Individualism

Talk Four

January 16, 2012

In the last three talks I have spoken of individualism as an attitude toward life that is, in the final analysis, focused on self and accountable only to self. We should note that Christians may offer a two-fold spirituality, sometimes at the same time.

1. Deny yourself. God is first. Others are second. I am last.

2. Fulfill yourself. Be yourself. Become whole. Wholeness is holiness.

In this second kind of spirituality, Christianity becomes a journey of self-discovery. God is the servant of our personal development. Again, self-knowledge and personal development are very very important. It is all a matter of what the goal of our life is, self-actualization or God.

A familiar phrase from St. Irenaeus is: “The glory of God is a man fully alive”. This phrase concludes with: “The glory of man is the vision of God” (p 1-7). Instead of elevating the human person, Irenaeus stresses that only when a person is in union with God has one come to their fullness. God, not us, is the measure of human fullness (p 7).

St. Irenaeus believes that the self is primarily an ability to receive God (p 9). He says that a human person is made up of flesh, soul and spirit.

· Flesh gives unity and form to a person.

· Soul is mid-way between the flesh and spirit. Today we call this our psyche. If the soul is subservient to the spirit, it is raised by it. If it allies itself with the flesh it descends into earthly passions and slavery to those passions.

· Spirit preserves and fashions a person. Today we call this part the soul.

Finally, Irenaeus says that when all three are together and are infused with the Holy Spirit, then a complete person is produced. It is an interesting concept. For Irenaeus a human person is a capacity to receive God. A human person is incomplete until that is done.

“The glory of God is a man fully alive”. By using this first part of Irenaeus’ sentence and eliminating the second, “The glory of man is the vision of God”, it puts the focus of self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and self-completion. It is a statement grabbed by individualism, by a state of mind that makes the human person, not God, at the center of things, and uses a respected Church Father to make it respectable.

We are a good monastic community. It would be surprising if individualism did not affect us in some ways. Next month I want to share more on this.

Individualism

Talk One

October 17, 2011

Sources:

The Promise of Virtue by Eugene Hemrick

Sharing our Journey by Robert Wuthnow

Emile Durkheim was a pioneer in sociology. The ‘Durkheim Constant’ says that there is a limit to the deviant behavior a community can recognize. When behaviors unacceptable to a community exceed the community’s capacity to accept them, then the community adjusts its standards so that conduct once thought reprehensible is no longer looked at that way (Hemrich, p 14). Durkheim also said that if we lack integrity we easily lose focus and are easily distracted from a dedicated and disciplined pursuit of the common good (Hemrich, p 10)

Abbot Hugh Anderson, President of our Congregation, sent a report on the meeting of the Synod of the Presidents of the various Benedictine Congregations throughout the world. The meeting was held in a monastery in Lithuania during September 26 to October 1, 2011. Abbot Hugh’s report arrived during the first week of October. Notker Wolf, the Abbot Primate, in his report on the confedration said, among other things, that vocations are growing in some areas and diminishing in other areas. Abbot Hugh also reported that the Abbot Primate as saying that in many communities there is “a strong individualism; the monks want to be their own superior and there is a genuine lack of real building up of community; these monks have little interest in the future of the community.” The Primate continued: “We must strengthen community life and everyone must accept responsibility for the future of the community.”

This is quite a statement. I suspect he is talking about monasteries in the first world. Every age has its imbalances, and individualism is one of ours. Unless we become conscious of this imbalance and see its functioning, we will not see it at all. Rather, it will be a value that seems good to us, we will embrace it and make it part of our life. It happens automatically. We breathe the air around us, unless we supply our own air. We live the values of our time, unless we develop our own.

The generational differences among us can be seen. For example, the older monks ask for permission to go somewhere. The younger announce that they will be going somewhere. This is not an insignificant change. There is good in the change. It fosters responsibility for one’s life and reflection whether what one is doing is good and right for a monk. At least that is the hope. But it also indicates that the one in charge of my life is me. Now, no one should give ultimate responsibility for themselves to another. In the final end, we are each accountable for ourselves. What is the balance between giving our life over to God and expressing our surrender to God by giving up control of our life to the abbot and horarium, and being an adult who assumes responsibility to live monastic life in an adult manner? We have the balance of surrender and personal responsibility. In a culture of individualism it is easier to slip into a subtle self-centeredness and put God, the Rule and the abbot in a secondary place.

Individualism makes oneself the authority of all things. We monks do not tend to push this to the extremes. We only establish ourselves as the final authority in some areas. For example, whether or not one comes to recreation, how often we skip common prayer, especially Noon Prayer, how well we inform the Prior of our absences, etc. The place where individualism most commonly appears is the liturgy, which is only natural because the liturgy is the most important thing we do. The words we change, the phrases we make sound different, are the instances where we make ourselves the final authority. The Church ought be the final authority regarding liturgy. But because we have decreased respect for the Church and for authority in general and because individualism has affected us, we make ourselves the final authority. We do that with the intention of making the liturgy better and more correct, more holy, more agreeable to our culture and us. Our intentions are to improve the liturgy, not make it worse. In the end, however, we set ourselves up as the ultimate authority as to how things should be done and what the words and grammar should be. I certainly have been guilty of this many times. The community has adjusted enough so that doing this causes little distress.

Individualism also has consequences for our spiritual life. People in general crave for community, but want nothing that binds them to someone or something. Many people want ties that are lose and tentative. We want spirituality but we want the sacred to serve us instead of the sacred requiring us to serve it/him/her (Wuthnow, p 365).

