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Well, what may be done about it? Rabbi Liebman, in the book I
mentioned, says that "the religion of the future should take a page
from the notebook of the psychotherapist." That is what I have been
doing this morning. If we can identify a condition, if we can truly
recognize it and not disguise it, we are already gaining power over
it. That is what the psychotherapist would tell us. We must gain
insight. We must know ourselves as we are. We must recognize
ourselves in our true character. Then we can do something about
ourselves. Forgive ourselves. And perhaps begin to like ourselves.
We can see how comical we sometimes are, how full of tricks and
stratagems, how far from the perfections we have tried to claim. And
we can get used to ourselves. Instead of living with a tortured
conscience, too sick to guide us, we can achieve a wholesome
conscience and learn to accept its directions. We can stop being
afraid of ourselves; cease using up our emotional energy trying to
pretend. We can be ourselves, but with an honest effort to be truly
better than we have been in the past. All this we can achieve, says
the psychotherapist, through insight. For with insight comes
humility. Not a false modesty, covering up an inordinate vanity, a
greedy self-conceit, that we do not want other people to know about.
But humility: seeing ourselves for what we are and knowing what to
respect in ourselves and what to put up with while we try to get the
better of it.
What this humility is in ordinary ways--not heroic ways, or
dramatically but just in common ways--has often been illuminated for
me when I have remembered an occasion, several years ago, in the
State of Maine, when I was driving through a sparsely populated
countryside and began to run out of gasoline. Just as I was getting
desperate I saw a gasoline pump half a mile down a hill and managed
to get to it. But by this time a thunderstorm was on its way. And
the old man who had been vending the gasoline took a look at the sky
and hurried off into a barn. Nor could I persuade him to leave its
shelter and come and sell me some gasoline--not until the storm was
safely passing down the river. Then he came out of the barn. Not in
the least embarrassed ar abashed, he looked into the car window and
with his face wrinkled up into a quizzical, whimsical sort of smile,
whispered to me--as though it were a confidence--"I'm not the
bravest man in these parts."
Well, he wasn't. And he would have been better off if he had been a
little braver. But just the same, he was no hypocrite. Nor was there
anything wrong with his humility. I'm quite sure that he'll never
have a neurosis--not even a complex. What he is, he is, and I rather
think he had done his best about himself. If a bolt of lightning was
going to hit the gasoline tank and blow up some city folks--why it
was something to watch, not something to share. He was "not the
bravest man in those parts." But he was something--he was honest and
humble and he didn't hate himself.
Perhaps, at his age, he ought to have achieved a little more than
that. Doubtless, he would himself have said so. But there are quite
a lot of people, both older and younger than he, and with far wider
opportunities, who are much below him in accomplishment. For they
are not honest--not really--nor humble --and they do hate
themselves. They pretend to forgive everybody else--but they don't;
and they don't forgive the world they live in, or the God who made
it. They don't forgive anyone or anything--not really: because they
can't forgive themselves.
All this, as we said a moment ago, is pointed up for us by modern
psychotherapy. Yes--but not alone by that. Valid insights are never
altogether new. And this one isn't.
Or what does this story mean: Two men went to the Temple to pray.
One a pharisee, the other a publican. And the pharisee lifted up his
voice and said, "God, I thank thee that I am not as other men. I
lead an upright life. I keep the commandments, pay my bills, give a
little to charity, never cheat, never gamble, never curse, never
drink. I am respectable...and certainly not like this publican
here." And the publican beat his hands on his breast, not daring to
raise up his eyes unto heaven, and cried, "God be merciful to me a
sinner!" Which of these two, asked the Man from Nazareth, went down
justified?
Let us take another look at them: these two. A pharisee--who hated
himself so much that he didn't dare to take his mind off his piety.
" God," something deep inside him was saying, "I hate the world, I
hate the people in it, I hate you and I hate myself." But he stifled
it by crying out his virtues that much the louder. Otherwise, his
prayer would have been something like this: "O God, I thank thee
that I am not as other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers--or
even as this publican. (I hate him! I hate this publican! He makes
me see what I am really like, just as full of temptations as he
is--and worse, because I'm cold and cruel and he isn't.) O God, I
fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all I get. (Why aren't you
grateful, God? Listen! I fast! I do without things! I give away my
money! Why aren't you grateful, God? I hate you. I hate you for
letting me seem so feeble, so stuffy, so pallid, so lifeless, while
I do all this for you!) O God, I keep the sabbath, I set a good
example, I follow the ritual . I'm not like other men. I'm
righteous. (Righteous! I hate other men. I daren't let myself know
how much I'm like them. I'm a hypocrite. But you mustn't know this,
God...in case some day there's something you have to forgive me.
Because I can't forgive you: for creating me the way I am, to live
in the world the way it is. And I can't forgive myself.")
That's how it was--when the two men went up to the Temple to pray.
And the other man just said, "Be merciful, O God. (I have loved the
world, I have loved its people, I have loved myself--too much. And I
love you. If it's blasphemy for one like me to say it, I can't help
it. God, I think you are different from the stories they tell about
you. God, I don't think you're like they say you are at all. I think
you know that I've not done very well; and it's possible that I may
not do much better.) Be merciful! (I'll do the best I can with
myself. But it won't be very good. And yet I won't be able to keep
on being miserable about it. Although I don't deserve to be, I'm
liable to be happy. I don't quite know what to make of myself--but I
have no other self. This is me and all there is of me. You had it in
mind to make me something more than this. I know, God. I've let you
down. But I shall have to forgive myself. I want to go away from
here cleansed. I want you to forgive me.) Be merciful..." That's how
it was when two men went up to the Temple to pray.
And, said Jesus, it was the publican who went home justified. It was
he who found peace of mind. What wonderful things would happen to
this weary world if its heartsick people should find the same
secret.
Prayer: O God, make plainer to us what we come so close to
understanding. Amen.
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