THE ROLE OF the Holy Spirit in regenerating the diseased personality so that its split-off, warring components can be integrated into a complete working unit, is one of the most important aspects of the spiritual life. It is also a dynamic point of operation between the work of the psychotherapist and the spiritual director.
As in al1 other aspects of human toil, there is always a living relationship between the human will and the power of God that comes to us as His Spirit. The human will acting alone cannot effect any creative illumination, nor can it reclaim a lost person or a broken life. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit does not act in a situation where the will does not co-operate fully and unreservedly with Him. I am sure this was why Jesus did not work many miracles in Nazareth, where there was a lack of faith. The people there knew His background too well to be impressed by Him and so allow Him to work among them. (Mark 6:1-6) Faith in the healing power of God does not require a simplistic credulity any more than theological orthodoxy. It demands a simple openness to the uncharted magnanimity of God, Who accepts us as we are in perfect Love, and then, with our co-operation, begins the regenerating work on our personalities. Until we understand the nature of this personal regeneration, we can never come to grasp the meaning of spiritual healing.
The range of human personality is vast. There is, at one pole, the brute beast, no different in appetites from his animal cousin but vastly more dangerous because of his intellectual development. At the other pole, there is a disinterested search for truth, a weary toil demanded by the creative impulse, a self-sacrifice on behalf of his fellows that comes near indeed to the Incarnate Christ. St Paul in Romans 7:21-25 contrasts these two polarities; the first identified with our bodily nature and the second with the Spirit of man, and he sees that, in all men, these two natures are constantly in conflict. The difference between the self-centred person and one who is spiritually dedicated lies in the altered balance of power between the two, but in no one can the first be eliminated by the second. To come to a full realisation of the spiritual potential within us; we have also to come to terms with our animal inheritance, not with resignation or even calm acceptance, but with joyful recognition. Until we can face the whole range of our personal response with equanimity, there can be no real healing in our lives, and therefore we will be unable to comprehend the full extent of God's love for us. It is not often realised how spiritual are the animal desires that are common to all of us. Indeed, our animal brethren often appear to emanate more natural grace than do anxious, alienated human beings.
Without our animal inheritance we would neither live nor actualise our potentialities on this earth. Without the direction of the spirit within, we would never transcend our own endeavours and would remain in a state of inertia. The spirit in man urges him to surpass his past records whether athletic, technical, or intellectual. But when this spirit is consciously infused by the Spirit of God, the will to transcend is no longer limited by personal objectives; it becomes universal in scope and sympathy. As St Augustine puts it: God has made us for Himself and our souls are restless until they rest in Him. But can my defective, sinful soul find that rest in Him Whose Perfection is too great for me to contemplate? St Paul, at the end of Romans 7 says, "Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death?" And he finds the answer, "God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord." (verses 24 and 25)
What does this mean in practice? One thing is clear to me: a mere theological acceptance of the saving power of Christ, no matter how sincere it is on an intellectual level, does not in itself lead to any noticeable integration of the personality. On the contrary, the clinics of many psychotherapists have been filled by broken, sincere Christians who have been brought up from their childhood on a doctrine of their absolute unworthiness. Jesus is seen to be so good as to be scarcely human at all, and He has sacrificed Himself to save sinful; worthless mankind, yet mankind is still as corrupt and worthless today as it was long centuries ago. A monophysitic Jesus Who is divine but not human actually separates man from God, and cannot bring the healing of Jesus to His brothers in the flesh.
