Amongst those experiences of life from which there is no escape is the awareness that you have fallen from the high standard that you know is a full measure of yourself. This falling from the mark, the evasion of the call to be true to one's highest intimations of reality which are codified in the moral teachings of the Bible, is the inner meaning of sin. Its outer showing is a perverse attitude to other people. It is of the essence of the paradox of human nature that we are both set a high standard of perfection and constantly betraying it in our lives. The heart of this paradox lies in the contrast between what we really are, children of God, and the journey away from that true identity we are obliged to make in the course of our life.
The history of Israel as recounted throughout the Old Testament is also an allegorical account of the soul's journey in time. The first of our human compatriots, Adam and Eve, are unconsciously living in unity with God and the created universe; they do not know God and are unaware of themselves as people. It is only when they disobey the command from above and partake of the fruit of human, divisive knowledge that their eyes are opened and they begin to see themselves as isolated creatures. At the same time, they have to confront their separation from God and their exclusion from the full life in eternity. The first Adam becomes a living soul, finite and isolated. His primal sin has emphasised the grasping, unscrupulous, predatory tendencies in man, intent only on himself with no regard for those around him. And yet he cannot ignore his true nature nor be unmindful of the destiny that he dimly divines within himself.
The great figures in the Book of Genesis - Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph - are more than simply characters in an historical setting. They are archetypes of the obedience of man to his divine calling in the wisdom of God. They show the pattern of right human relationships with God in which man is fully human and God both transcends all human understanding and yet is deeply rooted in His creation: His voice speaks in man's deepest intuition and gives the divine command to leave the flesh-pots of immediate gratification and enter into a way that is not known by human reason. The instruction given to Moses in Exodus 25:40 concerning the building of the tabernacle is even more pertinent to the saints of humanity in their relationship to the pattern of mankind's strivings to perfection: "See that you work to the design which you were shown on the mountain." The archetypes are our design, and we see them most clearly on the mountain of illumination when we put darkness behind us and view reality without impediment.
In the enthralling story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, we see a development of human consciousness beyond absorption in archetypal figures to a full participation in life. The Law brought down symbolically by Moses from Mount Sinai is the bond that unites God and man. It is in fulfilling the law of God that man participates in God's perpetual labour in the world; it is man's supreme privilege to work with God in the maintenance and spiritualisation of the created universe, at least inasmuch as it embraces our small place in it, though no one can know the extent of the cosmos that may respond to prayer. It is, as it were, that the exodus event marks man's arrival at an adult state of self-awareness. He sees himself in the world responsible for himself and his surroundings and privileged to commune with God and do the work that God requires. But the vision slips away time after time. The tempestuous rejections and apostasies of the Israelites in the wilderness bring on them appropriate punishment, and only after a prolonged period of purification is this turbulent people seen to be worthy of inheriting the promised land. The remainder of the Old Testament is a development of the theme of election by God, a slow striving for spiritual mastery, victory, apostasy, suffering and destruction. A remnant is left to continue the work, and every peak of triumph ends on a mute note of disillusionment, disintegration and destruction. This is not merely the story of a peculiar people: it is mankind's story, of whom Israel is the supreme representative. It is repeated in one form or another in all the world's religions, even the Christian religion, despite the radically new departure heralded by the God-man Jesus Christ, who of all the great spiritual figures in the world's history, gained victory in defeat, transfigured degradation to glory, and showed a full resurrection of even corruptible physical elements.
In the mystical views of ultimate reality there are several strands, none of which is adequate on its own, but all of which contribute to a fuller understanding of the life which we, as ordinary people, have to experience. This life is a mosaic of happiness and suffering, of growth and death. In the Advaita, non-dualistic philosophy of Shankara, the One alone is real The relationship with the One (or Brahman) and the soul is that of pure, simple identity. All that is fleeting and changing, which is the realm of finite experience and is subject to time and multiplicity, is unreal. It is illusory (or maya). It is ignorance (avidya) that is the root of the illusory appearance of finite things, although even this false appearance of the reality of the finite springs from the power of Brahman. In this respect Brahman is not the same as the personal God worshipped in the Semitic monotheistic religions. Brahman is more akin to the ineffable Godhead that can be described only in terms of what it is not, since it transcends all rational categories. And yet it is open to all in the supreme mystical illumination that is man's privilege to experience if only he were humble and receptive. It is known to the mystic as being, awareness and bliss. This ultimate reality is what each creature is in essence, since the spark of the soul, the Atman, is one with Brahman. The Buddhist doctrine of the void is another expression of this great insight into reality.
