Wednesday, November 23, 2011

An improved discussion of "human nature" for the Episcopal Church's Catechism: Step 4

It just came to me today, pursuant to recent discussions, that we could vastly improve on the "Human Nature" section in the Episcopal Church's catechism by simply printing out the Step 4 Chapter in the A.A. book, Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It does include some actual observations about "human nature" - and it's way more interesting besides.

So, without additions or deletions, or any further ado, here's the chapter in question:

"Step Four: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves."

Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them we wouldn't be complete human beings. If men and women didn't exert themselves to be secure in their persons, made no effort to harvest food or construct shelter, there would be no survival. If they didn't reproduce, the earth wouldn't be populated. If there were no social instinct, if men cared nothing for the society of one another, there would be no society. So these desires--for the sex relation, for material and emotional security, and for companionship--are perfectly necessary and right, and surely God-given.

Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper functions. Powerfully, blindly, many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. Our desires for sex, for material and emotional security, and for an important place in society often tyrannize us. When thus out of joint, man's natural desires cause him great trouble, practically all the trouble there is. No human being, however good, is exempt from these troubles. Nearly every serious emotional problem can be seen as a case of misdirected instinct. When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.

Step Four is our vigorous and painstaking effort to discover what these liabilities in each of us have been, and are. We want to find exactly how, when, and where our natural desires have warped us. We wish to look squarely at the unhappiness this has caused others and ourselves. By discovering what our emotional deformities are, we can move toward their correction. Without a willing and persistent effort to do this, there can be little sobriety or contentment for us. Without a searching and fearless moral inventory, most of us have found that the faith which really works in daily living is still out of reach.

Before tackling the inventory problem in detail, let's have a closer look at what the basic problem is. Simple examples like the following take on a world of meaning when we think about them. Suppose a person places sex desire ahead of everything else. In such a case, this imperious urge can destroy his chances for material and emotional security as well as his standing in the community. Another may develop such an obsession for financial security that he wants to do nothing but hoard money. Going to the extreme, he can become a miser, or even a recluse who denies himself both family and friends.

Nor is the quest for security always expressed in terms of money. How frequently we see a frightened human being determined to depend completely upon a stronger person for guidance and protection. This weak one, failing to meet life's responsibilities with his own resources, never grows up. Disillusionment and helplessness are his lot. In time all his protectors either flee or die, and he is once more left alone and afraid.

We have also seen men and women who go power-mad, who devote themselves to attempting to rule their fellows. These people often throw to the winds every chance for legitimate security and a happy family life. Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.

But that is not all of the danger. Every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows. If the pursuit of wealth tramples upon people who happen to be in the way, then anger, jealousy, and revenge are likely to be aroused. If sex runs riot, there is a similar uproar. Demands made upon other people for too much attention, protection, and love can only invite domination or revulsion in the protectors themselves--two emotions quite as unhealthy as the demands which evoked them. When an individual's desire for prestige becomes uncontrollable, whether in the sewing circle or at the international conference table, other people suffer and often revolt. This collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution. In these ways we are set in conflict not only with ourselves, but with other people who have instincts, too.

Alcoholics especially should be able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. We have drunk to drown feelings of fear, frustration, and depression. We have drunk to escape the guilt of passions, and then have drunk again to make more passions possible. We have drunk for vain glory--that we might the more enjoy foolish dreams of pomp and power. This perverse soul-sickness is not pleasant to look upon. Instincts on rampage balk at investigation. The minute we make a serious attempt to probe them, we are liable to suffer severe reactions.

If temperamentally we are on the depressive side, we are apt to be swamped with guilt and self-loathing. We wallow in this messy bog, often getting a misshapen and painful pleasure out of it. As we morbidly pursue this melancholy activity, we may sink to such a point of despair that nothing but oblivion looks possible as a solution. Here, of course, we have lost all perspective, and therefore all genuine humility. For this is pride in reverse. This is not a moral inventory at all; it is the very process by which the depressive has so often been led to the bottle and extinction.

If, however, our natural disposition is inclined to self righteousness or grandiosity, our reaction will be just the opposite. We will be offended at A.A.'s suggested inventory. No doubt we shall point with pride to the good lives we thought we led before the bottle cut us down. We shall claim that our serious character defects, if we think we have any at all, have been caused chiefly by excessive drinking. This being so, we think it logically follows that sobriety-- first, last, and all the time--is the only thing we need to work for. We believe that our one-time good characters will be revived the moment we quit alcohol. If we were pretty nice people all along, except for our drinking, what need is there for a moral inventory now that we are sober?

We also clutch at another wonderful excuse for avoiding an inventory. Our present anxieties and troubles, we cry, are caused by the behavior of other people--people who really need a moral inventory. We firmly believe that if only they'd treat us better, we'd be all right. Therefore we think our indignation is justified and reasonable--that our resentments are the "right kind." We aren't the guilty ones. They are!

At this stage of the inventory proceedings, our sponsors come to the rescue. They can do this, for they are the carriers of A.A.'s tested experience with Step Four. They comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his case is not strange or different, that his character defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearfully, look at his own defects.

The sponsors of those who feel they need no inventory are confronted with quite another problem. This is because people who are driven by pride of self unconsciously blind themselves to their liabilities. These newcomers scarcely need comforting. The problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine.