How did Jesus redeem those who were lost? He started by coming down to their level, by walking among them, and identifying Himself with them. Neither the prostitute nor the venal tax-gatherer was too debased to be close to Jesus. He sat among them and ate at their parties. Each Christian has a special text dear to him, and mine is Luke 15:1-2: "Another time, the tax-gatherers and other bad characters were all crowding in to listen to him; and the Pharisees and the doctors of the law began grumbling among themselves: 'This fellow', they said, 'welcomes sinners and eats with them.'" And then follow the stories of the lost sheep, the woman who loses a silver piece, and finally the incomparable Parable of the Prodigal Son. You may be sure that Jesus loved the company of these people. If He had attended their panics and revelry with an air of condescension, pious disapproval, or evangelistic fervour, He would never have been invited a second time. He did not exhort the revellers to think about the deep things of life or to consider the fate of their souls. He seems to have reserved this important reflection for those who were ambitious for this world's wealth at the expense of their own authenticity as persons. This included even His disciples. (Mark 8: 34-38)
He loved the sinners of this world for what they were. They knew in their hearts how far from their true nature they had slipped. The woman who prostituted her body for a lust she, in all probability, did not share really hated that body. The tax-gatherer sold his respectability for money, which alone afforded him a sense of security that his upbringing had denied him. And Jesus accepted them with love and thanks giving for what they were. As I have said, He put no demands on them before He associated with them; in doing that He alienated not only the traditional religionists of His time, but also the followers of John the Baptist, that stern, prophetic reformer who had no truck with dissimulation or hypocrisy, but was not notable for his sense of humour. This gift runs through the ministry of Jesus, although it is usually hidden from those who preach the Gospel.
An instance of this ironic humour, relevant to our present consideration, was His comment: "It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick; I have not come to invite virtuous people, but to call sinners to repentance." (Luke 31-32) It was, alas, those who were full of their own virtue, who paraded their moral health, that were sick unto death, because they did not know themselves. Their moral rectitude and religious piety had separated them from the springs of life which flow from the Creator Spirit and are transformed by the human soul into warmth, fellowship, and love. By contrast, the established sinners against the moral order had scraped the depths of degradation and came to realise their unity, even if it was only a oneness born of depravity. Yet Jesus accepted them for their authenticity: And they saw in Him, with the vision of a child, a person who was a proper man. By His very presence, He not only challenged their present mode of life, but, far more important, He showed them the way of release from their thralldom to the flesh to a full realisation of their whole personality.
The beautiful account of the conversion of the tax-gatherer Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10) emphasises this. Jesus had merely to acknowledge this man who was hated by the crowd for his dishonesty, and to dine with him, for a radical transformation of his character to occur. Jesus rejoiced at his change of heart, but at no time did He judge or condemn his past life, any more that He did that of the woman taken in adultery. (John 7:53 - 8:11) He came to heal, or save (the two words are very closely linked), not to judge, still less to condemn. It was the actions of both the sinners and the pious religionists that condemned them. Whereas the sinners had the humility, in the face of Christ, to repent and seek salvation, the religionists were merely threatened by that same face. It showed them all too clearly the gulf first between their faceless conformity to the law (which they breached at every opportunity by casuistical hypocrisy so as to put themselves to as little inconvenience as possible, as Matthew 23 so starkly relates) and the law of love that alone can fulfil the moral law.
The prerequisite for the healing wrought by the Holy Spirit, as demonstrated fully in the ministry of Christ, is a wholehearted acceptance of what we are now. If we cannot face our inner dereliction, or those qualities that rob us of communion with our fellows, or those perversions which shame us so deeply that we cannot bear to face them in full awareness, let alone confide them to others who might help us, we cannot bring them to God for healing. This is the heart of the most deadly of sins, pride. A proud person is so enclosed in himself that he cannot accept love. And not accepting love, he is equally unable to give love to others. It often happens that pride has its origin in a deep, wounding betrayal at any earlier period of life, so that the person bears the painful memory of rejection and remains shut in on himself; he cannot open himself to the love of God. Until that memory is healed, there can be no regeneration of the personality. The great spiritual law is, "Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened." (Matthew 7:7) But there is an inbuilt resistance to asking, a resistance based on our very proper feelings of unworthiness. We are indeed unworthy by human standards, yet supremely worthy by divine standards simply by virtue of God's love in creating us.
