“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
During the life of any heart, this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name, we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
Socrates taught us: ‘Know thyself!”
In a prior post, I wrote about the differences between the inner and the outer me. But, in the quote above, Solzhenitsyn points out that there is a difference also between the inner me and the inner me and the outer me and the outer me. Yes, I know that is a confusing sentence. However, so am I to myself. As the quote above points out, sometimes I am close to being a devil inside while (as I pointed out in a prior post) I am angelic on the outside. I pointed out that this is a case of hypocrisy on my part in that earlier post. But then, sometimes I can be quite consistent, being a devil on both the inside and the outside. And the converse is true. Sometimes I can be quite consistent, being angelic on both inside and outside.
As Solzhenitsyn points out, “One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being.” And, yet, it is the same me. This can be confusing, and can certainly make one wonder who they truly are. Am I that angelic being who shows themselves every so often? Or, am I that devilish person I do not wish to be? We are not the first to have that inner struggle, certainly.
For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. … For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. … For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Romans 7 (NKJV), St. Paul the Apostle
As I pointed out in my earlier post, St. Paul calls us to examine ourselves to ensure that we are in the faith. All too many interpret that to mean that we only need to examine our intellectual beliefs to ensure that they match with what the Church has proclaimed and declares. While I do think it is always wise to examine our intellectual beliefs, I do not think that this is the only examination of which St. Paul speaks (or even Solzhenitsyn). Rather, I think that he means what the monastics mean. That is, we are to examine our inner landscape until we see that about which Solzhenitsyn wrote.
The Gulag Archipelago of which Solzhenitsyn wrote was a perverted place. Justice was perverted. Freedom was suppressed. Mercy was non-existent. It would have been easy for him to conclude that his captors were the personification of evil while he was a symbol of what is good and true. Instead, he had the same experience as many of the monastics. The privations of the Gulag drove him to examine himself, and even his guards. The end result was that he saw a Solzhenitsyn that he never imagined. He received the same understanding of himself that both the monastics and St. Paul perceive. “Wretched man that I am!”
It is not surprising that St. Paul’s next cry was “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” When the monastics, when the Sozhenitsyns, when we begin to actually see ourselves clearly, it is no surprise that, like St. Paul, the first cry is a cry of horror over who we truly are on the inside. It is also no surprise that our next cry is to wonder about our salvation. For the view of our inner self imprints the word “hypocrite” upon our minds and we are brought to the realization that we are like the Pharisee whose salvation was in doubt and not like the Publican who went home justified. Do you understand now why some of the greatest among the monastics would yet say that they prayed for God’s mercy upon them at the time of their death?
That view, of one’s inner hypocrisy, is what keeps the Apostle, the monastic, and Solzhenitsyn humble. It is the realization of how much posturing we all do in our outer selves, posturing that does not match our inner selves. It also makes it easier to forgive others. How could I not forgive the much lesser sin of my brother/sister when I look inside myself and see my much worse sin! To paraphrase Jesus, I forgive because there is a log in my eye while my brother/sister only has a splinter. That is what the inner self-examination provides.
This is why I pointed out in that previous post that St. Paul calls us to examine ourselves to ensure that we are in the faith. We need to learn to see those logs, and even more, to see how utterly inconsistent we are in our inner selves. We need to realize that we are really more like the Pharisee than like the Publican so that we may have hope of being changed.
Let me leave you with one thought. St. Paul’s thoughts in Romans 7 are followed by Romans 8. Please do read the final verse of Romans 7 and go on in Romans 8. I do not wish for you to remain in Romans 7. However, I must caution you, if you do not go through Romans 7 you will not truly understand Romans 8.
Leave a Reply