Quotable: Virtue in General

And this is a lesson about virtue in general:
Virtue cannot be confined to a community of the virtuous;
a person who is just solely with the just,
generous solely with the generous,
and merciful solely with the merciful
is neither just nor generous nor merciful.

- André Comte-Sponville

Five Years Later

Worth watching: Keith Olbermann's courageous and solemnly outraged rejection of Bush's patronizing 9/11 drivel, delivered Monday evening live on MSNBC. Find it here.

Human beings died in the 9/11 attacks. Grief is an appropriate response. As with death under any other circumstances, the lives of family and friends will never be the same.

But 5 years later, it's still 9/11 for much of the rest of American society. Why? What did we lose besides our naive presumption that we as a nation are exempt from the patterns of human history (which migh just include the inconvenient possibility of suffering and even judgment)? Our self-righteous sense of entitlement to trouble-free lives was bruised and we want blood. We speak in wide-eyed horror at the imminent danger to all Americans should our world police state relent for a moment, then faithfully go about our patriotic duties of frequenting the mall and filling our gas tanks, wallowing in self-pity about inconvenience in airports. How would we cope if we actually had to live with war every day?

Grief is not new to this tired old world. 9/11 was hardly the first or the worst tragedy to befall the human race. Where is our perspective? Where is our compassion? Where is it written that the lives of Americans are more precious than that of anyone from any other nation? Every day, children around the world starve to death in numbers ten times that of the total casualties of 9/11. Every day. (I hear starvation is a rough way to go. A plane crash or suffocation in rubble would be mercifully quick by comparison.) Probably by now 100 times as many Iraqi civilians have perished since 9/11 due to indiscriminate military tactics used by the American armed forces (including the use of land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium, all of which are human rights violations according to international law) and due to the shortages of food, clean water, and medicine caused by war and economic sanctions.

The 9/11 terrorists attacked our nation's most prominent temple of Mammon and the cathedral of Might-Makes-Right. They did not (as the American military often does) kill families in their beds in the middle of the night and reduce whole neighborhoods and cities to rubble. They caused no one to starve or die of treatable diseases. They rendered no one homeless. They did nothing to blaspheme Christianity's God. They hit us where it really hurts - in the symbols of the economic and military dominion in which our nation puts its trust.

Repentance, too, is an appropriate response to 9/11. As is shame for what the citizens of this nation by our complacent silence have allowed to happen in the aftermath.

At the Well

(These reflections were inspired by a friend’s post entitled “theology or therapy?” )

Theology: (my paraphrase) Who is God, and what does this have to do with me?

Therapy: The treatment of illness or disability. (Editorial commentary: Too often the suppression of symptoms rather than correction of root causes.)

I find that the more I focus on people and events outside myself, the less power my “issues” have over me. (Conversely, the more I focus on myself and my issues, the bigger my problems seem and the less I care about anyone else.) This of course does not mean that when my focus is outward I cease to need healing and repentance, and I do not mean to make light of anyone's pain or suggest that counseling is always bad. I just think we need to get over ourselves and move on to more important things. The irony here is that though the process may be uncomfortable and even painful at times, adjusting to a theology of self-denial (self-forgetfulness might be a better term) renders unnecessary most "therapy" as such.

In class last week we talked about how we Western moderns have lost our sense of the transcendent and can no longer conceive of anything bigger or more important than us. This may well be a major cause of the psychological malaise and manifold complexes that plague us as a society. When each individual considers himself or herself to be central to the universe rather than one small character in a much greater story, we succumb to anxiety at not being able to control the plot, become riddled with fear that things might not go our way, take misfortunes as personal insults, and get angry with anyone who is not "with the program" as regards our demands and feelings. Finally (and perhaps worst) we treat God as the great vending machine in the sky which when we feed it our small change and push the right buttons should grant us our heart's desires. We are perpetually disappointed. Abandoning awe, we fall prey to despair.

True humility is not feeling small and worthless; it is understanding one's place in the cosmos and putting God and others first. Dying to oneself requires sacrifice of some things but also frees us from the self-pity and self-loathing that consume so much emotional energy, damage our relationships, rob us of abundant life, and render us useless in our vocation of loving others. Instead of living in service to the Kingdom, we turn to entertainment and addictions to distract us from the gnawing void that comes with idolatry of the self. We end up tempted to conceit (the attitude that “I'm better and more important than everybody else and am therefore justified in belittling, neglecting, or abusing them and putting my needs first”), shame (the self-deprecating conviction that we are beneath God's grace), or a convoluted bipolar mixture of the two. The cult of "feeling good" replaces the call to be good and do right.

Our culture's obsession with self-esteem or lack thereof is caused by the unhealthy and very unbiblical idea that we can decide on our own what we are worth and that we should think well of ourselves regardless of our character and behavior. Pop psychology tells us that when this formula doesn't work there's something wrong with us (which is true) but fails to admit that there might be something wrong with the formula. Then it rules out the concept of sin and approaches every problem as a clinically treatable disorder. When our false and petty notions of self and reality don't sit well with us, we go running to the professional clergy for spiritual Band-Aids and Aspirin (or Valium) instead of giving ourselves over to the Spirit for the life-giving "open heart surgery" of refinement and transformation.

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well (John 4) exemplifies what Christian counseling should be. (Worth noting: Jesus’ disciples, the chosen, don’t ‘get it’, and the unclean outcast does.) He treats her with dignity, listens to her, and entrusts her with important truths, but also matter-of-factly confronts her with her past. In naming her sin and offering her a solution beyond herself (living water) he frees her from stigma and restores her to her community. Instead of becoming defensive about her tarnished history or insulted at the suggestion that she might need anything from this stranger, she responds with gratitude and awe.

God, grant us the wisdom to be so gracious with one another when giving and receiving counsel. Spare us from the temptation to superficial antidotes to pain. Teach us the humility to recognize our need for the healing water and food that only the Messiah can give. Amen.