A new diagnosis of my root sin…

I was back in my home state and surprised to get the call. I couldn’t imagine what it would be about. I was in the Texas emergency room one week earlier after air travel triggered debilitating imbalance so severe that I couldn’t even walk on my own. The doctor discovered something in the x-ray of my brain when I was in the emergency room. “You need a more in-depth review of this situation” she said. So, I began the long and incredibly stressful journey to learn about the out-of-place stuff in the middle of my head.

This sounds like a traumatic event, and it was. But, after suffering from inexplicable symptoms for so many years, it brought me a measure of relief. If we could determine the root cause of my suffering, there was at least some hope of a remedy. So, though some would see news like this as tragic, for me it was a blessing, the beginning of healing.

Parallel with the basic elements of this experience, I recently had a revelation about my root sin. Years prior, I had, with my spiritual director, diagnosed it as sensuality. This was primarily due to specific struggles or symptoms I was experiencing because of severe health challenges. At that time, most of my battle with sin had some connection to my physical suffering. Constant pain and other symptoms revealed much in me that was far less than Christ-like. By God’s mercy, the pain and other suffering has decreased dramatically and I have moved back into a more tolerable state of health.

Since that time I ended up working on a project with a holy and insightful priest. One day during a personal conversation I revealed my root sin to him and he replied, “I would have never guessed that sensuality is your root sin.” I was surprised because he had come to know me very well. I asked him, with some measure of discomfort, “How would you diagnose my root sin? “Pride” he said. My heart sank. “Pride” I thought, “this is an ugly sin.” “This can’t be my sin.” “I am far too reasonable and open to feedback.” “I am far too aware of my own sin and spiritual frailty.” I smiled at the foolishness of my reaction and I suspected that he was right.

So, I went back the the drawing board. I decided to dig in to see if he was right. I talked to my spiritual director and then I went back over the symptoms of each of the root sins. For about a week I took notes every time I acted in a manner that did not seem in keeping with the fruits of the Holy Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, etc.). As you might guess, to my dismay, I discovered he was right.

Though this was a painful discovery, it was also a powerful one. My root sin had not changed, but circumstances forced me to focus elsewhere for a time. This was not a bad thing in any way. The pursuit of holiness, even in this sideways manner, is always good. I was able to overcome, by God’s help, some behavior patterns that should not have been present in me, even when suffering. Now, I had to reboot my perspective, rework my program of life, and dig in again.

Sometimes we misdiagnose our root sins based on delusion and sometimes because of circumstances. In my case, being painfully honest, it was both. It was easy to focus on sins related to my illness, but, I also did not want to believe that my root sin was pride. In fact, I took some pride in my ability to overcome my illness in the way had! My struggles and ability to overcome challenges in this area seemed far more noble than a battle against other sins (pride, pride, pride). Interestingly enough, pride was the initial diagnosis of my first spiritual director. I rejected that diagnosis for many reasons. In summary, I was simply deluded and distracted.

The good news is that we don’t have to obsess over whether or not we have achieved a perfect diagnosis of our root sin. What we need to do is make an approximate determination and aggressively move forward in the battle against anything that keeps us from fully loving and serving God and neighbor. It is a painful and inexact process. However, the Holy Spirit will, in due time, always reveal what we need to know and when we need to know it as long as we seek and are open his leading.

As Saint Paul said in his letter to the Philippians, “I am confident that He who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”

Blessings to you and yours from the halls of the interior castle,

Theophilus

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part II

In Part I of this series we discussed the problem of spiritual delusion and darkness as a consequence of the lack of a God-ward self-knowledge. The purpose of this awareness is simply this: To reveal the sin(s) that hinder our relationship with God and that keep us from the fullness of God’s person, love, and provision for us in this life and the life to come. As well, we desire to respond to this great love by a life of devoted service to him and for him for all eternity. To do this, we need to identify the barriers to growth and pursue those things that propel us deeper into the heart of God.

In our first post, we established – through our brake light analogy – that that there are things we cannot know unless someone else reveals them to us. So then, how is it possible that we can discover these challenges within our soul on our own? Doesn’t “self” knowledge imply we have that knowledge within our grasp? The answer is no… and yes. A God-illuminated self-knowledge is often beyond our reach, but we can work to acquire it with the help of the Holy Spirit and others. In fact, only with this help can we ever hope to really grow to the degree that God desires for us.

So, what are the key elements necessary for one to begin the lifelong quest to understand ourselves in the context of God and develop the ability to route out those soul-tainting defects that hold us from fully loving and being loved by him?

