More on Truth and Love

I’ve written before about truth and love and the necessity to keep a proper balance between them. Lean too far in either direction and you will fall into error either through rigidly enforcing law without mercy, as a political far right might do, and so becoming hard-hearted and dogmatic, or else by abandoning law for the sake of a sentimentalized love that recognizes no distinctions and no overarching truth, as the left does, thereby consolidating and confirming people in sin and ignorance. We can even look at these as masculine and feminine type reactions, at the same time noting that they are often provoked by an extremist attitude on the other side. Extremes breed extreme responses. To get this right requires a high level of discernment as well as honest motivation, and it is one of the primary tasks of the spiritual aspirant though really it is the duty of any individual to make some steps along this path.

The Pharisees condemned Christ because he favoured mercy over the law. In their eyes anyway. Actually he did not. He just didn’t reduce mercy to insignificance when set against the law. He kept the balance between the two and responded to each situation on an individual basis rather than an inflexible, set in stone one. Unlike the Pharisees he treated human beings in a human way not as impersonal objects to be fitted into an unbending dogma. But he also worked from law and truth as can be evidenced in numerous passages of the Gospels, for example when he said that he did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfil it or when, in John chapter 14 verse 15, he stated clearly and unequivocally "If you love me, keep my commandments".

The point is Jesus looked into the heart and if he saw goodness there he aimed to bring it out. He saw rigidity in the hearts of the Pharisees so contested them. Not because of their adherence to the Law but because of their hard-heartedness in enforcing it. He looked into the heart of sinners and sometimes he saw true spiritual feeling there, albeit overlaid by sin. So he encouraged them to come to him but that required a willingness on their part to repent of their sins, certainly to recognize that they were in a state of sin and do their best to move out of that. He reached out to people and called them to repent and change. If they were not willing to do that and wanted spiritual reward without being willing to renounce their sinful ways he would not have persevered with them. They would have been as bad as the Pharisees, at the other end of the spectrum of sinfulness. Their spiritual sincerity and desire to change were paramount.

It can never be repeated too often. Jesus did not come to make us happy in our earthly selves but to bring us to holiness. He loved and he forgave but above all he was the Truth and he required all those who followed him to walk in the way of truth. If they did not, well then they could not be his disciples. You cannot have Jesus and sin any more than you can have God and Mammon. If you love me, keep my commandments means if you don't keep, or at least try to keep, my commandments then you don't love me. Jesus brought mercy but not a cheap and false mercy that overlooked sin because sin is fundamentally what separates a person from God. To warn people against sin and the spiritual self-injury that results from it is not hard-hearted but truly merciful because it frees the soul from captivity.

We are all sinners but the spiritual person recognizes this, accepts it and tries to put it right. He doesn’t try to excuse or justify his sin. Likewise the spiritual teacher will talk of God's forgiveness but forgiveness is conditional on proper repentance. Again, truth and love must go together. You cannot have one without the other.

This idea has a bearing on the current difficulty in the Catholic church. I am referring to the so called 'filial correction' issued by some senior members of the Catholic hierarchy to the Pope. This is in response to his apparent opening up of Holy Communion to those who have disqualified themselves from receiving it by their way of life, principally, as I understand it, divorced people and others who have broken with traditional sexual standards. The reasoning of those who support the Pope in this is that he is bringing more people to God through the exercise of mercy and forgiveness. The concern of those who are against it is that he is offering forgiveness regardless of any repentance and thereby rebranding sin as not sin and starting the inevitable slide into moral relativism. 

It does seem to me that at the very least the Pope is being naive if he thinks that lowering the bar of what it means to be spiritual will do anything other than reduce God's truth to a worldly parody of it. You may increase quantity. You will certainly reduce quality. You simply cannot compromise truth and the excuse of love is no justification. At the same time you cannot use the excuse of truth to act unlovingly to God's children.  What the Pope should do is affirm traditional teaching while saying that the door is always open for repentant sinners who will be welcomed home as was the prodigal son. But note that the prodigal son had to return to his father. His father did not go to him. Yes, Jesus did come to us as that was his special mission, but he still required (and requires) us to come to him on his terms, the terms of truth, not on any of our own. There is no way round this. I can understand and sympathise with Catholics who regard this revised teaching with alarm, and I can appreciate their dilemma in that they have to go against their supreme authority on Earth. But there is a higher authority and they have to be faithful to that above all. Frankly, they've rather got themselves tied in knots with their doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope which comes very close to idolatry in my view.

So truth and love, always together. Neither one without the other. This is how it must be.