First off, they can be told that the majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from self-justification during their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink because times were hard or times were good. We had to drink because at home we were smothered with love or got none at all. We had to drink because at work we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink because our nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum.

We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of hand and we became alcoholics. It never occurred to us that we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever they were.

But in A.A. we slowly learned that something had to be done about our vengeful resentments, self-pity, and unwarranted pride. We had to see that every time we played the big shot, we turned people against us. We had to see that when we harbored grudges and planned revenge for such defeats, we were really beating ourselves with the club of anger we had intended to use on others. We learned that if we were seriously disturbed, our first need was to quiet that disturbance, regardless of who or what we thought caused it.

To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others, but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word "blame" from our speech and thought. This required great willingness even to begin. But once over the first two or three high hurdles, the course ahead began to look easier. For we had started to get perspective on ourselves, which is another way of saying that we were gaining in humility.

Of course the depressive and the power-driver are personality extremes, types with which A.A. and the whole world abound. Often these personalities are just as sharply defined as the examples given. But just as often some of us will fit more or less into both classifications. Human beings are never quite alike, so each of us, when making an inventory, will need to determine what his individual character defects are. Having found the shoes that fit, he ought to step into them and walk with new confidence that he is at last on the right track.

Now let's ponder the need for a list of the more glaring personality defects all of us have in varying degrees. To those having religious training, such a list would set forth serious violations of moral principles. Some others will think of this list as defects of character. Still others will call it an index of maladjustments. Some will become quite annoyed if there is talk about immorality, let alone sin. But all who are in the least reasonable will agree upon one point: that there is plenty wrong with us alcoholics about which plenty will have to be done if we are to expect sobriety, progress, and any real ability to cope with life.

To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human failings--the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.

All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. Then fear, in turn, generates more character defects. Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And with genuine alarm at the prospect of work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam. These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.

So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem to every newcomer that more is being asked of him than he can do. Both his pride and his fear beat him back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride says, "You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You dare not look!" But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a moral inventory is that pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else. Once we have a complete willingness to take inventory, and exert ourselves to do the job thoroughly, a wonderful light falls upon this foggy scene. As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable. These are the first fruits of Step Four.

By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and his failure at life; that unless he is now willing to work hard at the elimination of the worst of these defects, both sobriety and peace of mind will still elude him; that all the faulty foundation of his life will have to be torn out and built anew on bedrock. Now willing to commence the search for his own defects, he will ask, "Just how do I go about this? how do I take inventory of myself?"

Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and fairly obvious. Using his best judgment of what has been right and what has been wrong, he might make a rough survey of his conduct with respect to his primary instincts for sex, security, and society. Looking back over his life, he can readily get under way by consideration of questions such as these:

When, and how, and in just what instances did my selfish pursuit of the sex relation damage other people and me? What people were hurt, and how badly? Did I spoil my marriage and injure my children? Did I jeopardize my standing in the community? Just how did I react to these situations at the time? Did I burn with a guilt that nothing could extinguish? Or did I insist that I was the pursued and not the pursuer, and thus absolve myself? How have I reacted to frustration in sexual matters? When denied, did I become vengeful or depressed? Did I take it out on other people? If there was rejection or coldness at home, did I use this as a reason for promiscuity?

Also of importance for most alcoholics are the questions they must ask about their behavior respecting financial and emotional security. In these areas fear, greed, possessiveness, and pride have too often done their worst. Surveying his business or employment record, almost any alcoholic can ask questions like these: In addition to my drinking problem, what character defects contributed to my financial instability? Did fear and inferiority about my fitness for my job destroy my confidence and fill me with conflict? Did I try to cover up those feelings of inadequacy by bluffing, cheating, lying, or evading responsibility? Or by griping that others failed to recognize my truly exceptional abilities? Did I overvalue myself and play the big shot? Did I have such unprincipled ambition that I double-crossed and undercut my associates? Was I extravagant? Did I recklessly borrow money, caring little whether it was repaid or not? Was I a pinch penny, refusing to support my family properly? Did I cut corners financially? What about the "quick money" deals, the stock market, and the races?

Businesswomen in A.A. will naturally find that many of these questions apply to them, too. But the alcoholic housewife can also make the family financially insecure. She can juggle charge accounts, manipulate the food budget, spend her afternoons gambling, and run her husband into debt by irresponsibility, waste, and extravagance.

But all alcoholics who have drunk themselves out of jobs, family, and friends will need to cross-examine themselves ruthlessly to determine how their own personality defects have thus demolished their security.

The most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us, and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect we ought to consider carefully all personal relationships which bring continuous or recurring trouble. It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. Questioning directed to this end might run like this: Looking at both past and present, what sex situations have caused me anxiety, bitterness, frustration, or depression? Appraising each situation fairly, can I see where I have been at fault? Did these perplexities beset me because of selfishness or unreasonable demands? Or, if my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others, why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change? These are the sort of fundamental inquiries that can disclose the source of my discomfort and indicate whether I may be able to alter my own conduct and so adjust myself serenely to self-discipline.

Suppose that financial insecurity constantly arouses these same feelings. I can ask myself to what extent have my own mistakes fed my gnawing anxieties. And if the actions of others are part of the cause, what can I do about that? If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are? Questions like these, more of which will come to mind easily in each individual case, will help turn up the root causes.

But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human, too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt, and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings, a sense of persecution, and a desire to retaliate. As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us. Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension.

