Sunday July 23, 2017
Gosh! I'm Not God!
In my home town there was a story about a lawyer who had a very weak case to present in court. His client said to him, "You know, I have some nice fat geese at home. Would it help if I gave one to the Judge?" "Are you mad?" answered the lawyer, "Do you not know that this is the most upright and self righteous judge in the whole country?"
They went into court and the presentation went even worse than expected. However, the judgment was given in their favor and the lawyer was totally amazed.
Later, the client said with a smile, "See how the goose worked!"
"Don't tell me," said the lawyer, "that you sent the goose!"
"I did" said the client, "But I sent it in the other fellow's name!"
There is great irony in this story because it was the righteousness of the judge that made him blind to the truth and therefore act unjustly. Saint Ignatius said long ago that Satan does not generally tempt people with evil but rather with good. He makes them desire to be perfect and to desire to make others perfect. In this way they will set standards for themselves and others that will be too high. They themselves will eventually give up on trying to reach the standards that they have set for themselves and because of their coercion and unreasonableness will turn others against the pursuit of virtue.
The Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in Gulag Archipelago, Vol II has rich insights to offer on this matter of the struggle of good and evil within us.
I learned two great lessons from being in prison camps.
I learned how a person becomes evil and how he becomes good.
When I was young I thought I was infallible,
and I was cruel to those under me.
I was madly in love with power and, in exercising it,
I was a murderer and an oppressor.
Yet in my most evil moments
I thought I was doing good,
and I had plenty of arguments
with which to justify my deeds.
It was only when things were reversed,
when as a prisoner I lay on rotten straw,
that I began to feel within myself
the first stirrings of good.
Gradually I came to realize
that the line which separates good from evil
passes not between states, or between classes,
or between political parties -
but right through every human heart.
Even in hearts that are overwhelmed by evil
one small bridgehead of good is retained.
And in the best of all hearts,
there remains an unuprooted small corner of evil.
The Gospels report Christ as being in constant contention with the Pharisees precisely on the issue of perfectionism and self-righteousness. For them perfection was in keeping the law and all who failed, for no matter what reason, were evil, condemned, and to be eliminated. We see this very clearly in John Chapter 8 when the adulterous woman was brought before Jesus. The authorities said, "we have a law and according to that law she must be stoned to death. What do you say?" Jesus wrote on the ground and said,
"Which ever one of you has no sin throw the first stone." For Jesus compassion for the sinner came before condemnation and law.
In the Gospel today we find the farmer who has sown good seed in his field being amazed at the sight of weeds in the midst of the good plants as they grow. For me, this is one of the most insightful of the parables in the Gospel. As I listen to people, especially to young religious in directed retreats, the major question that keeps cropping up is, "Where did the weeds come from?" We discover these weeds first in the people around us. We expected those around us to be transparent, honest and forgiving but instead we find intrigue, manipulation and hatred. As we condemn these aberrations we may come to realize that we are trying to get rid of the mirror that is showing us our selves. We usually condemn and try to eradicate in others what we are afraid of in ourselves. If the direction process goes well the person will eventually come to realize that "I'm not okay and that's okay". Adam and Eve wanted to be like God, each of us has within an aristocrat in exile, a person who wants to be elite, to have a special perfect relationship - indeed equality with God. The moment of freedom and enlightenment comes with the realization. "Gosh. I'm not God." I may have been made in the image of God but I am not God. I have been called not to be perfect but to be perfect as the heavenly father is perfect. The way in which the Heavenly father is perfect is that he loves all, saint and sinner alike. He sends his rain and his sunshine on the good and on the bad alike. He has the same love for the sinner as he has for the saint, the only difference is that the saint knows that he is forgiven and loved. St Teresa of Avila used to say that awareness of one's own sinfulness is the bread (or the rice) that goes with every level of holiness. Just as in the Philippines we take rice with every meal no matter what else we may eat so too awareness of our sinfulness is an essential ingredient of all stages of the spiritual journey.
A lot of our traditional prayers are directed to making us special, trouble free and exempt from stress and suffering. Meditation is a standing in the middle between our goodness and our badness, between our good Intercessions and our interminable distractions, between the desire to change others and ourselves and a serene acceptance of what we cannot change. It is a patient act of faith in the presence of failure in the very simple but not easy task of repeating the prayer word for twenty to thirty minutes each day. It is an experience of what T.S Elliot expressed in his poem East Coker:
There is only the fight to recover
what has been lost
and found and lost again and again…
For us, there is only the trying.
The rest is not our business.
