Loving A Hidden God
THE DARKNESS OF DESPAIR
There are two things that kill souls, either despair or that pride that creates a false hope. Despair can infect people in the following way. When people think of the terrible lives they have led they become convinced that their sins are too big to be pardoned. They die in despair, saying to themselves: "There is no hope for me now, clearly the dreadful things I have done cannot possibly be forgiven. So why not continue with my lust-filled life? I might as well grasp at every present pleasure; I certainly will have no pleasures in the life to come. I might as well do whatever I please now so that at least I can get a bit of enjoyment in my time on earth, seeing that I will have no joy in eternity." By thinking that way such people will indeed perish, but only because of their own despair.
Sermon 87, 10.
At one point in his early life, Augustine seems to have been overcome by the despair reflected in the passage above. Not only did he believe that his life was hopelessly confused, he could not even believe in a God who could pardon him and help him to do better. He was at the low point in his life. The paradox was that he was a young and healthy man with a prosperous future ahead of him. His career was taking off. He was surrounded by family and friends who seemed to love him. And yet he felt that his life had no meaning. He could not find that vision of himself and the world which would give him a direction for his life. He despaired of ever making true sense of his life, of ever finding a God whom he could believe in and depend on. Some years later, recalling those terrible days, he cried out to God:
Where were you, Oh hope of my youth? Where had you gone? I walked in darkness and seemed to be sliding ever deeper into an abyss. I was searching for you everywhere outside myself but could not find you. I dove into the depths of a sea of confusion. I lost hope and despaired of ever finding any secure truth.
Confessions, 6.1.1
The turmoil of those days in Augustine's early life is reflected in an incident that occurred when he was at the peak of his earthly career as a respected member of the imperial court of Rome. He describes the event as follows:
I looked with longing at honors, wealth, and marriage, but you, Oh God, laughed at me because in the midst of such longing I was going through most bitter confusion. Inside I was wretched and you permitted me to feel my misery on the very day when I was to make an important speech in honor of the emperor. Of course what I said would be mostly lies but I would be applauded vigorously by all the assembled sycophants of the court who knew that I was lying but who cheered anyway. I was ashamed at doing this but at the same time my heart was inflamed with excitement at the prospect of such a grand event. As I and my friends made our way down one of the streets of Milan, I noticed a poor beggar. He was telling jokes and laughing and I imagine he was more than a little drunk. I fell into gloom and spoke to those with me about the endless sorrows caused by our own crazy lives. Here I was, striving so hard to achieve some sort of carefree happiness while this poor beggar seemed to have reached that goal before me. Indeed, he had achieved a goal that I might never attain. He had reached his goal through the few pennies begged from strangers. Those few coins had bought him at least a temporary happiness, a happiness which I planned and plotted to achieve through so many weary twists and turns. You might say that his happiness was empty but the happiness I sought through glory was emptier still. In any event, the undeniable fact was that he was cheerful and I was distressed; he had no cares and I had nothing but cares. Certainly I wanted to be joyful rather than fearful but if anyone had asked whether I wanted to be like that happy drunken beggar or be as I was, I would have answered that I still preferred to be as I was even though consumed with care and fear. But was this true? Certainly I was more learned than the poor drunk by my learning brought me little joy. I used it as a means of pleasing people, not enlightening them. ... And let no one say to me that it makes no difference where a man finds his joy, that whether a person finds his joy in drink or in glory makes no difference as long as they think they are happy. If the beggar's joy in his drink was not true happiness, neither was my thirst for glory. Indeed, the injury done to me by my thirst was far worse than the injury done to the beggar by his liquor. He would sleep off his drunkenness but I would sleep and wake, sleep and wake, for days unending still infected with my intoxication.
Confessions, 6.6.9-10
The incident described above proves that despair can come to us even in the so-called "good times" of our life. Sometimes it is precisely at that moment when people think we have everything to live for that we doubt deep in our hearts that life is worth living. Despair is not limited to the frantic jollity of single's bars where people dance and drink and search for a loving "connection". Sometimes it is an unwelcome guest at birthday parties, family gatherings. Indeed, it is not unknown in communities of religious men and women.
