October, 2005:

Thank God this dry and challenging patch has passed, and at the strangest time. This is due in large part to my shutting out of certain conservative-legalistic influences under which I have been toiling lately. It has been a discipline to resist engaging them but it has been an endeavour that was both necessary and fruitful.

These were not the villains I would have expected to be taken by. A year ago, in a time of what I now see was spiritual overconfidence, it seemed that I was indestructible. I guess in a spiritual sense, knowing in whose bosom my spirit is held that’s true – but I found that it didn’t mean I couldn’t be wounded.

The last 8 – 12 months have been months filled with small lessons from which a number of bigger-picture lessons have been born. The danger of spiritual overconfidence should not be underestimated. I grabbed a bit further than I could reach and what I pulled down, what was on the shelf that I could not see until it was coming down at me, pinned me to the floor for a while.

My adversaries were more prepared than I expected them to be; I wasn’t over-matched, I was under-prepared. My preconceptions misled me, having heard of the surface of their shallowest convictions from even shallower informants. I give them credit for this preparedness, although I have come to believe it is a misdirected effort on their parts. There are things they detest, and while their protests may have false foundations, those foundations are completely reasonable in their minds and exclusively believed.

The strategy of these groups (in this case what I would describe as conservative neo-Anabaptist), of most groups of a controlling nature (I could just say “cults” and save myself the keystrokes but…) is to pick certain authors and teachings and a build a theory of a thread running through them that unlocks the door to “what they were really trying to say”. And you can include biblical authors and passages in that pool of resources.

They will claim that they are “the Remnant”, the only remaining trace of true Christianity on the earth. They then proceed to shield their adherents from the full spectrum of Christian historical thought at nearly any cost while presenting selected passages of Christian thought in such a way that it appears to support their premises.

Once the new follower has been so misled, he or she is told that even the investigation of opposing views is an invitation to spiritual corruption. They are then in a trapped in a position with few escape options other than chewing off the leg or arm by which they have been ensnared. So when they come away, if they come away at all, they come away wounded or impaired or both.

Not to worry though, the one who heals our wounds and clears our impediments is waiting with open arms.

I pulled myself from the wreckage this week – I just decided one day to stop the misery and I did. I know I’ll have to keep making the same choice on a smaller scale every day for most of the winter but this week I made good on an opportunity to fight back.

The previous month is not without value; my hunger is restored, and I’ve seen my darkest parts again and tended to them. The bleakness is overwhelming and seems to be without value when I’m in the middle of it. I feel nothing – not dread, not a particular sadness, not hope, not desire – just nothing and an inability to do anything about it. I know it has something to do with the time of the year, diminished sunlight hours, and a change in my schedule from moderately active to borderline couch potato, but the biggest factors seem to be chemical and/or psychological. If I do feel anything it can only be described as a dread or a bleak hopelessness, and none of it circumstantial. Things can be going just as well or poorly as they were the day before and I can, without notice be alternately elated and desolated.

Now, the sharp cookies among you are thinking that I’m contradicting myself – I’m saying this depression comes without warning and overwhelms me but then I tell you that I pulled myself out of it this week. Well, both statements are true. I will try to explain…

It is an act of will. It starts with the act of acknowledging I have a will and that I can control it. I think the call to response and responsibility is the most beautiful thing I have learned so far in my exploration of Catholicism. God reaches out, but I must reach back. He respects my personhood enough not to force me to love him.

Sometimes I think I share my dark experiences with too many people, some of whom take it as an invitation to “witness” to me, thinking there is something behind these dark clouds that I am not revealing to them and not admitting to myself. They expect to see a mass of unwashed laundry, lying in a pile waiting to be cleaned. My laundry is clean; it just doesn’t fit me sometimes. They seem infinitely perplexed by this turn of events and can’t understand why I refuse to snap out of my slumber, as if it was as easy as responding to the morning alarm.

To have every shared weakness simplified by pointing to my inability to “claim the victory that is already won in Christ” frustrates me to the point of anger (How do I determine whether it is righteous anger or not?). These constant, impersonal responses do nothing but ensure that there will be no future such disclosures on my part.

I understand that these things are as beautiful as roses in principle, but in practice, unless you only admire those roses and do not touch or tend to them, there are still thorns to contend with and dirt on both your hands and your knees. Believe what you will, the gap between principle and practice will always exist because we are human and viciously inclined to choose ourselves.

You can believe the truth that we need never to sin again, that Christ has and will always make a way of escape available when we are tempted, but if you believe it in such a way that you are plunged into the depths of inconsolable remorse each time you sin, you will not only damage your faith, you will consign yourself to uselessness.

Acknowledging that we WILL sin is neither an excuse nor a pardon for sins we have committed or will commit. It is only facing up to the reality of our selfish humanity. I have been chastised for acknowledging these facts and accused of taking sin too lightly. I will confess that the charge of taking sin too lightly was not without grounds and there would be ample evidence for a conviction, but I am not afraid to learn from those with whom I disagree on many other points and so I have attempted to correct this error.

But never again will I live under the system of digging up the guilt of past sins if and when those sins, for reasons of my selfishness, re-enter my life. That added guilt is the surest way to make the path steeper and rougher than it was intended to be.

So I carry on with these friends in platitudes, maintaining my distance and no doubt exuding a snobbish vibe, but its for my own good, and theirs, but mostly mine. Constant and illogical disagreement is extremely frustrating and a drain on my intellectual and spiritual resources. This is not the same path of relationship on which I originally embarked but when you refuse to let roadblocks impede your progress you’re bound to find yourself in the mud sometimes.

Other times you find yourself on a good solid road that wasn’t even marked on your map. I feel these encounters have damaged me, and I’m not entirely sure that this damage is not irreparable. It has buried me deeper in both my faith and my depression, but believing that all things work for good I will trust that the deepening of my faith will remain while the deepening of my depression will not.

COMMENTS:

Shona said…

mike,

what you write is beautiful… something inside me cheered at some of your points, and paused a little longer at some of your other points… i am contemplating and chewing on what you have written… hopefully enough to have something to email to you later on. “some advice for the road” HAHA just kidding!!! :) i wish you joy in the journey…

Josh said…

You’re an accomplished writer. I’m pretty sure you could make a topic on paint thinner seem interesting enough to read through. I can identify with the seemingly spontaneous bouts of depression, although I would imagine we have different methods of dealing with it. I’ll e-mail you the rest.

Eric said…

Hear, hear! It is a season you speak of, but I have come to identify it not with the weather or the shortening days, but with the spiritual climate of the times. Something big is brewing. What you’ve struggled with, I have, my co-workers have, other bloggers I read have…

Madeliene L’Engle has a book of poetry she called “Weather of the Heart” and I think that phrase – whether she intended it to or not – describes some of what you describe here. Sometimes our hearts are stormy, and it isn’t just because we haven’t claimed victory. Sometimes its because the reality is that the victory we search for is harder to come by than some would have us imagine.