Lying and Loving

Words have been a fascination for me since I began to spell, and etymology has been the most fun of all – you know, like discovering that words like “substance” [which refers to that which "stands" (stantio) "beneath" (sub)] has changed its meaning 180 degrees from Thomas Aquinas’s 13^th century substantia to describe the spiritual dimension of a being to the present day meaning of something very physical (and usually gooey).

For a Christian, there are also some very specific definitions for words that describe moral behaviors and have been forgotten in the romantic every-day uses: like the words “lying” and “loving”.

Ask almost any Christian to define “lying”, and you will get an almost universal answer: lying is saying or writing something that isn’t true. So, you may reply, “Then is it lying to tell my poor ugly little cousin that she is pretty?” Then comes the “white lie” justification. And what happens when the rapist demands to know where one’s young daughter is hiding? Are we to tell him what is true or to make up something to protect the girl?

Do you see how easy it is to get side-tracked by simplicity? Well, what does the discipline we call moral theology have to say about it? Easy: “Lying is withholding from someone something s/he has a right to know.” Morally speaking, lying doesn’t have to do with some kind of objective truth, but rather with the rights of the person being addressed. (Notice: an element of this is still present in our judicial system in which a person cannot be forced to incriminate him/herself: i.e., you may not force me to tell you something that you don’t have a right to know.)

And “loving” is like that, too. The majority of people think that “Love your enemy” means one should have a positive emotional feelings towards that enemy. But the love described as “Christian love” (of one’s self, one's neighbor, one’s enemy, etc.) has nothing to do with “feeling” anything. Thomas Aquinas (again) gave us the perfect definition: To love someone is "to will the good for that person.” That’s it: all we need do to love is to want good things for our self, our neighbor, our enemy, etc. We are not commanded to “like” anyone – just to "will the good" for them. (And, of course, “willing the good” for someone may mean that we have to do something about it: e.g., one cannot “will the good” for a starving person and refuse to give her/him food, or, one cannot “will the good” for an enemy and then shoot him/her dead with an assault rifle or drop a bomb.

So both lying and loving have more to do with what goes on in one’s brain than eruptions of one’s emotions. Even God cannot tell us that we “must feel” any certain way, since feelings are not subject to our free will, and we cannot choose to have or not to have feelings. “You shouldn’t feel like that” is an insane statement --- based on the belief that our feelings are voluntary. In fact, the only thing we can do with feelings is to decide whether to act on them or not; we cannot choose the feelings themselves.

UN-Original SIn

I must confess (without apology) that I am a heretic! I simply do not believe in the bog-standard Christian belief in what is called “Original Sin”. In fact, I seriously doubt that the earliest Christians believed it, either. For all practical purposes, Original Sin was “invented” by Saint Augustine (of course it couldn’t be, could it, that he believed that because it explained his own shameful early life with his concubine without his having to take full responsibility for it?).

And it is easy to see that if one believes that the sin of Eden is transmitted to all newborn humans thereafter, some means of transmission needed to be found. Ingeniously, Augustine actually believed that “Adam’s sin” was passed on to all human descendants through the semen of the male line – women had no part in transmitting the sin! (grin)

And, of course, that would also mean that Godself actually participates in the creation of a sin-contaminated soul every time God creates a human being. And that is sheer horror and monstrously projective of our own human foolishness onto God.

My understanding is that all human persons are born into families, communities, and cultures that are simply absorbed with and immersed in sin, and we are ALL actually taught sin by our parents, teachers, clergy, and friends – we are taught the utter value of selfishness, competition, rivalry, antagonism, war, self-aggrandizement, profit, judgment, entitlement, and power-over-others, etc., etc. So none of us actually escapes sinful conditioning by our culture, but sin is NOT built-in or in-born or a congenital part of our human nature. In fact, our own human nature is the finest, highest, most noble, and most god-like of all the breadth of God’s magnificent creation.

Therefore, I must accept that Adam (and Eve) are not responsible for my sins or my sinful inclinations. I was born in a sinful world and conditioned by that sinful world to accept sin as “normative”. What comprises conversion is the discovery that I have been taught a Great Lie: that almost everything I had been taught as “normal” is, in fact, sinful. And that I am so immersed and incorporated into that sinful culture myself that I cannot escape it without God’s grace. [Note: “Grace” = God’s own life.]

However, that does not mean that I have to wait for, or work for, or long for that liberating grace of God, because I am, in fact, swimming in it – or, to put it the other way around, I myself am utterly filled-to-bursting with that grace already – and I have been ever since I was thought up in God’s mind and came to birth.

