exceeds those we chase after in its stead.

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. - Mt 6: 24a

Jesus may be primarily referring to material wealth and possessions, since he specifically refers to mammon later in the verse.  But this maxim is true of whatever our other master might be, including (but not limited to) comfort, power, pleasure, fitness, novelty and thrills. We will invariably resent God for keeping us from these things which we mistake as being desirable, when the truth is that we cannot receive all that God desires for us if we serve whatever our other master may be.

Conforming (phase 2), The Value System of Jesus Christ - A Summary (step 12), session 1

And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said: "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh.  Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man!  Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.  

"But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger. Woe to you that laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you, when all men speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets." - Lk 6, 20-26

Everybody seems to prefer (and to be more familiar with) the formulation of the Beatitudes from St. Matthew's gospel. This one has been chosen for the summary meditation because of how it contrasts the blessings and woes of the two values systems, the two standards, on which we have been focusing. But there are many ways in which the value system of the world may be expressed and lived out, and I am a bit disappointed that this retreat seems to focus so much on the values of wealth and esteem.

I'm feeling particularly torn between these two value systems right now in another way, as two beloved members of our family seem to be making daily decisions according to their own whims and disregarding the effects of their decisions on the family around them. How can I be an instrument of God's voice calling them to decide differently?

But I see another way in which the standard of the world takes root in my life when I look to comparative ways of evaluating my own morality and worth. (comparative vs. contributive identity, a la Fr. Spitzer, whom I have often invoked) This may include when I judge others, and may include looking for an opportunity to do so - for instance, looking up a list of athletes who have been the biggest problem in the locker room.

"For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?" - Lk 9, 24-25

I suppose there are different ways of saving our life. If I try to preserve the pleasures of life the way that I want to live them, rather than taking up the cross (v. 23) of living as Christ calls me, is that not an effort to save my life? Again, I have written before in different contexts about our insistence on seeing the cross as something other than the glorious thing that it truly is, and about our misunderstanding of what is truly glorious. We know that, in his humanity, Jesus begged the Father that the cup be taken from him, yet I also believe that he embraced the cross with more than resigned obedience, but rather with trust and love that outweighed his fear and human misgivings. What would it have profited him to avoid his cross, and what do we think it will profit us to avoid ours? The life that we have in its stead is no gift to us.

As they were going along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."

And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." 

To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." But he said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 

Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."  Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."  - Lk 9, 57-62

These can sound harsh, but they underscore what I think the Lord would have me hear in this session.

More on humility

The story is told of the rabbi and cantor who, on Yom Kippur day, the Day of Atonement, lament their sins at great length, each concluding that he is a nobody. Then the sexton, inspired by their example, laments his sins and declares that he, too, is a nobody. "Nuh," says the rabbi to the cantor, who is he to be a nobody?" - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

How this story sums up our struggle with true humility. My mom was a huge Mac Davis fan, and I'll always remember his tongue-in-cheek song,

O Lord, It's hard to be humble, when you're perfect in every way
I can't wait to look in the mirror, 'cause I get better looking each day
To know me is to love me. I must be a hell of a man
O Lord, it's hard to be humble, but I'm doing the best that I can.

There's a pretty clear difference in my mind between thinking that I must be more humble and realizing that I think entirely too highly of myself. There is also a difference between humility and self-deprecation or worse, self-loathing.

I think that perhaps Fr. Spitzer's emphasis on striving to identify with our contributive identity rather than the comparative one serves us well on this topic, too. If I find my own value only through perpetual comparison with others, I am unlikely to able to find healthy humility. On the other hand, if the primary sense in which I come to realize that I am somebody is an awareness that I am somebody the eternal Son was willing to come carry home, then I have both the humility of knowing I need him and the worth that comes from knowing that I am his.

There remains an interesting trap, though, in allowing the Spirit to apply this humility to all areas of our lives. We can be completely in balance in some areas and have others that remain problematic for us.