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring. To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with. Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been abashed to find that this is so simply because we have buried these self same defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Whatever the defects, they have finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery.

Therefore, thoroughness ought to be the watchword when taking inventory. In this connection, it is wise to write out our questions and answers. It will be an aid to clear thinking and honest appraisal. It will be the first tangible evidence of our complete willingness to move forward.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Step Three, revisited

From Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions:

"Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him"

Practicing Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness. Once unlocked by willingness, the door opens almost of itself, and looking through it, we shall see a pathway beside which is an inscription. It reads: "This is the way to a faith that works." In the first two Steps we were engaged in reflection. We saw that we were powerless over alcohol, but we also perceived that faith of some kind, if only in A.A. itself, is possible to anyone. These conclusions did not require action; they required only acceptance.

Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God--or, if you like, a Higher Power--into our lives. Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives. Therefore our problem now becomes just how and by what specific means shall we be able to let Him in? Step Three represents our first attempt to do this. In fact, the effectiveness of the whole A.A. program will rest upon how well and earnestly we have tried to come to "a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."

....

Then it is explained that other Steps of the A.A. program can be practiced with success only when Step Three is given a determined and persistent trial. This statement may surprise newcomers who have experienced nothing but constant deflation and a growing conviction that human will is of no value whatever. They have become persuaded, and rightly so, that many problems besides alcohol will not yield to a headlong assault powered by the individual alone. But now it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do. All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness. When he acquires willingness, he is the only one who can make the decision to exert himself. Trying to do this is an act of his own will. All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust, to God's will.

It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most wonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of willpower. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, and Step Three opens the door.

Once we have come into agreement with these ideas, it is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done."

November 17, 1983 - with gratitude.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Salvation and A.A.

I'm really enjoying talking with Lee and Christopher these days about (big theology word coming!) soteriology and things like that. Lee's latest post is called Participatory Soteriology and the Shape of Christian Life Together.

(The discussion came out of Lee's post about the latest Episcopal adventure, the vote to "rehabilitate" Pelagius in the Diocese of Atlanta.  Listen:  maybe Pelagius really didn't say things attributed to him by Augustine; I have no issue with "correcting the mistakes of written history" - but is this actually the most important possible project for Episcopalians at the present moment?  I can't imagine that it could be.)

Anyway, I'm worrying the subject of "Grace" these days, and what role it plays - or ought to play - in Christian faith, and in particular how we can fix what I see as our huge problem with "content" and the teaching (or, rather, not) of same in the Episcopal Church.

I'm coming to think that Grace is, more than likely, the most important idea in Christianity - and of course, as I always do, I'm tending to view these things through A.A. eyes. And that is perfectly OK, since A.A. descends directly from the 1920s-era Oxford Group, whose founder was a Swiss Lutheran pastor.  Sam Shoemaker, one of the group's leaders in the United States and a very early A.A. supporter (not an alcoholic himself), was the (Episcopal) rector of the parish now known as Calvary-St. George's in Manhattan.

A.A. is the example par excellence of Grace, in fact:  those who recover in the program recognize, sometimes early on and sometimes much, much later, that recovery is solely on account of the utterly unmerited Grace of God.  "The best efforts" of human beings - either the alcoholic or those who'd tried to help her - had no effect on the problem; it's not until people let go - till we surrender all control - that we are able to recover.   It is a left-handed process entirely:  great power unleashed in the midst of - and, in fact, by means of - pain and weakness.

One of the most wonderful things about the blogs, for me, is that these kinds of casual virtual discussions can all of a sudden illuminate a fact or an idea you simply hadn't seen clearly before.  And that's what just happened for me in the discussion at Lee's:  I realized that one of A.A.'s singular features - one of the things that make it different from religion as it's usually practiced - is that it's an open-ended process.  There is no ultimate "goal"; there's no particular endline that, once having crossed it, you can say that you've definitively "arrived."   There aren't any particular "metrics" - which means that there is lots of opportunity for adventure and the chance to continually learn.  There is the priceless opportunity to live one's own life, as it plays out in all its reality, under the Grace of God.

I wrote at Lee's that:
....the theory is – and it does work, I can say, from personal experience! – that once made free through Grace, we become very willing to share this Good News, because …. well, because it's good.

That is the experience of many people – surely those in A.A., but also Christians. Free Grace – the gift of God – is something that wants to share itself through those it's touched. Not for any reason that presents itself as morality, but just because it feels like Salvation, and because you want others to experience it. This is A.A.'s Twelfth Step, exactly: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles [i.e., the Twelve Steps themselves] in all our affairs." (Note the last clause!)

One of the best things about this is that no particular formula is given; it's rather understood that the "spiritual awakening" will be different for different people, according to their needs and gifts. There is no "blueprint," except for what actually happens in a person's life, and how A.A.'s principles apply to it.

In A.A., of course, the course is made easier: the Twelve Steps are life itself. Without them, the personality will once more decay and shrivel, the alcoholic will likely resume drinking, and all will be lost. So A.A. meetings – which are really just a place to talk about life and death and suffering and spiritual awakenings, and to regain perspective – are necessary. The Steps are necessary. Talking about these things is necessary. Admitting our "character defects" is necessary.

