• Human Reefs Need Saving Too

    Do not gratify the promptings of the flesh Galatians 5:16; hate the urgings of self-will.  (Rule of St. Benedict 4. 59-60)

    What is “the flesh”?

    “The flesh” is a Christian metaphor.  The struggle represented by “the flesh” consists of our efforts to do good and to reject evil.  It’s this vital spiritual struggle that builds the moral exoskeleton of formal behaviors that define right living.

    This spiritual struggle is not a fight against our own physical bodies.  Sexual desire isn’t evil, nor are the desires for food, warmth or sleep.  Desires only become “the flesh” when they impel wrong behavior.  “The flesh” tempts us to do things that would violate a command of God, if we yielded to the impulse.  For example, a struggle against an angry impulse to hurt someone is a struggle against “the flesh,” even though bodies may have nothing to do with it.

    The part of us that opposes “the flesh” is our conscience.  Your conscience informs you when you’ve breached a norm of your Creator.  It’s the spiritual organ that corresponds to your physical nervous system.  Just as your nerves react when you’ve injured yourself and produce a sensation of pain, your conscience reacts when you’ve incurred spiritual damage by doing wrong.  The feeling your conscience produces is called remorse.  Most importantly, remorse is meant to help you survive spiritually. Like physical pain, it indicates when and where you have a problem.

    Neither your body nor your soul will function if you numb them with substance abuse or perpetual escapism.  Your conscience will sicken if you bathe it in evil influences.  Temporarily you may feel relief if moral limits disappear from your habitat.  But soon the murky haze of a featureless landscape disorients your conscience, which continues to lash out at evil without knowing where evil is anymore.

    So those who seek holiness immersed in toxic waste shudder daily from the shocks of brutality let loose in their midst.  No stops remain to signal small aggressions.  Suddenly grotesque violence explodes without warning.

    What happens to communities when moral boundaries disappear?

    For generations the West has employed a blast fishing approach to material progress at the expense of spiritual infrastructure. Blast fishing uses dynamite to stun fish so quantities can be netted quickly. As a result, the blasts destroy the nearby coral and eliminate its reef habitat.

    The ban against idolatry was exploded to make room for the supersize ego.  Holy sabbaths crumbled in the vanguard of economic expansion.  Refraining from adultery blew up when personal bonds got in the way of individual satisfaction.  Of the Ten great commandments, not one remains sacred.

    To clarify: not all of the destruction is accidental.  A campaign to erase all formal boundaries has explicitly targeted moral restrictions.  Big players blast away at ethical barriers in the name of their personal freedom.  For large egos, freedom requires the total elimination of any hindrance.  Nor do they permit anyone else to live free.  All in their path must yield.

    Coral polyps are fleshy creatures that form exoskeletons to survive.  They take in colorful algae to farm for nutrients.  Coral communities create vast structures called reefs.  The intricate spaces of the reef formations provide shelter to fish and invertebrates seeking refuge from predators.  Large predators cannot penetrate the narrow fissures of the reef structure.

    Similarly, human beings are vital souls whose efforts to repel evil and cultivate goodness produce the formal systems that support a thriving culture.  Comedy, tragedy, eroticism and remorse all require fixed boundaries to exist.

    What happens when you take the bait?

    The sales pitch has been a promise to eradicate pain.  It is as a form of pain that remorse was slated for elimination.  The lure of numbness generates enormous profits as drugs and distractions achieve insensibility for all.  Millions too zoned out to react to their own destruction float into the nets of unscrupulous profiteers.

    No boundary: ergo no transgression.  No transgression: ergo, no guilt.  And without guilt, there can be no remorse.

    In this wasteland devoid of impeding structures, Homo neuroticus thrashes about. Anything and everything in the cloudy murk triggers a spasmodic reaction, inflicting harm on those nearby. Neuroticus used to be a rare breed and was called “crazy” in the vernacular.  Psychologists of a previous age had observed an association between neuroticus and remorse. But they didn’t have many specimens to analyze. Freudians assumed that neuroticus must be the offspring of remorse, since the two were often seen together.

