It is a terrible thing to be faithless, nihilistic, cynical, and depressed. There are many that find themselves in a state where effort seems ineffectual, the future appears bleak, and life itself feels meaningless. Too long in such a state can be a very dangerous thing, as the broken person may begin to consider ways to expedite the end of their miserable existence. Even if not, though, they will continue forward in a sort of waking death, unmotivated to do any of the things worth living for, isolating and numbing, and just letting themselves go. They may reach a “natural end,” but one that was premature and avoidable.
On the other hand, though, one might love life to the point of debauchery. They might become carnal, sensual, eagerly pursuing every pleasant, vibrant experience, trying to live as full and varied a life as possible. But gross hedonism is just as tended towards death as depression. Promiscuous sexuality, drunkenness, risk-taking, late-night parties, and gluttony do not prolong life, rather they burn it out faster, resulting in either an accidental death, or once again, a demise that might be considered natural, though premature and avoidable.
The soul cleaved from its purpose becomes depressed and gravitates towards death, but also the soul that makes its purpose the pleasures of life also gravitates to death. Survival itself is contingent upon finding the true life worth living, and committing ourselves wholeheartedly to it.
We are each of us outnumbered in our own person during our struggles to do what is right. On the one side we have but our conscience, while on the other side we have both our selfishness and our ignorance. We must compete with both our desire to do evil, even when we know it is evil, and our tendency to choose wrong, even when our intentions are pure.
None of us can hope to prevail in this struggle of two-against-one. We may put up a respectable fight, but each of us will be overrun by our baser instincts and shortsighted mistakes sooner or later. If we hope to ever have any chance of success, we have got to get help. We need more than ourselves. We have to stop doing this alone and let God in. Then the scales can finally tip in our favor.
In the middle of his mortal ministry Jesus Christ gave the following instruction:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
-Matthew 7:13-14
The last time I read this passage I was caught by this particular sequence of words: “few there be.”
“Few” would suggest less than half, probably significantly less than half, in any case a clear minority. And if a minority of people are finding the pathway to heaven then, by definition, the average goodness of man would be insufficient.
This makes me wonder…am I only of average goodness in my everyday dealings? Am I only of average zeal in my seeking and proclaiming of the truth? Or is my discipleship the sort of which one would say “few there be?”
Above Average)
I am also reminded of another declaration from Christ:
For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.
And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.
And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.
-Luke 6:32-34
I believe that these verses describe the efforts that most people make to live good and wholesome lives. And while it certainly is not bad to love, do good, and lend to those that we are close to…once again, the default goodness is clearly not enough.
If “few there be” that find the path to eternal life, and most people are trying to be basically good, then we must aspire to be more than basically good. We must be extraordinarily good, uniquely valiant, and exceptionally virtuous. Christ says that we can find the strait and narrow way, but not by doing the status quo.
Perhaps this isn’t the comfiest of teachings, but at least Christ was good enough to forewarn us, to give us a chance to check ourselves and change our path. Pay close attention to how these words stir your heart, and give those feelings the heed and serious consideration that they are due. Don’t be going so fast that you can’t make the turn-off that takes you from where you are headed to where you need to be going. It’s a pretty narrow road, after all, and few there be that find it!
There are many instincts that we people have ingrained in us, even without being taught them. We tend to fear heights, have a revulsion to spoiled meat, and pull our hand back when it is burned. These reactions are all invented from within us, though, they do not immediately correspond to some physical, universal reality. The universe is not afraid of heights, the universe is not repulsed by spoiled meat, and the universe does not pull back when it is burned. Fear and revulsion and recoil are not calculable by any sort of physical equation, they are only psychological illusions.
One might also make the case that it is the same with our morality. There is no observable universal reality that hates slavery and abuse. There is no observable universal objectivity to loving kindness and bravery. Could it be that these are also delusions of the mind? That they are simply extreme emotional hallucinations, totally detached from reality, just like being afraid of heights?
It’s an interesting argument but I do not find it convincing. In fact, it undoes itself.
Abstractions of Reality)
Let us consider the first half: the notion that the universe itself is not afraid of heights, and so our fear of it is merely a psychological illusion. It is true that the greater cosmos does not shrink back at the edge of a cliff. All of the elements and minerals and flakes of dust that have no mind attached to them happily roll off the edge of the cliff without a care in the world. But that doesn’t mean that our fear of the cliff is random or detached from reality.
The fact is, we fear the edge of the cliff for a reason, and that reason is based on three universal truths. The first is that objects which become untethered at a high height will be accelerated downward by gravity. The second is that an object which has been accelerated into another object will experience an opposite and equal reaction, a force that presses against it. The third is that a force will continue through a body, dispersing its energy in fractures and breaks, until that other body has cancelled out that force.