What we cannot face cannot be brought to God for healing. We approach the Father through the Son (now ascended in glory with the Father) and the Spirit of God infuses us, starting the process of inner healing. The essential spiritual insight that has come to me over the years is that God loves us as we now stand. Every defect, every weakness, every perversion is as much under the control of God and His glorious love as are the spiritual gifts we value. How often does one encounter a sincere, questing seeker, trying desperately to lead a Christian life but thwarted by some deep-seated defect, very often one of sexual aberration! His efforts to live in purity and dedication to the highest are shattered by the lust of the flesh within him. Or it may be a resentment so ingrained that it casts its malign shadow over the beauty of life and spoils every treasured memory. How can God face such a person? His life is a betrayal of all he believes with his mind and affirms with his lips. And yet God loves him precisely because of his weakness, just as Jesus loved the pariahs of society who crowded together to hear him. He Who makes the sun rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and the dishonest, Who sustains those who deny Him as well as those who love Him, can never, by His own nature, reject any of His creatures. It is only we who can reject Him, and in so doing we isolate ourselves from the lifegiving power of His Spirit.
God is not primarily rejected through the mind; atheistic intellectuals are often rejecting an image of God that is false, but have not the imagination to penetrate beyond that childish conception they so rightly despise. Those who really reject God often, paradoxically enough, affirm Him intellectually and in their words and worship. But their heart is far from Him because it is sealed and remote. The cement that shuts the heart is a combination of guilt and pride; it also occludes their spiritual vision so that they cannot see their neighbours either. If only they were able to see properly, they would soon discover how much they share in common with those around them: fear, isolation, anxiety, despair. Truly it is these negative attributes that bring us close together. This thought in itself gives us some insight into the value of a defect in our personality, once it can be faced, acknowledged, and given its due of love.
But how can I love something aberrant, unclean, and disreputable within me? By seeing it for what it is: a split-off part of the personality that is still of childish stature, and, being isolated, claims its due attention. As long as it is rejected, it will war with the remainder of the personality, violating any inner peace, and separating me from full attention to the present moment. As soon as it is accepted and cherished, I at once humble myself and bring myself into communion with those around me, who, as I have already said, are just as sick in soul as I am. To be sure, their weaknesses may be of a different nature to mine, but they produce a common disintegrating effect on the life of the person, leaving him a mere. shadow of what he might have been had he the courage and faith to accept the difficulty, and work constructively with it. "Anyone who wishes to be a follower of mine must leave self behind; he must take up his cross, and come with me." (Mark 8:34) I believe the cross we, each in our own way, have to carry is that circumstance which prevents our life being successful, which takes away our inner happiness and security, which casts its shadow and leaves its pall of doom upon us. It may be a difficult personal relationship, ill health, a defect in intellectual development, or some inner moral weakness. We may pray for its removal, but not the slightest change will occur until we have contended inwardly with the difficulty.
Jacob was not a very admirable man when he was assailed by an angelic presence during the night. He had tricked his brother Esau out of his inheritance and had later been obliged to flee from his kinsman Laban. He was in a state of fear as the time of meeting with Esau drew near. But despite his ambivalent nature, he did not lack courage, and he contended with the angel of the Lord. He neither cowered in fear nor submitted with pious abnegation of self. In the end, despite a hip injury, he prevailed and would not let go until he had obtained a blessing.
Like so many inspired stories, this can be interpreted on many levels, but one thing stands out: Jacob is the representative of us all. When he faces the consequences of his sins and does not retreat behind plausible excuses or fulsome cajolery, he rises to the stature of a full man, one who strove with God Himself. (Genesis 32: 22-32) His subsequent meeting with his brother was amicable, and his name is raised to that of an immortal.
We each have some inner defect to confront, not with abject shame but with passionate affirmation. Once this thing of darkness, which is within us, is acknowledged openly, without deceit and without apology, it can be transformed. The transformation that culminates in healing may be rapid and painless, but more usually it is prolonged and causes much suffering within. The Holy Spirit brings a knowledge of truth with Him, and he incises the shell of a damaged personality until all the defective parts are exposed and acknowledged.
