GREATER THAN OUR HEARTS: LESSONS FROM ST. JOHN (PART 4)

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 St. John 3:16-18).

We live in the midst of a popular notion that our beliefs are a matter of private preference and, because they are just reflections of our interior state and not of anything outside in the world we share with others, there is no real problem with them changing frequently or with their being in direct conflict with other of our beliefs or with the stated beliefs of others. With some beliefs this is clearly not a problem: it does not bother me if your belief in the greatness of chocolate ice cream contradicts my obviously superior belief in the greatness of strawberry ice cream. Neither belief is of the kind that requires exclusivity. But there is a different variety of belief that makes this conflict more problematic. For you to believe that it is universally evil for anyone to eat ice cream under any circumstances definitely stands opposed to my belief that it is in fact morally permissible to eat ice cream under many circumstances barring the times we must abstain for spiritual or health concerns. 

We find ourselves with two beliefs here that cannot coexist with each other, for they are not matters of preference but statements about the goodness or evil of an action, a thing that applies to us both and to all people. In this case we can’t rest back on the idea our beliefs can coexist when they clearly are beliefs that invalidate the other, forcing us to choose which we will pursue and require of others that they pursue. Some beliefs make claims on the nature of reality, and those cannot be allowed to contradict. 

But it is not the case, always, that these beliefs come from two different people. Sometimes they exist simultaneously in the same person, who holds two notions that make claims on reality and that are exclusive of one another. When such beliefs arise in a person, we cannot simply say that because the conflict is restricted to the interior life of a person that it’s all well and good that they have beliefs in them that will tear them apart or render them incoherent. We should not wish that fate on anyone. Seeking to help that person, then, we might be inclined to help them assess each of the beliefs in conflict to see which is the stronger and more true. Then we might encourage them to cling to the truth and to reject the false imitation. Perhaps we could imagine the situation in which we are the one looking into our own interior life and we find there are multiple beliefs about the very core of who we are that are in conflict with each other. This would feel something like multiple voices in the soul of a person that make claims about the value or meaning of our life. Because these beliefs are not of that preferential sort and are instead claims about the reality of who we are, they cannot be allowed to remain in contradiction. We must choose which voices are truth-tellers and which ones are spinning falsehoods. 

The desert fathers and mothers took this very seriously. They believed that in every person there are several voices at work. One is the internal monologue of the person themselves, the language of our heart and mind in dialogue with each other. One is the voice of God generally revealed in the conscience or through the instruction of the Holy Spirit teaching through the Scriptures, the Church, the Sacraments, Directors, or through times of direct inspiration. But then there is another voice, sometimes called ‘the little voice,’ and it is a voice that seeks to imitate the voice of God. Those fathers and mothers of the church taught that the little voice was something like the voice of our human brokenness that spans all generations and is passed from our first parents through all lines and peoples. It is the voice of the break in our nature we call original sin. Sometimes this voice becomes the mouthpiece of the devil or his minions, but more often it seems to be a voice that speaks of the frailty, scarcity, and mortality we are all heirs to by virtue of being human. It is a little voice because it can never come to maturity, it is stuck in perpetual shame and fear and seeks to speak these into the interior dialogue of our souls. From this influence we get compelling but conflicting temptations, cravings, bargains, and rantings that rail against the guidance of God. 

This is what is likely happening on the spiritual level when we encounter warring beliefs about our place in the family of God, the gift we spoke of earlier. There is the voice of God declaring us His children, heirs of glory with His Son in the loving embrace of the Spirit. Then there is the little voice of our broken humanity, pointing out the absurdity of that idea for someone has broken as us, seeking to incline us to take over and make deals with the world to secure ourselves and make our own way rather than trusting in God. But imitation can never displace the real--it can only distract. While the little voice may remain with us through death and be finally done away in the Resurrection, it can be tamed and consoled by speaking with the voice of God against it and over it. To its claims of scarcity and temptation we have the words of God delivered through the means of grace to meet its demands and assertions of itself and to require of it obedience to the truth it can only hope to imitate. But we all know what this can feel like. It feels at times like we will be torn apart by the conflicting beliefs we hold and it can be difficult to tell the voices apart. 

St. John again gives us hope. Because the truth of our adoption is the gift of God, it is not in the perfection of our interior dialogue that the security of our eternal life rests. Rather, it is to look beyond the conflict and know and seek to believe in every moment that God is the one who knows us more deeply than we know ourselves. As we learned earlier, the end of our self-guided interior quest is to arrive at some form of the ego or the little voice, arriving at some imitation of the light of God or some imitation of the darkness. Only God knows us as we really are, only God can look on the light that is our inheritance as His children, and only God can look straight at the darkness that afflicts us and tempts us. We need to be led. By this we know the light, life and love of God. Jesus revealed it to us by coming down and showing the light and dark, life and death, love and hate to be what they truly are in his Passion and Resurrection. 

That means for us there is mercy on our frailty of belief, but there is also a call that we return constantly to the One who alone can teach us who we truly are. Let us put away the shame and fear and pride that would keep us from such a love. Rather, let us take hope: if we cannot see how we could be the children of God, God will deliver us into the knowledge in time, for our Father in heaven knows us better than we know ourselves and loves us more profoundly than for which we could think to ask or pray.