BOTH AND
Who I am is the mysterious mixture of good and evil; thus I am a contradictory being. I don’t have to theorize this truth or prove that this contradiction is real. I just know. It is in front of me every day. As Paul confessed, I don’t do what I ought to do and I do what I should not do (my loose paraphrase of Romans 7). At the same time, evidence of the goodness in my heart surprises me from time to time. When I witness the kind acts of other human beings done to others, my good and kind heart responds in earnest cheer and joy. Joy in one sense is where my goodness intersects with others’ goodness. This goodness was given to me even before I was born, having been knitted in my mother’s womb. I am and do good because goodness has been given to me. I am also born in separation which we call sin. The evil in me is also enculturated by the very air I breathe and the systems of the powerful “princes and principalities of the air” that hold all humanity under bondage, masterminded by the devil himself.
In order to live my life well, I need to embrace both the saint and the sinner that are within me. It must be a constant reminder that I am both. When I swing from one extreme to another, I am off-kilter and lose sight of the subtle balancing that is required for true transformation. Perhaps the greatest gift of embracing both the good and the evil is the creation of the capacity to receive God’s unconditional love coming to us as grace. If I am all good and if I believe that to be true, then there is no room for God’s love to enter into my life. The good in me would naturally reject and betray my need for something absolutely and divinely good. If I am all evil and have my life as proof, I instinctively know no love and cannot accept anything perfectly good.
The trajectory of a transformed life is the internal maturity and external expansion of our goodness while learning from our sin to keep us humble and create capacity for empathy with humanity. The contradiction we all are under (if we are aware) serves as a welcome space of collegial and collective transformation of humanity. And if we are honest, we can experience deeper sympathy toward each other as fellow humanity and less judgmentalism because we know we all are contradictions. We can truly live out Jesus’ golden rule, “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.”
If we succumb to the game of comparison and judging which is really to say that we compare our best with somebody else’s worst, then we fall to the great scheme of the Devil. I like Richard Rohr’s paraphrase of French philosopher and historian René Girard’s definition of the scapegoat. Rohr says that scapegoating is the ability (and capacity) to hate ourselves by attacking others.
This past week, my wife and I drove our youngest, Brad, to Santa Cruz for his final year of college. Though his school is still not open for in-class learning due to COVID-19, he wanted to experience college life with his buddies in an off-campus apartment. The drive was supposed to be 5 hours and a half. I was enjoying the drive and the view since I have not driven far out of Pasadena much during COVID-19. I realize afresh that my soul needs vast open space. Lazy rolling golden hills (since it’s been dry, and I wondered maybe this was why people say “Golden” California) with occasional majestic oak trees dotted landscape particularly soothes me. (For those of you who care, I was traveling Interstate 5 north, cutting across on scenic Highway 46 through Paso Robles, a legitimate California wine country, to Highway 101 to Pacific Coast Highway 1 to get to Santa Cruz. Or at least that was my plan.) I missed a turn to take PCH 1 to the peninsula, as Santa Cruz sits on a coast, which cost us an extra 30 minutes. Only 30 minutes. But I was mildly fuming inside because I could not forgive my mistake. Then once we arrived at the address given to me, I noticed my engine was exhaling smoke as I parked as if my old car was gasping for air. I subsequently opened the hood to investigate (not that I would know what to do because I am not a handyman) and saw nothing to be suspicious about. But it remained a concern in the back of my mind. When I regained awareness that we arrived at the destination, I found out it was the wrong address. So I lashed out at Brad, making him feel doubly bad. After we arrived at the right address and unloaded, I gave Brad an apology. Minutes later, my wife (who has the superpower to see through me before I do) pulled me aside and told me plainly my apology was not good enough. I started to ponder but by this time, we were already driving back to our hotel in a farm town called Salinas, since I had a 6 pm zoom call with someone in Korea. I came to my senses and promptly called Brad, this time offering a real and right apology from my heart. Brad graciously extended his forgiveness, followed by heartfelt mutual exchange of love yous. I noticed my soul at rest after the phone call. So there it is. My latest humbling scape-goating experience. . .
Understanding and appreciating how the scapegoating system works, living my life well is accepting the very contradiction I am as a human being. Living my life well is also far from a selfish pursuit of happiness. Thomas Merton writes, “To live well myself is my first and essential contribution to the well-being of all mankind and to the fulfillment of man’s collective destiny.” I resonate with this statement. In fact, this is the only way we are invited to live our life, to live our life. That is the most essential and the only contribution to all mankind.
A few sentences later, Merton speaks of the mysterious and contradictory nature of humanity, “To live well myself means for me to know and appreciate something of the secret, the mystery in myself: that which is incommunicable, which is at once myself and not myself, at once in me and above me.”
It seems to, me, the key at least according to Merton, is awareness and appreciation without needing to understand everything.