Conversion or transformation, therefore, is not so much becoming something (or someone?) different, but rather experiencing the freedom and liberation of that true person God originally made me to be. It can be said that conversion involves retrogression – a re-surrection of God’s original design for me-as-person which by sin I had been repressing, had been ignorant of, and was hitherto blind to.

I paraphrase some words of C.S. Lewis about that conversion:

We are to be re-made!

All the rabbit in us is to disappear —

The worried, conscientious, ethical rabbit,

As well as the cowardly and sensual rabbit.

We shall bleed and squeal

As the handfuls of fur come out;

And then surprisingly, we shall find underneath it

A thing we have never yet imagined:

A real human being,

An ageless god,

A child of God,

Strong, radiant, wise, beautiful

And drenched in joy.

I WANT TO, BUT I WON'T; I DON'T WANT TO, BUT I WILL

Our English word “vow” comes ultimately from the Latin voveo which in Latin use comes to mean literally “to promise to a god in return for a favor” and related to it is the Latin word devoveo which means “to promise as an offering or sacrifice” (our English “devote”).

On a mystical level, the true value of “vows” is that they enable us to partake (in so far as a human can) in the changelessness of God and of heaven. A vow allows us transient and ephemeral beings to be a little bit “more like God”, denying our emotions in the name of something higher.

The taking of a vow is one of the defining functions that differentiate human beings from animals, because we are the only beings who can say “forever” and have the means to make that true. “Vowing” is like loving and reasoning and choosing and creating –– it is part of our best nature because it calls upon us to transcend our earthly nature in favor of the heavenly.

And a vow is the most perfect training ground for heaven, because – like fasting – it begins to acquaint us with what it is like to repudiate one’s own preferences in the name of something. By practice one learns to be less self-serving, less self-centered, less oriented towards self-fulfillment and to come gradually to understand the essential mystical linkage between “true love” and “sacrifice” (which elements can never with integrity be separated).

No true vow can ever promise actual changelessness. One cannot promise, “I will always feel x, y, or z” or “I will always want x, y, or z” because no human emotion can ever be depended upon to continue without change, no matter how salutary or high-minded, but one can promise behavior. I can promise that I will always remain married to my spouse, but I cannot promise that I will always enjoy or appreciate or feel loving towards him/her. I vow that I will remain poor, chaste, and obedient, but I cannot promise that I will never want wealth or a lover or freedom to do what I choose. I can take ordination vows to accept and obey the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal Church, but I cannot promise that I will not sometimes think the Church is populated by a bunch of heretical loonies.

The process of taking vows involves both oneself and at least one other person. The development of my own sense of integrity is the first fruit of my vow, and that is of considerable worth; and the value to others is as great since by vowing I am telling others that they can absolutely depend upon my promise, that they can make plans based on my vows, that they can feel secure that I will fulfill those vows to the best of my ability regardless of the circumstances. By my vows, I am assuring a spouse that s/he need not fear for my unfaithfulness or my departure; I am assuring a Church which ordains me that I will be true to her teaching and practices no matter how I may come to feel about it in future; and I am telling my Brothers and Sisters in a Religious Order that I will not leave no matter how irritating or difficult or boring the monastic life may become for me.

And it is only if we have this kind of integrity that God can finally have his way with us! If we live a merely self-fulfilling life, doing only what we want or feel like at the moment, there is no opening through which God can work, no milieu in which God’s presence can bloom. There are bars on all the doors and windows. One’s self fills everything: one’s preferences, one’s predilections, one’s inclinations, one’s opinions, one’s appetites fill the self and God is either locked in or squeezed out. There is hope when one can say to God, “I am here, and I shall remain here no matter what: now you can show me your Truth and you need not spare me, for I will neither flee nor hide.” – and that is called “making a vow”.

This is what a Rule of Life is about: it is a way to maintain one’s availability and vulnerability to God no matter what else is going on in one’s world.

Since there are few enough opportunities for anyone to make a valid sacrifice these days, I don’t know how one can ever discover God without taking a vow! A vow of some kind?

AN ULTIMATE DEMAND

In the last hundred years or so, some Christians – for the first time in history – have come to believe in an unrelieved, unqualified, literal reading of every passage of Holy Scripture. If that describes you, would you share with me how you have personally lived out Luke 14:33 in your own life?