Just as happiness depends on the fulfillment of our basic desires for life, love, meaning, and freedom, so despair sometimes follows when we think that any one of these will never be fulfilled. I have heard of perfectly healthy people with important positions in life and the fullness of freedom take their lives because they thought that they were not loved. A friend of mine with a good job and loving family committed suicide the day after he discovered that he had cancer. For him death seemed to be a better prospect than diminished life. The mother of another friend of mine seemed to simply waste away after he died. For her life lost all meaning without her son present to love. Prisoners have been known to choose death rather than prison. The loss of life seemed preferable to loss of freedom. Indeed, I suspect that sometimes despair grows out of simple boredom with living. Like the character in Sartre's novel, we are tempted to plunge a knife not through our hand but through our heart, just to have an experience of something different.
When you think about it, the human temptation to despair is understandable. We have a thirst for the perfect, for the eternal but must live out these days in an imperfect, passing world. We have a natural need to "wonder" at the world, to discover new and interesting things, to have new and exciting experiences, and when our life comes a succession of "same-old" "same-old" days, the thirst for life can diminish. The rut that is our lives gradually deepens and widens into the grave that will hold us in darkness till the end of time.
Despair is rooted in our great expectations for ourselves and the world, the bright expectations that seem to be reflected in the shining eyes of every baby born into a new life. When we discover as we grow that those expectations will be difficult to fulfill because we and those around us remain "cracked", we can be overcome with sadness. The laughter of our infant days are then followed by the tears of an imperfect life ... one necessarily falling short of our desire for a happy world filled with wonder.
Despair can make our life on earth a living hell. It can also stop our progress towards loving the hidden God. Faith tells us that God has put us on the road to heaven and will give us his grace to help us on the way. Despair makes us doubt that assurance and it stops us in our tracks. We fulfill that terrifying prophecy that Augustine spoke long ago:
We are running, running to our homeland; but if we despair of ever reaching it, by that very despair we will fail in our journey.
Commentary on First Epistle of John, 1.5.3.
Again and again Augustine returned in his sermons to the topic of despair, outlining the ways it could affect a person and showing the only way to overcome it. Thus, on one occasion to told his people:
Christ became the way to heaven for us. How can we despair of arriving there? This way which is Christ cannot be shut down, it cannot be severed, it cannot be destroyed by rain or floods nor can bandits block it. Thus, let us walk safely with Christ without anxiety;
... don't stumble and fall,
... don't get stuck in place,
... don't stray away from the true path.
If you can only avoid all of these things, you will certainly arrive at your destination.
Sermon 170, 11.
When we are tempted to despair we must first be careful that we don't stumble and fall, for example by falling into some heinous perversity, some new addiction, some plunge from that high pedestal that we had so laboriously built for ourselves. Once fallen, their is the danger that we will have no inclination to pick ourselves up and start over. We forget that we live in a world where it will always be necessary to say "I'm sorry!" again and again. We forget that although we are "renewed in Christ", we still are cracked and those cracks will have a tendency to manifest themselves again and again in unexpected ways. If we take our fall too seriously, we may react like a sick person suddenly diagnosed with a terminal disease, saying to ourselves:
What's the use? Why fight any longer for good health? Let me now indulge in all those destructive habits which I fought against for so many years. Let me eat what I want, drink to excess, and once again start smoking. And don't try to stop me by warning that these habits will endanger my life! I am already a member of the living dead, one who has no hope for salvation in this life or the next!
