Quis Sum

There is a story I came across years ago about a Westerner who asked the Dalai Lama what he thought about self-hatred. "What's that?" the Dalai Lama asked his translator. He thought it may have been a mis-translation, as he was genuinely unfamiliar with the term. When the person who asked the question explained what she meant by the term--talking about the cycle of self-judgment, guilt, and unproductive thought patterns--the Dalai Lama responded incredulously, "How could you think of yourself that way?"

The way I often find this playing out in my life and mind today comes by way of comparison. As the old saying goes, "compare yourself to others and you become either proud or vain." Both are sinful states, and so should be avoided, and the best way to do that is to not compare yourself to others.

And yet what often happens is I will see someone well versed in philosophy or theology, someone more analytical and dispassionate than myself; someone in a good career in which they are able to provide well for their families because they majored in something marketable; someone who is private and reserved and slow to speak...and I think to myself, "why can't I be more like that? More like them?" I come face to face with my own character and flip it on its back, pinning it to the floor, and set to accusing, "Well aren't you a sorry excuse. Why do you have to be this way? You talk too much. You need to work on such and such. No wonder you're losing friends with how you are." So on and so forth.

The thing is, I'm not unique in this reasoning, I don't think; anyone can do this. No one can be all things all at once. St. Paul warns against such tendency to compare and envy with regards to spiritual gifts:

"Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines." (1 Cor 12:7-11)

He goes on to encourage the Corinthians that they are part of one body, though different parts. The gifts given are given as God sees fit and in accordance with his good pleasure, and that such comparisons between one another with regards to gifts is as ridiculous as saying the body should be composed of one organ only:

"Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body." (1 Cor 12:15-20)

Satan, the Father of Lies, is sometimes referred to as the "Great Accuser." This is a telling description, because when it comes to self-loathing and self-accusal, he is a master. To the extent that we allow ourselves to take part in in, we take part in his work.

I was thinking about all this while listening to Dr. Peter Kreeft, the formidable professor of Philosophy who converted to the Catholic faith from Reformed Protestantism, this morning speak in a recording in which he was asked who his spiritual heroes were. He mentioned both Aquinas and Augustine, and was quick to point out that Aquinas himself held Augustine up and referred to him more than any other figure in his writings and philosophy. The two were very different though, Augustine being more of a poet and Aquinas akin to a scientist. Augustine wrote with beauty, Aquinas wrote with the utmost clarity. Augustine refers often to himself and his past, while Aquinas has been described as a kind of angel looking down at a battlefield from above and telling you exactly what is going on and how the battle is playing out. But, Dr. Kreeft makes the point, "they are thinking the same thing. They are, as Chesterton notes, two opposites doing the same thing."

Now, I'm an Augustinian at heart. I tend more toward poetry than philosophy, towards the subjective than the objective, and towards beauty more than clarity. And yet it is the Great Accuser who plants the weeds of comparison, whenever I come into contact with great objective, rational, philosophical contemporaries and think, "why can't you by more like them, you lout? Why are you always writing willy-nilly with yourself as the subject? You're not smart. You're too passionate, too open. Shame on you." 

And yet, it is one of the great mysteries why God gives us the gifts, talents, personalities, and dispositions He does. The Devil will attack this good reasoning and good purpose by inverting it, through the thoughts I just described, to work against that great diversity God delights in. In addition to being a Great Accuser, the Devil is also a Great Homogenizer. He doesn't care who you are or what you do, as long as he gets you to turn away from God. Sin is boring, because it has at its root the same thing: a willing turning away from our Creator. He will use whatever means necessary to get us to do that, to loathe our very being and creation, because he hates himself and wants us to be like him.

It can be a very hard work to accept and love who God created us to be. I am not Augustine or Aquinas. I am not Padre Pio or John Bosco or Anthony of Egypt. I am Rob, and I have been created for a purpose: to love God, to know God, and to serve God. This is what I teach my eight year old son his purpose is as it relates to our Father God, our Creator, as it comes straight from the Baltimore Catechism. Sometimes we forget these basic fundamentals and need to revisit them, the "Beginner's Mind" of faith. What's good for an eight year old is not too good for us as well.

Because I still find myself in a more melancholic state these days, my cognition and outlook has shifted slightly, a kind of refraction that sees from a different angle. Sometimes this can have the benefit of tempering a kind of naive optimism, or bringing a deeper awareness of mental and emotional struggle. In doing so, I am often less judgey, more forgiving of others faults, because I see them so clearly in myself.  In that sense there are some benefits of this dampened state.

But to the extent I begin to hate myself because I am a foot rather than an eye, or a poet rather than a philosopher--well, this is a twisting of things by the Great Accuser to take the focus off the Creator and the gifts He has given us for His purposes. If he can get us to envy by way of comparison, or to encourage vanity by the same token, he has made headway in coaxing us away from the Source. As we move farther away from the source, the farther we are away from love, from warmth, from familial acceptance, and so we are set up for self-loathing, depression, and coveting.

We can't be who God has not made us to be. We can only be ourselves, and we will work out our salvation in fear and trembling wearing our own shoes, not someone else's. He has given us all we need to achieve that, but in accordance with those gifts that were meant for us. Every saint is unique, but every saint is also themselves, their best selves as it were. It's a good reminder I can so often forget. Be the person God has created you to be, and do it well. As St. Catherine of Siena said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”