A.A. says that: "Great suffering and great love are A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others." And this is surely true for others, too.
I think one of the most important things about all that is contained in this idea:  "There is no 'blueprint,' except for what actually happens in a person's life, and how A.A.'s principles apply to it."  And, believe it or not, I think the key phrase there is "what actually happens"!

A.A. concerns itself primarily with reality.  Reality - "what actually happens" - is the key to everything.  What's true about the human condition as alcoholics live it out.   What's true about my own character defects; what's true about the harm I've caused others.   As I said over there, A.A.'s whole project is about "ego deflation at depth":  the First Step is an (often very hard-won) admission of the reality of one's own personal situation.   But this doesn't ordinarily (if ever) come in the form of a result of personal effort; it arrives instead as a flash of insight - as a "moment of clarity," as I've heard often in the rooms.

And that moment is the embodiment in the world of pure Grace; without it, there's no way forward at all.

More later, surely, as I think these things through further.  

Salvation and A.A.

I'm really enjoying talking with Lee and Christopher these days about (big theology word coming!) soteriology and things like that.

Lee's latest post is called Participatory Soteriology and the Shape of Christian Life Together.  (The discussion came out of Lee's post about the latest Episcopal adventure, the vote to "rehabilitate" Pelagius in the Diocese of Atlanta.  Listen:  maybe Pelagius really didn't say things attributed to him by Augustine; I have no issue with "correcting the mistakes of written history" - but is this actually the most important possible project for Episcopalians at the present moment?  I can't imagine that it could be.)

Anyway, I'm worrying the subject of "Grace" these days, and what role it plays - or ought to play - in Christian faith, and in particular how we can fix what I see as our huge problem with "content" and the teaching (or, rather, not) of same in the Episcopal Church.. 

I'm coming to think that Grace is, more than likely, the most important idea in Christianity - and of course, as I always do, I'm tending to view these things through A.A. eyes. And that is perfectly OK, since A.A. descends directly from the 1920s-era Oxford Group, whose founder was a Swiss Lutheran pastor.  Sam Shoemaker, one of the group's leaders in the United States and a very early A.A. supporter (not an alcoholic himself), was the (Episcopal) rector of the parish now known as Calvary-St. George's in Manhattan.

A.A. is the example par excellence of Grace, in fact:  those who recover in the program recognize, sometimes early on and sometimes much, much later, that recovery is solely on account of the utterly unmerited Grace of God.  "The best efforts" of human beings - either the alcoholic or those who'd tried to help her - had no effect on the problem; it's not until people let go - till we surrender all control - that we are able to recover.   It is a left-handed process entirely:  great power unleashed in the midst of - and, in fact, by means of - pain and weakness.

One of the most wonderful things about the blogs, for me, is that these kinds of casual virtual discussions can all of a sudden illuminate a fact or an idea you simply hadn't seen clearly before.  And that's what just happened for me in the discussion at Lee's:  I realized that one of A.A.'s singular features - one of the things that make it different from religion as it's usually practiced - is that it's an open-ended process.  There is no ultimate "goal"; there's no particular endline that, once having crossed it, you can say that you've definitively "arrived."   There aren't any particular "metrics" - which means that there is lots of opportunity for adventure and the chance to continually learn.  There is the priceless opportunity to live one's own life, as it plays out in all its reality, under the Grace of God.

I wrote at Lee's that:

....the theory is – and it does work, I can say, from personal experience! – that once made free through Grace, we become very willing to share this Good News, because …. well, because it's good.
That is the experience of many people – surely those in A.A., but also Christians. Free Grace – the gift of God – is something that wants to share itself through those it's touched. Not for any reason that presents itself as morality, but just because it feels like Salvation, and because you want others to experience it. This is A.A.'s Twelfth Step, exactly: "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and practice these principles [i.e., the Twelve Steps themselves] in all our affairs." (Note the last clause!)
One of the best things about this is that no particular formula is given; it's rather understood that the "spiritual awakening" will be different for different people, according to their needs and gifts. There is no "blueprint," except for what actually happens in a person's life, and how A.A.'s principles apply to it.
In A.A., of course, the course is made easier: the Twelve Steps are life itself. Without them, the personality will once more decay and shrivel, the alcoholic will likely resume drinking, and all will be lost. So A.A. meetings – which are really just a place to talk about life and death and suffering and spiritual awakenings, and to regain perspective – are necessary. The Steps are necessary. Talking about these things is necessary. Admitting our "character defects" is necessary.
A.A. says that: "Great suffering and great love are A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others." And this is surely true for others, too.
I think one of the most important things about all that is contained in this idea:  "There is no 'blueprint,' except for what actually happens in a person's life, and how A.A.'s principles apply to it."  And, believe it or not, I think the key phrase there is "what actually happens"!

A.A. concerns itself primarily with reality.  Reality - "what actually happens" - is the key to everything.  What's true about the human condition as alcoholics live it out.   What's true about my own character defects; what's true about the harm I've caused others.   As I said over there, A.A.'s whole project is about "ego deflation at depth":  the First Step is an (often very hard-won) admission of the reality of one's own personal situation.   But this doesn't ordinarily (if ever) come in the form of a result of personal effort; it arrives instead as a flash of insight - as a "moment of clarity," as I've heard often in the rooms. 

And that moment is the embodiment in the world of pure Grace; without it, there's no way forward at all.   