However this extreme monism does not fit in with the whole gamut of experience. Other great mystics, while acknowledging supreme reality only to the One whom men call God, also accept that the creation has its own integrity. There is a hierarchy of created forms that are differentiated individually without being divided one from the other. St Paul's analogy of the body of Christ, in which each member is an essential organ yet unable to exist except in the unity of the whole body, is a valuable illustration of this truth. Our particular world may be a dark universe in the hierarchy of heavenly realms; it may indeed be a shadow-world, but it has its own significance in the scheme of things. It is not simply an illusion. This is the Platonic insight which was fully articulated in the mystical theology of Plotinus. Indeed, the experience of the soul's separateness and isolation is a surface phenomenon, for in the depths of being the separation dissolves in the living reality of God.
The Indian mystic Ramanuja, the exponent of modified non-dualism and a critic of the great Shankara, believed that the obviously manifold nature of the universe springs from a tendency inherent in the very nature of divine reality. Both he and Plotinus saw man as a young prince brought up among strangers, unaware of his own origin or his true nature. Indeed, he cannot be or know himself until he acknowledges his inner oneness with God. Ignorance lies at the root of this human alienation, and the basis of the misunderstanding is the false identification of the person with his body, which should be his servant but which has, in the course of incarnate life, become his master.
This essential insight into the dilemma of human consciousness can easily enter extreme dimensions. The gnostics believed (as we have noted already) that matter was intrinsically evil, indeed that the material world was itself the outcome of a fall. Matter can assume, in this outlook, a force of blind desire, a manifestation of the power of darkness which is in perpetual conflict with the divine power of light. Some gnostic mystics attribute evil to the operation of forces beyond worldly limitation, even indeed as a result of discord arising among the divine qualities. The great Jewish theosophical treatise, the Zohar which is the heart of Kabbalah sees discord arising through the separation of divine judgement (Din or Gevurah) and divine mercy and love (Hesed).
All this may seem dry and barren, purely intellectual speculation, but throughout human history the greatest minds have wrestled with the problem of evil and the destiny of the universe. Both are different aspects of the same enigma. As far as my own insight has shown it to me, I have no doubt that God is in control. All the schemes alluded to have their validity in the total reality of life in God. None is completely adequate on its own, but each complements the unsatisfied part of its fellow. To return to the analogy of the human soul among strangers, which seems to be a profound insight into the human condition, it seems that this very experience of alienation is necessary for the growth of the person into full union with God. While the monistic view of the identity of the soul and the One is eternally true, this truth has to be experienced, not philosophically or even in a fleeting mystical experience, but in the course of incarnate life. It is through the experience of suffering that is at the heart of all separative existence, as the Buddha so rightly diagnosed the human condition, that man transcends the purely personal mode of being and enters his true estate. He is indeed a prince by birth, but before he can enjoy the privilege and responsibility of his inheritance, he has to prove himself worthy. And the seal of worthiness consists in knowing the world, knowing its creatures, identifying himself with all of them, and sacrificing himself for them. Only then are the scales lifted from his eyes, and he can enter into the royal realm which is the kingdom of God.
There was One alone who showed this pattern in His short life, and He entered the state of resurrection after He had given everything He had in order to redeem all that was lost and forgotten by men. Through faith all who believe in Him are shown the way to eternal life in God and are strengthened by His Spirit. But they have to recapitulate the life of their Lord. Mere intellectual acceptance of credal formulae is not the essence of the faith that saves. That faith offers itself as a living sacrifice to God and to be used as God wills it. Thus the faith that Abraham had was not fully shown until he entered on the final act of actually preparing to slay his son Isaac; only then did God intervene supernaturally, and a new understanding of reality was granted to the great patriarch. The metaphysical identity of the spirit of man with the One is realised in bodily life only when man has, in the likeness of Christ, raised up into glory all that is corrupt and fallen in the world.
Suffering is the way of growth into Christhood, and our sufferings complement the redemptive work of Christ on the cross. As St Paul says: "It is now my happiness to suffer for you. This is my way of helping to complete, in my poor human flesh, the full tale of Christ's afflictions still to be endured, for the sake of his body which is the church" (Colossians 1:24). This does not mean that St Paul's suffering adds to the value of Christ's redemptive work, for this work could not be augmented. It means that the pain we must all undergo for the kingdom of God to be established on earth is our contribution to the resurrection of the world, since "the universe itself is to be freed from the shackles of mortality and enter upon the liberty and splendour of the children of God" (Romans 8:21). This is perhaps St Paul's supreme insight concerning the full meaning of the Incarnation and its final end. It is our privilege to be God's heirs and Christ's co-heirs as we share His sufferings now in order to share His splendour hereafter (Romans 8:17).
