Choice, Will, & Redemption

What if spiritual growth and decline, like market investment, both appreciated with a compounding interest. As a young adolescent, I began to think in these terms, with a hunch that mustering a small amount of courage to leap one hurdle, in common social affections, filial relationship, even the more risky "agape" form of love, the next step of progress would be more quickly forthcoming.

There seems to be a certain meaninglessness in orienting one's sense of well-being and fulfillment on the chance of material gain or fiscal "return." Such thinking can lead a person to grave disappointment. An investor who is addicted to the stock ticker, staking himself on the hopes of at least an "equitable" return, will almost certainly earn less than will satisfy. And so it is, whatever our poison, that we often become disgruntled and disillusioned with life when its deepest marrow of meaning eludes us. It was in this vein that the Preacher of Ecclesiastes feared that all was merely "a chasing after the wind," that there was "no profit under the sun."

Investing in our spiritual growth, rather, is productive due to the very fact that it does not fixate on meaningless things nor is the type that is blinded to the beauty of life's grandeur...but develops a capacity for loving others and appreciating the depth of meaning in even the mundane. The earthly counsel of Job measured spiritual health according to the false merits of existential comfort, and the "health and wealth" evangelists of our day breed not more joy but more insecurity, not more money but more anxiety. In no sense do we spiritually, materially, or otherwise, "profit" in conjunction with our degree of dutifulness. Yet, there seems to be a strong conjunction between "will and vulnerability," or the desire for true Goodness and the capacity to enact it, and our assumption of spiritual, or some may call existential, vigor.

At least to some degree, I believe that spiritual fullfillment comes by way of "will and vulnerability," the micro-recognitions of sin, grace, and choice, the micro-choosings of Good and Relationship, the very enactments of the micro-redemptive processes of our everyday lives.

We Christians define ourselves as if who we think we are "deep down" and sincerely desire to be somehow takes precedence and priority over our real actions. Our own personal identities, rather than based on the more obvious tendencies, desires, and enactments of our everyday lives, tend to be either based on our ideals or our insecurities. It is no wonder, given our self-ascribed definitions, that we experience repulsion at the doctrine that describes a "total depravity of Mankind," when in all actuality the evidence literally stares us in the face every morning. Yet, if our focus was not even toward ourselves but God Himself, our entire sense of spiritual orientation could be rejuvenated.

Our sense of choice is skewed by our sense of self. And so we choose based not on the Good that we would ascent to, but to the "good" that we desire, a carnal lust that determines us, not merely to the degree that we choose it, but to a greater degree, for sin also operates on a sort of cosmic Economic. We chase after the wind, and we get not a cool breeze in return, but a rabid windstorm. And so when we chase after Good, we run into not just Relationship, but God Himself.

Our capacity to choose changes constantly with our practice of life. The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens--or better perhaps, comes alive. ...Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme when I can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme when I have lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice. In the practice of life the degree of freedom to choose is different at any given moment. If the degree of freedom to choose the good is great, it needs less effort to choose the good. If it is small, it takes a great effort, help from others, and favorable circumstances...Most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot lead a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide. They are not aware when life asks them a question, and when they still have alternative answers. Then with each step along the wrong road it becomes increasingly difficult for them to admit that they are on the wrong road, often only because they have to admit that they must go back to the first wrong turn, and must accept the fact that they have wasted energy and time.

(Erich Fromm, The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil, pp. 173-178).

We find ourselves on the wrong path not just because when the road diverged in the wood, we took the wrong one, but because at every juncture, it either becomes more wooded or more well lit, more difficult or more easy to discern which path might, in fact, be the better one. This is the very nature of Pride. If it is true that "Pride goeth before the Fall," it must also be true that Pride, at every turn, descends further and further, and more sharply down, until, instead of Fall, it could better be described as Abyss. The path to Heaven is likewise.

In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis brilliantly portrays the journey towards Heaven and Hell in a number of characters whose degree of choice, will, and redemption is experienced in conjunction with the degree to which they have already chosen, willed, and either accepted or rejected shards of that which is Redemptive. The beauty of this truth, as shown in the following story, is that the Redemptive shards, in even grazing the ear of a sinner, can have the power to restore not just that sinner, but literally turn his burdens to majestic creatures of holiness...