So while he had the wrong reasons in mind, Mac at least had the title right.

Irreverence leads to . . . ?

So I guess that this book by Fr. Neuhaus gets into my brain even when I don't have a chance to open the pages, because I'm pretty sure that where I ended up in my thoughts were close to an idea he expresses in the pages I'm reading. But getting there was a quick and interesting thought trip.

Yesterday on the way home from Cincinnati we passed the Solid Rock Church adjacent to I-75. This church is semi-famous for a pair of massive statues that it has erected facing the highway. The first, the King of Kings statue, was locally referred to as Touchdown Jesus (not to be confused by the mosaic at The University of Notre Dame in South Bend), and was destroyed by a fire resulting from a lightning strike drawn to its iron framework. I knew it probably wasn't an original thought when I told my wife that the new statue that has replaced it has taken the church from Touchdown Jesus to Five-Dollar Foot-long Jesus. Turns out I'm not the first to see it that way.

I immediately realized I was being a bit irreverent, and decided not to post this smart-alecked observation on Facebook. I know quite a few people who'd be amused by it, but that isn't the point. I also know quite a few friends who are already biased against organized religion, and for all that my fellow Christians rightly point out that Christianity is about a relationship with a person rather than a set of religious observances, this distinction rings hollow to the people I have in mind. Many of these folks balk at the idea that we need to be saved in the first place, let alone that Jesus saves us, and this expression of humor would be more likely to reinforce their preconception rather than overcome it.

But this got me considering why we rebel against the gift that God offers us. Why do so many of us conclude that we don't need a Savior? It's a complex question with many answers, but I found myself thinking primarily about one of them, and that's where my re-reading of Death on Friday Afternoon comes in. This is also likely to invoke some of my favorite thoughts by Fr. Spitzer.

It's pretty simple, really. We estimate our sin wrongly. We insist on evaluating ourselves by comparison. "I'm a pretty good person," most of us think. And we're right. Most of us are not murderers, thieves, abusers or felons, so there is a high degree of truth in our evaluation. Those of us who are murderers, thieves, abusers or felons either continue to reach the same conclusion by shifting our comparison pool, or reach the opposite one. Some folks who should be able to think that they're pretty good people also find themselves locked into the same thought process that grips many of those who fall into this other category: "I'm not a good person. If you knew the truth about me, you'd want nothing to do with me."

And the thing is, there is enough truth underlying this thought that, once again, we're right. If we're living by comparison, our lives encompass enough areas that we will always find people against whom we compare favorably and unfavorably. This is why comparison doesn't really work as a standard for judging ourselves.

There is a standard for us to live up to, if we are going to try to live well enough to gain admission to heaven for ourselves. Jesus gave it to us, right there in the Sermon on the Mount, where everyone likes to point for "the New Testament version of the Ten Commandments." How we love the Beatitudes, but because there is so much in them we often fail to read the rest of this sermon along with them. Next Jesus spoke of things like being salt and light, of his fulfilling of the law rather than abolishing it. Ahh, now we're getting close. Do we judge ourselves in comparison to others? We're not murderers? We're not adulterers? Most of us have been scorners and lust-ers, though. He goes on to talk about how to respond to evil done upon us, a lesson which he would demonstrate to its ultimate extreme. Finally he puts a bow on the entire chapter: Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We had a great homily a few weeks ago reminding us that this perfection is not about performance, but about how we love. Even so, we fail to live up to it, and I am convinced that Jesus' purpose in delivering this sermon was not to provide another standard which we have no hope of ever achieving. Nor was his dying intended to show us that it could be done, so get to it! After all, it was impossible to keep all of the laws already established, and even getting rid of the Pharisaic interpretations wouldn't make that exactly manageable. So why could Jesus have given us such a truly impossible standard?

Could it have been for no other reason than so that we would understand that every human being is equally dependent on God's grace and mercy, so that we might appreciate the gift we have been given so much that we wish to offer it to everyone else?

