(TRADITIONAL) REFLECTIONS ON THE CHRISTIAN PROMISE
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Happiness
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Each and every person desires happiness, it is the end, the ultimate state of being, that all of us seek; it is the only thing we actually desire for it�s own sake � happiness. Everything else we pursue we seek as a means to this end: power, possessions, money, sex, altered states � all sorts of things, pleasures and thrills. To be sure, the powerful, the rich and the famous are just as unable to find this permanent state of happiness as most of the rest of us; theirs is simply a more elaborate string of dead ends. We may think, on the one hand, that if we�ll all hit dead ends anyway, we might as well do so in style and variety, thus we naturally tend to envy those gifted with the most fame and fortune. Yet it also follows just as certainly that, if there is indeed a true path to happiness then weaving a more elaborate maze about ourselves will most likely make it that much more difficult for us to find it. So naturally, we ask, is there any evidence that people have indeed attained this end for which our nature is designed? What does it look like? It�s a matter of common sense that an acorn naturally seeks it�s end (it�s fullness, it�s end, is the oak tree) if it acquires the proper means it needs and thus does not die, but what is the oak tree state of the human acorn, so to speak?
To start with the first question, the ancient philosophers saw that human nature has basic inclinations, or desires, and that these things provide the framework within which our pursuit of happiness is guided. Mortimer Adler sums them up:
1.) "external goods...[moderate] wealth [etc.]"; 2.) "bodily goods...health [etc.]; and 3.) "social goods...friends and the society in which we live"[these are called the "goods of fortune"] ; and, finally, the fourth, which is the �goods of the soul: knowledge, truth, wisdom and moral virtue.�
Since we cannot rest in all of these goods at once, then happiness, according to this model, is a lifetime spent acquiring them. A good life defined in this way is like a good baseball game, it is not considered good until it�s over, it is a quality taken as a whole and it is never, at one moment, rested in, never enjoyed. What then, you may ask, is the difference between the glamorous life of, say, the filthy rich or the tyrant, and the good life propounded by the philosophers? The difference is found in the acquisition of wisdom and moral virtue, which are matters of our will; they are right habits in choosing the correct means which bring us inner peace, proper treatment of others, and appreciation of the beauty in the simple things around us. In short these right habits are the Cardinal Virtues. To paraphrase Adler, they are Temperance (moderating pleasure), Courage (withstanding pain and discomfort), Justice (that virtue which regards others insofar as we are not to interfere with their pursuit of happiness) and Prudence (habitual knowledge of when to apply temperance, courage and justice).
However, as psychologist Connie Zweig -- drawing upon the work of Carl Jung -- writes, �[w]e know� that, when an individual can survive as a separate person and the ego is stabilized, it begins to yearn for something [ineffable]�; this observation is, incidentally, an answer to Ayn Rand�s Objectivism which stops at the ego. Therefore someone like Aldous Huxley is justified, in principle, when he goes beyond this view to find �sanity� in the great sages of the past, people who not only lived a naturally virtuous life, but who taught and lived self-denial and nonattachment in order to attain the �ineffable�. C.S. Lewis comments on Huxley�s doctrine of sages, �Mr. Huxley expounds �non-attachment.� We cannot escape the doctrine by ceasing to be Christians. It is an �eternal gospel� revealed to men wherever men have sought, or endured, the truth: it is the very nerve of redemption, which anatomizing wisdom at all times and in all places lays bare; the inescapable knowledge which the Light that lighteth every man presses down upon the minds of all who seriously question what the universe is �about.� The peculiarity of the Christian faith is not to teach this doctrine but to render it, in various ways, more tolerable. Christianity teaches us that the terrible task has already in some sense been accomplished for us�that a master�s hand is holding ours as we attempt to trace the difficult letters and that our script need only be a �copy,� not an original. Again, where other systems expose our total nature to death (as in Buddhist renunciation) Christianity demands only that we set right a misdirection of our nature, and has no quarrel� with the body as such, nor with the Psychical elements in our make-up.� Huxley sees the common thread of self-denial within all the major religions forming the pathway to sanity, and the sages teaching this doctrine as the sane.
Traditional Christianity takes over the path of the philosophers and finds truth in the practice of the sages. It says of the natural virtues, yes, this is all true to an extent, but human nature desires something deeper than these natural goods, and it cannot acquire the moral virtue necessary to grasp this profound object which would, unlike natural happiness, satisfy us completely (including this scared desire for something earthly life cannot give) and satisfy us all at once. It likewise says of Huxley�s doctrine of sages, indeed, self-denial is an integral part of pursuing the object of our deepest desire, but humility is the root of self-denial, and the ultimate act of humility is the recognition that we cannot be good enough, of ourselves, to attain to spiritual union with this object: God. Unless we�re to hope for the complete obliteration of the self, then the only hope we have to become �rightly fashioned persons�, completely fulfilled persons, is in the truth of the central Christian doctrine of the Atonement. Let�s turn to Lewis, once again, to see why:
�� unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all--to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His nature, He has not.
But supposing God became man--suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person--then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being man. THAT IS THE SENSE IN WHICH HE PAYS OUR DEBT, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.�
In man�s pursuit of happiness, therefore, we have, in addition to the wisdom of the ancient philosophers and the perennial practice of the sages, the image of what our search for the �rightly fashioned person�, the person who has attained this end for which our nature is designed, should be: the Christian Saint�a reflection of Christ.