Monastic communities by and large have adjusted to allow the imbalance of individualism to exist to a certain degree, so that it does not cause too much trouble for the community or the monk who has adopted aspects of individualism for himself. This adjustment prevents the community from experiencing too much stress when an aspect of individualistic behavior expresses itself. The Abbot Primate sees individualism as a real problem. So do many other observers and commentators.

In the next talk I want to reflect more on how individualism can infiltrate and direct our spiritual life away from how Christian spirituality has been understood through the centuries.

Individualism

Talk Two

November 14, 2011

Last month, in my first talk on individualism, I mentioned that it is one of the imbalances of our time. I also mentioned that monasteries have adjusted their values to accommodate certain aspects of individualistic behavior. The Church at large has also accommodated individualism, though at present there seems to be a move against it. In monastic life I suspect the same move against individualism is going on.

I now want to speak about how individualism can and has influenced how we look at our spiritual life. For the overall picture of how individualism has affected spirituality, I will be dependent on a book by Heather Ward, entitled The Gift of Self, and upon the author of the Forward to this book, Kenneth Leech.

In recent decades there has been a tremendous growth in inwardness. But it an inwardness that is contrary to the Gospel (p. VII). The Reformation and the Enlightenment are the source of individualism in the western world. From their influence, especially from the Enlightenment, religion has become privatized. A great amount, if not the majority of popular spirituality today, focuses of self-awareness, self-realization and self-fulfillment. There is such a thing as a personal growth industry. This personal growth spirituality has but a weak and thin connection to historical Christianity.

Twenty-first century popular spirituality is not directly connected, and often not connected at all, to churches or to doctrine. This popular spirituality rests upon the self and upon the technique each chooses to complete and fulfill the self (p.vii).

For example, the phrase, “Invite Jesus Christ to come into your life” is often heard. The focus seems to be ‘my life’. Jesus Christ is to improve ‘my life’. The New Testament, however, is the exact opposite. What the Gospels do is bring us into God’s life so God can transform us (p viii). One may ask what the difference is between inviting Christ into one’s life and being brought into the life of God. Are the two that different? It depends on our point of view. But I suspect that for some, at least, there is a 180 degree difference.

When our spiritual life is too concerned about improving ourselves, even when we call upon God’s help, we are most likely only searching to fulfill our ego. The Gospel calls us to lose ourselves, empty ourselves, and forget ourselves. We have the familiar phrase from St. Luke: “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but however loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk 9:24). In his letter to the Romans St. Paul says: “Do not conform yourself to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect” (Rom 12:2).

Several decades ago my room was next to that of Fr. Thomas Jundt, OSB. He was interesting to talk with in his later years. One time he told me that he no longer was interested in making effort to practice this to that virtue. When he was younger, he said, he would focus on a virtue and try to practice it and make it part of his life. “Now”, he said, “I do not care about that stuff anymore. All I care about is God’s will.” The point is not self-improvement, but God’s will. Making God’s will paramount in one’s life will improve one’s life. But the goal is God, not an improved self. A ‘virtuous’ individualist will be concerned about fulfilling self, being oneself, knowing oneself and bringing to life who one is.

Almost all this things that the individualist fosters are good and necessary in a Gospel based spirituality. In the individualistic outlook, however, the end goal is self. In the Gospel outlook and in the Rule of St. Benedict’s outlook and in the monastic tradition outlook, the goal is God and God’s glory.

Next week I hope to share a bit more about this topic.

Individualism

Talk Three

December 5, 2011

Source: The Gift of Self by Heather Ward

In my last two talks on individualism, I said that individualism is one of the imbalances of our time. I also mentioned that the language of popular spirituality is a self-centered language, geared not toward God, but toward the self. If God is involved, God’s job is to improve and complete the self.

In the Gospel, the will of God, not self-improvement, is the point. The Rule of St. Benedict makes the same point. He says: “It is love that impels them to everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which the Lord says: ‘Narrow is the road that leads to life’ (Mt 7:14). They no longer live by their own judgments, giving in to their appetites; rather they walk according to another’s decisions and directions, choosing to live in monasteries and to have an abbot over them. Men of this resolve unquestionably conform to the saying of the Lord: ‘I have come not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me’” (Jn 6:38) (RB 5:10-13).

The New Testament calls us to God and to live by the prompting of the Spirit, not by the promptings of the self in search of human perfection and fulfillment. St. John the Baptist says of Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). Jesus says: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever disobeys the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains upon him” (Jn 3:36). Jesus is the source of eternal life, our self-perfectionism is not. Self-actualization is not salvation. God wants to make a new creation out of us, and our ideas as to how God will do that are not the point. Surrender to God is the point. The ego, not God, is served in a spirituality of self-improvement. This does not mean that we do not try to avoid sin and do virtue but we do so out of loving obedience to God and not obedience to a self that wants to be perfect.

The monastic desire to be perfect is to please God out of love for God. Our desire to be perfect is not based on a desire to feel self-satisfied. It wonderful to feel satisfied with who one is. But ultimately this feeling rests on being unconditionally loved by God. For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it (Jn3:16). God’s plan is to save us, including me. This is the spiritual foundation for a sense of feeling satisfied with the self. God is looking out for me and wants to give me the best there is, heaven. To be loved is a good feeling.

“No one lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:7-8). Monastic life fosters the Gospel value of emptying the ego, emptying ourselves and surrendering to Christ all our plans about how to become one with Christ. Monastic life is not a project of self-improvement, but one of dying to self so that Christ may live in us an make us his own.