The more I know, the less I understand.

All the things I thought I knew, I’m learning again.

Don Henley, “The Heart of the Matter”

 

“They’ll stop when change becomes less uncomfortable than the status quo.”

My students have heard me say some variation of this from time to time, which I am convinced is an accurate commentary on human nature. It came out of my mouth most recently in a conversation with one of my son’s teachers as we mused about how the lad and his classmates had procrastinated on a major assignment. How do you get them to stop doing that, he wondered. Well, I responded…we don’t. We can nag them until their ears bleed, but nothing will change about how they handle their responsibilities until procrastination hurts more than the alternative. All we can do is put the facts and the options before them and invite them to embrace alternatives to the status quo.

Of course I’m not really talking about procrastination, or even about my son or my students. I’m talking about who I see when I look in the mirror, and whether I’m more uncomfortable with what I see or with what is required to become who I want to be. That struggle partially explains why my orphan blahg has been silent for so long. That, and I still haven’t convinced myself yet that blahging isn’t a breathtakingly pretentious exercise. Mostly I’ve been alternating between having nothing to say, having no idea how to say what I do want to say, and having too little time to figure out how to say it well.

Hiatus

As I have said here before, writing is not an easy task. To do it well (as I demand of myself) there has to be sufficient time, energy, and inspiration; rare is the day when I have more than one of these, let alone all three. And, contrary to well-intentioned—but unintentionally aggravating—belief, my life doesn’t slow down just because the students leave campus for the summer. The school year is very busy, but I’ve probably put in more hours in the month since graduation than in the six weeks prior. So time has been an issue.

Having something worth saying, and knowing how to say it, also requires discretion I’m not always certain I possess. The fact remains that I’m a reluctant blahgger. I should be careful not to paint with too broad a brush, because there are many thoughtful people out there contributing good insights through what they write. But so much of what I see crossing my newsfeed amounts to “you’re doing it wrong” scolding that makes me feel like a drive-by victim even if I’m not the intended target of the lecture, and I admittedly let that sort of thing depress me more than I should. But I very much don’t want to be that or do that myself.

All I can really do is use my “I” statements and own my own stuff. Which leads me to another blahgging irony: Talking about myself seems so self-centered, and I don’t want to do that or be that either. But the story I want to tell is really about escaping myself. This is the journey I’m on. This is what I’m learning. This is how I’m changing. And I’m slowly learning that my story is not so unique.

So…I’m going to write about what I’m learning and how it is changing me. If the choices I’m making and their consequences are helpful or interesting to you, I am glad. But while I invite you to explore these weird, strange ideas rattling around my brainpan with me, I have no desire to impose my choices on you. The invitation implicit in my blahgging is that you may do—or not do—with my story what you see fit.

Escape

Once upon a time, when hair metal bands roamed the earth, escaping myself meant abandoning the moral foulness of former habits and behaviors. But today escaping myself means repenting of my goodness. And that probably sounds strange, especially since I have no desire to revert to what I once was. But I’ve come to recognize in myself an unintentional, accidental Pharisaicism that is no less toxic for being well-intentioned, because it is both self-congratulatorily smug and woefully insufficient

The problem is not a desire for moral excellence. Jesus was morally perfect without being a Pharisee. The problem is the motivation that lays behind the pursuit of moral excellence and the attitude that accompanies it.

When my pursuit of moral excellence becomes a means to an end, legalism lies in wait. A common example is the fear of doing wrong only because of the unpleasant consequences of the wrongdoing; there may be a recognition of what is higher and better, but there is also an accompanying resentment that says “but I’d do it if I could get away with it.” On the other side of the same continuum is morality as a meritorious duty, one which seeks the favor of God and the admiration or respect of people. The root of this morality is not merely selfish, though it is certainly that. It is also contemptuous of the grace of God which alone makes me right with Him.

While both of these attitudes may serve a short-term purpose to more completely teach me the truth God invites me to embrace, they have value only as I pass through them to Grace. Failing this, they hold me short of full participation in the freedom, maturity, and love of Christ. They inevitably snare me in a legalistic attitude towards God, in which I presume that I am owed reward or recompense on account of my own efforts or goodness, and judgmental attitudes towards people who fail to live up to the standards I inconstantly apply to myself. Both invoke the word Grace but fall far short of the mystery and paradox that Grace truly is. They only masquerade as Grace, but are subtle enough and convincing enough to keep me unaware too long of what I have unintentionally become.

And learning to perceive this vital distinction has been my story for the last few months and years. In some ways, it is nothing I haven’t known. But there’s a difference between seeing and perceiving, between knowing and understanding, between watching the game and being on the field. So many things I’ve known incompletely for so long are coming into clearer focus…but the more I know, the more I recognize that my understanding is still growing. I have a lot left to learn and a long way to go. And perhaps the strangest part of my recent journey is the contentment I have found in that. It is comforting to know I don’t have to be perfect, and even more comforting to know that God alone is.

Monkery

A lot of what has shaped my understanding in the last three years is reading monastic literature from the first few centuries of the Church, particularly the Institutes and Conferences of John Cassian. It is quite the intellectual and spiritual exercise to contextualize the principles you find in such reading to the life of a married guy living 1600 years later and half a world away.

But what the monks have been teaching me are insights into how to keep my motives and attitude in  proper tension so I can live fully in the power and paradox of Grace. The alternatives are legalism on the one hand and moral recklessness on the other, and neither is a status quo I’m willing to accept any longer. The key is to understand why I struggle, succumbing to either temptation (perhaps without even realizing it) or moralism rather than living in the healthy tension of Grace.

That’s the outline of my story. Time and energy permitting, I’m going to try to lay it out a piece at a time over the next few weeks, so I invite you to check back each step along the way.

 

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