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Christianity, Sainthood, and the Three Ways
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A Christian is one who believes the claims of Jesus Christ and follows his commands (I�ll be more specific in a moment). A Saint is one who is so full of the life of Christ through faith, hope, and love, that he has a constant awareness of God, a spiritual fullness, and a heroic love for others�in a word, he has attained union with God. The journey from being an initial Christian convert to a Christian Saint takes place through the three traditional Christian stages of conversion. These stages begin in what is called the Purgative Way, continue on through the Illuminative Way, and end in the Unitive Way�the state of being of the Saint. There are also two transitional stages known as the Dark Night of the Senses, and the Dark Night of the Soul�the first lies roughly between the Purgative and Illuminative Ways, the second between the Illuminative and Unitive Ways, though we can drift back and forth depending on our progress.
Before continuing on let us back up a few steps in order to get a clearer picture of something important. I said earlier that we desire something deeper than what normal experience can provide. A closer look at the nature of this Sacred Desire is properly in order; it is something placed in all of us, and something recognized by all of us to greater or lesser degrees without regard to our own personal holiness. Thus Edgar Allan Poe, hardly a saint, can write, �The origin of poetry lies in a thirst for a wilder beauty than earth supplies"--clearly finding this sacred desire within himself. Or take the personal reflection of the famous atheistic philosopher (atheists deny God exists), Bertrand Russell:
"I am strangely unhappy because the pattern of my life is complicated, because my nature is hopelessly complicated; a mass of contradictory impulses; and out of all this, to my intense sorrow, pain to you must grow. The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain-a curious wild pain-a searching for something beyond what the world contains, something transfigured and infinite-the beatific vision-God.�
C.S. Lewis observes,
�The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject which excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy."
Lewis was, like Russell, an atheist. But, due in part to the realization of what this desire meant, he went on to link it with God, and later became a Christian.
�...the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given--nay, cannot even be imagined as given--in our present mode of spatiotemporal experience. This desire was, in the soul, as the Seige Perilous in Aruthur's castle, the chair in which only one could sit. And if nature makes nothing in vain, the One who sits in the chair must exist.� �C.S Lewis
The Author of Psalm 27 wrote, probably close to three thousand years ago, that the only thing which could satisfy him would be to �gaze on the divine beauty.� And fifteen hundred years ago St. Augustine, a man who pursued dead end pleasures until he converted to Christianity, said likewise:
�Late have I loved Thee, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new�Thou hast formed us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee."
The main focus of traditional Christianity, up until rather recently, was to pursue union with this secret behind all of our temporary desires�the �divine beauty�, through the Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive Ways. Nearing the goal (in the Illuminative Way) and resting in the goal (in the Unitive Way) of this pursuit was called contemplation, and once again I�d like to quote Huxley, �traditional Christianity�[held] it� axiomatic that contemplation [was] the end and purpose of action.� The �practice of the presence of God�, in the words of Brother Lawrence, was the goal of discursive prayer and action -- a �prayer without ceasing� as Scripture puts it, and as the author of the Way Of the Pilgrim found to be literally true. Father Thomas Dubay says (infused) contemplative prayer (to gaze on the divine beauty) reaches a point in the �transforming summit� where it�s a �constant divine awareness.� Beginning with a relationship with Jesus Christ, it is both regular prayer and action guided by the virtues that prepare the soul for God�s gift of contemplation, for a constant, blissful awareness of His sacred presence--the most fulfilling thing, the highest definition of happiness, which can be attained on this side of life.
I began this section by saying that a Christian is one who believes the claims of Jesus Christ and follows his commands. Mark 16, verses 15+16 records, �15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.� Believe in Jesus, be baptized, and the Holy Spirit will indwell your very being; all Christians believe this, and all agree on the first sense, the doctrinal formulation, of what it means to believe in Jesus called the Nicene Creed.
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty
Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.
We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us (men) and for our salvation he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was
buried.
On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures
he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
And his kingdom will have no end
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life,
Who proceeds from the Father (and the Son)
With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic [universal] and apostolic Church
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Christianity can be divided into three main branches: the Protestants, the Catholics and the Orthodox. The majority of Protestants would hold to the Creed above, as would any faithful Catholic, and, with the exception of the clause �and the Son� in the line about the Holy Spirit, so would the Orthodox. The original formulation of this Creed in the fourth century was the standard of Christian faith long before the Schism and the Reformation (before Christianity split). Preservation in this faith, and growth toward union with God, are achieved by the second sense of faith, that is, obedience. Matthew 28:20 adds, after baptism, these words of Jesus, �Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.� Among those commandments are things found in the Lords Prayer (like forgiving others), and the Sermon on the Mount (being humble, pure in heart, etc.). He leaves us, as well, His Church (to lead us into all truth), confession, communion, and, obviously, baptism. Prayer and the reading of Sacred Scripture are daily essentials for growth.
There are many prayers you, if you are a non-Christian, can use to begin your walk. For instance you can begin by saying something like, �Heavenly Father, I believe that you sent your only Son so that I may have eternal life and that I�ve begun to receive the baptism of your Spirit; I fully intend, with your help, to obey Christ�s commands.� You may also want to add the profession of faith of the Nicene Creed by saying �I� instead of �We�, i.e., I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty� etc. From here see the first and second steps in the essay Sober Inebriation. Next, find a church� seek to be baptized, or, if you were baptized when you were younger, seek to be confirmed. May the Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, be with you�
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