More later, surely, as I think these things through further.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

"The Righteousness of God"

I've had some recent conversations (and disagreements) with the Mockingbird crowd, about some of their theology - and I'm finding many of the disagreements fruitful.  Even puzzling over the reason that Evangelical Protestants tend to be much, much worse than Catholics (or even the Orthodox) on Topic H has given me a lot to think about.  Of course the "presenting issue" is the Bible, so they say.  But that's not really what's at the core, since Protestants ignore the Bible - erm, "re-evaluate Scripture" - whenever they feel like it,  too, if it suits their fancy.  More on this sometime, I promise!

And of course, along with many other gay people I've been suspicious of evangelical Protestants for a long, long time - and quite manifestly not without reason.   MBird itself, unfortunately, recommends blog posts from evangelicals who take as the default assumption the sinfulness of homosexuality (although they might qualify this by saying that "it's no worse a sin than any other" and/or that "the church should not point to this sin at the expense of others, which it often does").  This is, apparently, what passes for enlightenment on the topic; there's no real discussion of the core issues - and of course, no attempt to deal with the real people involved.   Besides that:  I've heard things from people I trust, about this.  Too bad, too; I hate it when reality loses out to fantasy (which is the very topic of this post!).

I'll probably continue to go over there and talk, because I think they're really onto something theologically (outside of Topic H) - and I do like David very much.  But I'm more ambivalent than ever about it; nobody seems, ever, to want to address the issue directly; "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is obviously still the rule in many places.  I mean, this is one of the big church issues of the moment, yet there is not a peep about it over there.  I'd be happy to talk about it (some more!) myself, if it were ever addressed.  But in fact at present I've completely ended my posting on other blogs and boards, too, because I'm very, very tired of the topic.  At some level, I guess, I can't believe people are simply going to carry on with their "beliefs" in the face of everything that's happened; the whole thing seems so last century at this point.   On one board I used to frequent but do no longer, they're still shunting discussion about the topic onto its own, separate space!  How are we supposed to move on - to grow and learn - when ridiculous things like that are still going on?   People justify this by saying that "the topic overwhelms every discussion" - but that is not our fault at this point, really.  I'm just unwilling to humor people on this subject anymore, I guess.  It's really long past time to move on - and so I'm just going to go ahead and discuss the real issues and leave the other, retro stuff behind at this point.  It's not important anymore.  (Victoria Matthews, (Anglo-Catholic) Bishop of Christchurch, NZ, has just written about her own incredulity and impatience when being asked to "defend" the idea of the Ordination of Women!)

Anyway, the latest disagreement was about this post:  "Beyond Imperatives:  A Must Read on the Law."  So much of what's said in this post - or, rather, the source it's quoting - I find simply incomprehensible.  And not for the first time.  As I wrote over there: 
I can hardly follow what’s being said sometimes – particularly when we get to things like “third use of the Law,” and “unconditional context[s] within which ‘go and sin no more’ is not an ‘if.’”  I just don’t understand what these things mean. Perhaps it’s me, and I’m not constitutionally able to grasp these ideas. But I don’t get it.


So that's to start.  But then we get to another idea:  Pastor Ed, a Lutheran, helpfully tries to explain things to me using this formula:

Luther considered the proper distinction between Law & Gospel to be the highest theological art, and the one who achieved the mark deserved a Doctorate in theology. He knew that our natural human theology is one governed by law and that we will continually gravitate back to it. We learn it as children; good boys and girls are rewarded and bad boys and girls are punished. In other words, “we get what we deserve.” 

When this theology creeps into the church L&G are mixed together and neither is properly understood. When L&G are mixed forgiveness is used like a carrot on a stick, to motivate us to do “good things” or avoid “bad things”. When L&G are mixed assurance is erased because I will never know if I have done enough to deserve forgiveness. But, when L&G are properly distinguished I am see myself for who I am (a wretched sinner without hope – Romans 7:24) and then I am pointed once again to the One who provides hope (Jesus Christ – Romans 7:25). When L&G are properly distinguished assurance is conveyed because it is not about what I have done but what Jesus did and has given to me. Grace is double blessing. Not only do I not get what I deserve (punishment), but I am given what I do not deserve (the righteousness of Jesus). Luther called this the Great Exchange.

 So that sets the scene.  I've heard this before over there:  the discussion of Atonement as a mystical acquisition of a state of "righteousness before God."  And I thought the first time I heard it, and I think now:  "This is really bizarre.  But more than that:  this is a big error, one that creates a disastrous psychological problem."

It's true that Luther did argue this:
“That is the mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ’s and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s but ours. He has emptied Himself of His righteousness that He might clothe us with it, and fill us with it.

And He has taken our evils upon Himself that He might deliver us from them… in the same manner as He grieved and suffered in our sins, and was confounded, in the same manner we rejoice and glory in His righteousness.”

–Martin Luther, Werke (Weimar, 1883), 5: 608.
Pastor Ed says this argument is Biblical, too; he cites 2 Corinthians 5:21 as the source for this argument:
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I'm not sure what Werke is, or how developed this idea is elsewhere in his writings - so I can't say whether Luther above is giving us a bit of one-off rhetoric or a fully-blown and defended theological position.

But I do think that such a position could cause real psychological mischief - and I believe that it has already done so and continues to do so.  This is not a good idea, truly.   It involves, in effect, the adoption of a complete and total fantasy as a principle for living:  that God "sees us as righteous" when we are sinners.  (Why would God need this fantasy, I must also ask?  Doesn't this God seem a bit - well, loopy and pitiful?)

