Recipes are no substitute for relationship

This is the first post in quite a while.  What can I say?  It was a long hot summer in Texas, the sort of hot that sucks all the energy out of you and turns your brain slightly soft. But now the weather is cooler and it is time to start writing again.

Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father– the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  Matthew 23: 1-12

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One of my favorite cooking magazines is Cooks’ Illustrated.   Most cooking magazines are all about developing recipes and taking beautiful photos of the food. The emphasis in a lot of them tends to be on the new and different.  I remember one magazine even ran an article on a new trend of eating things that were still wiggling when they hit the plate. (It was a short-lived trend.)

Cooks’ works differently.  There are no beautiful photos, just black and whites and really well-done drawings. And, instead of emphasizing the new and bold in the world of food, Cooks tends to take basic recipes and work to develop the very best version of it possible. They are really serious about this testing business.  They do things like test 27 different batches of oatmeal cookies, or 15 batches of chicken parmesan until they come up with the version that has the ideal balance of crispiness, seasonings, and textures.  The deal is that you should be able to follow their recipe and make the ideal oatmeal cookie or chicken parmesan. Then they write a long article about all the things they tried, why certain things didn’t work, and even the chemistry involved. Some people like all of that information. But most people, I think, like Cooks’ Illustrated because someone else has taken all the guesswork out of cooking. It’s safe, you know, you can just follow the recipe and be sure that whatever you are making is going to be good.

I think there are a lot of people out there who really don’t like to ad lib. They don’t like it in the kitchen and they don’t like it in any other part of life.  What they really want is a safe recipe that will tell them what to do and when to do it. No matter what “it” happens to be.

People are like that with their spiritual lives, too. They want a recipe that they can follow. A recipe that is fool-proof. They don’t want to ad lib.

You may not have thought of it this way before, but a lot of what the Pharisees were trying to do was give people a recipe.  It was a recipe for how to be righteous—in line with the will and desires of God—in a place where the pressures to be unrighteous were immensely strong.  How in the world could you be a good Jew in a world occupied by Romans, infiltrated by all sorts of philosophies and polytheisms, and governed by a Herodian king who was cruel and a heretical half-Jew? The rules and the laws of the Pharisees were intended to help people know what they had to do and not do to be good Jews. Only Good Jews would live eternally in the Kingdom of God. Bad Jews and Gentiles were excluded from the company of the righteous.

Part of the reason the Pharisees created their “recipe” was that they were committed to relating religion to daily life in a way that would make it evident that they were Jews and were faithful. It is a noble purpose. People who want to be faithful need to know what faithfulness looks like. What’s more, religion that doesn’t relate to real people in their daily lives is useless.

The laws of the Pharisees were a way to keep the Jews from forgetting who they were and whose they were. So, they had a “recipe” of more than 700 laws. Break one, and you were in trouble.  Keep them all and you were assured of your righteousness. You could be sure you would turn out right.

I have some good news and some bad news for you about finding a recipe for faith and for being a Good Christian.  Both sorts of news come in the same sentence.

Jesus is not a fan of recipe-driven faith.

Recipes can become ends in themselves. Jesus tells the people to listen to what the Pharisees and scribes tell them because they sit on the seat of Moses. Sitting on the seat of Moses is a way of talking about their education and formation in scripture and the law.  The Pharisees and the scribes were the “test kitchen” for theology and for daily living.  They debated among themselves and worked out which things worked best to help Jews be faithful in an unfaithful world.  Then they put those things in their recipe of laws for daily life.

There was a problem though.  And it was one of the things that disturbed Jesus. They forgot to allow for grace, or remember that there were times when a person had no alternative but to ad lib. So, if you were standing in the wheat field on the Sabbath and were absolutely starving you could not break off a couple of head of wheat, rub them in your hands to remove the husks and eat the kernels.  The breaking and rubbing were work.  Rule broken.

Or, if you were a man with a withered hand and the only person who could cure you was only available on the Sabbath you couldn’t be healed. The person who healed you would be breaking the law against labor on the Sabbath. Either you remained stuck with your disability or that person made himself “unrighteous.”

There was no room for grace, or mercy.

The Pharisees created the law—the recipe for righteous living—to help people. In the end, they forgot that the law was made for human beings, human beings weren’t made for the law. That’s what Jesus means when he talks about them tying up heavy burdens and laying them on other people’s back.

It works that way even in Cooks’.  If you are too wedded to having the perfect recipe, you are unlikely to improvise or make do with what you have on hand. Some times you just have to adjust.  The recipe doesn’t cover all contingencies.

There is another reason Jesus isn’t a fan of recipe-driven faith.  The recipe creators begin to think they are something special.  They begin to think they are ones who determine salvation, not God.

Listen to what Jesus says about them…. “They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long.”

In other words, they want people to notice them. They too have forgotten the proper order of things, they have forgotten that it is what their heavenly Father sees in secret that is far more important that what people see in public. There is no place in the gospel where Jesus approves of displays of public piety for others to see.

It’s a bit like making a really special cake–one with lots of tiers and fancy frosting decorations–and then parading it through the streets for everyone to admire. It proves how well you, the baker, could create and follow the recipe. But, the point of a cake is to cut it and let everyone eat it.

Jesus, says, “They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them rabbi.”

The rabbis are the recipe creators, after all. They have the keys to heaven because they have determined what had to be done to get there.  What pride has caused them to forget is that the law is intended to align a person’s heart and will to God, not to the law writers.

The law-writers have set themselves up in judgment over all the others.

If you’ve ever watched any of the cooking shows on television you will probably have discovered that most of the great chefs have egos that barely fit into the same room where they are standing. For some of them the worst sin you can commit in the kitchen is to forget who they are.  They have forgotten that every mouthful of food that we eat is a gift from God and that our job is to prepare it in ways that honor the gift.  All the great chefs are here for is to help others learn the best ways to honor the gifts of God.

The last problem with recipe-driven faith is that recipes don’t make great cooks, and rigid adherence to as set of rules or laws doesn’t make for passionate faith or engagement with God.

If you give two people the same recipe and they follow it exactly you can end up with entirely different results.  Someone who has the skills but no passion for cooking will not create the same dish that someone who has passion as well as skills.

What’s more, no number of recipes will create that passion. I have a friend who loves to read Cooks’ Illustrated. She loves all the chemistry and the reports of the various tests and trials. Her cooking consists of making the occasional peanut butter sandwich. She knows how, she just doesn’t care to try. No recipe in Cooks’ is going to make her a cook.

And that’s where, finally, cooking is very different from faith and passion for God. Your life isn’t at stake in the kitchen.

Jesus was angry because the Pharisees and the scribes had sucked all the grace out of being one of the People of God. They had forgotten who they were, servants of God, and set themselves up as judges in the place of God. They had made following the recipe more important than trusting in God.

There are days when most of us wish there were a recipe for faithfulness.  There isn’t. The hardest part is learning to trust God.  To open our hearts and souls and let Christ be our teacher. To pray for grace to strengthen us and for grace that holds us close to God even when we want to fall away.  We have to trust the grace that forgives us when we have fallen, and for the grace that will aid us when life is dark and difficult. That means we have to have a relationship with the Lord, one we have cultivated in worship and prayer.

A recipe is no substitute for a relationship.

The Trouble with Following

I don’t know about you, but I have always had a hard time following.  Ever since I was a little girl, I have had a hard time with letting someone else lead or start things. I used to give my parents and their friends a fit of giggles in church when our youth choir sang because I always started half a beat before everyone else. I was so afraid of being behind that I overcompensated every Sunday.  This was not a problem that went away as I grew older. It just got more sophisticated.

By the time I was a big girl, and then long after the word “girl” could be applied I still had to struggle with this issue of following.  I didn’t want to be behind.  I didn’t want to miss anything. I didn’t want to come up short on the performance side of things.  So, I anticipated, or tried to anticipate everything.  I was always half a beat ahead. But, what is cute when you are six isn’t so cute 30 years later. And, it is exhausting.