And perhaps the biggest obstacle, then, standing between us and Christ, is our unwillingness to stop looking down on others so that we might feel better about ourselves.

Okay, this is probably incoherent and wandering, and I lack the time or ability to make it any better, so I just offer it to you Jesus, as I do myself, to use as you will.

Faces of superiority

Just a few, some I'm immune from and others to which I'm highly prone:

• Trying to answer a riddle challenge.
• Posting the challenge to see how many of your friends fail, as you did, to guess the answer.
• Boasting that you got it right.
• Keeping track of how many of your friends got it wrong, or felt compelled to try and to comply.
• Asking others to take an action demonstrating that they support your cause.
• Refusing to kowtow to such requests.
• Answering yet another variation on the same math question, geography question, etc.
• Knowing that in less than two seconds you can indeed name a state, animal or branch of science that doesn't contain the letter "A."
• Not needing to post it. 
• Coming up with such things just to see how many people feel compelled to try.
• Wanting everyone to know how well you can do something, anything.
• Always evaluating whether you can do it better.
• Or whether you are better.
• Judging others' faults.
• Judging others' judgmentalism.

Oh, I may as well stop. It isn't as if there's any end to the list. I guess that this comes back to Fr. Spitzer's concept of the comparative identity to which many of us - perhaps all of us - tend to fall subject, at least occasionally. That's the disease. Yes, living by the contributive identity is better, but in itself still leaves us susceptible to lapsing. Soaking in the love of God is probably the analgesic, and ultimately the cure, though none of us will probably fully realize it (make it fully real) in this world. 

I need to stop making other things more important. 

Strengths and weaknesses

Okay, a friend of mine just posted a link to a video allegedly of a husband and wife in a car discussing a very basic math problem involving velocity, distance, and time.  If it's real, the husband is just as clueless as the wife, though in a completely different way.

I won't post a link to it, because someone has to know what this man doesn't:

• you don't humiliate people
• you especially don't do it publicly
• your particularly don't humiliate your wife on the Internet. 

This couple will not be married long unless something changes drastically to change the husband's attitude toward his wife.

Follow up: my wife and I were discussing this video on Friday night.  I think she thought I was testing her, when what I was really doing was a) bemoaning this husband's attitude, and b) reaffirming that I no longer have such an attitude toward her.  She also thought we'd discussed this video already, which I'd never seen prior to Friday afternoon. 

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  An emotionally healthy person, who isn't dependent on what Fr. Spitzer calls the comparative identity for his sense of self worth, doesn't build himself up at the expense of the people he loves by demonstrating their weakness. 

Misunderstood grace

But stay with them for a while, for these questions lead into the mystery of a love that searched out and found such an unlikely soul as Dysmas. It is the same love that found us, and if we don't think that we are equally unlikely candidates for salvation, we have not begun to understand the meaning of grace. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

With apologies for not even getting past a single sentence in this book between my last entry and this one, but this gets to the root of a major obstacle to our being vessels of grace.  I cannot write about this without also acknowledging Fr. Robert Spitzer, and I've previously written at length about the coincide-ence of these two wonderful approaches to that bring us to the same  point.

We seem to easily internalize the prevalent idea that we're saved because we're good - and the implication that others are not saved because they are evil or, at least, not good, not good enough, not as good as we are - much more easily than the idea that any degree of goodness in us is due to God's grace at work in our lives. We think of our goodness as an attribute that is ours because of our makeup, our personality, our virtue. No matter how much we say that any good thing that is ours is a gift from God, including an exhaustive list of our good traits, we insist on giving ourselves the credit for most of it.

It's easy to see why we feel this way with regard to decisions we make. When we decide not to have an affair, not to steal, to help a stranger, to feed someone who is hungry, to help build someone a home, it is natural - it is in our nature - and it is important to realize that we could have chosen otherwise. And yet, for someone living by grace, it is equally important but not natural that we realize that these decisions we make and efforts we put forth are also God's gift to us, which we accept and receive by choosing to participate in God's grace.

