Excerpts from Chapter Five:
If the passions (our own thoughts, emotions, and habits) are
the enemies of our ability to love other people and God, how do we fight
them?... Prayerful introspection and prayer itself.
Introspection means looking inside ourselves to see what it
is that makes us tick, or fails to make us tick, in order that we may love. It has to do with observing ourselves to see
what we think or feel or do that hurts us or makes us hurt others so that we can do something about what needs
to be corrected, and strengthen what needs to be strengthened…
All of us know ourselves at some level much better than we want
to admit we do. No matter how blinded by
passions (our own thoughts, emotions, and habits) there always is a bit of us
that can see the truth. Nevertheless, we
often do not care to see it, and so we use up a lot of energy hiding from that
seeing part of ourselves and denying what it sees.
This certainly does not
mean that since we can almost always see the truth, no matter how faintly,
we should just grit our teeth and overcome our thoughts, emotions, and habits by
self-control. We are all like Paul: even
when self-deception does not get in our way, much of the time the good that we
want to do we cannot, and the evil we do not want to do, we cannot seem to help
doing (Rom. 7:19). Often self-deception
keeps right on functioning even when a part of us knows better… We cannot seem
to change our behavior.
Being able to look inside ourselves and see what is going on
is a crucial part of breaking free of destructive passions (thoughts, emotions, and habits). Watch yourself as you interact with others
and the world around you and puzzle over what you see until you know what your
destructive passions are: pride or depression or restless boredom, or whatever
else. Looking inside and seeing things
is the first step away from these.
Find your own real needs.
Too many times as Christians we believe we have a problem with, say,
irritability, and we try to conquer irritability head on, by prayer and
self-control. But the truth may be that
we are not taking seriously our own anger at something that needs to be
corrected. Anger is not hiding reality from
us, rather it is our fear of anger and lack of humility in the form of low
self-esteem that needs to be tackled.
Real needs that are not met are among the sources of our destructive
thoughts, emotions, and habits – such as a need for rest and quiet, for prayer,
for leisure, for food and sleep.
Often, however, we are not able to see what is causing our
problem, or if we can, the information is not helpful. We may not even know we have a problem. Having a teacher, guide, or trusted friend is
of real importance to the process of learning to escape our own distortions of
reality in order to learn to love.
Rooting out self-deception can be excruciating. And we are in need of people we trust outside
ourselves who, when we are in trouble or trying to grow in the Christian life,
can tell us what they see us thinking or feeling or doing. Theoretically, a Christian could live in
isolation from other Christians, but it would be a very sad thing. We need each other.
The place of a teacher can be taken by our Christian
community. Ideally, this often happens
in worship. Sometimes the words of
scripture or prayer or the sermon can cut right through our self-deception to
speak the truth to us; we might be jolted out of a fearful and helpless frame
of mind by the hearing of a the words of Psalm.
Just as important, we also need to be able to count on individual
friends, or a group of friends to function in this way for us. Somehow, in most of our churches, we are not
prepared to take enough risks with each other.
We need our friends to help us by being real with us. It will most certainly feel awkward at first,
and it may continue to be a bit uncomfortable until you are both used to
it. It is well worth the discomfort,
fear of embarrassment, and the work because a Christian can never be a matter
of only ourselves and God. We are part of
the body of Christ, and were created to need the other parts as well.
Being able to look inside ourselves deeply takes real
humility. Each of us is vulnerable in
all sorts of ways, and God who made each one of us also loves each one of us in
all our fragility. This means that we
need not feel set apart from others by whatever introspection or conversation turns
up within us, no matter what it is.
Cultivating humility also means that we will begin to stop
measuring ourselves continually against others.
Humility takes the fear out of a lot of introspection, making us
courageous and strong.
Humility also makes us patient with ourselves when we do
find the things we probably will see in ourselves. We will be able to accept it as true that
the thoughts, emotions, habits, feelings, attitudes, obsessions, and certain
kinds of behavior do not go away all at once simple because we have identified
them. Humility reminds us that the
process of becoming free of our destructive passions is often a long one, and
that is all right. Do not try to do
everything at once; take on only one thought or emotion or habit at a time. Learning to love is a slow business.
Humility, finally, will enable us to hear what others tell
us and will help us cultivate within ourselves a continuous attitude of
listening to the world around us, to friends, to those who are not so friendly,
to what we encounter in prayer and worship.
Humility makes us receptive to all that comes to us that might bring us
to love of God and of each other.
Humility is the only possible attitude out of which we can ever speak a
word of truth to another person without doing terrible harm to ourselves and
the other. After all, what we are about
is never ever executing God’s righteous judgment on another person, or ourselves.
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| plumeria blooms in my front yard |
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| meadow blooms in Sequoia National Park |
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