The thing is, I don’t think I am all that different from most people.  Most people have a hard time following.  What’s more, there are real rewards for learning to anticipate what others want and need.  This sort of behavior means others will consider you a real “self-starter” at work, a wonderful host or hostess, a great parent, and a loving spouse. You aren’t following anyone, you are just doing what you think they want done.  When you are right, it is a great thing and you get lots of applause for it.  When you are wrong…well, that can make for a very bad day.

All of this anticipating and being in front of the needs or wants of others is not the way one ought to approach one’s spiritual life.  But, over all my years as a spiritual director I have found that when it comes to Jesus every one of us tends to do exactly that.  We try to get out in front of what Jesus wants and then to do it before he asks.

There are problems with this behavior that short circuit our spiritual lives:

First, we learn to treat the Bible like a guidebook and comb through it for lists of things to do and not to do. The problem is, the Bible wasn’t really written to be a book about ethics. Instead the Bible is a collection of books that say, “This is how God is and how God works in the world.  Are you on board, or not?”

Second, what we do becomes a way to earn Jesus’ attention and favor or, depending on your view of God, a way to avoid earning negative attention and disapproval or punishment.  Old-fashioned Christians used to call this “works-righteousness.” It amounts to thinking that Jesus will only love you if you have already earned A’s by doing all sorts of good projects before you were asked. It is really hard to believe someone loves you if you think that you are only loved and loveable because of what you do.

Anticipating Jesus all the time keeps us focused on Christianity as ethics—a list of do’s and don’ts.  We’re always trying to get out in front of God.  Do what we think God would like us to do before God asks.  We work and work and work at anticipating God.  This doesn’t always lead to a healthy relationship with God.  Instead, it often keeps us from ever asking or thinking about asking what the Lord wants us to do. And, since we think we have a list of things to do, we don’t take the time to listen for what the Lord wants to say to us. That means lots of us spend our lives doing things that are not really what the Lord wants or expects from us.

Think about it like this…Suppose you go to law school because you think that being a lawyer is what your family and everyone important to you expects of you and wants you to do.  You always wanted to be an architect, but you are trying to anticipate the needs and wants of those you love. You hate law school, and hate being a lawyer even more.  Still, you persevere because you are sure that is what everyone wants from you. Then, one day your mother tells you that your parents and everyone important to you were surprised when you went to law school because they had always hoped you would be an architect! What a waste!

I know lots of people who “go to law school” where Jesus is concerned. They may do a lot of good work for various charities, they may be deeply involved in the church, they may be giving away extraordinary amounts of money.  All of these are good things and one would think that these people would be at peace, happy with their lives, and secure in their relationship with the Lord.  But, they are driven by anxiety and restlessness.  Far, far too often they have never stopped to ask the Lord what he wants them to do. Instead, they spend their lives doing what they think he wants them to do.

How about you?  Are you churning and churning, trying always to anticipate what God wants of you so that God will look down and say, “Atta boy,” or “Atta girl”?  Do you believe God could really love you, I mean really love you, if you weren’t doing something to prove yourself to God all the time? (Many of us, deep in our hearts, believe that God loves us, but only because God is strange that way and has to love us, not because we are essentially loveable.  I know.  I lived that way for years, and so have many of my directees.) What would happen if your slowed down and stop trying to be half a beat ahead?

Here are some things that might happen: First, you might find out that God really wants to help you pursue the dreams of your heart. Second, you will be much more at peace with yourself and the world around you.  Three, you won’t have to be in charge, up-front, and out ahead all the time.  Four, people will see you as a graceful person.

Stop. Be still. And know that God is God, and God is in charge.

Beware, little Pierre! (Part 2)

The ninth in a series of columns about habits of the heart that block the work of God’s grace in our lives.

Just in case you missed it, here is where we started “Beware, little Pierre! (Part 1)”:

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”    1 Peter 5:8-9a

Whenever I read that passage of scripture during Compline I think of Maurice Sendak’s wonderful little story, Pierre. Pierre is a little boy whose only words are “I don’t care.” His mother offers to do nice things for him.  Pierre says, “I don’t care.” His father offers to take him on an outing. Pierre says, “I don’t care.”  So, Pierre gets left at home. While his parents are out, Pierre is visited by a very large lion who threatens to eat him.  Pierre says, “I don’t care.” The lion swallows Pierre whole. When his parents return Pierre’s father climbs a ladder and shakes the lion by his heels until Pierre falls out. Pierre, glad to be saved from his predicament, suddenly cares about everything and everyone.

Beware, little Pierre, your adversary prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Depending on how you choose to read it, Pierre, is a perfect allegory for either of the two habits of the heart that I have been working on these last two columns.  They are unlikely flip-sides of the same coin, and look very much alike from the outside.  They are avarice and sloth. The last column talked about avarice, this one deals with sloth. The virtues that come from dealing with the habits of the heart are wisdom and objectivity (avarice) and true ability to be a peacemaker (sloth).  It is another way in which they go together.  Peacemakers cannot make peace without wisdom and objectivity.  Wisdom and objectivity are easily corrupted when not guided by the goal of assisting God’s peace in the world.

While avarice and sloth are very different in terms of orientation and definition, in real people they can often look like they are the same.  And, in real people they rarely look as though there is any sin involved. Instead, these people are often described as prudent, wise, unflappable, and careful. What connects these habits of the heart is their tendency to be careless in their regard for the spiritual lion that awaits them.

The people whose habit of the heart is sloth truly live like little Pierre, at least on the inside. On the outside they may appear calm and unflappable to the point of indolence or sheer laziness. They live life as though most all of it was too much trouble. They really don’t care.  Or at least they act like it.

There is, however, more to sloth than just laziness. In fact, limiting sloth to laziness and procrastination will help obscure the many ways this habit of the heart shapes the person who struggles with it.  Sloth is acedia—the demon of the noonday sun—the seeming boredom with life, the feeling that clock is ticking too slowly, that concentration is just too much effort.  At its heart sloth also can be passive-aggressive and cynical. Rooted deep within it one unusually finds anger and arrogance.

The person who suffers from sloth will always ask the question, “Is this really worth getting hot and bothered about?” “Is this worth the effort?”  For the most part whatever “it” is, it isn’t. Getting hot and bothered is very rarely, if ever, worth it.  It takes too much energy. People who struggle with sloth spend their energy on trying not to get hot and bothered or caring too deeply about an outcome or relationship.   It is emotional energy that they spend all of their energy conserving. These people can and do care deeply about a few things or a few people, but outside of that short list, it can be like pushing string to get them to move.

The person who deals with sloth conserves him or herself against the outside world and its entanglements.  The person who struggles with avarice uses things or ideas to build a fortress in pursuit of safety.  The person who struggles with sloth hides herself from others so that she can have peace. Peace and comfort are the idols here.

One of the ways you can identify this habit of the heart in yourself is to think about tasks, projects, or degrees that have or have not completed.  People who struggle with sloth often have lots of projects. They start, but never quite master or finish almost everything.  As the old saying goes, they are often jacks of all trades and masters of none.  These are often very bright people who figure out that the extra effort to master something just isn’t worth it.  Those who struggle with sloth will be content with good to average on a wide range of things.  Mastery takes effort.  They would rather spend their energy on not making any effort.

In relationships with other people the attitude can come across as, “I don’t care enough about you to spend energy on you.”

This is where the spiritual lion enters the picture. What can look like objectivity, neutrality, and calm, disguises cynicism and an incredible arrogance. “You aren’t worth my time or effort.”  For people who struggle with sloth, the list of things not worth the time and effort often includes God, at least if God wants something that might require spending a lot of energy or really buckling down to master something.

