The Wrong Sort of Saint

There were many thoughtful responses and questions left in the comments of my last post. We could have several interesting conversations around them, especially about the Original Sin bit. Kate wrote a very good post about one take on original sin. Reading her post will probably give some further context to this one. I did want to clarify that when I said "I backslid into a steaming pile of original sin", I meant that I backslid into my old thinking about original sin. These days, Kate's conception of it is much closer to the way I feel.

But a comment of Liz's called out to me, and I've been sitting with it a bit:

it is hard for me to get a sense of how much you truly lament your plain-dress (in which case, you may wish to test the good order of laying it down) and how much you are just having fun

It startled me, because I didn't mean to give the impression that I lament my plain-dress.

The question that was disturbing me in my post wasn't so much the question of "Oh gosh, must I be so drab?" but a much bigger and older one: how much of becoming "good" has to do with transformation, and how much has to do with becoming your authentic God-created self? And are the two mutually exclusive? Are we supposed to replace ourselves with God? Scoop out the juicy Amanda-Pulp and pack in the Christ?

It is not I who live, but Christ in me

My current leaning (not necessarily leading) is to remember that we are all in the image of God, and to take that very seriously. Each of us posesses a unique and irreplacable reflection of God. I know that God is One, and that God is Infinite, and all of the billions of differences in every thing on the planet are still not enough to show all of the facets of God.

But we're supposed to try, and that's what we're here for. Being faithful has to do with being true to that facet of God it's been given to us to reflect.

Grey Jumpers vs Rainbow Socks sounds a bit silly in the context of these important questions. But of course, plain-dress is supposed to be the outward sign of an inward process. The process of becoming Godly.

My old pattern for being a Saint was very limited. There was a particular template, and my job was to pattern myself after that Master Copy. I felt that to become a faithful servant of God meant trimming away all the parts of myself that didn't fit the template of "Godly".

I've also been thinking of, God help me, Harry Potter.

"Dark and difficult times lie ahead, Harry... says Dumbledore "...soon we must all make a choice between what is easy, and what is right"

Well, duh, right? There are lots of times when being good is difficult. It's not easy to keep from snapping at highly irritating people, but it's right. It's not easy to give up your spare time to serve a good cause, but it's right. There are a lot of challenges inherent in doing the right thing. So when the stubborn or lazy or irritable parts of me get in the way of doing right, then it's proper to struggle against them, and "trample and thunder down" all that is contrary to good.

When it came to the question of plain-dress, I started re-examining this policy of trampling down and sanding off and trimming away. As I said in my post, I used to feel "That there are parts of me that...that must be stripped away, pruned, weeded, burned" and I realized that I'd been reverting to that idea. And not only that, but I wondered if I was taking the weeding and the sandpapering too far, trying to get rid of parts of myself that weren't sinful or wrong, but that just didn't necessarily fit this outside pattern I was holding myself up to.

Maybe I've been being too literal about the sorts of ways I am supposed to emulate the Master Copy. Maybe I've been confused about just what the Master Copy is. Maybe I've been looking at a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy, and things have been getting blurred.

I've been savouring this John Woolman quote.

"As Christians all we possess are the gifts of God...to turn all the treasures we possess into the channel of universal love becomes the business of our lives.

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about why I do the things I do, thinking of Aristotle, and how he said "virtue" is found doing a "good" thing because it is "good" and for no other reason, which of course begs the question of what is "good", and automatically it becomes a bit self-indulgent and time-consuming after a while, sorting out the sheep from the goats. I am tired of trying on this or that second-hand set of ethics, which will supposedly help me judge what is good or what is virtuous or what is Godly. And whenever I sit in worship and ask God "is this-or-that "good"?" I get the same question in response, every time "Is it loving? Does it further the cause of Love?"

When I've examined my behaviour and my belongings in the past, I've been examining them against these outside measures of "good"...which ever measure of Good I happen to be nearest. Is this Baltimore Catechism Good? Is this Secular Humanist Good? Is this Pragmatically Good? Is this Liberal Conservative Hicksite Plain Quaker Good?

And each of those "Goods" have had large dollops of Loving in them, and in the barest essentials, a lot of the "Goods" have been the same in each case.

But when it comes down to things like choosing the colour of my socks or the length of my hair, I could get a different answer from anyone's set of ethics. And when it begins to seem as though applying the question "Is it loving? Does it further the cause of Love?" is ending up with a shrug, I start thinking: "Well, then why do I feel guilty about this? Is this something that I need to prune out of myself so that I can be more like God?"

I think, well, maybe it's that I'll be more humble, and that will make me more loving.

Maybe.

I think, well, maybe the time I spend thinking about my socks will be better spent loving people.

Maybe.

And then I think, well, maybe I am just trying to cut myself to an outside pattern for reasons that have nothing to do with love.

Maybe.

I've wondered about the difference between ego and individuality. I've read about "losing yourself" in God, about being immolated by the Spirit until there is nothing left of you but God. And I've wondered about the deeper meanings of these ideas. How much has to burn away before it's just God? What exactly is it that remains?

All we possess are the gifts of God

I don't want to sound like I'm haggling with God..."You can have this, but I want to keep that. You can have that, but then I want two of these..." because it's not that at all. Turning all of my treasures into the channel of universal love probably doesn't mean destroying or obscuring or defacing them. If all I have is from God, then what am I doing taking a power-sander to it? As Kate said:

God does not want you to be smaller or less than you are now, but more, and larger.

Can it be that some of the things I've been trying to hack away at are the very things that God gave to me to be put to use in the service of universal love?

And of course...I'm not really talking about socks here. I'm talking about the possibility that one of the reasons I struggle so much in my spiritual life has been because I've been working against what I've been given, contorting and distorting myself into a pattern for the wrong sort of Saint. And maybe that does absolutely nothing to make me more loving. Maybe when I try to diminish myself, I'm diminishing the God in me.

In the meantime, the smaller plain-dress question is pretty moot. I'm not in the market for anything new, and the plain and not-so-plain clothes that I have are serving me well. It wouldn't be loving for me to own any more than I already do.

I'm also giggling because I was mocking myself a little about "precious precious unique little snowflake" and then, envisioning myself trimming all sorts of bits off myself to fit each set of ethics, I thought of the paper snowflakes I used to make as a kid. I'm sure there's some exhausting illustration in that which completely contradicts all I've just said. :)