Silence: The noise and relentless busy-ness of modern life is a blight on our souls and a favored tool of the enemy to drown out the still small voice of God. Often we welcome this evil ambiance in order to to hide from the thoughts and feelings that cause us pain and anxiety. As with substance abuse, hiding from our thoughts and avoiding the discomfort of quiet doesn’t solve anything. Similarly, ignoring the signs of a serious illness like cancer allows the disease to progress unchecked in our bodies. So too, our hidden (or not-so-hidden) faults promise the same result in our souls. Silence is one of the most basic elements necessary for us to come face-to-face with these issues, with God, to hear his voice, and see our way clear to healing and growth. In the classic Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis reveals a demonic diatribe (a senior demon on a rant to an apprentice demon) about the value of noise to the enemy of our souls. An important side note here is that when the demon is talking about music he is speaking about sacred music:

Music and silence—how I detest them both! How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell—though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express—no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise—Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile—noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end! We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth. The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end!

For most in modern society the enemy’s plan has worked. Between tweets, texts, telephone calls, TV, Internet, radios, computers and iPods, we wake up to noise, we are inundated with noise as we move through the day, we get in our cars and turn on the noise, we work with the noise in the background, we leave work with noise in our cars again, we return home to noise. Where in all this noise will we find God? How can we hear the voice of God when our hearts, minds, and hearing are constantly bombarded by the endless “noise” of modern life?

The truth is, we can’t. There is no way around this problem. We may limit the noise to those things compatible to our faith like contemporary Christian music or great programming like EWTN; however, regardless of the degree of piety or putrification we allow to occupy our souls, there is no way we can claim to hear God if we don’t first create space to listen to him in silence.

In Part III, we will explore exactly what we mean by silence and begin to identify ways we can incorporate it into our lives.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan

Self-knowledge and the spiritual life – Part I

How are the brake lights on your car? Are they working properly? I have an experiment for you. Go out to your car all by yourself and try to verify that they are working. Back already? How did it go? Did you cheat and do the exercise in your head? That’s ok, let’s just go with it. The bottom line is this; in the normal course of life, you would never know that one of your brake lights was broken unless someone else revealed it to you.

The same is often true in the spiritual life. Because of the effect of concupiscence (our inclination to sin) we are prone to self-deception and to fall prey to the lies of the world and the enemy of our souls. These deceptions are often subtle and have worked their way into our persons in such a way as to blind us to them. Our natural adaptation to ways of living, thinking, and acting become second nature and thus they disappear from our sight because they are familiar to us. These hidden faults might come from a series of choices we have made in life or they can come from patterns of behavior common to our families of origin. They can also come from the habitual clinging to imperfections or venial sins that provide some temporal benefit to us. Regardless of their source they are moral defects or patterns of sin and spiritually destructive behaviors that we are often unable to see without the help of others.  They are the broken brake lights that significantly increase the probability of a serious spiritual crash.

How can we be sure we are driving through life with all our lights functioning properly? The answer lies in a life-long commitment to spiritual practices that foster self-awareness. St. Teresa of Avila and St. Catherine of Siena, along with many other spiritual doctors of the Church, strongly emphasize the necessity of a God-centered self-awareness in order to have a vibrant and healthy relationship with God and others. St. Teresa says this about self-knowledge and spiritual development (in the second chapter of the First Dwelling Places of Interior Castles):

Knowing ourselves is something so important that I wouldn’t want any relaxation ever in this regard, however high you may have climbed to the heavens… So I repeat that it is good, indeed very good, to try to enter first into the room where self-knowledge is dealt with rather than to fly off to other rooms… Rather, let’s strive to make more progress in our self-knowledge. In my opinion we shall never completely know ourselves if we don’t strive to know God. By gazing at His grandeur, we get in touch with our own lowliness; by looking at His purity, we shall see our own filth; by pondering His humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble.

Regardless of the level of delusion we suffer, the challenge is that if these patterns of deception find a home deep within our makeup, it is very difficult to diagnose and then effectively deal with them. Failure to deal with them can result in serious spiritual calamity. The good news is that the beginning of freedom comes with the beginning of self knowledge. The beginning of self knowledge comes through the exploration of God’s love and provision for us. In our next post, we will explore a few ways we can uncover these challenges hiding in the dark corners of our souls that hinder the great love and peace that God has prepared for us in Christ.

Seek Him – Find Him – Follow Him

Dan