These are people who love to plan, but never want to attend to the details or work on the execution.  If you leave them with an indefinite timeline, nothing will get done.  If there is a deadline, all the work will be done just before the deadline, and not a day before.  No effort should be expended before its time. (I speak from years of experience here.)

People who struggle with sloth tend to sleep through a crisis. Literally. When harmony and unity evade them they just fold up and go to sleep, or wander off into a daydream about the harmony and unity they would rather have. It’s their own version of Scarlett O’Hara’s, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” These folks will eventually think about it, but only after they have had a nap.

Jonah, the unwilling prophet, apparently struggled with sloth. When the Lord tells him to go to Ninevah he complains about the distance, about the unlikelihood that the Ninevites will actually respond if he makes the effort, and worst of all, God’s willingness to save Ninevites upends all that Jonah has so carefully worked out about who God really is and what God really does. (Upending Jonah’s notions of God upends the peace and harmony of Jonah’s world.) Jonah doesn’t want to go. But, filled with resentment, he goes anyway, in exactly the wrong direction. (How arrogant to think he could just turn God off by going the other way.) He spends a lot of energy trying to avoid doing what he was told to do by running away and gets swallowed by a big fish for his efforts. (It is so typical to spend more effort running from the job than it would take to actually do it.) The experience in the fish changes Jonah’s mind—if not his heart—and he goes to Ninevah. Then, still resentful, he wanders the streets in sackcloth and ashes and tells the Ninevites they must repent. Sometimes I wonder if instead of shouting his message he actually mumbled a lot of it under his breath. Lo, and behold, the Ninevites do repent! Even their animals are made to repent!  It is all too much for Jonah.  He goes out of the city—away from his upended world and views of God—builds a shelter and TAKES A NAP!

Jonah’s incredible anger, “I am angry, angry enough to die!”, his resentment that God would act in a way that Jonah did not understand, and worse, that God insisted that Jonah get up and do something—a big, energy demanding something—on God’s behalf are terrific mirrors into the anger and arrogance of sloth.  There is nothing in the story that indicates that Jonah eventually comes round.  For all of us who struggle with sloth that is an important thing to see.  The effort to avoid doing anything that disrupts our own private world can lead us to resent and reject the work of God in our lives and the lives of others.

There is a big lion at the door, little Pierre.  Do take care!

If you struggle with sloth as a habit of the heart, there are things that will help you release its hold.  First, pick a project, preferably a small project, and complete it.  If it requires that you learn a new skill, so much the better.  Take the time to actually master the skill. Keep on doing it even when the tedious details of completion are boring you and you can think of five new things you would like to try. Don’t live your life with the closets and cupboards filled with half-finished projects you will get back to someday, or degrees that you have never quite finished. Learn to be a master of a few things rather than a sampler of many.

I know this is harder than it sounds.  It’s one of the reasons I make public commitments to preach a series of sermons. Once you announce you are going to do something you have to do it, or people become convinced you are unreliable. It is a matter of focus.  Pick one to three things, focus on them and see them through to completion. The focus requires attention and effort. It strengthens “muscles” that sloth never develops when it moves from project to project without completing much of anything.

The more obviously spiritual discipline is learning to do contemplative prayer in a way that opens your heart and mind to the living presence of Christ. This takes time and effort, and it requires that you make yourself vulnerable and available for the serious work of healing in Christ. Make no mistake this work is real work, but the wholeness that comes from sticking with it is available no where else.

The gift that comes from taming the lion of sloth is true peace—the peace that can only come when you are anchored in Christ—and the ability to be a true peacemakers. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.

Baby Dolls and Babies Are Not The Same Thing

I’ve been weirded out for two days about this and so I have to interrupt the series I’ve been working on to post this: The other night we were watching Top Chef Masters (Every once in a while I have to indulge in watching other people cook.) and when TCM was over something called “Pregnant in Heels”—about a woman who makes her living as a baby concierge in Manhattan–came on. We were cleaning up and I wanted to see what the heck a baby concierge was. I ended up watching in horrified fascination. Reality TV can have that effect on you.

I’ve been praying for the two babies involved ever since.  Their mothers were three weeks and one week from their due dates and were convinced that their babies were going to be like dolls.  When asked what they planned to do with their babies they said, “Dress them.” Neither had ever a baby, neither had ever changed one, neither knew that babies are messy and can without warning puke all over your silk shirt or that diapers can leak and you can end up with a hand full of poop. Both mothers had never done housework and had no intention of starting with a baby in the house. One of them had four strollers so that she would have the perfect stroller for every sort of fashion occasion. She didn’t know how to fold any of them up. I learned there are such things as “push presents.” I always thought that was what the baby was. One mother was sure her daughter was going to be exactly like her, a little miniature version. “She is just an extension of me.” (The baby looked a lot like her father. Oh, the irony.) Even the fathers admitted their wives were more than a little spoiled. Otherwise, they seemed pretty much out to lunch on the whole baby business and really unwilling to take responsibility. One of the mothers was three days from her delivery date and hadn’t even made up the crib because she had never made a bed and was waiting on her husband to do it. Besides, her hand-embroidered linens had not yet arrived from London.   This couple was going to have a daytime nurse who would, as the mother put it, “do all the work and icky stuff with the baby.” When asked who would get up to feed and change the baby at night she said, “Do you have to do that?  I thought he would sleep all night just like us.” The other wanted to breast feed, but was grossed out by the idea of touching breast milk.

These people had no conception that they were talking about a real, living, breathing, human being when they talked about their babies. They were completely unprepared for a world in which someone else might have to come first.  I cannot imagine how such self-invested, narcissistic, selfish people can ever raise a healthy child. The best I can pray for is that they get good nannies.  I do have to give the woman who is the “baby concierge” credit, she really tried to explain all this. The baby concierge was admirably concerned with the health and well-being of the baby who would some day be a child and then an adult.  Some ignorance, however, is willful and invincible. I don’t think I will ever watch this show again. It leads to despair.  People with resources the rest of the world cannot even imagine seem to be incapable of raising healthy children.  What are we doing?

Beware, little Pierre! (Part 1)

The eighth in a series of columns on the habits of the heart that block the work of God’s grace in our lives.

“Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.”    1 Peter 5:8-9a

Whenever I read that passage of scripture during Compline I think of Maurice Sendak’s wonderful little story, Pierre. Pierre is a little boy whose only words are “I don’t care.” His mother offers to do nice things for him.  Pierre says, “I don’t care.” His father offers to take him on an outing. Pierre says, “I don’t care.”  So, Pierre gets left at home. While his parents are out, Pierre is visited by a very large lion who threatens to eat him.  Pierre says, “I don’t care.” The lion swallows Pierre whole. When his parents return Pierre’s father climbs a ladder and shakes the lion by his heels until Pierre falls out. Pierre, glad to be saved from his predicament, suddenly cares about everything and everyone.

Beware, little Pierre, your adversary prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Depending on how you choose to read it, Pierre, is a perfect allegory for either of the two habits of the heart that the next two columns will examine.  They are unlikely flip-sides of the same coin, and look very much alike from the outside.  They are avarice and sloth. In this column we will talk about avarice, in the next sloth. The virtues that come from dealing with the habits of the heart are wisdom and objectivity (avarice) and true ability to be a peacemaker (sloth).  It is another way in which they go together.  Peacemakers cannot make peace without wisdom and objectivity.  Wisdom and objectivity are easily corrupted when not guided by the goal of assisting God’s peace in the world.

While avarice and sloth are very different in terms of orientation and definition, in real people they can often look like they are the same.  And, in real people they rarely look as though there is any sin involved. Instead, these people are often described as prudent, wise, unflappable, and careful. What connects these habits of the heart is their tendency to be careless in their regard for the spiritual lion that awaits them.

