October 15, 2007> 7:40 PM
merton on legalism > 3 I just remembered, I wasn't done yet with this legalism series. Neither is big Tom. I'm pretty sure it pissed him off as much as it does me. I wonder, too, if he saw it in himself , or saw himself escaping from it. I think we are all in the process of escaping from it. The propensity to be legalistic, I believe, is inside us, but it's not natural. Now, by "natural" I mean the original natural, God-Natural. This propensity is a part of the fallen, broken nature we've inherited. The danger is, we mistake it so easily for a propensity to righteousness. Our legalism is a way for us to control things - ourselves, others, God. Let's continue with Merton's thoughts...
The reason why this legalism is a danger is precisely because it can easily be a perversion of true obedience as well as a perversion of love. Authoritarianism has a way of becoming so obsessed with the concept of obedience that it ends by disobeying the will of God and of the Church in all that is most dear to the Heart of Christ. It is the obedience of the son who says, "Yes, I go" and aterwards does not go to carry out the command of his father. The obsession with law and obedience as concepts and abstractions ends by reducing the love of God, and of God's will, to a purely arbitrary fiction.
"Obedience" and "discipline" alone cannot guarantee the unity of the Body of Christ. A living organism cannot be held together by merely mehcanical and exterior means. It must be unified by its own interior life-principle. The life of the Church is divine Love itself, the Holy Spirit. Obedience and discipline are necessary to prevent us from separating ourselves, unconsciously, from the guidance of the Invisible Spirit. But merely bringing people to submit to authority by external compulsion is not sufficient to unite them in a vital union of Love with Christ in His Church. Obedience without love produces only dead works, external conformity, not interior communion. (bolding mine)
It does indeed. Even if it's God's Laws were are focusing on, they still can't create, in themselves, the Life of God inside us. Even our conscientious effort to obey legitimate Laws cannot produce in us an interior transformation. These externals are only supposed to be guide rails that helps us to pay attention to the Voice of God and the action of God the Holy Spirit, working in us.
That work, though, is very mysterious to us. We don't understand it. We can't see the Holy Spirit doing His work and often, we are unable to perceive that anything has been done even when it has been. What we can see are external rules and regulations. We can measure that. We keep them or we don't. That's visible and not too mysterious for our little brains. Trouble is, we're being called beyond them. They are a starting point. If we make them the point, we keep ourselves at the starting line and hinder our actual progress in the kind of Life that God is drawing us into. That's a shame. Let's not make our spiritual lives a shame. Let's crack our little heads open and allow God to rebuild our thinking capabilities.
October 15, 2007
> 7:40 PM
I just remembered, I wasn't done yet with this legalism series. Neither is big Tom. I'm pretty sure it pissed him off as much as it does me. I wonder, too, if he saw it in himself , or saw himself escaping from it. I think we are all in the process of escaping from it. The propensity to be legalistic, I believe, is inside us, but it's not natural. Now, by "natural" I mean the original natural, God-Natural. This propensity is a part of the fallen, broken nature we've inherited. The danger is, we mistake it so easily for a propensity to righteousness. Our legalism is a way for us to control things - ourselves, others, God. Let's continue with Merton's thoughts...
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