It isn't me. It's grace. Yes, I must choose to participate with it, yet that is still grace.

If I have been saved, I am no more deserving of it than was Dysmas. We think like the laborers in the parable who toiled all day in the field only to receive the same wage as those who started late in the day. The job was a blessing, and while it offends our sense of fairness for another to receive the same reward for far less labor, we've forgotten that God's love is such a great reward that we could never earn it with any amount of labor!

(Of course, St. Dysmas is an easy comparison. Maybe we should choose someone we can all agree was truly and utterly despicable, whose crimes against humankind cannot be denied. If I will not do for an example, perhaps Adolph Hitler or Josef Stalin might. No, I'm not suggesting that any evil I have done was as great as theirs, though it might be true that I should have been better equipped not to do mine.)

And neither am I, because of my failings, less a candidate for salvation, by the same logic. I mustn't take that as freedom to do whatever I want, but rather should find that considering such a gift causes me to want to respond in ways that please the Giver.

Grace means that I accept a love that is greater than I could ever deserve, and freely offer it to everyone else because I recognize it was offered to me freely, as well.

More on mercy

You are good at excusing and justifying your own deeds, and yet you will not listen to the excuses of others. It would be more just to accuse yourself and to excuse your brother. - The Imitation of Christ

I was reflecting on this tendency of ours just this past weekend in our men's fellowship group, and yesterday here. I think it is rooted in what Fr. Spitzer refers to as the comparative identity. The only way many of us know to feel good about ourselves is in comparison to others, and life becomes a sort of competition by which the "best and brightest" of us are the privileged few to merit God's favor (along with the rest of life's blessings). Even if we're aware of this dynamic, we tend to do this all the time, and we instill it in our children from a very early age.

The gift of Christ's love to one who knows they don't deserve it can set us free to discover our true value, which isn't in comparison to others but simply in being so loved by the God of the universe! Then we strive to respond to that love independently of how others may respond, but in the uniquely contributive way in which we are called.

There is joy in finding Christ present, even as we long for him to be present to us more fully!

A complicated reflection on Simplicity

What we call our higher level of consciousness is but an instance of our calling evil good, of our priding ourselves on the consequences of a catastrophe that is our fall from the knowledge of the good.  True knowledge of the good is a way of knowing that is, in the words of Jesus, loving the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind.  The reflexive mind, the divided soul, the conflicted heart - these many take to be the marks of maturity and growth.  To know the good simply to love the good and do the good because it is self-evidently to be loved and to be done - that is taken to be the mark of those we condescendingly call simple.  So it is that sin's injury is declared a benefit, our weakness a strength, and the fall of that dread afternoon a fall up rather than down. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Ahh, here we arrive at one of my most persistent ongoing challenges.  On the one hand, I say I envy those possessed of simplicity, yet when I encounter someone with this virtue I insist on thinking it quaint.  Yet I must also reject the tendency to mistake any particular personality trait or even any exterior practice for godliness.  For instance, it is certainly just as possible to be simply worldly as sophisticatedly worldly.  So, some reflection related to this particular tendency in me (in us), then some more general observations about what holiness really means and what it doesn't.

I can't help but think of how this sophisticated pride fits in with Fr. Robert Spitzer's concepts of comparative identity versus contributive identity.  He observes that many - perhaps most - of us tend to evaluate ourselves by comparison to others.  "I'm better at my job than Mike."  "I wish I could play the guitar as well as Jimmy." "I'm so glad I'm a better husband than Steve."  "My talent isn't as valuable as George's."  (Only one of those is a real person.)  Likewise, when I become enamored of my complexity, my intelligence, my sophistication, my inner conflict, etc., it is usually by comparison against those whom I consider simple-minded, unintelligent, or not to have been as challenged as I have been.  I tell myself that I think or feel or experience life more fully than they do, and what it comes down to is that I'm glad - thankful, even! - that I'm better than them.