Here is Luke 14:33 in Greek transliteration (sorry, the font doesn’t allow for breathing marks):

hoútos oûv pâs ex humôn hòs ouk apotássetai pâsin toîs heatoû hupárchousin ou dúnatai eînaí mou mathetés.

Here are all the English translations I could find:

“So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” (NRSV)

“…everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.” (NAB)

“So in the same way, none of you can be my disciple without giving up all that he owns.” (NJB)

"So therefore, whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” (RSV)

“So also if you are not prepared to leave all your possessions behind, you cannot be my disciples.” (REB)

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” (NIV)

“So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” (KJV)

“So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” (ASV)

“In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.” (Today’s NIV)

“So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” (ESV)

“So therefore everyone of you who does not bid farewell to all of his own possessions cannot be a disciple of mine.” (My own translation)

I have always been deeply curious about how this verse is understood and put into practice by those who "take the Bible literally".

AN EXPLORATION OF INTERCESSION

I - THE HOLY TRINITY

On Trinity Sunday and on the feast of St. Athanasius, our Julian tradition is to use the Athanasian Creed (the Quicunque Vult) in place of the Nicene Creed at Mass. Those who know it will remember that it is an almost exhaustive (and ex­hausting!) summary of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, filling every possible blank space or potential heretical lacuna with detailed definition after definition. It al­ways reminds one of how complex, how deep, how intricate, and how absorbing the “simple” doctrine of the Holy Trinity really is. And, of course, that doctrine is cen­tral, if not primary, in Julian’s writings.

But the doctrine is a “mystery” in every sense of the word. Indeed, no matter what kind of intellectual expressions one may use to describe the Trinity, one can be said to grasp it truly and deeply only by a fleeting, momentary intuition — by an inexpressible and wordless “sense” of the depth of the bond between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit which makes the Three one Godhead, one Being, one Entity. We can try to find the words, but we discover our verbal poverty in that whatever we say about the Trinity and the Trinity’s internal relationships is never exhaustively descriptive, accurately illustrative, or theologically precise. We can speak of the three Persons of the Trinity as being immersed in each other, enfolded into each other, embedded in each other, meshed with each other, interwoven among each other, but these are all only shallow hints at the ineffable Unity of the Trinity.

But, so what? More than one person has suggested over the years that the doc­trine of the Trinity has no practical application in the lives of Christians, and might just as easily be entirely overlooked by the ordinary Christian. However, an ineffa­ble and inexpressible as it is, it still provides us with an archetype that can perhaps enrich our understandings of our own enmeshedness in Christ.

2 - THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH

While there are any number of disturbing conflicts and discords going on in the Church these days, perhaps the most foundational and elementary has to do with the very nature of the Church itself. Almost weekly one hears of another example of the disembodying of the Church — that is, of flight from the deep and mystical un­derstanding of the Church as the assembly of the baptized within the Body of Christ. That designation is so familiar that it has tended to be dispossessed of its true meaning and its immeasurable mystical implications for our lives.

What does it mean for the Church to be called (as St. Paul refers to it) “The Body of Christ”? The fact is that the true nature of the Church is just as mysterious, just as inconceivable, just as indescribable as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity — and for some of the very same reasons.

What can it possibly mean that baptized Christians are INSIDE the Body of Christ? And not only inside it, but actually PART of it, members of it, pieces of it, sec­tions of it, organs of it? In fact, the etymology of the word member leads us back to its original meaning of “limb” or even “piece of meat” — so a “member of Christ” is not merely someone who has paid dues to an organization and whose name is on the list of constituents of that organization.

Think of the linguistic options Jesus faced: he could have had “followers”, “dis­ciples”, “adherents”, “supporters”, “students” or any other of a dozen or so words de­scribing the relationship of one person to a leader or master. Some of these may even have been satisfactory during Jesus’ lifetime on earth, but once that was finished, these words became too poor, too meager, too deficient to explain the relationship of Christians to Christ. And so we began to hear words like “incorporation” (into Christ’s Body) — far, far more seriously involving than mere “affiliation”.

This was no longer to be a simple situation in which one person merely relates to or believes in or accepts or follows another Person (regardless of all these evangelistic pleas to “come to know Jesus”, or to “walk with Jesus” or even to “accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior”). It is no longer adequate to think of relating to Jesus out­side oneself — but of relating to Jesus INSIDE HIMSELF. Having “Jesus in your heart” is simply not enough — rather, one needs to discover oneself in Jesus’ heart (to put it poetically).

