Tag Archives: Grace

Trump as an Instrument of the Good???

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The evangelical Christian support of Trump has been a sore point for me, given my background in fundamentalist Christianity and a continued emphasis in personal faith.  The evangelical trope, “The Lord has raised him up” to restore our country to greatness, (i.e. “Make America Great Again,”) has always been a really irksome bit of their rhetoric for me.  But, I now can certainly accept the notion of “the Lord’s” hand in “raising him up” as he has brought to the surface the full extent of our collective and personal shadow.  Here is a bit of wisdom from Francis Bacon (1561-1626) relevant to our collective unconsciousness’s intent in bringing this darkness to the light:

“We are much beholden to Machiavelli and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do . For it is not possible to join serpentine wisdom with the columbine innocency, except men know exactly all the conditions of the serpent; his baseness and going upon his belly, his volubility and lubricity, his envy and sting, and the rest; that is, all forms and natures of evil. For without this, virtue lieth open and unfenced. Nay, an honest man can do no good upon those that are wicked, to reclaim them, without the help of the knowledge of evil.”—Francis Bacon

This “knowledge of evil” is something we prefer to see in others, having a very human aversion to recognize that it lurks beneath the surface of us all.  This is particularly difficult for persons of faith to accept, especially the Christian faith, as being a “person of faith” often convinces one that he has “seen the light” perfectly and has clear judgment.  Trump has clearly shown all of us, even the whole world, just how impaired our judgment is; yes, even in the area of religion. W. H. Auden, in his narrative poem, “New Years Letter,” presents the, “Prince of Lies” as being a god-send as in spite of its evil intent, and often being necessary to, “push us into grace.” Trump is one of these opportunities for us if we could ever manage to pause that linear-thinking monstrosity of our collective Western thought and let it dawn upon us, in the words of Pogo, “Uh oh, we have met the enemy and he is us!” We could then be “pushed into Grace,” kicking and screaming every inch of the way.

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Here is a list of my blogs.  I invite you to check out the other two sometime.

https://anerrantbaptistpreacher.wordpress.com/

https://literarylew.wordpress.com/

https://theonlytruthinpolitics.wordpress.com/

Auden on Judgment and Grace

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W. H. Auden is one of my the most important influences in my life. He offers a stunning insight into the human heart and its complex machinations, including in the area of spirituality. I’m sharing here a paragraph from “The Sea and the Mirror,” in which he brilliantly describes the Christian mystery of judgment and grace, poetically juxtaposing the two so that we can see them as something other than mere concepts in reference to a concrete God in the sky, “out there” but something intrinsic to the human experience. You might want to use “google” with some of his terms and images. For example, that “wind-whipped cornice” and our wills “chucking” in our hands made more since when I did some research.

 

Yet, at this very moment when we do at last see ourselves as we are, neither cosy not playful, but swaying out on the ultimate wind whipped cornice that overhangs the unabiding void—we have never stood anywhere else—when our reasons are silenced by the heavy huge derision—There is nothing to say. There never has been,-and our wills chuck in their hands—There is no way out. There never was,—it is at this moment that for the first time in our lives we hear, not the sounds which, as born actors, we have hitherto condescended to use as an excellent vehicle for displaying our personalities and looks, but the real Word which is our only raison d’être. Not that we have improved; everything, the massacres, the whippings, the lies, the twaddle, and all their carbon copies are still present, more obviously than ever; nothing has been reconstructed; our shame, our fear, our incorrigible staginess, all wish and no resolve, are still, and more intensely than ever, all we have: only now it is not in spite of them but with them that we are blessed by that Wholly Other Life from which we are separated by an essential emphatic gulf of which our contrived fissures of mirror and proscenium arch—we understand them at last—are feebly figurative signs, so that all our meanings are reversed and it is precisely in its negative image of Judgment that we can positively envisage Mercy; it is just here, among the ruins and the bones, that we may rejoice in the perfected Work which is not ours. Its great coherences stand out through our secular blur in all their overwhelmingly righteous obligation; its voice speaks through our muffling banks of artificial flowers and delivers its its authentic molar pardon; its spaces greet us with all their grand old prospect of wonder and width; the working charm is the full bloom of the unbothered state; the sounded note is the restored relation.

 

(If Auden interest you, you might check out the following link: http://thepoetrycollection.wordpress.com/w-h-auden-1907-1973-in-sickness-and-in-health/)

 

(NOTE: One reader recently made some suggestions about technical improvements I could make on my blog. I am not very savvy re the technical dimensions of WP but am trying to learn and do appreciate any suggestions you might have.)

Humility Comes Hard to the Humble!

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By this, I mean that if you have been enculturated with “humility” then it is really difficult for Humility to penetrate your “humble” heart. Most pieties come to us first through enculturation and we subscribe to them because of  ego satisfaction that comes from a very basic need to fit in, to adopt the values of our culture. And this was the problem that Jesus saw with the Pharisees, reproaching them for the very premise of their “humility”, calling them “whited sepulchers.” And people never like having their premises, their preconceptions, questioned and those who deign to put them on the table are asking for trouble.