Take it from people who know most of what there is to know about fantasy as a way of life:  A.A. members.  The very first order of business for a recovering alcoholic is to get a small grip on the reality of our situation - and that involves recognizing what sorts of problems we actually do have.    That's the First Step folks:  "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable."

It sure doesn't sound like there's any sort of "righteousness" being "imputed" to us there, does it?   No - and the point gets driven home again and again as the years go on and the Steps continue.  "Ego deflation at depth," is what Bill Wilson called it:  we must let go of our fantasies about what remarkable people we really are, and be simply "one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society."

James Alison, who came from a Protestant Evangelical background, once said that "Curiously, a strong belief in 'Justification by faith alone' seemed to have as its psychological counterpart an extreme need to justify oneself."  I have no background at all in this, but it certainly seems that this "psychological need" could possibly have its origins in the "wondrous exchange" idea.

I'm not at all saying that this is what people think they are doing at the outset  I'm simply saying that reality is not achieved by pretending that something is true when it manifestly isn't.  I'm saying that mere human beings can't make psychological sense of this idea; we can't digest it in a way that's meaningful for us.  We will always make the mistake of thinking that if God sees us as righteous, we therefore are righteous.    If you need proof - why, it's everywhere around you.  Take a look at the history of the church for the past 400 years if you don't believe me.
 
And, I mean, let's face it:  Luther was nuts.  Really, he was.  That's not meant to be a casting of aspersions; it's just a fact.  He was saved by Grace - no small thing in an era before Xanax - but he was bonkers.  (Listen:  I was bonkers, too!  I identify with him, in fact - but nuttiness takes awhile to work itself out, if it ever does, and we shouldn't hang on his every fanciful notion.)

Let me also point out that, after Pastor Ed mentioned the 2 Corinthians verse above, I did a little reading in commentaries - because while I know the pastor was trying to be kind, and while I do have deep respect for what I know of Lutheran theology, well:  this is just a proof-text, really.  One of the commentaries I found, N.T. Wright's piece called "On Becoming the Righteousness of God," (that's a PDF) kind of shreds the idea above to little, tiny bits.   His very straighforward argument consists of just a few points:
  1. Paul uses the phrase "the righteousness of God" elsewhere in his writings (specfically in Romans and Phillippians) - and it never has the meaning attributed to it by Luther here.
  2. Paul does not do "theology" detached from argument about the practical matters he's addressing.  He's making a chapters-long argument here about the nature of Apostleship (his, in particular), and about salvation history.  He's arguing that "the righteousness of God" has more to do with Abraham's faith before the Law came into being, than with individual soteriology.  (Big theology word!)  This verse is a summing-up of that argument, which has as its base the historical and contemporaneously continuing "covenant relationship."  Wright says:
    Verse 20 then follows from this as a dramatic double statement of his conception of the task: “So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” That is to say, when Paul preaches, his hearers ought to hear a voice from God, a voice which speaks on behalf of the Christ in whom God was reconciling the world. Astonishingly, the voice of the suffering apostle is to be regarded as the voice of God himself, the God who in Christ has established the new covenant, and who now desires to extend its reconciling work into all the world. The second half of the verse should not, I think, be taken as an address to the Corinthians specifically, but as a short and pithy statement of Paul’s whole vocation: “On behalf of Christ, we make this appeal: ‘Be reconciled to God!’”

    In the light of this exegesis of chaps. 3-5, and this reading of 5:11-20 in particular, the thrust of 5:21 emerges into the light. It is not an aside, a soteriological statement thrown in here for good measure as though to explain how it is that people can in fact thus be reconciled. It is a climactic statement of the whole argument so far. The “earthen vessel” that Paul knows himself to be (4:7) has found the problem of his own earthiness dealt with, and has found itself filled, paradoxically, with treasure indeed: “for our sake God made Christ, who did not know sin, to be a sin-offering for us, so that in him we might become God’s covenant-faithfulness.” The “righteousness of God” in this verse is not a human status in virtue of which the one who has “become” it stands righteous” before God, as in Lutheran soteriology. It is the covenant faithfulness of the one true God, now active through the paradoxical Christ-shaped ministry of Paul, reaching out with the offer of reconciliation to all who hear his bold preaching.

    What the whole passage involves, then, is the idea of the covenant ambassador, who represents the one for whom he speaks in such a full and thorough way that he actually becomes the living embodiment of his sovereign — or perhaps, in the light of 4:7-18 and 6:1-10, we should equally say the dying embodiment. Once this is grasped as the meaning of 5:21, it appears that this meaning fits very well with the graphic language of those other passages, especially 4:10-12. This in turn should play back into our understanding of chap. 3: the paradoxical boldness which Paul displays in addressing the Corinthians is organically related to his self-understanding as the “minister of the new covenant,” the one who has “become the righteousness of God.” Indeed, we can now suggest that those two phrases are mutually interpretative ways of saying substantially the same thing.
  3. This would be the single example of the "wondrous exchange" to be found anywhere in the Gospels or letters.  And that means that there simply isn't enough evidence to construe "imputed righteousness" at its heart.  In actual fact, there isn't any such evidence.
So now we have arguments against it from two different, unrelated directions.  (Granted, my own personal opinion may not carry much weight - but I did attempt to back it up with some facts.  And there is a perfectly coherent theological argument above, anyway.  (And Look, Ma!  I'm fighting with Evangelicals via Evangelicals sources!  Yay!)