Avarice is the accumulation of things or knowledge beyond sufficiency or need. Avarice is about accumulation and hoarding.  There is no pleasure in consumption for the person who struggles with avarice.  This habit of the heart accumulates in order to avoid having to depend upon or involve anyone else in their lives. Their goal is to have enough money, enough knowledge, enough of themselves, that they never have to depend upon anyone else. Because they get no pleasure from consumption—even spending money on groceries pains them—they do not give.  They don’t give money, things, or themselves to anyone else.

People who struggle with avarice often look like little Pierre, they just don’t care about anyone else or anything else.

Avarice is different from gluttony because gluttony is about consumption and the pleasure found in consumption. It is true that both habits of the heart are about accumulating things, but the person who struggles with gluttony envelops those things and the world about him.  The person who struggles with avarice hides those things away and withdraws.

Avarice is most often associated with money.  They hoard money in order to build a fortress.  There is never enough money and it is never safe enough.  I once talked to someone who had several million dollars in the bank by the time she and her husband were 40—and that saved from middle managers’ salaries. But, she confessed he felt that it wasn’t enough.  He needed more to feel really secure. The thing was, as we worked through the numbers she admitted that $10 million would not be enough.  There was enough out there, she was sure, but $10 million wasn’t it. Fortunately for her, her husband was as concerned as she. They spent nothing more than necessary, and shopped incessantly for bargins.

The issue here is not  people who save prudently and faithfully for their retirement.  That is absolutely necessary.  I am not advocating that anyone be profligate. The problem is with the inability to feel safe, no matter how prudent and faithful one is. It is the idol of safety that must be dethroned.

If people who struggle with this habit of the heart are not concerned with money they are often concerned with knowledge. They can never know enough, and knowing enough means knowing everything–absolutely everything–about a subject. They gather degrees.  Like the friend who got an MD, then decided to get a Masters degree in another professional field, combined the two careers, and then decided to get a Masters and PhD in yet a third area of study.  Instead of hobbies, she went to school. She is only in her 40s, who knows what degree is next. People who struggle with avarice know instinctively that knowing more than everyone else is power and safety, and controlling the flow of information is the ultimate power.  They build another sort of fortress with their knowledge.

These are often people with collections.  Sometimes they collect porcelains, or cars, or books.  And then there are the strange collections like beer mats or bottle caps or arcane medical devices. The people who struggle with avarice will know all the details and trivia that go with the collection, no matter what it is.  They will know things like how many years Nehi used a particular bottle cap design, or in what year the birds were painted with that particular wing pattern on that sort of porcelain. At their worst, people with this habit of the heart are hoarders, keeping newspapers, plastic bags, anything and everything, “Just in case.” They will live in mountains of trash rather than risk throwing something away. Again, they are building a fortress.

People who struggle with avarice live out of fear and an acute sense of scarcity.  So, they build a fortress and live in it. They often avoid marriage or having children if they are married because it would demand that they give of themselves. Giving anything, but especially of their emotional capital, feels like pulling bricks out of the wall of the fortress for these people.  If they do marry, and especially if they have children, they are glad when it is over.  When you have a habit of hoarding, you will even hoard yourself. (Think Greta Garbo. An incredible actress in the 1930s, she withdrew from public life after making a few great movies, always appears in photos wrapped in scarves and hiding behind sunglasses, and lived as a recluse, speaking only to a few trusted people.  Howard Hughes is an even more extreme, and unhealthy example.)

The fundamental orientation here is fear.  Fear always leads to idolatry. Here the idol is not actually money, or things, or knowledge, it is the safety that the money, things, or knowledge brings.

These are people who idolize safety. In one version, they are the people who read the stories of Abraham or Moses in the Bible and are pretty sure that a God who wants you to do risky things like pack up and move from Babylon to the land of Cannan, or lead the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land is not safe. They don’t want anything to do with an unsafe God.

In another version, these are people who can be quite taken with mystical paths and the religious life. The mystical and religious life appeals to their desire to know everything about a subject–even God. If they enter the religious life, though, they like monasteries and convents the best.  They may even be hermits. They want to enter the religious life in a place where they can have a “fortress” and don’t have to move around much. The security and stability of such a life are very attractive.

On the surface, people who struggle with avarice tend to be calm and unflappable (because they are not engaged with what is going on around them).  They look like they don’t care.  Perhaps the difference between them and Pierre is that, were it a real lion, they would not have let it in the house. The spiritual one, however, they cannot see.

If you struggle with avarice, there are spiritual disciplines that will help you. First, give. Give. Give things away. Throw out the trash. Don’t bring anything into your life without giving away something. If you make and addition to your bottle cap collection, don’t add a bottle cap unless you give away a bottle cap.  Don’t start a collection of beer mats unless you give away the bottle cap collection. Give money. Find away to give a percentage of what you earn each year to charities you believe in.  Be faithful about it. Remember that there are people out there whose lives will be changed by your ability to change your life.

Second, teach. Teaching, if you are to do it well, requires that you give of yourself and all that knowledge you have accumulated. It also means that you must be out in front of a group, taking responsibility for what they learn.  It means you cannot hang out in your fortress of knowledge.

Third, find one person to share yourself with. Sure, check them out, but then find one person—perhaps a spiritual director—and practice sharing yourself with that person.  Tell that person the truth about who you are and what you feel. Tell the whole truth.

There are two virtues that come from the hard work of dealing with this habit of the heart: wisdom and objectivity. These are people who will help the rest of us think about what needs to be done, what the costs will be, and what goals can actually be achieved by our efforts.  Wisdom and objectivity are the virtues that allow one to see and know the mind of God.  These are the virtues valued above all others in scripture, and ones achieved when the person who struggles with avarice learns to open him or herself and give of what they have to others.

For the next column: Sloth

I want what I want, NOW!

This is the seventh in a series of articles about habits of the heart that block God’s grace in our lives.

Lust as a habit of the heart.

There are three habits of the heart that seem to need no definitions.  They are things that everyone thinks they understand and can identify right off the bat. Anger, pride, and…….lust. This column is about lust.

I imagine there are at least a few people who suddenly got a lot more interested in this column.  A whole column about sex!! This could get exciting.

Except for the fact that the sexual expression of lust is lust of the lowest order. Sexual lust is really not all that remarkable—at least from a theological point of view. It can be terribly damaging in its own way, but it is not exceptional. All healthy human beings are subject to it at least occasionally.  This version of lust is almost impossible to grow out of.  Trust me. You won’t get too old for this sort of thing. But, this sort of lust is more biological than anything else. When it is symptomatic of a lustful habit of the heart, then it begins to get actually interesting. When we confine defining lust to sex, however, we overlook the real spiritual dangers that are part of this habit of the heart.

By the way, not all sex is lust. One of the great misunderstandings of the church’s teaching on sex is the belief that sex and sin and lust are the same thing.  THEY ARE NOT. Sex is a gift and the loving expression of sexual desire in a relationship is a beautiful thing.  There is little that is more glorious. It is sex for self-gratification, sex for assertion of power, or sex used to brutalize or objectify another human being that Christianity has always worried about.  God did not make us to use or consume one another. It isn’t for example, the sex act itself that worries Christianity when people talk about “hooking-up”: It is the consumption of another human being with little more care than one would give to eating a hamburger that is the problem.

Lust is the shameless, unbridled use of another human being, or group of human beings, for self-satisfaction, self-aggrandizement, or passion.  Let me repeat that…. Lust is the shameless, unbridled use of another human being, or group of human beings, for self-satisfaction, self-aggrandizement, or passion. The person who struggles with lust as a habit of the heart makes other human beings into objects to satisfy his or her desires.  They become “things,” no less “thing-ish” than inanimate objects.

For people who struggle with lust as a habit of the heart life is all about possession and domination.  It can be sex, it can be bullying, it can simply be controlling other people and everything in their environment. What is more, it isn’t a habit of the heart that men are more prone to than women. Both sexes share equally in this tendency.