With this in mind, I don’t really think it is possible to be “humble.” For it is basic human nature to take ourselves too seriously, to defensively cower before the scrutiny of “otherness”, and fight vehemently against anyone who tries to challenge our smugness. But, I do think there is Humility in the world, and active in the human heart, and always seeking to find expression. I like to think of it as a process of “humility-ization” that is always underway, the process of bringing to our conscious awareness our shortcomings, including the “thoughts and intents of the heart.” But this process, this Divine operation, will not force itself upon us but is always there awaiting our willingness to examine our heart. And, if we are willing to submit ourselves to this scrutiny, from time to time we will be stung with sudden insight that our noble vision of ourselves are less noble than we wanted to assume. “O blessed be bleak exposure on whose sword we are pricked into coming alive,” said W. H. Auden.

There is a danger with this line of thought that I will be understood to mean that human nature is dark and evil. No, but this nature is “human” and therefore naturally prefers blinders rather than the light of the Eternal day. And, when we are “pricked alive”, we merely bleed “human” for a moment before we find the Grace to accept the insight and grow.. And, when we are so “exposed”, we might ask ourselves, “Why did I ever assume otherwise”? Maturity means learning to accept short comings as a routine part of being a human and being open to learning about them when circumstances bring them to our attention. Sure, we can then be overwhelmed and even grovel before god and man, but why? Why not just recognize, “Oops! There I go being human again.” And we can discover that there is Beneficence in this universe that forgives us, a Beneficence that I like to describe as “the Grace of God.” But this Grace is always awful at first in that we must first experience the “awful” pain of “self” awareness, recognizing that we weren’t quite as virtuous as we thought. So it is not that this Grace is “awful” but that our experience in being disillusioned of our pretenses is “awful”.

I think this is relevant to what the Apostle Paul meant when he cried out, “I will to do good, but evil is present with me.” He sincerely wanted to do good…and did a lot of good…but occasionally he would be exposed by God’s “discerning Spirit” and would see his shadow side at work. He would then bleed human for a moment, then ask himself, “Why am I surprised?” and then get on his feet again and resume his walk of faith. In the words of Auden, “We wage the war we are.”

 

The “Judgment of God” in Tandem with Grace

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The concept of “boundaries” did not exist in my youth, at least not in my culture. This concept is one of the most fundamental dimensions of life and I’m pleased to note that now, even in early grade school, teachers and care-givers introduced the concept and reinforce it frequently.

When I think of “boundary” I think of a limit. And it is that, but much more; it is even a beginning. Heidegger once said that boundaries are where the Essential begins its unfolding. He argued that without boundaries there could be no unfolding of the Essential. From his observation, I suggest that without the development of boundaries (which is basically the formation of an “ego”) the child would remain lost in a maze of reptilian-brain impulses, basically a brain stem with arms and legs. And we have all seen adults who are still captivated by this old-brain energy!

Boundaries give us the power of choice. They enable us to make decisions about our impulses and behaviors, determining which ones are appropriate, and whether or not the setting is appropriate for their expression. One simple, but powerful example is sexuality. When sexuality is rearing its ugly head (wink, wink) in a male’s teen years, if he has good boundaries he will know how and when to “make a move” on a winsome young lass, having confidence that his “moves” might be and ultimately will be successful in accomplishing this physical and emotional goal. If his boundaries are poor, he will be rude and offensive, often guilty of what we now call “sexual harassment”, and sometimes even sexual aggressiveness.

This subject is very relevant to the phenomena of “feelings” about which I recently discoursed here. If our boundaries are present and mature, we will own our feelings and embrace them, but not allow them to run amok. I suggest that if they do run amok, it is not actually “feelings” but instinctual energy without the modification of boundaries, that God-given gift of our forebrain. If, on the other hand there are too many boundaries and/or if they are too rigid, there will be still another problem—the person will be pent-up and restricted and often overly moralistic. These “overly moralistic” people will emphasize the “letter of the law” and will probably merit the description “judgmental.” They champion the “judgment of the Lord” over His grace.

Let me illustrate from the New Testament. On one occasion, Jesus cast the money-lenders out of the temple, chasing them with a scourge. On another occasion, at a community well, he encountered a known adulteress and offered her forgiveness, telling her to, “Go and sin no more.” According to the letter of the law, he should have quickly organized a mob and stoned her to death. But he exercised mature judgment and “chose” to offer grace, forgiveness, and love rather than brutal punishment. I suggest that on that occasion Jesus demonstrated “feelings” and “boundaries” working in tandem in a mature fashion. Neither one predominated and he “chose” to exercise grace.

It is so easy to exercise judgment when an offering of love is usually much more appropriate.

 

Addiction and Grace

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I recently posited the notion of addiction as an ersatz religion and alluded to the same in my last posting. But religion itself can easily be an addiction, a means of avoiding the very God that one purports to believe in so strongly. Or to speak more precisely, it is a way of avoiding the experience of God that one believes in so strongly. These people who immersed in the “letter of the law” rather than the “spirit of the law” and, of course, “the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.”

