Dear Flannery,
The other day I was helping sell books at an annual convention for therapists and psychologists who gather together to discuss the discipline under the canopy of religion, as members of our Church, when my husband and I were invited to join some intelligent and highly educated professionals at their luncheon table. Bear in mind that among these were people I have appreciated and admired greatly for some years. To my disappointment, the conversation went very wrong.
As I sat there listening to the conversation I realized with a start that it was just as you said: they were totally mistaking the devil for this or that psychological tendency! In our mainstream society today almost limitless sexual immorality is embraced in large part because of political pressure, fear, intimidation, and misinformation. Even some of the churches with the most strict rules for sexual conduct are softening on an institutional/doctrinal level toward what used to be considered unspeakable and sinful temptations and practices. (To give you an idea, there are churches that now ordain proudly and openly homosexual clergy who are "married" to their same sex partner.)
According to our luncheon companions, patients who experience and entertain (by whatever means) totally out-of-bounds sexual feelings must be encouraged to totally free themselves of all shame and guilt; otherwise they will be overwhelmed and make no progress in understanding, controlling, or redirecting said feelings. To this I asked what was so wrong with shame and guilt if it's justified? I said that I myself appreciated those feelings as warnings that I needed some correction. Eyebrows went up. I said none of us are very wise or brave or pure or good (a fact that is popularly overlooked) so why should we coddle and flatter the sexually wayward/troubled/addicted? Forks went down. I said why not try the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as in teaching that God loves us immeasurably, that we are fallen creatures, and that we need to continually repent through the merits of Christ? Someone might have choked slightly on their chicken manicotti.
To top it off, they argued that erasing the sinful stigma attached to sexual abominations (they didn't use the Biblical word abominations; nobody does anymore) is what we must do to facilitate discourse and heal relations with the opposition (whom they apparently forgot is the devil). When I said, what business is that of ours? I saw some rather shocked and serious faces.
Of course the opposition won't be appeased until God and His goodness have been gotten rid of completely. In fact, any kind of opposition to sexual freedom is increasingly being punished, fined, disallowed, and demonized, religious conscience notwithstanding. There's even a movement to not just discredit but outlaw the very type of therapy these people practice, even if it aims to merely diminish homosexual desires. It's as if these church friends believe they are operating in some special bubble.
Finally, when I asked them which way, Christ's (truth) or theirs (flattery), could teach the patient more about humility, patience and other Christ-like traits, and which would teach them more about pride, selfishness, and other devilish traits, they were speechess. Their final rejoinder was, "I think we're really agreed, just using different words." But of course in reality we were talking about completely opposite things.
You saw all of this coming. So, you want to know what my worst fear is?
My worst fear is that I, me, myself, will be caught up in the flow of it all, that I'll slowly, incrementally, step by tiny step, inside my head, without realizing it, give way, bit by bit, and be swept along in the lukewarm river of spineless public sentiment, of Godlessness, ease, popularity, obliviousness, complacency, humanism, pride, lies, vanity, and mediocrity. No more transcendent ideals. No more absolute truths. No more spiritual certainties. Only the subjective ego and the brainwashed, secularist public blindly trusting that whoever happens to be in charge will somehow turn out to behave benevolently towards them. The only sins commitable will have to do with now stodgy-sounding traditional, Godly virtues.Tyranny and disorder and arbitrary edicts will arise, so slowly we won't see the big picture until we're drowning in meaninglessness, oppression, despair, filth, and decay.
I can feel that I am not immune to losing my way, at first just a little, until I've lost it completely. The strength and ingeniousness of the pressure is unprecedented, so how can a little hobbit like me withstand it?
Yes, I'm trying to be vigilant. I'm praying and studying and exercising my faith. Of course this only makes the distortions, the softening, the pervasiveness, and the omissions more incredible and troubling. It's true that when I give in to feeling sentimental and overwhelmed and fretful and discouraged and bitter (these are some of my sins) I often end up feeling that generous divine grace humbling me, throwing me back on God, teaching me to trust in Him, rather than in any human being or institution. But, just as I enjoy witnessing the morning sun peek over the mountain (I follow Thoreau's advice to watch the sunrise each day in order to keep my sanity, or as my sister-in-law called it, my "sunity") and must soon look away for its brilliance, I don't seem to be able to continuously entertain that bright grace and I find myself time and again trying to see through some degree of darkness. Will I never learn? I suppose that doesn't matter. What matters is if I keep wanting to.
I wonder if fifty years ago you imagined that you would be a help to someone like me.
J.