It is this incredible mystical comprehension of the nature of the Church that has been so sadly perverted in our day when bishops become CEO’s, priests become pop-psychologists or entertainment managers, and deacons become social workers. When a congregation had problems in the distant past, what was needed was a saint or a prophet to set things straight; today what is called for is an organiza­tional consultant. The recent “20/20” program called for attracting new members and doubling church attendance by the year 2020 — but with little attention to the nature of the Church (or even the parish) that those new people will be joining.

When the Catholic sacramental system was attacked by reformers (from the 14^th century on), what was denounced was the “magic” aspect of the Sacraments (which required no human agency or cooperation to be worked). Infant baptism was assailed because for the reformers, one’s voluntary, informed, and intellectual as­sent was needed to make baptism “real”—in other words, the active agent in the reformer’s idea of baptism was the individual being baptized, not God the Holy Spirit. For the reformers, nothing happened to the bread and wine of the Eucharist unless the receiver believed it — again, the active agent was no longer God, but the individual receiving Communion. Private and individual “conversion” came to be the goal — overlooking the ancient understanding of the Tradition’s provision for a Sacramental entry into the mystical Body of Christ.

Our relationship with Christ (and each other) inside of this Mystical Body is almost as indescribable as the relationships within the Trinity — but it is modeled on those relationships. Why? because our Creator’s goal for us was perfect union with God within that Holy Trinity — and the union with each other inside the Body of Christ is the first step. If we can begin to grasp the implications of the Christic unity, we are well on the way to the intuitive (and beatific) vision of the Trinity.

This is not entirely accurate, but it approaches accuracy: that the relationship of Christians to each other inside the Body of Christ is basically the same as the relationship between the three Persons of the Trinity. So it was intended that our experience in the Mystical Body of Christ was to ready us for our ultimate union within the Holy Trinity.

3 - UNINTENTIONAL INTERCESSION

And, what does all of this esoteric and mystical theology have to do with the subject of this essay: Intercession? In fact, it is the core and heart of any serious un­derstanding of Intercession, because the very core of Intercession has to do with the mystical “connection” among us.

The word Intercession is simply the combination of the Latin words inter = be­tween, and cedere = to go. “To intercede” is “to go between” or “to intervene” — an “interceder” is a “go-between” — in our case, between a human being and God. But there is more involved when the interceder and the one interceded for are both part of the mystical Body of Christ.

So, my making intercession for you is analogous to my hand putting food into my mouth — the hand and mouth are both parts of the same body, and at least in­directly, the putting of food into the mouth benefits the entire body — including the hand that does it. It is therefore not wholly un-selfish for the hand to serve the mouth — indeed, if the hand selfishly refused to serve the mouth, it would be hurt­ing itself.

Since you and I are both members of the same Body, as we serve each other helpfully, we help ourselves. But there is also a sense in which we cannot avoid in­tercession. At every moment of every day, whatever I am doing affects you (since we are members of the same Body) — for good or ill — and vice versa. If I am behaving in a way that supports the purpose for which God made human beings – if it is “sacrificial”– then my behavior also devolves positively on you, because my behavior “feeds” the whole Mystical Body. Conversely, if my behavior is ego-oriented, or selfish, or self-destructive, it also affects you negatively. [If the hand puts food in the mouth, the whole body benefits; if the hand puts poison into the mouth, the whole body suffers.] So whatever I do – as a Christian – affects you; and whatever you do – as a Christian – affects me. In that sense, we are interceding for each other every moment of every day. And, curiously, that “unintentional intercession” may be positive or negative: may bring benefit to the Body or harm to the Body. The only way for one to cause this constant intercession to cease is to tear oneself away from the Body in intentional schism – to convert one’s corporate and communal religion into something that is private, secluded, isolated, and exclusive.

All of this is part of the mystical understanding of how an enclosed, contemplative, monastic community (like OJN) which does little by way of “good works” in the world benefits the Church as a whole. The presence of these souls who are offering a constant cycle of prayer and personal sacrifice means that they are supporting and feeding the Body — for the good and benefit of the whole Body. They are restoring and modeling the Church’s relationship with God — and doing it on the behalf of others who might be either unable or unwilling to do it.