The Pharisee's prayer, God, I thank you that I am not like other people (Luke 18, 11a) takes many forms.  It's by no means limited to hypocritical religious leaders, intelligentsia, the famous or any other category of successful people you might think of.  "Ordinary folk" can be just as disdainful of others, both above and beneath them in any category of social standing, as can the upper crust of society.  But I don't want to go too far down that road, lest I find myself thinking that I'm better off by being free from such an approach to life, when I am clearly as enmeshed in it as anyone.

The point is just supposed to be this: if I'm to be less enamored of my own strengths, whatever they might be, I've got to stop finding my identity in terms of whether I am better than some people and, conversely, worse than others.  If I'm to be the follower of Christ that I'm called to be, I need to simply follow wherever he leads me and encounter him in whomever I meet along the way.  And I am to leave aside any consideration of whether I'm following better or worse than Joe or Sue, or how utterly depraved and horrific others' sins are.  I don't need to bother myself with whether Fred or Mary is worth sharing him with, with evaluations of whether someone else's mind is already made up about him or if they're in the right place just now to hear about his love for us.  We're called to simply scatter seed and let God worry about the condition of the soil, to cast our nets and let him haul in whatever fish are ready for catching.  I find that I'm a whole lot more useful in that when I'm operating in the contributive mindset, allowing God's love for me to define my worth, rather than the comparative.

(Wow, is this one going to wander!)

I've spent way too much of my life evaluating and judging instead of loving.  In my insecurity, I used my imagined superiority to others to prop up myself.  I say that without self-condemnation; I understand this is a natural tendency of our fallen human condition.  But when I stop thinking in terms of what a complex, conflicted, misunderstood person I am, I find a freedom to simply be who God is calling me to be.  When I stop needing an image of superiority as a poor excuse for a real self-concept, I find within me a precious child of God, and suddenly discover all around me other wounded, wonderful sons and daughters of his.

When that happens, I find that I no longer need to dispute with God, to stubbornly define for myself what good and evil are in a way that lets me evaluate myself as good and my shortcomings as more tolerable than those of others.  Refusing to gorge myself on the fruit of the forbidden tree - to define for myself what good and evil are - I find myself free to share love more simply, and to receive the love of God more fully, both directly and through those around me.

So how is all of this related to living in holiness?  And for that matter, what is holiness, and what isn't it?  It must be something beyond simply living according to the contributive identity and stopping all the confounded judging.  And we've already decided that it is more than mere simplicity, while leaving in place an underlying assumption that simplicity may be an important element of living in holiness.

I come back to Fr. Satish's chief point about prayer in our recent parish mission (rooted in Jesus' teaching about the most important commandment), along with Jesus' example as illustrated in Phil 2.  As I consider these together, I see why prideful self-determinism is such an impediment to my walk with God.  Prayer must first and foremost grow out of a love relationship with God.  Yet this relationship cannot be completely like love between human beings.  At first glance it would seem as if there'd be no conflict between embracing our own ideas about right and wrong and the greatest commandment to love God with all we are.  After all, in every other relationship, we are responsible to decide for ourselves what is right.  But we're not talking about a give-and-take love with an equal, because we are not God's equal. We are made in God's image, but not in equality with God.  The chief thing about Jesus' example was that, being God, he didn't cling to that equality.  So in the garden of Gethsemani, as he agonizes over the central decision of his human life, he doesn't seem to grapple with the question whether it was right to lay down his life.  Setting aside any issue of his own idea of right and wrong, Jesus' knows the Father's will, and simply struggles to submit to it.

And I suppose this gets to the root of what it means to be holy.  I need to love God above all else, to trust that doing God's will is always going to make both my life and this world better, and to be willing to do God's will even when it's a struggle to set aside my own.  Given that, my personal devotion to prayer and the service of my neighbor that grows out of it fall naturally into place.