Th e problem for these people is that their desire has overrun them.  God created human beings as desiring creatures.  We are meant to desire.  It is the constant longing that lives within us that will, if we let it, lead us to God. Our desiring is created to fit and match the desire of God for us.  But, when one lives with lust as a habit of the heart one is literally consumed with one’s own desires and there is no room for God.

Lust is a form of idolatry, as pernicious and serious as gluttony (See “Cheetos® and other terrible temptations”).  The difference is this: Gluttony expects things to satisfy the empty desire within.  Lust idolizes the self. It expects power and domination over others to satisfy the intense desire within. The person who struggles with lust wants to be his or her own God. As a result, God is pushed entirely out of the picture.

Sex is often the way that we all experience this vice and get a taste of its consequences. When we abandon ourselves to its fulfillment through sex the pleasure can be intense, but it is always transient and often destroys others who are not the objects of our lust. When we are enthralled by lust we will find excuses, we will rationalize, we will give up our own standards and worse we will give up the laws of God that are written on our hearts.  We are perfectly capable of destroying our lives and others with sex. Imagine what life would be like if you had that kind of tension—not necessarily the sexual desire, but the tension that goes with intense sexual desire—swirling around in your insides all the time. That is what it is like when you live with lust as a habit of the heart.  The intensity of the desire will make a person utterly shameless.

Here is what a person who is dominated by lust forgets. A love for God puts all other loves in proper relationship and order, but a life given to lust will be consumed by it.

This is exactly what happens in the story from Genesis where Adam and Eve are convinced by the serpent that they should consume the forbidden fruit. It isn’t that Eve and Adam are overcome by the beauty of the fruit and can’t resist its beauty. It is that they have begun to think they are equal to God.  You can tell by the way that Eve talks about God with the serpent, as though God were a third person somewhere out of the room. This is not the same as walking with God in the garden in the cool of the day.  Wanting to equal to God in knowledge is the ultimate in lust.

There are a lot of examples of lust as a habit of the heart:

Think about Gollum from J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings: Gollum finds and keeps the One Ring of Power, the most powerful talisman in all of Middle Earth. Gollum senses, but never really learns of the Ring’s full power. Gollum’s understanding of the Ring’s power is limited by his own shallow understanding of the purposes of power. Gollum’s uses of the Ring are mostly banal and brutal. (Perhaps this was Tolkien’s comment of those who see power above all else.)  But he names the Ring, and after he loses it, calls for it.  “My Precious. Where is My Precious?”  Holding on to the power of the Ring, Gollum shrivels and contorts into something unrecognizable as the creature he was before he enslaved himself to the Ring. Physically, Gollum is a perfect image of what happens to someone who gives themselves over to lust.

Or, think of  Mummar Gaddafi.  His lust, his absolute self-abandonment to the pursuit of power has led him to dominate and brutalize an entire nation.  He too, has disintegrated into a living caricature of himself.  Whatever it is that he looks like, it is no longer human.

There are numerous other public examples, and undoubtedly you know some that are less public but no less real. Lust as a habit of the heart does not always express itself in large tyrannies.  It can be even more easily found in the more banal tyrannies of everyday relationships.

In the examples of lust I gave, and in many of the people who struggle with lust as a habit of the heart, you can see changes in visage, as each person gives in to his desires he or she wastes away, consumed from within. It can shrivel or inflate, but interestingly it almost always changes a person’s appearance over the long run.  Unbridled, uncontrolled lust destroys.  It tears away at the very core of what it means to be human by denying God a place.  In an example like Mummar Gaddafi, we see people who become abusive, brutal, dangerous human beings.  Not addressing this habit of the heart—this vice–can lead to a spiral that ends in brutality and can be dangerous for others as well as the individual.

If you struggle with this problem, what can you do? This is hard. Because even when people recognize themselves in this situation, the first reaction is to deny that it is a problem.  You see, someone who struggles with the habit of lust cannot bear to be weak.  Admitting that their behavior is a problem might be a sign of weakness.  So, they often end up trapped by their own fear of weakness and powerlessness.

People who struggle with lust as a habit of the heart must begin with a rigorous self-assessment and honesty, asking themselves if they turned the other person into an object to meet their own needs, or if the annihilation of another in order to win the argument was really necessary. God’s grace begins to work and assist change when we are honest about ourselves and our motives. The self-examination required in this situation is not always easy or pleasant. I am convinced, however, that many of those who live with this habit of the heart do not want to hurt others in the ways they often do. Remember how the good traces of Smeagol (the name he had before the Ring) that are left in Gollum often argue with him in conversations in The Lord of the Rings? Smeagol knows Gollum for what he is and challenges his behavior. Part of the work of changing the habit of the heart lodged in lust is letting those impulses that argue against our brutal, objectifying behavior have a voice and the power to guide our actions. A trusted spiritual director who is tough enough and honest enough to push back against all the rationalizations and evasions that the lustful heart will invent can be an invaluable, even essential, helper in this process. It doesn’t have to be done alone in some spirit of rugged individualism.

The virtues that result from healing this habit of the heart are anything but weak or powerless.  They are Innocence or Courage, and Mercy.  Innocence in not naiveté.   Naiveté is being clueless about the consequences.  Innocence or courage is facing situation knowing the consequences and dangers and going anyway. Courage and innocence go hand in hand, and they are not weak.  The other virtue is mercy. People who have been merciless become filled with mercy—turning all that passion into caring for those who cannot care for themselves or have been abandoned or oppressed.  When the person who struggles with lust as a habit of the heart finally gives in and turns his or her life over to God—when such a person seeks God as the answer to intense desire—this person can do the work of God in the world and inspire others to do the same.  Someone who did this was Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She turned her desire to desire the One Thing: Christ and his work in the world. Look at what she accomplished.  And those who knew her would tell you she was anything but a pushover or a doormat.

In fact, come to think of it.  There is the choice: Some version of Mummar Gaddafi (even if it is only a petty version in your own home or at work) or Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Who do you want to be?

The Real Me is Whatever You Want Me to Be–Really.

This is the sixth in a series of reflections on the habits of the heart that block the work of God’s grace in our lives.

Several months ago I was talking with a friend about someone we both knew in college. This young man had a strong academic bent and the vocabulary and demeanor of a seminary student who grew up in a conservative family in the holiness movement. Toward the end of seminary he determined that he wanted to do a PhD but only at the best school in the country.  He applied and was turned down.  He was rather depressed about it all for a day or so.  Then he decided to go into business because he wanted a big family and he could never support them on a professor’s salary.  Almost instantly he began speaking in the rapid-fire clipped cadences of Gordon Geko from the movie “Wall Street”, and nearly every sentence was a business cliché. He got a great job where he was very successful.  Then, another company offered him a more important position. He really, really, wanted that title. So, he left an already great job and went to the start-up.  Then he left the great new job and went back to his old company. These days this man has his own company—a consulting company that works on decision analysis and recruiting assistance.  Basically, he is making a whole lot of money telling other companies why their decision making process is flawed and what decisions they should actually make.

Sounds like a typical story of a successful business executive, doesn’t it? But there is more to it.  What was interesting as we reflected on the person we knew was how much it seemed he struggled with a habit of the heart that is hidden and very difficult to see. In fact, I would go so far to say that the acceptance of this habit of the heart is so deeply rooted in our culture that we aren’t even sure it is a problem. After all, being successful is what Americans are all about.

This is the habit of the heart that is known as mendacity, or deceit.  It isn’t that these people lie all the time, though they may.  The problem is that they are emotional, intellectual, and spiritual chameleons—color-shifters who will do whatever it takes to be successful and to blend into the group.  They are not conscious of being deceitful, they are just trying to get up the ladder, to be the people others expect them to be, to be whatever and whomever the situation calls for. The thing they want more than anything is to be successful and they will do what it takes to achieve that success.