These are all objective realities that apply to every physical object in the universe. The combined effect of them is, of course, that an object that is suddenly released at a great height will fall, and hit the ground with great force, and be broken into pieces. Our seemingly subjective fear is actually an abstraction of multiple objective truths that can combine to destroy us. It is well worth appreciating how our minds are able to take all these separate physical phenomena, and encapsulate them with a single, visceral emotion.
So yes, there is no universal fear of heights, but that fear is an abstraction of physical laws. So our fear does actually have an objective basis and justification, and no one is deluded for listening to it. The same goes, of course, for our revulsion of spoiled meat and our recoiling of our hand when burned. These impulsive, instinctive reactions are simply abstractions of objective truths in chemistry and thermodynamics.
The Moral Reality)
Having recognized these objective roots to our other instincts, it seems most logical to assume that it is the same for our sense of morality. To suggest otherwise, one would have to make a compelling case as to why one set of instinctive, emotional reactions is grounded in reality, while another is purely relative, and I struggle to think of what such an argument would be.
To me, it is far simpler to assume that our disdain for slavery and stealing is a subjective abstraction around an objective reality. Not a physical reality, but a spiritual reality, and the disdain is not a protection of our physical form, but of our spiritual form. We are afraid of unkindness because it is a reflection of unseen universal, moral truths that will damage our spirits just as surely as falling off a cliff will damage our bodies. So even if our sense of justice and compassion and virtue are subjective illusions, they are still illusions that signify an underlying truth.
Many of my generation and culture have expressed that we were raised with strict—and sometimes severe—consequences for any time that we slipped from the moral standards we were expected to live by. Quite a few of us developed a strong sense of perfectionism as a result, inflicting upon ourselves an impossible standard that has tied more than a few of us into painful knots. Too many of us have had constant feelings of being guilty and unworthy. Suffice it to say that there were some flaws in the way we were given our belief systems.
But on the other hand, I have also seen several of my same generation that were raised under an anything-goes sort of mentality. Moral misdeeds were only winked at, and consequences obscured, resulting in some incredibly reckless, selfish, and narcissistic tendencies. Either morality was relative, or it didn’t even exist, and many avoidable wounds were suffered by that denial of objective truth. From my observation, this philosophy wasn’t really any better than the extreme legalism.
The Inevitable Extreme)
Either way, one can easily come to feel that they were dealt the harder hand. I have seen many of my peers throw the baby out with the bath water, renouncing all moral law because they were hurt under an inappropriate application of it. They lack the nuance to see that there was good in the theory, if not the execution.
And, frankly, these flaws and nuances are inevitable. Whatever principles people choose to live and raise their society by, there will always be those that take the principles to an inappropriate extreme. If you decide to instill a strong sense of moral obedience, sooner or later you will have individuals that enact cruel punishments for any perceived deviance. If you decide to instill a carefree, life-loving mantra, sooner or later you will have individuals that pursue carnal indulgence without any regard for the people harmed along the way. Humanity is made up of all sorts. It has the best of people within it, but also the worst, and it is the worst who will always find a way to pervert the well-meaning conventional wisdom.
Lessons Learned)
Having explained this, let me point out two essential takeaways related to the matter:
In any philosophy that you choose to live by, it is worth considering what potential evil might sprout from it down the line. Life philosophies are not so much a destination as a direction, and it is important for us to follow the logical conclusion of that direction to its furthest extremes. In the wrong minds, what are the worst interpretations that others might take from your teachings? If you identify what those perverse extremes are, then you can call them out ahead of time, setting in place the bounds that will let you and others know when things have been taken too far.
Any principle, even one that is true and good, becomes corrupt when pursued at the expense of all other true principles. Going back to the idea of life philosophy as a direction, we might also consider it as a vector: a line stretching across a graph. It may run from one inappropriate extreme to another, but in between it might run through some very worthy territory as well. Additional principles can be thought of as more vectors, other lines that stretch across the graph, and at certain points intersect with our first. Those intersection points help us greatly in that they represent the natural bounds that each principle sets upon the other. For example, if we are mature enough to hold both the principle of moral obedience and grace for sin at the same time, then each will keep us from running too far with the other. Together they plot for us when to forgive and when to call for repentance. They will even show us how to do both at the same time!
I’ve been part of an addiction recovery group for a while, and I’ve noticed something that can trip up addicts in our sobriety. I think it is a trap that applies universally as well.
I have witnessed and experienced how an addict will sometimes re-examine his definition of sobriety, playing with the fringes of exactly what behavior he will consider a relapse and what behavior he will not. Sometimes he will find a behavior that really doesn’t contradict his conscience or give him any guilt. So he relaxes the rules and guidelines in that one area, but not long after he finds himself pushing the envelope further and further, and ultimately relapsing multiple times in a row.
So was he wrong in his appraisal and just trying to justify doing things that he should have felt guilty about all along? Not necessarily.
