Eyes and ears to see?

11 "But my people would not listen to me;
Israel would not submit to me.

12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
to follow their own devices. Psalm 81:11-13 (New International Version)

How often have we scratched our heads because someone was denying a (to us anyway) obvious truth? Now, perhaps I am more into the demands of truth than some, but I have always believed that denial of the truth was a willful act. Someone who did not hold themselves to the standard of their rhetoric was in my mind nothing less than a liar. "Say what you mean and mean what you say" was my unofficial motto.

But a funny thing happened on my way to righteousness. I was forced to note in my own life those instances where I too failed to live up to my own rhetoric. It seems that much of my life (ok most of it) has been spent bending my behavior to my will with only moderate success. The rest seems to have been spent bending my will to God's as revealed in and through His Church. This last part is perhaps the hardest because it involves humility and that has just never been my strong suit. To be honest, humility is for me a total gift from God because it just doesn't seem to be a foundational part of my temperment.

In a certain way, this only reinforced my belief that failure of others to own up to their mistakes or act in accord with their stated values was willful. Because I am always aware of where I was failing and I am always aware of where I was elevating my will above God's. But lately, I have come to view this awareness as not any ability on my part but rather as a gift from God. It seems that most people do not have that self-knowledge and this is not a deficiency or disability on their part.

But what about the cases where the truth is made manifest? For example when someone makes a good argument for faith, or perhaps more mundanely, when your debt or weight indicate an obvious lack of temperance or prudence? Now, when I say I see my failures and strive to bring them in line with my will, I do not want to give the impression that either the decision to change or the process of change is easy. It is not. First, it requires meditation on the failure and a request that God illuminate the error. Our paths in gaining virtue are as individual as our particular vices.

So first we must understand the vice behind our failure. (mind the weight example is for me, for many being overweight is just a health issue and has nothing to do with the state of their spiritual lives) The narcissist cannot make it past this stage because it requires admitting our weakness and fault. This is perhaps where many in our current society get lost. They look at themselves but not with the idea of finding ways to grow in holiness, but rather they look to see what they desire.

So acknowledging failure is a stumbling block for many, including myself. But it is better to be looking for failure when the failure is small than to wait for God to hit you upside the head with His call to lead a holier life. God never stops calling us, but our ability to hear Him is lessened every time we hear his call to grow in holiness and say "not today".

It becomes harder for us to stay on the narrow path because sin decreases our ability to percieve reality as it is and ourselves as we are and thus decreases our ability to act prudently toward a wise end. Perhaps it is the Good that we become blinded to. Maybe we become so enamored with attaining a percieved " good" that we willingly persue that good in an evil manner, excusing our behavior by citing our good intentions. As the proverb has it, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. However we prefer to assert our own will over God's, the fact is that as we do so, the path we are on widens. And we all know where the people on the wide path are headed.

Because we are intellectual creatures, we must operate within reason, which informs and upholds our faith. But reason can be clouded. Hence in order to be free, we must control our passion through our correct use of reason (fortitude, temperance) Not until we understand this does the idea that freedom consists in the freedom to make the correct choice, rather than the commonly held belief that freedom consists in the freedom to make the choice we want to make simply because we want it and without any constraints put upon us by the necessity of having a "correctly informed world view".

I think that bending our will to God is perhaps the harder part of conversion. But if we don't, we risk hardening our hearts. Every time we say "I know better than the church" or "the Church is out of touch or doesn't understand", we put ourselves ahead of God. Docility is a lost virtue, but one that is desperately needed in our age of hyper individualism. Perhaps a mistake has been made in this or that doctrine, but I am willing to bet that 99.99% of the time, such claims are a cover to hide our failings. To paraphrase Jesus: it is much easier to see the error in someone else than the error in our own lives.

So the next time you feel that you are wiser than the Church or upset at some of her teachings, consider that it may be God calling you to greater understanding, but more likely, it is just an excuse.

Stay on the narrow path and if today you hear His voice, harden not your heart.