I'm feeling pretty frustrated with my ability to articulate my thoughts to represent the arc that was in my head when I started writing this.  At the same time, I feel peaceful about this: it's way more important to spend time with the One who has inspired these musings than it is to get every nuance expressed precisely as I wish.  Perhaps that starts to get me back to the simplicity that this meandering post purports to seek.  As Jesus said: God alone is good.

Exercising the contributive identity

Though all the dog lovers out there might hate me for saying it, I think maybe I should learn something from the way Michael Vick seems to be handling his past.  It seems he manages to keep from being consumed by guilt over the wrongs he's done, without minimizing them.  Of course, it could be that he still doesn't really think what he did was "all that bad," and by comparison, I guess I'd tend to agree . . . (the reader will please note that I am not suggesting that cruel treatment of animals is not a terrible evil, but its practitioners likely compare it against murder, torture, rape, and many forms of child abuse to conclude that it isn't as harmful as other things . . . )

There's Fr. Spitzer's "comparative identity" kicking in again.  And I really think that this concept must be at the root of effectively dealing with my shameful past.

There's some important reconciling of my thought processes to be done here . . .

Inspired by an intersection . . .

 . . . between Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and The Shack.  Re: My last post:  Not judging myself has got to mean not judging others. The two are simply not separable.

But we also have to be careful what we mean by "not judging."  We are clearly not called to be so tolerant as to say that all choices are okay.  Sin is still sin.  But sinners (myself included) are to be offered the Truth (and the Way and the Life) in love and mercy, not condemnation.  My job is simply to be a vessel of Christ to those around me.  It is his job, then, to change their lives according to His dreams for them, by the Holy Spirit.  But enough of this aside.

How is my judging of myself so inextricably tied to my judging of others?

It is all caught up in what Fr. Robert Spitzer (President of Gonzaga University, and the most intelligent and articulate man I've ever heard speak, but then, see the rest of this paragraph for what's wrong with that compliment!) refers to as the "comparative identity."  This concept describes our tendency to think of our selves primarily in comparison to others, and takes many forms in our lives: the struggle to be more successful than others, our habit of thinking we're "not so bad" compared to others, our envy of others' accomplishments or relationships, and so on.  We tend to think well of ourselves or, in the case of those who are neurotic about their failures (like me), think poorly of ourselves, always relative to others: better or worse husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, students, employees, citizens, believers.  Our self-judgment is ever present, on so many levels, when we live according to the comparative identity.

I'm really prone to the negative side of that whole dynamic.

On the other hand is what Fr. Spitzer calls the contributive identity.  When I realize my utter dependence on Jesus Christ for the salvation he has provided for me, I am more likely to focus on how he is calling me to respond to his gift.  Then I blog as well as I can without concern for how articulate I am compared to all the other bloggers, and I play my guitar as well as I can without regard to whether that's better or worse than some other guitarist might play.  I do the best job I can do, and celebrate my coworker whose best effort has  earned him a promotion even if I might have it wanted, too.

This is an incredibly liberating way to live, and I must confess I don't manage it very well. But it also has some challenging implications.

Suppose a man rapes and murders a child.  This is a unspeakably hurtful, heinous act, and society has a responsibility to condemn this crime, and to punish - and protect itself from - this criminal.  We owe it to the child's family to bring the criminal to justice swiftly, without making them relive their trauma over and over again.  We owe it to the rest of society to make sure that no one else falls prey to him.

So in the process, am I not judging him?

You see, equally true is this: our responsibility to ensure that he never again commits such an act is also for this man's own sake.  To be sure, the harm he has done to his own soul is as great as that he has done to everyone else.

And no, I'm not judging him, if my desire for him in the context of experiencing the consequences of his actions is that he encounter the mercy and forgiveness which Christ offers each of us.  I may not wish him to ever be free again, and yet may wish to encounter his healed soul in heaven some day, where he will be restored to the wholeness that would have prevented him from such an atrocity.  If heaven is a reward for right living, bestowed according to careful weighing of the scales of justice, he might never aspire to this.  For that matter, neither do I.  If, rather, it is the unmerited gift of a loving God to his beloved children, then I cannot accept this gift without also desiring it - indeed, all the more so - for my least deserving, most broken brother or sister.