I saw coming towards us a Ghost who carried something on his shoulder. Like all the Ghosts, he was unsubstantial, but they differed from one another as smokes differ. Some had been whitish; this one was dark and oily. What sat on his shoulder was a little red lizard, and it was twitching its tail like a whip and whispering things in his ear. As we caught sight of him he turned his head to the reptile with a snarl of impatience. 'Shut up, I tell you!' he said. It wagged its tail and continued to whisper to him. He ceased snarling, and presently began to smile. Then he turned and started to limp westward, away from the mountains.

'Off so soon?' said a voice.

The speaker was more or less human in shape but larger than a man, and so bright that I could hardly look at him. His presence smote on my eyes and on my body too (for there was heat coming from him as well as light) like the morning sun at the beginning of a tyrannous summer day.

'Yes. I'm off,' said the Ghost. 'Thanks for all your hospitality. But it's no good, you see. I told this little chap.' (here he indicated the lizard), 'that he'd have to be quiet if he came--which he insisted on doing. Of course his stuff won't do here: I realise that. But he won't stop. I shall just have to go home.'

'Would you like me to make him quiet?' said the flaming Spirit--an angel, as I now understood.

'Of course I would,' said the Ghost.

'Then I will kill him,' said the Angel, taking a step forward.

'Oh--ah--look out! You're burning me. Keep away,' said the Ghost, retreating.

'Don't you want him killed?'

'You didn't say anything about killing him at first. I hardly meant to bother you with anything so drastic as that.'

'It's the only way,' said the Angel, whose burning hands were now very close to the lizard. 'Shall I kill it?'

'Well, that's a further question. I'm quite open to consider it, but it's a new point isn't it? I mean, for the moment I was only thinking about silencing it because up here--well, it's so damned embarrassing.'

'May I kill it?'

...'Honestly, I don't think there's the slightest necessity for that. I'm sure I shall be able to keep it in order now. I think the gradual process would be far better than killing it.'

'The gradual process is of no use at all.'

'Don't you think so? Well, I'll think over what you've said very carefully. I honestly will. In fact I'd let you kill it now, but as a matter of fact I'm not feeling frightfully well today. It would be silly to do it now. I'd need to be in good health for the operation. Some other day, perhaps.'

'There is no other day. All days are present now...'

....'Damn and blast you! Go on can't you? Get it over. Do what you like,' bellowed the Ghost: but ended, whimpering, 'God help me. God help me.'

Next moment the Ghost gave a scream of agony such as I have never heard on Earth. The Burning One closed his crimson grip on the reptile: twisted it, while it bit and writhed, and then flung it, broken backed, on the turf.

'Ow! That's done for me,' gasped the Ghost reeling backwards.

For a moment I could make out nothing distinctly. Then I saw, between me and the nearest bush, unmistakably solid but growing every moment solider, the upper arm and the shoulder of a man. Then, brighter still and stronger, the legs and hands. The neck and golden head materialised while I watched, and if my attention had not wavered I should have seen the actual completing of a man--an immense man, naked, not much smaller than the Angel.

What distracted me was the fact that the same moment something seemed to be happening to the Lizard. At first I thought the operation had failed. So far from dying, the creature was still struggling and even growing bigger as it struggled. And as it grew it changed. Its hinder parts grew rounder. The tail, still flickering, became a tail of hair that flickered between huge and glossy buttocks. Suddenly I started back, rubbing my eyes. What stood before me was the greatest stallion I have ever seen, silvery white but with mane and tail of gold. It was smooth and shining, rippled with swells of flesh and muscle, whinneying and stamping with its hoofs. At each stamp the land shook and the trees dindled.

(The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis, pp. 96-100)

Just as sin is the yeast of a hardened heart, Redemption is the great contagion of God Himself, raging ruthlessly into the hearts of His children to the degree that we avail ourselves to receive it. We who receive not ask not, and we tend to "ask not" all too often. Yet when the most humble bit of Charity reaches past the gates of our Pride, the gates don't just come open, the walls come down. For the qualities that birth any small Good contain the momentum to obliterate our Perpetrations. Given the state of our hearts, we are at far greater risk from the righteous hand of God than from the Enemy.