These people are ideologues and ideologues of any stripe are dangerous. And by that I mean hyper-conservative ideologues and hyper-liberal ideologues as they are cut from the same bolt of cloth. They believe in their ideas so much that they can’t understand the simple fact that the word (or idea) is not the thing, that words are merely pointers, or to borrow from the Buddhist wisdom, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

These spiritual ideologues often have memorized tons of scripture and are well versed in theological intricacies. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with “tons of scripture” or “theological intricacies.” The problem becomes when the whole of the individual’s life is a mechanical regurgitation of words and phrases, dogma if you please. It is to be immersed in the Christian variety of what Conrad Aiken described the “glib speech of habit, of well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” The bible is an excellent way of avoiding the Bible, god is an excellent way of avoiding God. And we must remember the biblical admonishment against “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

And I close with a relevant thought from Gerald May about the pervasiveness of the addictive process:

I am not being flippant when I say that all of us suffer from addiction. Nor am I reducing the meaning of addiction. I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word. Moreover, our addictions are our own worst enemies. They enslave us with chains that are of our own making and yet that, paradoxically, are virtually beyond our control. Addiction also makes idolators of us all, because it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another. (Gerald May, Addiction and Grace)

Sin, Words, and Grace

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“Speak words that give shape to our anguish.”  This poet recognized the power of the spoken word to provide a container to human experience, to impose a limit to what would be otherwise unbearable.  Another poet put it like this, “To name the abyss is to avoid it.” There is a profound difference in the raw, unmediated, emotional, pre-symbolic (pre-verbal) experience of the abyss and the concept of “the abyss.”

Let me share an anecdote from clinical work many years ago.  I had young male for a client who was very addictive and functioned very poorly at times.  He had no history of religion and church.  He stumbled upon the phenomena of “religion and church” and found himself attending a formal, non-evangelical church fairly regularly.  He told me several times of how comforting the liturgy was to him, particularly that portion where he acknowledged, by the spoken word, that he was a sinner.  As we explored this experience of his, he recognized that by conceptualizing that he was a “sinner” he was able to articulate a deep-seated feeling of “badness” and “darkness” and “shame.”  He was able to apply a limit or boundary to the experience.

There are some whose life is sin articulate.  Their life is raw, unmediated, unmitigated “hell on earth.”  And I’m not talking about “sin” as it is usually taught.  I’m talking about sin as the experience of being separated from one’s Source and separated in a radical fashion. It takes a quantum leap for the individual so confined to say, “I am a sinner” and in so doing escape that “hell on earth”,  that world which Paul Tillich described as “an empty world of self-relatedness.”

This is actually a conversion experience and is a quantum leap from one sphere of existence into another.  It involves the experience of discontinuity, what St. Augustine described at his moment of conversion as “that moment when I became other than I was.”  This is not simple compliance with a syllogism

Let me close with the marvelous sonnet of John Donne:

BATTER my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee,’and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due, 5
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely’I love you,’and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie: 10
Divorce mee,’untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Resting in His Grace

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A friend of mine in the blog-o-sphere has entitled his blog, “Resting in his Grace.”  I was reading his post this morning and the title itself spoke to me as a friend of mine is currently experiencing first-hand a powerful manifestation of this grace.  My dear friend, “KW” is dying, and he is doing so with the “grace of God” so clearly present in his life.

I should explain that KW and I grew up in a similar conservative religious environment in Arkansas.  Both of us did the obligatory “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” when we grew up and went to college and discovered there was a world outside of Arkansas.  But as we aged, we continued to have a spiritual dimension to our life and in recent years we frequently mused about holy writ from all religions, certainly including Christianity.  And in these final days and weeks of KW’s life, certain little tidbits of biblical lore have found meaning for both of us.

One of these tidbits was “grace” and I had the pleasure of sharing with him one of my favorite poems (The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry) which so beautifully conveys the grace found in the world of nature.  One line from this poem notes how animals do not “tax their lives with forethought of grief” and I think this is a fundamental dimension of grace.  We humans live day to day well aware that our life is very fragile and will come to and end sooner or later and only grace will allow us to not “tax our life with forethought of” that particular grief.

KW has battled this monster cancer for over a year now and he has wrestled with the full gamut of human emotions.  He has been very angry.  He has told me of throwing one huge fit in the backyard of his place, enraged at God. He has had “pity parties” from time to time.  He has been depressed on occasion.  But he has come to peace with his mortality and now he is comfortably ensconced in the grace of God.  It has been deeply moving to be part of this experience and this will help me immensely as I approach that point in my own life.

god’s awful grace

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Marianne Williamson quotes Aeschylus, “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

Now why would anyone describe God’s grace as “awful”?  The answer is that grace can come to us only when our ego has been penetrated and that is an excruciatingly painful process.   Mercifully, most of us get this grace piecemeal.