December 9, 2006
Advice
We have written here only recently that neurosis has little if anything to do with how one behaves or how one suffers, or even with the fact that the psyche, the self, is infused with contradictions. Rather is neurosis primarily the failure of the capacity to attend to the truth about oneself, whatever it may be, with an awareness free of emotionalism, a capacity that the great spiritual masters called sobriety.
That thought returns to mind midst the tensions surrounding the Iraq Study Group’s unanimous report on our failure in our current preemptive destruction of that ancient biblical land and its people. A failure that comes at an embarrassingly outrageous and shameful expense in life and financial security.
Advice, any advice, especially that of those ten worthies making that study, even when asked for, is often hard to take. Especially when it is viewed through the twin lenses of denial and grandiosity that so often distort our humanity. As Christians, we believe that to be human is to be imagined by God into a freedom to love, to reason, to create, and to live in harmony with God and God’s created order. As well, do we believe that God’s grace is for now accessible for its healing when broken.
Denial and grandiosity, as two of the more powerful valences of neurosis, severely cripple our capacity to be truthful about ourselves. Grandiosity distorts our self-image beyond any reasonable bounds. Denial blinds us not only to that fact, but to any possibility of a balanced perspective about our collegial relationship with one another and with God.
That basic failure so apparent in our leaders permeates us all not only with the imbalance of anxiety, but with the necessity that we use our anger judiciously if we would accomplish any stability in the face of it. We should not be surprised.
We, as well, should be grateful that in the wisdom of our founders, we yet possess the means, the system whereby we can and we may recover our sobriety, our capacity to be truthful about ourselves, our nation, our environment, and, indeed, our world. It is altogether possible that we have now come to such a constructive bend in our history that portends real substance to this season’s message of Peace and Goodwill. God comfort us in the pursuing.