If anyone is in hell - and Fr. Neuhaus makes the first persuasive argument I've ever heard that perhaps hell is empty of human souls - I think it is primarily because of this: some of us might never be willing to abandon ourselves to a God who could show mercy even to someone who has committed unspeakable atrocity.  I fear that many of us would reject God's mercy for ourselves rather than accept it if it means accepting everyone else on whom he bestows it.  "To abandon myself is to abandon judging myself," which I cannot do without  also abandoning judging others.  Having eaten deeply of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we are often loath to do so.

Let's consider the opposite example: say, Mother Teresa.  Such a saint, I think.  I could never hope to live in the sort of holiness she walked in!  But moving away from the comparative identity, there is a holiness which God desires to give me.  It may not be the same, or "as great," as that of Mother Teresa, but it is God's plan for my life.  And if I get too comparative, I'm going to fail to become all that God intends for me because of the simple fact that I'm not "as special" as someone else.

The truth is that I'm utterly unworthy of God's love.  But I don't believe I'm more unworthy of that love than you are.  We're all unworthy, else there'd be no need of mercy.

I also know I am a saint, despite my unworthiness.  I'm not more of a saint than you are, though I may be aware of God at work in me in a way that's different from your awareness of God at work in you.  I'm holy and whole as God is calling and enabling me to be.  In my remaining brokenness, I sometimes choose other than the best which God has in mind for me.  But that has nothing to do with the comparative identity, and while it makes me in that moment less of a person than God dreams for me to be, yet his mercy remains abundant in my life.

I pray the same for you, dear reader.

Good Friday thoughts

It has become a custom for me to spend at least an hour in prayer in the wee hours of Good Friday morning. The concept is that we are keeping watch with the Lord in Gethsemani, though we're not so presumptuous as to think ourselves any more successful at that than the apostles were. The Garden may have represented a time of crisis for them, but we usually find our personal crisis points somewhere other than our unitive and commemorative participation in the events of Holy Thursday night.

I marvel at the insights and blessings that arise out of this prayer time. Sometimes, I'm touched anew by things I know I've reflected on before: how marvelously Ps 95 (the invitatory psalm which may be used to start prayer virtually every day) applies to the context of Christ's passion ("harden not your hearts," indeed!); the sublime insight of St. John Chrysostom, who points out that the water and blood which flowed from Christ's side are the Baptism and Eucharist by which we become transformed in him; a fresh identification with Jesus' utter crushing (part of the meaning of Gethsemani, where the olives were crushed into oil) -- the One who deserved to be adored by all creation was willing to instead be crushed in our place.

Usually, newer insights accompany these. The last couple of days in the car during my (very short) commute, I've been listening to a talk by Fr. Robert Spitzer, president of Gonzaga University. I was there as he delivered this talk a couple years ago, in the course of which he spent some time discussing the practical application of Jesus' prayer, "Thy will be done." Of course, Jesus taught this in what we know as The Lord's Prayer, but then showed us its ultimate application in the Garden.

To what degree am I willing to truly submit: Father, Thy will be done? Will I trust that this really will be for the best? Isn't it usually only insofar as we can see the potential good, and are not too put out? If it means that we're likely to encounter consequences that intimidate us, or which might cause us to suffer loss or embarrassment or shame, we're not so good at living this out. When we know the right thing but fear implications which cow us into (what we rationalize as) pragmatism, it is much more challenging to trust God's will and providence rather than our own vision.

Today, I am given a gift I can never deserve, as my Savior gives his life in my place. I pray my response to my deliverance will be an ever deeper trusting in God, a willingness to truly and fully submit to God's will, especially when it is most challenging.