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September 28, 2007
> 10:40 AM
merton on legalism > 1 I picked up a little Merton book called Disputed Questions this morning and started flipping through it. I found this in the chapter called The Power and Meaning of Love. He speaks of the real Love of God in the Christian and in the Christian community, as well as it's corruptions in the same. One of them is a spirit of legalism. There are several very good paragraphs on this. I'll lay them out here in a series of sorts starting today. Very interesting stuff. Legalism, on the other hand, is another weak form of love which in the end produces dissension, destroys communion, and for all its talk about unity, tends by its narrowness and rigidity to create divisions among men. For legalism, refusing to see truth in anybody else's viewpoint, and rejecting human values a priori in favor of the abstract letter of the law, is utterly incapable of "rising above" its own limitations and meeting another on a superior level. Hence the legalistic Christian (like the legalistic Jew who caused so much trouble to St. Paul), instead of broadening his view to comprehend the views of another, insists on bringing everyone else into the stifling confines of his own narrowness.Merton wrote this sometime in the late 1950s it looks like. I'm sure we all know this stuff has been around since Jesus kicked up dust on the earth. It probably always will be until the clouds part and the wind preceding His return kicks it up again. Our time in between those two events is going to be fraught with stumbling and grappling. Even if He has given us Gifts by His Holy Spirit to ensure we keep on the right track, still... still we see through a glass darkly. Now, I am ashamed to say, I have been one of these legalistic Christians at some period during my spiritual development. I remember it. I'm sure God is still trying to help me not be this way now. My understanding of how crystal clear things are was skewed toward the letter. Surely, there are things written with letters, but to take all our energy trying to avoid and redefine statements made to us in Scripture, by Paul or whomever (by God ultimately), that point out that this dependence on the written letter and law is unhealthy and indeed unChristian, is waisted energy. We need to realize that these kinds of statements are there, are legitimate and real and are aimed at those who do indeed have more of an external view of being a Christian. And please, don't get excited that you've found someone to lecture about how we need law and rules and how we shouldn't just be wild and do whatever we want. Lord, please show them that is not what I am talking about. If you can't get this for what it's saying and take it if you can honestly see where it's pointing at you, or me, to help us all weave past an unhealthy way of being - well, than I'm not sure. More later. Nothin' like some big Tom to get you bloggin'. Pax vobiscum. technorati tags > legalism, christianity, thomas merton Labels: merton, spiritual formation 0 Comments:| permalink | e-mail me | 
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