Simone Weil expressed the vocation of suffering in Christ perfectly when she wrote: "The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural remedy for suffering but a supernatural use for it" (in the chapter on affliction in Gravity and Grace). There is no growth without pain; there is no freedom without renunciation; there is no life without perpetual death. It is the status quo that hems us in with the comfortable illusion of ownership that we identify with reality. This is the illusory path that the mystics are at such pains to expose and extinguish. As Jesus said: "Whoever cares for his own safety is lost; but if a man will let himself be lost for my sake, and for the Gospel, that man is safe" (Mark 8:35). Material safety is the one certain illusion, for all manifest things pass away as in a night. But the material world is our place of experience and experimentation. We grow into full human beings in its environment, as we, in our turn, have to give something of our essence to lift up the rocks and soil, the vegetation and the animal creation, and indeed the very air we breathe, from inertia to life and from the cycle of decay and death to eternal life. Only then does the world around us live with us, and both we and it pass from illusion to reality, from death to immortality. As we grow into spiritual understanding, so we begin to grasp the essential truth that nothing is evil in itself, but anything, even the highest religious observance, can assume an 'evil propensity if it makes us feel that we have attained the end of our journey, that we have finally arrived. "For here we have no permanent home, but we are seekers after the city which is to come" (Hebrews 13:14). It is in coming to a measure of full humanity in the form and person of Christ that we raise up inert matter to spiritual essence and deliver that which was used for evil intent to the fully pure.
The life we lead here is one of constant imperfection. As St Paul wrote: "The good which I want to do, I fail to do; but what I do is the wrong which is against my will; and if what I do is against my will, clearly it is no longer I who am the agent, but sin that has its lodging in me. I discover this principle, then; that when I want to do the right, only the wrong is within my reach. In my inmost self I delight in the law of God, but I perceive that there is in my bodily members, the law of sin. Miserable creature that I am, who is there to rescue me out of this body doomed to death? God alone, through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:19-25). The way of God's salvation in Christ is much more gradual and progressive than many believers, young in the Christian faith, recognise. Dramatic conversion and charismatic experiences may punctuate the inner healing that a knowledge of God brings with it, but there are also the prolonged, significant periods of apparent stagnation and relapse that are the more real way of spiritual growth. Our inner feelings are poor guides to the state of our spiritual health. The Pharisee in the famous parable thanked God that he was so much better than his fellows, whereas the tax-gatherer knew only how derelict he was, yet it was he, not the self-righteous man, who went home acquitted of his sins.
The pain of sin, which, as St Paul points out with the authority of a modern psychologist, is an integral part of natural man, manifests itself by an awareness of guilt. This is the inability to look one's fellow in the face because of one's sense of inner corruption. Not all guilt is the fruit of sin; some is due to our failure to live up to the demands exacted on us by society. This includes our parents and teachers who assume a god-like role in our lives by virtue of the conditioning they laid upon us during the formative years of childhood. This Freudian "super-ego" has to be analysed, seen in its rightful perspective, and then transcended. A guilt that derives from the unfulfilled demands of the super-ego is morbid, and it may require intelligent professional help to disentangle and exorcise.
Another dimension of society that may inflict a burden of guilt on the unfortunate person is the peer group to which he belongs. Group loyalty, which can be extended into the categories of class structure, religious affiliation and political alignment, often affects the sensitive person with a sense of utter worthlessness if he dares to strike out on an independent course. To be ostracised by one's former friends and colleagues is a terrifying experience. Jesus underwent this during the last period of His life when He appeared discredited in the hands of the authorities whom most of the population detested.
There is, however, a third type of guilt that is undoubtedly the fruit of sin. It occurs when we have deliberately or unwittingly betrayed a fellow human being. A stench emanates psychically from us, and we are even more aware of the radical nature of our withdrawal from the society of men than are those whom we have wronged. This is indeed an aspect of the sin against the Holy Spirit, for when we betray or demean any person, we are demeaning Christ Himself ("I tell you this: everything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me" - Matthew 25:40); this text applies as much to someone we hurt as someone we help, since all of us are parts of one body (Ephesians 4:25). Indeed, we exclude ourselves from the one body, the living power of which is the Holy Spirit. Until we align ourselves once more with the on whom we have wronged, we cannot be in alignment with the body of mankind, and the Holy Spirit does not inspire us with life. The result is disease and death.
The reverse side of the experience of guilt for wrongful actions against other people is the equally destructive awareness of resentment over wrongs that we ourselves have suffered. If the first experience requires forgiveness for its healing, the second attitude can be repaired only by our own ability to forgive others. Forgiveness, furthermore, is of God, not of man. The religious folk of Jesus' time were quite right to be affronted by the emphatic way in which He forgave the sins of those who were affected in body and mind. But they were unaware of the divine nature of the One who forgave. Before we can forgive we have to experience forgiveness ourselves, and that can occur only in an encounter with God. Then God speaks through us, effecting our own inner healing and proclaiming the healing of those who have wronged us. Forgiveness brings the wrong-doer and the victim together in one body. In this body both are transformed, and a new life is available to them. The gesture of forgiveness that may be proffered on purely human terms seldom effects any change in attitude either in the victim or the guilty party. It is essentially an act of condescension, in which the one who expresses his forgiveness is really proclaiming his moral and spiritual superiority over the person who has done him an injury. To know all may be to forgive all, according to the well-known saying, but this all-embracing knowledge must include not only the circumstances of the trouble but also the persons involved. Only God can have this knowledge. As we do not even begin to know ourselves except in the pit of suffering, we are hardly in a position to know anyone else or the circumstances of either his or our own wrong-doing.