Mendacity is untruthfulness. The person who lives with this habit of the heart loses track of what it means to be authentic. They find it hard to have real emotional contact with others in their relationships. They are constantly performing. These people are always looking to see what the audience, whoever or whatever it is, wants next. These are people of whom others say, “ She is so hard to get to know.” or “There is no there, there.”

This is an especially hard habit to deal with because the person who suffers from mendacity fools him or herself even more than they fool others. They get so good at playing roles and trying to fool others that they forget what is real and the role-playing becomes almost instinctive.

The person who suffers from mendacity doesn’t have to be trying to control the world; they don’t have to be in business; they don’t have to be obvious schmucks.  They can live ordinary lives in neighborhoods just like ours.  They are the people who are always telling you how successful they were at fundraising for the children’s school. They are the ones at church who always want you to know that they worked harder and were more creative than anyone else. They often ask questions like, “How am I doing?” Did you see how well I did?” “Don’t you think I look like the part?”  “How am I dressed?” They want to be successful, they want to win, and they want you to be impressed. One of the greatest compliments you can give them is to tell them that they have or are, “the whole package.”

Sometimes they are con-artists —either professionally or just as a habit—they can look at you with a straight face and tell you a lie and believe every word that comes out of their mouth.  You’ll believe it too. They can be terrible hypocrites, believing that the rules apply to others but that there is no moral problem with their refusal to follow rules or to make up the rules as they go along.  They are the sorts of people who will not play Monopoly with you if you always win.  They have to win the game.

There can be serious psychological needs and problems associated with mendacity, most of them stemming from a conviction that a person is not loved except for what they do, and only when they are successful at it.  These are people who, for example, think their parents will only love them if they get A’s in school, or that their spouse loves them because they are a professional musician, or an investment banker.  They will often tell their spiritual directors that they feel they are performing all the time and that no one really knows the real them. That is usually true, and they often know themselves least well of all. As a rule, they don’t like to spend the time doing spiritual direction or introspection because if they aren’t “doing something” they are sure they are wasting time. Then there is the problem of the constant performance–if they drop the performance who would they be?

People who live with mendacity can be very aggressive if they aren’t as successful as they want to be.  They can be abusive, using their dominance over another to feel successful. When unsuccessful, or confronted with a tragedy they cannot turn to their advantage these people often become addicts—using their ability to lie convincingly to con others into supporting their habits.

But, I am not trying to do therapy here.  What I want to talk about are the moral and spiritual problems of a person who suffers from mendacity.  It is a subtle problem, hard to see and hard cure because it is a color and shape-shifter and changes to hide from all that challenges it.  The fathers of the desert called it vainglory, and they believed it was the hardest of all sins to uproot.

Vainglory looks like this: A person who recognizes that they have a problem with mendacity turns into a crusader for truth, always calling others’ bluffs, being excruciatingly scrupulous with themselves and making sure that they are always doing the truthful thing.  Of course, the problem is that they will have to tell you that they are doing it and want you to admire their change of heart. Being the “truth-teller” is simply their latest role.

Or, vainglory can look like this:  You come to the altar rail and while you are kneeling and waiting for communion you wonder if the priest noticed how quietly you came up, or the precision of the way you crossed yourself, or if anyone noticed how straight your back was when you knelt. Vainglory is hard to get rid of because you can even find yourself proud of wanting to get rid of it. Vainglory always means you are serving the wrong god.

People who suffer with mendacity are quintessentially the people Jesus warns in Saint Matthew’s gospel, “You cannot serve God and another master” Unless they take the time to do their spiritual work the master they serve is their own image of themselves. Spiritually, there is no room for God in their lives.

So, what can you do to address this problem? Well, telling the truth—making a habit of telling the truth—is the obvious cure. And, don’t forget, all of us lie. But that is a hard place to begin because truth telling can so easily become a role rather than a real habit—something you do to be successful at truth-telling rather than a state of being.

I would suggest there is a place to begin curing this habit of the heart that is more elemental than truth-telling.  People who suffer with mendacity must first learn faithfulness and fidelity.  They must learn to practice spending time alone, sitting with themselves and letting the Lord show them the consequences of their habit of the heart.  Then, instead of getting all wound up in their failure to be successful in faithfulness and truth telling, they need to just practice being faithful. Persistent quiet time in prayer is a great place to begin to learn this sort of faithfulness.

Being faithful means things like:  Staying faithful to spouses, even when spouses don’t fit the role that the mendacious person has set up for the spouse or the marriage.  Faithfulness means coming to church and worshiping God even when church doesn’t feel like a place where they are the success they want to be.  Faithfulness in prayer—not the sort of prayer where you do all the talking, but the sort where you do the listening. Faithfulness in doing the work of getting to know who you actually are.  It isn’t easy. You will have to stop lying to yourself.

People who suffer from mendacity have a hard time learning to know who they are. This is the terrible irony of this habit of the heart. But, if we do not know who we are, we cannot know who God is. The gift of conquering mendacity is that you will be given yourself—for the first time you will know the true you and you will know God. You will be free from the burden of constant performance. Faithfulness to the work of getting to know who you really are is the beginning of healing.

“I would rather die than be ordinary.”

Jewish scholars tend to be wonderfully down-to-earth in their reading of Scripture.  I sometimes wonder if it is their identity as God’s Chosen People leads them to read the Bible as though it is a personal history and personal instructions from God. Because, it is. One of the more interesting things I’ve learned about Jewish interpretation of the Bible is about the way they tend to read the Decalogue, or Commandments.

There is, apparently, a long history among the rabbis of debating which of the commandments is most important. Jews look at the commandments and say, “These commandments are about keeping proper relationships with God and one another. They are about the communion in community. So…..what is the commandment that represents the fundamental breach of communion and so leads to all the other breaches of communion?”  For some, the answer is the last commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. You shall not desire your neighbor’s house or field, nor his male or female slave, nor his ox or ass, nor anything that belongs to him.”  Because, you see, covetessness is simply envy by another name, and all the sins in the world begin with envy.

It was envy of God that led Lucifer to try to be God himself, it is envy of the worship of the true God that leads human beings to set up idols whose worship and actions they think they can control, it is envy that causes a man to tear down his more successful brother, it is envy that lies at the root of the phrase, “misery loves company,” and it is envy that leads people to make sure that they are always the most important person in the room. It is often envy that leads people to do the flamboyantly evil as well as the flamboyantly good.

Envy.  It is a habit of the heart that keeps us from knowing the grace of God.

Envy isn’t big on anyone’s list of sins these days.  Mostly the only sins the world cares about have to do with sex and money. (Although when you think about it, sins involving sex and money most often start with envy—wanting what you do not have and isn’t yours.) We live in a culture that is built on the notion that it isn’t acceptable just to keep up with the Joneses but that one must beat them, and so we turn a blind eye to envy, sometimes calling it competitiveness.  If, however, envy is not at the root of our motivation, why would beating the Joneses be all that important?  So much of the materialism of our culture is built on envy that we dare not admit it is a sin.

And so, the notion that Jewish scholars think it is at the root of all other sins strikes us as overblown.  What we want to say in response is, “Envy is just a little sin, like white lies or gossip, that doesn’t really have cosmic importance.”  But, what we want to say is wrong. (For that matter, we are wrong about white lies and gossip, too.)

The person who lives with a heart that knows envy is never satisfied, never happy with what they have, never fulfilled, never at rest.  It is an awful way to live.

We all know people who live out of their envy: These are the people who must always redirect the attention of the room to themselves.  They are always putting on a performance.  They control information about themselves and others, if they know more than you then they are special.

People filled with envy usually have a problem with gossip. Having “special” knowledge about someone, or being able to lower someone else’s status makes the person who lives with envy feel as though he is superior. They constantly redecorate, trying to have a home or a room that is better than the one in the magazine or at the neighbors.  They can have a business worth $100 million dollars and be dissatisfied because a competitor’s company is larger. They are never satisfied.

