When being well-intentioned is not enough

This grab bag of half truths and real truths is, I think, well-intended, but still does real damage too. Here’s how I sort wheat from chaff.

First, I wholeheartedly agree that it is clearly and obviously false that there is only one way to live. If there is anything the Christian tradition affirms, it is the massive diversity of the human race. That’s why Paul insists that the Church is like a body with many parts.

Likewise, the Christian tradition flatly repudiates the gnostic notion that your spiritual self is all that matters. The Word became flesh and any spirituality that denies our full humanity–body, soul, mind, heart, spirit, emotions, appetites, physical needs, relationships, work, etc.–is a spirituality at war with both the Incarnation and our humanity. John XXIII was characteristically Catholic when he wrote “We are not angels” on a set of blueprints for a facility in which the architect had forgotten to include toilets.

That said, the rest of these affirmations are troublingly simplistic and two are simply false.

So while it is true that I am not responsible for saving others in the sense of their eternal destiny (that’s why Jesus, not me, is the Savior) I am absolutely responsible to help do the works of love that Christ commands, particularly for the least of these. The Pharisee and the Levite who passed by on the other side of the road from the beaten man no doubt practiced this affirmation as they ignored him. The call to have empathy and give practical help is not guilt manipulation, but common decency.

Relatedly, while it true that many and even most desires are not sinful, it is plainly false that there are no desires at all that can lead to sin and even monstrous evil. Note that I say “lead to” not “constitute” since mere temptation is not a sin, but only the “tinder for sin” known as concupiscence: the weakened will, darkened intellect, and disordered appetites that are the effect of original sin. Temptations don’t become actual sin until we give in to them and actually do what is contrary to the love of God and neighbor. If we are tempted and overcome the evil, we have actually grown in virtue and become a stronger, better, and happier person.

That some of our desires are wicked is obvious, not because the Church tells us that, but because we tell ourselves that when we are petty and spiteful, or greedy, or cruel to somebody weaker than ourselves, or gutless cowards when we should have stood up for somebody being bullied, or smug, or any of the million other ways in which we humans betray our own best selves. The graphic, of course, is really assuming that sin just equates to sexual desire which, alas, many Fundamentalists in our Puritanical Jansenist religious culture do think is intrinsically evil (including atheist fundamentalists who think Christian Fundamentalism is the sum total of the Christian tradition). But it’s a severe case of throwing the baby out with the bath to deny the very possibility of sinful desires in order to deny that all sexual desire is sinful.

Another half truth is the notion that not trusting yourself is simply and solely evil. Yes, scruples, self-hatred, and lack of confidence are terrible crosses and we should seek deliverance from them (as well as defend the scrupulous from religious bullies who run them down and try to dominate them with narratives of how worthless they are). But again, sanity lies in the middle, not in extremes. The world absolutely abounds with confident morons and Premium Members of Dunning-Kruger Club who have total and complete trust in themselves that they are never and can never be wrong about anything. Marjorie Taylor Greene, pontificating about Jewish Space Lasers and following around survivors of the Parkland massacre to harrass them, is perfectly serene in trusting herself and her rectitude. She is also committing grave sin and is behaving like a massive jerk. Intellectual and moral sanity is found in those who are capable of saying, “Of course, I could be wrong” without having to add “because I am worthless.” We are not worthless. We are so precious that Christ laid down his life for us in love for us.

Which brings us to the two final affirmations, which are simply false. For the reality is, we are broken and in need of salvation (which is why we, among other things, seek out affirmations that tell us we aren’t) and we (and everything else that exists) are, in the most literal sense of the word, Nothing without God.

Mind you, that does not mean we are worthless, unloveable, despised, doormats, dart boards, or vermin. Nor is God equal to or coterminous with (or sometimes even vaguely related to) things like “my religious subculture”, “the ideology I have embraced due to Stockholm Syndrome”, “images I carried around in my head since childhood”, “my abusive parent/sibling/spouse/significant other/some belittling authority figure from my past”. I mean the actual God, who created heaven and earth and who, in pure love and delight, holds you and all things in being from one nanosecond to the next and who will not rest until you are completely happy and completely filled with love and joy and delight as he is.

In short, we cannot not seek our happiness. It is impossible. And we seek it because we do not have it fully yet–because we are broken and in need of salvation. Even a suicide does what they do because they think it will bring them “peace” (aka, happiness). And that restless search for happiness is not a sign that you are despised, worthless vermin, but a sign that you seek love, which is to say, God. There’s nothing shameful or weak or wrong with that. That is why I am joyful and proud to say without shame, “I am nothing without God. And though I am broken and in need of saving, I am joyful because my Savior loves me and gives me hope that this longing that is who I am will someday be so profoundly filled (as even now it is partly and increasingly filled) that the Ecstasy will never ever end and will be shared with all flesh and the whole of creation in the New Heaven and the New Earth.”