The upshot here is this:  I'm of the opinion that Christianity IS quite a bit about "healing."  It really is and must be; Christ was incarnate as a healer, after all - not as an accountant or a king.   And it doesn't seem to me that the church has ever been very good at healing; certainly it hasn't been recently.  To repeat myself (I'm sure), William James said the same thing over a hundred years ago, in pointing out why the "mind cure" movement had gained hold even as the churches were emptying out:
On the whole, one is struck by a psychological similarity between the mind-cure movement and the Lutheran and Wesleyan movements. To the believer in moralism and works, with his anxious query, "What shall I do to be saved?" Luther and Wesley replied: "You are saved now, if you would but believe it." And the mind-curers come with precisely similar words of emancipation. They speak, it is true, to persons for whom the conception of salvation has lost its ancient theological meaning, but who labor nevertheless with the same eternal human difficulty. THINGS ARE WRONG WITH THEM; and "What shall I do to be clear, right, sound, whole, well?" is the form of their question. And the answer is: "You ARE well, sound, and clear already, if you did but know it." "The whole matter may be summed up in one sentence," says one of the authors whom I have already quoted, "GOD IS WELL, AND SO ARE YOU. You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being."
The adequacy of their message to the mental needs of a large fraction of mankind is what gave force to those earlier gospels. Exactly the same adequacy holds in the case of the mind-cure message, foolish as it may sound upon its surface; and seeing its rapid growth in influence, and its therapeutic triumphs, one is tempted to ask whether it may not be destined (probably by very reason of the crudity and extravagance of many of its manifestations[53]) to play a part almost as great in the evolution of the popular religion of the future as did those earlier movements in their day.  ...  The ideas of Christian churches are not efficacious in the therapeutic direction to-day, whatever they may have been in earlier centuries; and when the whole question is as to why the salt has lost its savor here or gained it there, the mere blank waving of the word "suggestion" as if it were a banner gives no light. Dr. Goddard, whose candid psychological essay on Faith Cures ascribes them to nothing but ordinary suggestion, concludes by saying that "Religion [and by this he seems to mean our popular Christianity] has in it all there is in mental therapeutics, and has it in its best form. Living up to [our religious] ideas will do anything for us that can be done." And this in spite of the actual fact that the popular Christianity does absolutely NOTHING, or did nothing until mind-cure came to the rescue.[55]
Whether you agree with this or not - I don't, in fact, with quite a bit of it - there are a few simple ideas that argue in favor of what he's saying:

  1. The human condition, even here today with all our riches and our lives made so much easier as a result, has not changed much in thousands of years.  We are all still subject to doubts, fears, inadequacies, addictions, etc.  The Seven Deadly Sins (to put it another way) haven't gone anywhere.  Failure is still a reality.  Loneliness is still a reality.  Poverty is still a reality.  Death is still a reality. 
  2. People are left very, very angry without spiritual help and succor, despite all those riches.  Take a look at any anonymous web forum to see the depth of the fury that's out there.  And there is nowhere to go with all this anger - no relief, and noplace that even pretends to offer it, other than the therapist's office.
  3. Is there anyplace that has seemed less like a place of healing over the course of its history than the church?
I'm going to end this now, because it's getting too long.  I will end by saying that I'm more convinced than ever that the church could - should - recognize its own message to be a source of healing of the mind and heart and spirit.  And, equally important:  there is, simply, no place else except religion that offers such a thing to anybody who wants it, free for the asking.   People should be beating down the doors to get in - and if they are not, it's because we're not offering them anything important.

More later - and, I think, back to the analysis of the Twelve Steps.  A.A., of all things, is a mind-cure if it's anything, and it's actually a healthier place on average than most churches.  We've got to do something about that, because most people won't go to A.A., even if it was designed for them - which it's not.   And A.A. was started by a crackpot Lutheran pastor, BTW.....


Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Selling Junk Bonds and Reading Lectures to Elephants: Robert Capon on Religion, Grace and Nose Slicers | Mockingbird

Selling Junk Bonds and Reading Lectures to Elephants: Robert Capon on Religion, Grace and Nose Slicers | Mockingbird

From Mockingbird blog:
A couple characteristically vivid quotes from Robert Farrar Capon’s classic Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus:

The world is already drowning in its own efforts as life; it does not need lifeguards who swim to it carrying the barbells of their own moral and spiritual efforts. Preachers are to come honestly empty-handed to the world, because anyone who comes bearing more than the folly of… the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:21,18) has missed completely the foolishness of God that is wiser than men. The wise steward, therefore, is the one who knows that God has stood all known values on their heads – that, as Paul says in 1 Cor 1:26ff, he has not chosen the wise, or the mighty, or the socially adept, but rather that he has chosen what the world considers nonsense in order to shame the wise, and what the world considers weak in order to shame the strong. The clergy are worth their salt only if they understand that God deals out salvation solely through the klutzes and nobodies of the world – through, in short, the last, the least, the lost, the little, and the dead. If they think God is waiting for them to provide classier help, they should do everybody a favor and get out of the preaching business. Let them do less foolish work. Let them sell junk bonds. (pg 242)

What role have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshiping, sacrificing) the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten.