Envy makes these people want to be god in the minds of others. A person who lives out of envy always, always, wants to be the most special person in the room, the community, the business, the world.  They don’t want to dominate the world, they just want to be the most special and be adored.

When they talk they will tell you things like, “No one has ever understood me.” “I just can’t find someone I want to marry.  I think I am too complicated and intense for most people.” “Oh, of course I am happy for her, she has had a great success, but you know it was nothing like the time I…..” “Oh, you poor dear, I am so sorry that you must endure this treatment for brain cancer.  I’m sure it will be wretched.  But, speaking of wretched treatments, have I told you about my recent illness and the treatment for it?” “Yes, it’s true he has built a business empire, but you know, his parents have money so he had a leg up on the rest of us, and I hear he has even had an alcohol problem.”  These are all statements or the sorts I have heard made by people whose hearts are filled with envy. You can’t really have a relationship with someone like that because they cannot have a relationship with anyone but themselves. When they look in the mirror of your eyes, they are constantly preening.

If you have a heart filled with envy you have a spiritual problem. How can you address it? When it was still recognized as a serious spiritual problem the treatment was often drastic. Long ago in a convent you may have been given the rattiest habit, the lowest seat at the table, and no job that made you stand out from the rest. In the best of circumstances, you would also have been given the space and the prayer support needed for you to confront this habit that was rooted in your heart and pull it out.

There is a place for those very practical sorts of physical disciplines to attack a habit of the heart but I don’t suggest that you engage in them unless you have a spiritual director of the highest gifts, and willing to walk every step of the journey with you.

Absent such a spiritual director, there are other things you can do: First, find your copy of the Book of Common Prayer at home, or some other prayer book that you find really helpful. Make it a daily practice to prayer the General Thanksgiving found on page 101, or the General Thanksgiving found on page 836. (A written prayer helps to focus your mind and keep you other-directed.) Read the prayer out loud, slowly, and visualize everything in the prayer. Keep your mind focused on the words of the prayer. Gratitude is the anecdote to envy.

Accept the fact that you are ordinary. Most people who live out of envy would rather die than be ordinary, but accepting the fact that doing a good job and living a good life is ordinary and that ordinary is good. Ordinary means steady, faithful, and reliable. Ordinary faithfulness is what human beings ought to strive for.  Calvin summarized it best, “Remember your place in this world, God is God, and you are but a human being.”

Practice gratitude for what you have, everyday. You are blessed and beloved.  Keep repeating your appreciation of that fact until you finally believe it.  Remember, that there is a difference between you and God. Be thankful for that, too.

A habit of the heart has its positive side too. People who struggle with envy are people who live with great intensity.  They can be fabulous friends and have a wonderful sense of the drama of a situation. In a crisis or in great celebration they can really get in there and feel it with you. These people can be quite successful with a nose for the innovative and different. They are incredibly creative. But these gifts are only freely and fruitfully expressed when you control the habit of the heart, not when it controls you.

The true reward of giving up envy is that you can give up the anxious struggle to be God. That’s a losing proposition anyway.  Practicing a habit of gratitude means you will learn to trust God, to appreciate what you have, to actually have space in your heart to be in real relationship with others rather than competing all the time.  Most of all, you will know peace. That sort of peace that passes understanding—the peace that allows God to be God—the sort of peace that our Lord promised.  Do you want that?

Cheetos® and other terrible temptations

(This is another in a continuing series of reflections on the habits of our hearts that block grace and the spiritual gifts that are ours if we break the habit.?)

I love to cook.  I really love to cook—pretty much anything: Mexican, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, French, Greek, Italian—you get the picture. So, while I always ask guests if they have anything that they really won’t eat, it doesn’t do them much good. I really like to cook.

But, there is one food that I cannot have in the house. Just cannot have it.  If it is in the pantry it sits there and calls my name and I cannot resist.  Guess what it is? Cheetos®.  Baked or fried it doesn’t matter.  If there is a bag of them in the house I will eat the whole thing—all at once. Once I start I cannot stop.  Fred is amazed. Why anyone who loves to cook as much as I do will eat the most plastic-tasting, nuclear orange snack food on the market is beyond him.  But, I cannot control myself when it comes to Cheetos®.  One is never enough.  Ten are never enough.  Best just to avoid them altogether. Temptation has a name.  It is Cheetos®.

I eat Cheetos® until I am full, and then keep on eating them. I know that they apply themselves to my body like glue and make me rounder and fuller of figure than I need to be.  In the middle of a bag of Cheetos® I don’t care.  I just want more. I eat Cheetos® well past the point of satiation and need—I just keep eating. And, since a bag of Cheetos® is well more than the number of calories a woman my age should eat, the entire day becomes a nutritional wasteland.

It was Cheetos® that taught me the true meaning of the habit of the heart of gluttony.

Gluttony is the consumption of anything, food or anything, well past the point of satiation or need.  It is unbridled consumption. Gluttony is NOT just about food. And, it is a serious spiritual problem.

Gluttony is another one of those problematic habits of the heart that we do not talk much about in our “super-size me” culture.  How could we?  A culture that finds its meaning in what people consume can hardly acknowledge that unlimited consumption might not be a good thing. When every commercial is about more, bigger, faster, better, and MORE…When we use slogans like “He (or she) who dies with the most toys wins”… When our economic health is gauged by consumer spending…How can we look at over-consumption as a problem?

Now, please hear me I am not about to go from here to a sermon on the evils of capitalism or the modern economy.  We are talking about a habit of the heart that blocks God’s grace in your life and in mine.

Let me give you another example that doesn’t have anything to do with food.  I watched exactly one episode of Sex in the City. (I decided that I had better things to do with my life, and that watching it was bad for my soul.)  Anyway, in the one episode that I watched, the Sara Jessica Parker person was looking for a new apartment because she could no longer afford her old one.  She needed an apartment in Manhattan with more closet space and for less money than she was paying.  Fat chance.  Why did she need that apartment?  She had more than 100 pairs of shoes—Manolo Blahnik shoes to be precise—and needed a closet to store them. (Apparently this character’s fascination with Manolo Blahnik shoes made them hugely popular.)  At one point in the show one of the other characters pointed out to her that at an average cost of $400 a pair she had over $40,000 invested in her shoes.  Enough to have made a down payment on a condominium, or to have continued to have afforded her old apartment.

That is an example of consumption beyond all satiation or need. That is an example of gluttony.

So, besides financial recklessness, or endangering health through obesity, what is the spiritual problem?

The fundamental problem here is not the desire for food or things.  The problem here is the choice of food or those things over God.  It is another way of saying, “There is nothing else that will make me feel full.  Nothing else makes me feel so happy.  Nothing else makes me so safe.” The glutton makes little effort to control consumption because of a deep seated conviction that consuming more will fill the gnawing, interior void that is a continual presence.

Fundamentally, gluttony is the refusal to believe that God can satisfy you.  It allows the good gifts of God to loom larger in our lives than God himself. It is a serious form of idolatry.  This is why gluttony is a spiritual problem. It makes something other than God the most important thing in life.  This is why St. Paul always mentions it when he talks about spiritual sins.

Gluttony is a subtle problem, it is a human problem.  It is deeply wrapped around a fear of physical or psychological pain.

What drives the glutton?  What makes it such a difficult habit of the heart to unseat?  Fear.  The glutton has ultimate trust issues that are coupled with the fear of pain. The glutton cannot believe that God will meet his or her needs, that God will be present at all times, that any pain can be worth suffering.  So, consciously or not, the glutton finds something else to meet those needs and block the possibility of pain.