As a general rule, good begets good and evil begets evil, but there are times where an action that is neutral, or even good, should be treated as evil, not for its own sake, but because of the evil places it tends to lead to. The addict has to acknowledge what actions follow his choices down the line. Lending a sympathetic ear to a friend might seem like a good thing to do, and in-and-of-itself it might be, but if spending time with that particular friend often leads to you eventually losing your sobriety, then maintaining that relationship is actually a bad thing to do.
The addict—and everyone else as well—is playing a game of chess against his own nature, and to not get caught in a trap he has to know how to play six moves ahead. He must reject what is clearly wrong, but also reject whatever leads to it. He must place a prudent and deliberate buffer around evil. He must come to know himself very, very well.
It can be a hard thing to change the story we have told other people of who we are. Each of us suggests to others what our principles and priorities are, what we will and will not do, and what behavior they might expect of us. Sometimes we begin to shift who we are, though, and at that point it becomes difficult to explain to others this new emerging version of ourselves. This is true whether our change is for the worse or for the better.
For the Worse)
Let us first consider the example of a change for the worse. Suppose I am developing a bad habit, or that I’m trying to admit to a bad habit that I’ve kept a secret. In this case, then telling others about this new lifestyle of mine reveals any number of the following details about me:
I was lying to people in the past.
I’m ignoring my conscience to do something that I still know is wrong.
I wasn’t nearly so firm in my past convictions as I pretended to be.
None of these are a pleasant thing to own up to. None of them show me in a very good light. All of them make me a fool and/or a liar. Any other principles that I still claim to maintain are now suspect, because I’ve already shown the capacity to abandon one of them. This creates a motivation to hide our vices, to let people go on thinking that we are still as saintly as they had assumed, thus adding another layer of deceit to our story.
For the Better)
Now let us examine the example of me giving up a bad habit, changing my life for the better. In this case, there is still a friction against changing my story. For one, I might have the sense that my present company have something over me in that they knew the old me, the worst me, the me who openly did the things I now say I don’t do. I might be worried that these people will see my new efforts as nothing more than an act, a forced performance and not my true character. They might be anchors, trying to pull me back to what they think is the “real” me, even though I am trying to reject that version.
Not only this, but if I have done these bad habits with others, they may feel judged by my rejection of that behavior. I might say that I don’t judge them for doing that which I now consider inexcusable in myself, but that is inconsistent. I am now opposed to a part of my old self that still loves on in my friends’ current selves, so in truth I am now rejecting a part of who they are.
These two factors create a pull back towards our old ways. We are motivated to undo our story rewrite.
Is Change Possible?)
Whether for the better or the worse, change implies that there something wrong and deceitful about yourself either in the past or the present. Making a change means admitting to your flawed nature, your unreliableness, and your uncertainty. Is it any wonder, then, that so few people seem to change? Some people even believe that no one can really change. They say that people can only alter their outer behaviors from time-to-time, but will still be the same person at their core.
I don’t think the situation is quite that severe, though the difficulty of true transformation should never be understated. I think it would be more accurate to say: a man really can change, even for the better, but more often than not it takes an act of God to do it!
When you apologize, acknowledge your wrongs and express remorse for them, stopping short of the wrongs that the other person has done to you. It doesn’t matter if you hurt them because of what they did, or if they responded disproportionately. Regardless of the context, if what you did was wrong, then own what you did and speak only to that.
Ideally, the other person will also apologize for their wrongs, stopping short of the wrongs that you did, only owning what their own failings. If they do, then you will both be free, but even if they don’t, you still will be.
Raising a voice in anger, using insulting language, and swearing exhaust all forms of fear and coercion that we can impose on another before all that remains is to become physically violent. Shouting at other people communicates that we are one step from physically hurting them.
Shouting is, of course an antagonistic form of persuasion, as opposed to friendly forms of persuasion like reasoning, convincing, and offering. Shouting is to get the other person to give us what we want, though it personally hurts them to do it. As such, shouting communicates: that we are an antagonist, an enemy, a hater of the person. We can say that we do not hate the other just because we are shouting at them, but the message that others will receive is clear.
I have watched two people reassure one another of their friendship even in the middle of a shouting match, but as shouting became the standard form of communication between them, soon all talk of friendship ceased and they angrily parted ways. One must understand that whenever they raise a voice in anger, they raise the risk of ending the relationship forever. How often is that worth getting what we want in the moment?
So do we really mean to imply all that we imply when we shout at another person? Do we really want to tell our kids, our spouse, our friends, our coworkers, or our neighbors that we are their enemy, that we hate them, and that we are close to violence? Do we want to tell that to strangers and acquaintances just because they make a mistake or a social gaffe towards us? Do we even want to tell that to social rivals just because they have deeply held beliefs that contradict our own? When another person shouts at us first, does even that justify us in showing them the same message of hate in return?
Certainly we are justified to reason, to correct, to call out, and to oppose at all times. I would even say that at certain times there are those individuals and situations that are deserving of the threat of violence and hatred that we give in an angry shout, but these are very far and few between.
Spiritual Wanderings 