The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade. The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Chirst died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.

The reason for not going out and sinning all you like is the same as the reason for not going out and putting your nose in a slicing machine: it’s dumb, stupid and no fun. Some individual sins may have pleasure still attached to them because of the residual goodness of the realities they are abusing: adultery can indeed be pleasant, and tying one on can amuse. But betrayal, jealously, love grown cold, and the gray dawn of the morning after are nobody’s idea of a good time.

On the other hand, there’s no use belaboring that point, because it never stopped anybody.
And neither did religion. The notion that people won’t sin as long as you keep them well supplied with guilt and holy terror is a bit overblown. Giving the human race religious reasons for not sinning is about as useful as reading lectures to an elephant in rut. We have always, in the pinches, done what we damn pleased, and God has let us do it. His answer to sin is not to scream “Stop that!” but to shut up once and for all on the subject in Jesus’ death. (pg 252-253)

That's good stuff; I do love Mockingbird, even when I don't understand what they're saying, really, or agree with a lot of it.

I'm an empiricist, without a doubt - and I suppose it hinders me at times. I don't really understand the point of trying to make everything make perfect sense, down to the last dotted iota; I don't think various contradictory ideas in the Bible can be harmonized - and don't really worry about this, either. I don't know why anybody does.

I've just come from reading the Wikipedia definition of "The Theology of the Cross," and find I don't really accept that in full, either - and again, don't know why I should have to.

I do know one thing, though - and as I've just come from writing elsewhere, it's the horse I'm definitely riding these days. And this is the thing I know: there is nothing so productive of energy and growth as admitting one's weaknesses and acknowledging one's problems. These things are the very elementary bases for recovery in A.A., which is by a long shot the most exciting, productive, energetic, and fascinating spiritual journey I've seen and been involved in in all the world and in all my life. There is and has been nothing like it.

For quite a while, I thought it didn't translate to non-addicts - but I'm over that now. And so I'm sort of "preaching the Gospel of preaching the Gospel" these days. I'm out there making claims that if we did this - if clergy and members of Episcopal churches would stick to the very basic ideas behind "the theology of the cross" - we would matter to people. If we would just admit our own weaknesses - and acknowledge that that's what we were there for in the first place! - we would be an irreplaceable lifeline in the world. We would be as vital - and as necessary to its members - as A.A. is to alcoholics.

It would be like this:

By way of contrast, the Christian church often creates an environment where people cannot really be open and honest about their struggles. It can appear that Christians have no besetting struggles, just “victory,” and the occasional assaults of the devil, but very few inwardly generated liabilities or recidivistic tendencies. The person in AA who denies these things is nothing more than a liar. To quote 1 John 1: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves.”

Imagine walking into a church where all who entered were asked to sign a waiver at the door that said: “I’m a sinner and by stepping into the room today I acknowledge that fact.” Ministry and church life would be tremendously more effective. Unfortunately, you can come into church these days and sign up for any number of identities: Easter/Christmas type, fanatic/Pharisee, sinner, middle-of-the-road, or whatever. In AA there is only the option of sinner.

To be weak is to be strong; to fail is to triumph. And at that point, how could we lose? We would be offering something fascinating and really utterly unique in the world - a path to energy, movement, and personal transformation of the most exciting kind. They would be beating the doors down to get in.

It's no good to want or try to be right or perfect; what's the fun in that? Where can you go? What do you have to look forward to? Nothing at all, in fact; you're stuck right where you are, forever.  (Unless you become as little children, you really cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.)

So I ask you: which path sounds like the more exciting and wonderful one?

That's
the horse I'm riding these days, and I don't care about all the rest of it.  I'm not interested in whether or not there's "free will" or in "irresistible grace" or in "justification by faith alone" - I don't have much faith most of the time, myself - or in whether or not people can do anything good at all; that's "over-egging the pudding," as they say in the Olde Country.  It's going way, way beyond what's necessary; it's thinking way, way too much.

No, I'm interested in offering people some way to get unstuck - to find joy in and engagement with life and living, and the potential for growth and change.  The rest is, literally, academic.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Hmmmm....

I've come to realize lately that in fact what's wrong with the church is that it doesn't have a program.

I went through the whole "deconstructing the 12 Steps" thing awhile back - I'm still not finished with it - but I'm beginning to see that it's a case of "not seeing the forest for the trees." It isn't a case of what the church does that's like the 12 Steps; it's a case of what the 12 Steps do that the church doesn't.

And that's this:  they give people a discipline to work through in an orderly fashion.  The church doesn't do this at all; it doesn't say to its newcomers:  "Listen, we found this group of principles that works really well in helping people 'lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in their fellows.'"  (That's another quote from A.A.)

No, the Church, lamely, doesn't do anything, really.  It hires a weekly speaker and a musician, and asks people to fork over some money.  Not really a formula for success, I'd say; no wonder it's losing members right and left and going extinct. 

Well, it's time to develop a program, I'd say.  And I think I should do it in reverse:  see how the 12 Steps can best be adapted to what the church is doing.  We know they work (although I'm a little worried the whole concept might be debased at this point, after 40 years of "self-help" industry promotions).

So that's what I'm going to do.  I think the "deconstructing" series might help - got to finish that - but I was really looking at the whole thing backwards....