The terrible trap here is that someone with this habit of the heart is constantly disappointed.  They anticipate that eating all that food, or buying all those shoes will make them happy.  But it doesn’t.  It never lives up to the anticipation. So, there is a horrific cycle.  I anticipate that I will finally feel safe and good if I buy shoes, or eat all this food, or consume all of these things, but the food and the things never satisfy. I still feel empty. I am disappointed. But, the next time I am faced with food, or the things I have turned into my talismans, I am convinced that they will meet my need and fill the void. And so the cycle starts again.

Gluttons don’t have to be fat. The character that Sarah Jessica Parker played ate almost nothing.  She bought shoes instead.  But then, the food, or the shoes, or the latest tech gadgets that are supposed to work don’t, this time.  Maybe it will work the next time. The glutton runs from the dark things they are afraid of—most of all the idea that their needs will not be met, and tries to fill the void of unmet needs with food or things. And the food or things never actually satisfy.

A person who lives with this sort of habit of the heart will not commit to very much, except to the idol that they have chosen.  They find it hard to cling to the promises of God, and even harder to believe that struggling with God will not mean pain.  What they are sure they know is that anything involving struggle and pain cannot have its own rewards.

So, what is the spiritual practice that helps to overcome gluttony?  Fasting.  It always amazes me how many people insist that they cannot possibly fast, or that they will not consider fasting.  If your reaction to the idea of fasting is to worry about how you cannot stand to be hungry, that is worth thinking about. As I said, one of the hallmarks of this habit of the heart is a deep fear of physical or psychological pain. Often the first time I speak with directees about fasting, their first question is, “How will I stand the pain of being hungry?”

Why does fasting attack the spiritual problems created by this habit of the heart called gluttony?  Because at its heart, fasting is about emptying and making a space for God. And, it is about struggling with God and finding that God is there. After all, if the other alternatives that have been tried have always proven to be unsuccessful at filling the void, why not try God?  Sometimes fasting can mean not watching so much television, cleaning out your closets and getting rid of all that stuff you are hoarding—like maybe 80 of the 100 pairs of shoes, or clothes you’ve had for 15 years, or staying off of the internet.  What do you use to block your fear and avoid God?

BUT

Fasting from food is particularly important here.  First, because God commands us to fast and pray for our own spiritual growth as well as in times of crisis.  Second, because fasting from food tends to focus us on our bodies—reminding us that being human is about being a creature with a body and soul and that life cannot be lived entirely in the mind. Ironically, people who live with this habit of the heart can be disconnected from their bodies and inclined to live life in their heads.  So, fasting helps reconnect the body and the soul.  Since the void that people who live with gluttony as a habit of the heart feel is psychological and not actually physical the connection between the two must constantly be reestablished.  Third, the vacancy created by fasting is a vacancy for God. Consciously asking God to be present and to fill in that vacancy helps to reorient the effort to fill the empty-feeling with things or food.

What is the spiritual virtue that the redeemed person who lives with this habit of the heart displays when they have done the work necessary to get honest about who they are and have learned to trust the Lord?  Joy.  The sort of joy that brings peace and a quiet confidence into all activities of life.  Not the class-clown sort of joy, or anything giddy, but the sort of joy that shines out of you and makes people who know you want to find out where you got it.  Think St. Francis, not Jim Carey.

If you struggle with this habit of the heart, I have good news for you.  It is Lent.  Lent is an open invitation to engage in the spiritual discipline that is most helpful to you. Why not give that fasting business a try—with something you will miss even more than chocolate? Maybe even regular days—like Fridays?—when you practice that discipline of fasting. Ask someone to do it with you, so you don’t have to struggle all alone.

Wouldn’t  you like to replace that fear with joy?  It can be done.

Taming the Angry Heart Within — Part 2

Dealing with anger that is directed inward.

Do you find that, much to your frustration, you often cry when you are angry because you are so furious and want to say things you know you should not or must not say, and so there is nowhere to go with the anger and it hurts, literally hurts?

Or, have you ever had the experience of getting really angry because people you know get cancer and die? Did you leave the church because it is not perfect as God? Do you find yourself wanting to scream because your boss is not always fair and is sometimes incompetent.  Have you ever broken off a friendship because your friend turned out to be less ideal than you thought he or she was when you met? Have you completely reorganized an organization to which you belong so that it will run more efficiently?

Do people tell you that you are cold and judgmental, that you live in your head, when you know yourself to be caring and encouraging? Are you a serious perfectionist? Is there a constant commentary going on in your head that critiques—brutally and honestly critiques—everything you do and see?

If these are habitual patterns in your life, you likely live with inwardly directed anger as a habit of the heart. This form of anger may not be as obvious as anger that is directed outward, but those who live with it know how relentless it can be.

If you are a person whose habitual anger is directed inward you need disciplines that, literally, will help you learn to lighten up. Far too often you tend to interact with the world in a way that says that while you know you are not God, you are pretty sure you have been deputized to act on God’s behalf.

Some of the spiritual disciplines that work on this habit of the heart are very much practical ideas. What makes them useful is their ability to attack the tendency to over-do and to force the acknowledgment that nothing ever is, or can be perfect except God. For example, if you are planning to entertain and are putting together a list of things that need to be done (You know you have one), cross some things off of it. When you are done, things may not be perfect, but no one else is likely to know. Must you clean the hall closet before dinner?  The need for order when you struggle with anger as a habit of the heart can be overwhelming and even off-putting.  Learn to loosen your grip.

The second thing is related to the first: Let other people do their jobs.  If they don’t do it exactly like you would do it, that is okay. Take the time to teach someone how to do something, and then let them do it.  Be especially careful to do this with children. Above all, resist the temptation to say, “That’s okay, I’ll just do it myself.”  This is a great place to say the Jesus Prayer, take a deep breath and relinquish control.  I am not suggesting you do this if it would imperil others or cost you a job.  But, the deep breath and the Jesus Prayer are likely to help you see that most situations do not involve dire circumstances or consequences. There may even be someone out there who can do the job more creatively and efficiently than you.

The third suggestion will seem strange, but it works.  Learn to garden or learn to play music. If you have no space for even a flower pot or a guitar or recorder, then find some sort of manual project or cultivate a collection of music that you listen to with regularity.  In either case, the project or the music should be complex enough that it lifts you out of yourself and helps you see the beauty in the world around you. The purpose here is to make connections between the senses and feelings.  The perfectionist streak in people whose anger is directed inward can make them seem as though they live life entirely between their ears. Music and manual projects help break down the barriers to integrating as the sort of human being God intends us all to be.

Fourth, (and I wish I could say this more gently, but it would be pointless) get over the fact that you aren’t perfect. No one is. The great good news of Christianity is that we are forgiven.  When we fall down, when we limp, when we are less than spotless, we can be forgiven. Part of the anger that drives you is rooted in a conviction that you cannot be loved unless you are perfect. The reality is that God loves us.  Period.  No perfection is required.  Learn to laugh at yourself and your compulsion to be perfect.

Lastly, spend time with people who are ill or whose problems you cannot fix. There is great grace in just learning to be present to things we cannot fix. A ministry of quiet presence to the difficulties and pain of the world teaches compassion and helps you to see others through the Lord’s eyes. For people who want things to be perfect, the great temptation is to fix everything that God has “allowed” to be screwed up. A lot of perfectionists carry a not so secret anger with God.

This overwhelming need to fix things and an accompanying sense of driven bitterness is why others often think that the perfectionist thinks he or she is God. What a terrible image of God to present to the world.

People who live with inwardly directed anger can bring great gifts to the world when they learn to accept the fact that they, and the world, will never be perfect. They have a unique ability to see what things could be if they were better, and so push all of us to be a little better than we are. They have a vision, and can often see a way to achieve it when others think it impossible.  When the people who live with this sort of anger have learned to accept the disappointment of their own imperfection they are among the most compassionate and generous of souls—encouraging others and more willing than most to walk through the dark places with someone else. Compassion and freedom are great gifts to offer the world.

Which will you choose?