    Neuroticus is insensitive to humor, grief and contrition.  It must contort itself to get a sexual thrill.  It expends furious energy to control everything in its environment.  But it cannot control itself.  Neuroticus experiences its own impulses as irresistible.  Its large ego prevents it from admitting that it could do anything wrong.  With no cultural reef of formal boundaries to limit its movements, neuroticus produces specimens with larger and larger egos.  No joke can survive in the shadow of neuroticus.  No sorrow throbs.  Mercy moves not.  These have all fled.

    But remorse is not the parent of neuroticus.  Remorse is its guide through the deep.  When you have a sense of where the boundaries are, you can direct your actions purposefully.

    Bring the reef back.  We could all laugh again.  We could weep again.  Real thrills could move us.  We could live again.

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  • Curb Your Urge

    For this reason Scripture warns us, Pursue not your lusts Sirach 18:30.  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.25)

    We live in a culture where it’s supposed to be fun to let yourself go.  People announce that they’re about to let themselves go, and then they do it.  Not only do they not feel shame: they expect you to pat them on the back.  Most of the time they act with good humor, and with no thought of harming themselves or anyone else.  The binge is benign these days.

    Until it’s not.  The fact is that we have countless people who are suffering the tragic consequences of their own impulses–or worse, of someone else’s.  Some of them refuse to admit responsibility.  But others are discouraged, because they’ve tried and failed to change.

    Self-control is not an instant thing.  It’s the work of a lifetime.  It’s the practice of a life well-lived.

    If you want to be an athlete or an artist or any sort of skilled worker, you start at the beginning and practice basic moves first.  Checking your own impulse is one of the most basic moves of all.  It’s an element of any future action.  It’s not just that refraining from one action frees up time and energy for an alternative.  Curbing your impulse also builds strength and skill.  These in turn open up new possibilities that would otherwise have remained out of reach.

    A century of Freudian psychology has led us to assume that checking an impulse means repressing desire.  When you repress a desire, you don’t act on it, but it comes out in some other, weird way that you don’t control and that you may not even be aware of.  So you might as well let yourself go.

    Suffering the consequences?  That’s someone else’s specialty.  Next, please.

    The difference between self-control and repression is that self-control does not suppress desire.  Self-control nurtures and trains desire.  While the binge lets desire loose, without regard for other people, self-control keeps desire on a leash and exercises it with consideration for others.

    The lure of the binge is easy pleasure fast.  But the thrill tends to decrease with repetition.  You work harder to get less.  And you suffer the side effects.  With self-control, on the other hand, you start small, but the enjoyment increases with practice.  And the horizons are infinite.

    The best the binge can claim is not to have harmed anyone else.  But self-control allows you to do good to others actively.

    People who can’t control their impulses only get along with others who want to do the same thing at the same time in the same way.  When a whole collection of individuals are all out of control together, they meld into a mob.  The mob tramples any divergent individual.  But then the frenzy burns out, and the mob disperses.  The same individuals go back to competing ruthlessly against each other.  They separate, each alone with an ungoverned desire.  The endpoint is a life without any relationships at all: just interactions that serve the appetite.

    But self-control allows you to live in community.  Christian community aims not to meld but to harmonize individual desires.  It’s a complex challenge, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we do make a life together.  This calls for active participation on the part of each one, rather than a passive letting go.

    Life in a family is a training ground for harmony.  Baby learns to sleep at night long enough for Mom to get the rest she needs.  Baby learns to go for longer without eating, so that eventually the child’s habits match the habits of the family.  In practice this effort takes years, and every time a new baby arrives, another individual process is thrown into the mix.  Easy is not part of the deal.

    But the endpoint is paradise, which Jesus describes as a banquet Matthew 22:1-14; 25:1-13.  A banquet is a fancy dinner where people dress their best, eat together and enjoy each other’s company.  When you have a family sitting down to a meal together, you have a foretaste of heaven.  The food may be simple.  The clamor around your table may not sound divine.  But consider what you’ve achieved: you’ve taken human beings from a state of chaos to a state of sociability.  Even if it’s not yet heaven, it is the foundation of civil society, and that’s something no one should take for granted.