In the agony of guilt and the fury of resentment, through the muttered prayers for relief, there comes a time when the suffering is so severe that all personal demands are shattered. It is in the crucible of God's devouring fire that the old personality is completely remoulded so as to be divested of all its ego-dominated dross. Then, at last, the pearl of great price, the soul with its enshrined spark of spirit, lies revealed, and from it a new personality is born, in which the ego is a true reflection of the glory within instead of being an independent focus of domination. The devouring fire of God is also His forgiveness. It is as if we, like Jacob, have had a hard contest with the brightness of God's truth that penetrates and pulverises all personal illusions. When we stand naked before God's fire, His love can enter our hearts, and we can articulate His forgiveness. We know that we are forgiven because we are now as open to the world as we were in the innocence of our childhood. We have been told that only those who accept the kingdom of God like a child can ever enter it (Mark 10:15). Suffering has the cleansing effect of shattering our selfish demands for justice and rewards for services rendered. It makes us value life as the supreme gift of God. What does a man gain by winning the whole world at the cost of his true self? What can he give to buy that self back? These two piercing questions of Jesus (Mark 8:36-37) focus our attention on the reality of life itself and lead us away from dissipating our energy on the superficial events that colour and distort true living. Only the one who has suffered can separate the living reality from the illusions that encompass it. He alone is forgiven of his many sins, and the proof of that forgiveness lies in his changed attitude to those who have wronged him. He now realises, perhaps to his surprise, that he bears no one a grudge any more, that any demand for justice and retribution is completely irrelevant to the new life upon which he has entered.
This absolution from past sins does not free us from the consequences of hurtful actions that we may have committed. On the contrary, it is only with a healed conscience that we can begin to lead a risen life, one that is devoted to all the injured, sick members of society. The motivating power in putting right some of the damage we have previously done is neither a sense of duty nor the demands of society; it is a burning love that embraces all creation. It will never rest until it has lifted to resurrection all that is unclean, perverse, sordid and evil. Only when the unclean, evil thing is embraced in the love that Jesus had for those who persecuted and reviled Him can it too be reclaimed and brought back to its source, which is God. When we see forgiveness in this light, the great ethical demands of the Sermon on the Mount cease to be merely ideal attitudes of a perfect society, but become the only way in which life can be preserved. "Do not set yourself against the man who wrongs you. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left . . . Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors . . . There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly Father's goodness knows no bounds" (Matthew 5:38-48).
It must be said that this counsel of perfection does not come to fruition until we have been divested of every illusion of separative existence and personal eminence by the winnowing fire of suffering. This may take the form of years of incarceration in an inhuman prison camp, or the prolonged spiritual isolation that follows the death of a loved one, or the gradually failing power of the body that accompanies progressive, incurable disease. With God's grace the suffering may end before the person dies, in which event he can show his love to the world. But more frequently his love pours out of a dying body that is a witness both to man's inhumanity to man and man's unconquerable spirit in the face of unmitigated hell. When one reads such a book as the already-mentioned Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, one is struck by its transcendence of personal bitterness and by the absence of imprecations of hatred against the Nazi torturers. And yet there is no sentimentality about it which might tend to blur essential moral issues. Good and evil are clearly defined, and yet forgiveness transcends both of them and brings them into a new creative synthesis. The Buddha taught us a long time ago that hatred never ceases by hatred. Hatred ceases only by love; this is the eternal law (Dhammapada 5).
When Dame Julian of Norwich was shown in her Revelations of Divine Love that sin was behovable (necessary), but that all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well, she was being initiated into a supreme mystery. Without the constant fall from the high standards that God has implanted in us, we would never acknowledge the supremacy of those standards, and would certainly never attain them in the course of our life on earth. They would remain wonderful ethical ideals on which to meditate but without actually practising in the course of a day's sweat and toil.
Sin makes forgiveness possible, and forgiveness heralds the advent of the new man, who is no longer limited in vision by his deserts, privileges and rewards, but who moves in compassion to take on the burden of all created things.
MeditationI thank you, O Lord, for the divine discontent deeply placed within my soul which will never let me be until I give myself wholly to your service.