To those who have "stumbled and fallen" and have despaired of their spiritual health, Augustine cries out:
For God's sake (and yours) listen to the voice of God and stop listening only to yourself. Here is what God is saying to you: "Desperate soul, start hoping again." Listen to what Paul has to say: "I was once a blasphemer, a persecutor, a man filled with arrogance. But on that very account I was dealt with mercifully, so that in me, as an extreme case, Jesus Christ might display all his patience, and that I might become an example to those who would later have faith in him and gain everlasting life." (1 Timothy 1. 13 & 16) Think of what God has said, "If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die." (Ezekiel, 18.21) You were sitting on the river bank, or you were carrying a noose around in your despair, you were eager to do away with yourself, perhaps having nothing to live on, you wanted to die. Come back! You do have something to live on! Listen to the nourishing words of God: "I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, say the Lord God. Return and live! (Ezekiel, 18.32)
Sermon 94A, 8
The second dangerous effect of despair noted by Augustine is the temptation to "stick in place", to become completely absorbed by trivialities of the present or by nostalgia for the past. My despair makes me believe that the future holds no good prospects. Both the world and I seem to be spinning towards times that are even worse. It seems better then to just concentrate on my present and make it as pleasant as possible even if this means "not thinking" about it, absorbing myself in the pleasures and fantasies (T.V.?) of the moment. Those who are so enthusiastic about their present life that they never think about the life to come, are as unrealistic as those who worship the past. Augustine reminds them that the "good new days" are not as good as we sometimes make them seem.
There is an equal danger or ruminating too long on the "good old days", those historic times when life seemed simpler and heroes and romance ruled the world, those grand days when I was young and life seemed an adventure, days when I was held in the arms of love who now is gone. It is foolish to dream of an idyllic past Those times can never return and if you think about them seriously, you can see that they were no better than the present. They are idyllic only in that they are true "idylls of the mind," a fantasy appropriate to poetry but not reality. Augustine suggests that the reason why these fantasies of the past seem so romantic is because in fact they never occurred. They are not "what was" but "what we would have liked to have been". (Sermon 25, 3)
It is easy to become enthusiastic about the simplicity of out-door plumbing when you were never forced to use it. As an acquaintance of mine discovered upon finally visiting a historic Augustinian monastery, a good rule of life is to never stay in a house where the plumbing is 400 years old. To think that the past was a utopia of good times, has in itself the hidden truth. Such perfect days are truly to be found in "no place". As Augustine observed:
From the time of Adam right up to the present there existed the same "toil and sweat", the same "thorns and thistles".
Sermon 346C, 1.
In whatever form it takes, such despair comes not from some great moral fall that we believe cannot be forgiven. We have not fallen on the road to heaven, we have just become tired. We have tried to live a good life over our lifetime and now have been infected with the terrible temptation of the virtuous: boredom in leading a good life. (Commentary on Psalm 106, 6) The road ahead seems dark and long. We say to ourselves: "Why not just sit here in the fading light of my life and dream of days when all was bright and a happy life seemed possible?" Our apathy and nostalgia flowing from despair about anything better in the future, makes us sit down on the road. Rather than move, we mope.
A obstacle to our journey to heaven that comes from despair can be described as a "falling off the road completely". The road to heaven is definite and fixed. It is a path laid out by Jesus Christ that includes a moral life dominated by love and the assistance of God's grace. Though many can follow this path through noble lives without even knowing of Jesus Christ (those who have received the so-called "Baptism of Desire"), no one can stay on the path if they are too proud or too despairing. Other moral faults may slow our progress (since we now carry extra baggage of our weakness and vices) but at least we are still on the road. We may be "back-sliding" but at least we are still on the path and there is always the chance that we will follow the example of the Prodigal Son and turn around when our bad habits turn sour. But if we have created our own imaginary road to perfection through pride or have fallen into the crevasse of despair and make no efforts to overcome it, then we are lost without some miracle of grace interceding to pull us off the mountain or lift us out of the pit.
The beginning of our climb out of the depths of despair is to cry out for help. As Augustine points out:
Those who cry out from the abyss are not in the very depths of the abyss. Their very cry lifts them up.
Commentary on Psalm 39, 3
But to do even this demands uplifting grace from God and great courage from us to at least hope for hope. And as we shall see, there are good reasons for such hope even in the midst of the darkness of despair. If we have but a little faith in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ, we can listen and be encouraged by the words of his disciple, Paul:
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trial, or distress, or persecution, or hunger, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword? Yet in all this we are more than conquerors because of him who has loved us.
Romans 8:35,37
Believing this we may begin again to hope.