In our wrestlings with the dark forces within us, we can today count on the help of modern psychological understanding. We know how the will is undermined by subterranean complexes of high psychical potency, deep in the unconscious realms of our personalities. Modern psychotherapy is aided by the increasing understanding of the social and economic dimensions of sin. We now realise that we are as much sinned against by our environment and those who were responsible for our upbringing, as simply sinning ourselves. These insights help us to attain a wider view of the inadequacy that is part of the sinful world into which every soul is conceived. Wel1 did the Psalmist write, "In iniquity I was brought to birth, and my mother conceived me in sin." (Psalm 51:5) It should hardly need to be said that sin has nothing to do with the act of procreation but is an inveterate part of the psychic atmosphere into which each soul is introduced at the moment of conception. And yet both Jeremiah and Ezekiel discountenance the old saying, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge." (Jeremiah 31:29 and Ezekiel 18:2)
The law of personal responsibility is not abrogated by the fact of communal involvement in sin. It tells us of the infinite worth of the person despite his inevitable contamination with the stain of the world. Indeed, it is only by the individual's growth into the likeness of God that some of the stain may be removed, that the evil in the world may be purged, and that the universe may be re-created in the pattern of God's excellence. "See that you work to the design which you were shown on the mountain." (Exodus 25:40)
Where does the work of modern rational healing agencies such as psychotherapy end and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit begin? The answer is, of course, that whatever work is undertaken to relieve pain or dispel ignorance is inspired by the Spirit of God. Every scientific discovery, every philosophical insight, every human aspiration that yearns for truth is due to the inspiration of that Spirit. But rational healing is applied from outside the person. It aims at disclosing the chaos within to the conscious gaze of the person, so that he may gain understanding of the deeper springs of his present infirmity. Such understanding helps to dispel feelings of guilt and releases him from a self-inflicted isolation. At last he can see how much in common he has with others and that his own inner pains are not unique. In diverse ways these patterns of suffering are repeated in the lives of all people. Yet all this intellectual knowledge may not, of itself, effect the slightest change in the inner attitude of the person. He can enjoy rationalising it to the extent of boring his friends with his psychological expertise, but inwardly he may remain as far from his centre as ever. Healing comes like a thief in the night, unheralded and unprepared, when a sudden change of heart is felt and the darkness of the past is lifted. Then at last the person is released from the imprisonment of childish ways of thought and outdated attitudes of mind, and he begins to reflect on his life clearly, perhaps for the first time. The emergence of the Spirit is sudden, authoritative, and incontrovertible. It unlocks the person's inner life, and he becomes less closed in on himself and more ready to open himself up to the love and the wounding of his brothers. The Spirit effects this opening of what was previously shut and inaccessible by the power of love. This love binds the broken personality, and sets in motion the transformation of all the unhealed elements within it. The Spirit is the heart of all healing, the centre of the process of restoration to wholeness. But it cannot be ordered from a distance, nor can it be attained from within until all selfish striving for mastery had been rejected.
It can therefore be deduced that only when a person has the honesty and courage to face the shadow within himself, and, at the same time, the faith to present himself fully to God as a living sacrifice, will the Spirit enter his life both as a gift from without and as a burning presence in the depth of his soul. It is the proof of God's unreserved, unquenchable love for him, and if for him, for all creation also. The Spirit is also the cosmic presence by Whom each individual grows into the stature of a real person, with Jesus Christ as the end as well as the promise of that perfection.
To summarise, it can be said that the regeneration of the personality is the heart of the process of healing and is the central work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He makes us aware of the aberrations within us, gives us the courage to face them and accept them as integral parts of our nature, and fills us with the intuition of God's love for us as we now stand. In this way we do not need to divert our gaze from any aspect of ourselves, and can stand naked once more before our Maker as did Adam and Eve before they committed the act of insolent pride, exalting themselves above God, and separating themselves from Him. In this trusting nakedness, our essential beauty is once more revealed, so that even those aspects of our personality which were previously perverse and shameful are now within reach of God's grace. And then they are transformed into something beautiful and holy. This transformation is aided by al1 the healing agencies available to us, but the act itself is supernatural, being divine in origin. To be receptive to this Spirit that regenerates the personality, the pre-requisites are honesty, courage, humility and faith. It may take years before the incubus within is removed, but even during this period of waiting, one's sympathies are broadened and one can become an ever more useful servant for others. Our wounds become the agents for healing once we have transcended both self-pity and self abhorrence, and have come to identify ourselves more with other people.
It is worth remembering that this process did not even really begin in the lives of Jesus' disciples until their Master left them on their own.
Chapter 6