    Ultimately: heaven.  Here and now: a functioning society.  Earliest of all: a family meal.  But it all begins with harmonizing individual impulses.  And so, each one of us must achieve a measure of self-control.

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  • Yield Your Imagination

    Our thoughts are always present to God… God searches hearts and minds Psalm 7:10….  The Lord knows the thoughts of men Psalm 94:11….  From afar you know my thoughts Psalm 139:2….  That he may take care to avoid sinful thoughts, the virtuous brother must always say to himself: I shall be blameless in his sight if I guard myself from my own wickedness Psalm 18:24. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.14-18)

    Invite the Holy Spirit into the house of your mind Romans 12:2 ; Revelation 3:20.  The dark and horrible corridors hold no terror for him.  Hand him the keys, and you will find that the doors you tried so hard to keep locked will soon be propped open.  A ray of light will penetrate even fearful corners.  A breath of air will stir in stagnant places.  The Holy Spirit will not demolish your imagination: he will inhabit it.

    Your imagination is not the part of yourself that you must overcome.  Rather, your imagination is the organ God endows you with to help do the overcoming.  Just as he designed the human body with a liver that filters out toxins and aids in digestion, he designed the human mind with imagination.  If you were never exposed to toxins, you wouldn’t need the liver to be the heaviest organ in your body.  If you were living in the Garden of Eden, an impure thought would never enter your mind.  But even if you lived in a pristine environment, you wouldn’t necessarily do the right thing in it.  Adam and Eve certainly didn’t.  Conversely, history shows that the holiest people have often been exposed to terrible things.  Removal from contamination does not guarantee righteousness.  Proximity to evil does not produce sin.

    It’s true that moral toxins can overwhelm the imagination, just as alcohol abuse can overwhelm the liver. You shouldn’t expose yourself deliberately to poisonous influences.  But day after day, a functioning imagination helps us process the moral challenges to which a fallen world exposes us.

    For example, there are occasions when the task that duty calls you to is onerous, boring or repellent.  When you’re cleaning up vomit off the floor, should you fully engage in the moment with all of your faculties?  Because the sight and smell of vomit can induce such nausea that you’ll be unable to complete the task.  In such a situation, the imagination offers a way to distance yourself–to redirect your attention–so that you can complete the task without quite focusing on it.  At the end of the day, right action remains the standard of right living.  If your weird fantasy helped you do your duty, then you’re in better shape than the people who ran away from responsibility because they couldn’t enjoy the moment.

    The imagination also serves as an aid to right living when we rehearse various options for behavior.  When we’re angry, we may imagine any number of phrases we could say to the person who has offended us, or vengeful actions we could take.  But what do we actually say and do?  The imagination gives us a way to consider the consequences of wrong behaviors without actually living them out.  Sometimes it’s only through the process of imagining a wrong behavior that we come to feel that it is wrong.  The important question is whether, after imagining our options, we reject the wrong and choose the right.

    A third way that imagination helps us is by entering into evil, not to embrace it, but to combat it.  If you want to vanquish evil, you must gain an understanding of how it works.  Not all thinking about evil things is sinful, not anymore than working with a deadly virus is sinful, if your goal is to find a vaccine.  However, you must take precautions.  Don’t underestimate the thing you’re called to combat.

    Your imagination also provides a place to escape to, when you’re too weary to cope with reality.  Sometimes your fantasy reveals a specific stressor that you need to address.  In constrained situations, the escape into fantasy may be the best alternative available.  We live in a culture with fewer physical challenges than ever before in human history, but with overwhelming mental challenges that produce chronic psychological exhaustion.

    God knows all of this.  Even in our most intimate, most embarrassing, most bizarre moments, we can always turn to God and ask for grace to grow into habitable dwellings for the Holy Spirit.  When we feel ourselves inclined to evil, we should admit it and ask for strength to behave rightly.  Entrust your thoughts to God, and keep dreaming.

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