4 - INTENTIONAL INTERCESSION

The source of all grace (which may be defined as “the very life of God”) is God­self — the ONLY source of grace. But that grace has a triangular (trinitarian?) dimension to it. God’s grace – Godself – flows to us constantly and unceasingly, immersing us, surrounding us, enfolding us (as Julian puts it). And it comes to us generally from three “directions”:

(1) By our divinely-created human nature, we all have the capability of experiencing the direct flow of God to, into, and around each of us ourselves. It is the recognition and perception of that direct and immediate contact with God that is the great goal of the prayer of any true mystic. God inspires (“in-spirits”) each of us, but we are so unfamiliar with that idea that most of the time we are completely unaware of it; most of the time we are blind (Julian’s word for sin is blindness) to that unswerving and unvarying Presence of God. We live in and with God, but mostly we do not know that or experience it directly, because we are so coarsened and desensitized to it — indeed, we tend actually to distrust anyone who claims a consciousness of that Presence. And some of us, intuitively seeking that awareness, think to find it in deep emotional experiences or in shallow sentimentality — both of which will tend to cloud our awareness of God rather than clarify it.

(2) Before anything was created, there existed only God — and the prime attribute of God then was (as always) existence itself! A dimension of God was “existence”; “existence” itself was divine! (Indeed, the revelation of God’s nature to Moses in the burning bush was exactly that: God’s name is “I AM”, “I EXIST”.) And then (from our time-bound point of view) God shared out God’s own existence into what we came to call the universe and that universe was brought into existence, too. The existence of the universe was a part of God’s own divinity. Everything that was created carried within itself a spark or flicker or a hint of the life of Godself. And so the flow of God’s grace, God’s own life, comes to us not only directly from the realms of heaven, but from every corner of the created universe as well. The whole universe is busy revealing God to us all the time. There is Order, there is Beauty, there is Truth, there is Pattern — all of which are revelations of God’s own nature – efforts on God’s part to share Godself with us. But, once again, we have been dissuaded from recognizing that, and now we define an “act of God” only as a dire, cataclysmic natural disaster.

(3) Finally, as a very crown of that new creation, God brought into existence a human being. And the human being shared not only “existence” with the Creator God, but was actually an in-time, on-earth model of God’s own self – made “in the image of God”, carrying a spark and fleck and shard of Godself. (Julian calls this a godly wil that never assentid to synne ne never shal.) And so each human being carries divinity within him/herself, and s/he becomes an actual source of Godself to others.

So, there are the three channels or conduits of God’s grace: Godself, the created universe, and every human being. It is all the same divine grace, and it is all God’s gift, but in God’s wisdom we are offered that grace from three “directions” as it were.

And that is (finally) were intentional intercession comes into the picture.

You and I can choose to “activate” ourselves to BE the channels of grace for other humans as God intended us to be. My intercession for you is merely a case of my directing God’s already existent grace through me to you — fulfilling the Creator’s intention in creating me enough like Godself that I can be a means of grace for you.

True and valid intercession for you on my part is merely a recognition of my solidarity with you within the Body of Christ and the expression of my wish to be a means of grace for you. True and valid intercession “asks” nothing of God, does not require a change in God’s mind or plan, does not tell God what would be good for someone else. It is merely a non-demanding holding up of one’s brother/sister to God’s all pervading Presence and will — it is like saying to God: “I unite myself in solidarity with the needs of my sister/brother, and ask that I be given the sanctity to allow your grace and love to flow through me to that person.”

Intercession must never intend to change God or to interfere with God’s will, but only to concentrate the recognition of God’s universal love on the person in need. Perhaps we can best understand this complexity by analogy: we all have the experience of listening to an stimulating speaker (say, a Desmond Tutu) and experiencing a kind of spiritual uplift, an inspiration, an enlightenment from the speaker’s words – perhaps even a strong enough impetus to resolve to undertake a noble task or to re-direct one’s own life. That is simply the power of Godself working through the channel and agency of another human being. And so it is with intercession – although the recipient of our intercession may not even be conscious of the flow of grace directed to them through ourselves.

So, intercession is not a case of trying to push God around or to get God to change earthly circumstances. It is rather an intentional immersion in the very will of God, and a willingness to enter mystically into solidarity with another’s pain or need, and to allow God to flow through one to that one in need.

And none of it is mechanical, or measurable, or magical or any such. It just requires recognizing God, recognizing one’s bond with one’s brothers/sisters, and opening one’s soul for God’s use as a tool.

An Egg in the Nest

It took a long time to decide, but finally I came to the conclusion that I DO, in fact, have things to say that might be valued by others, and that perhaps a blogsite might make sense. So.........we begin......