Becoming an Emotionally Mature Adult, Part 1

This past week, I preached at our church, which is nearing the end of a series on a book entitled, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Peter Scazzero who is a pastor in Queens. I highly recommend the book which is not only a very simple introduction to the spiritual disciplines/practices but shows how emotional and spiritual health are irrevocably tied. I was asked to speak on chapter 9, where Scazzero points out that the outflow of the spiritual disciplines, the intended result of the spiritual practices, is to love others well. Rather than preaching through the contents of the chapter, I took this idea and virtually ran with it, largely depending on the thought of one of my favorite philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas. After the congregational reading of Romans 12, this is what I had to say:

Intro
Loving well, Pete Scazzero tells us, is the goal of emotionally healthy spirituality. The outflow of learning to have emotional boundaries and engaging in spiritual practices is to interact with one another with love, respect, and dignity. Silence, solitude, meditation, the Ignatian examen, all of the personal disciplines are good things, but unless they help you love others better, they are completely worthless.

This is the chapter most forgotten in books on the spiritual disciplines. So often, the Christian life is focused only on contemplation, on our vertical, individual relationship with God, while our horizontal relationships are all but forgotten. This is the devastating heritage of much of Christian spirituality throughout church history. Christianity appropriated the Greek philosophy which diminished the physical world, virtually viewing the body as evil, and placed a high value on unity with the One, or God. Augustine, Aquinas, the ascetics, monks, and mystics like Theresa of Avila, by accepting this set of values came to view the goal of life as to continually disassociate with the things and people and relationships of this world in exchange for a detached, intimate, personal encounter with God.

This way of thinking still bears its mark on the way we think about relating to God. While we do talk about the Christian life as being part of a Body, as we just read in Romans 12, and occasionally we speak of God's covenant people when we speak of the Old Testament, by and large, ingrained into our mind is the necessity of a “personal relationship with God.” Perhaps its the result of our hyper-individualistic culture, or the remaining effects of modern conceptions of God that make us so confident we can neatly mark the parameters of God's character and actions by our own ingenuity. On the contrary, as Peter Scazzero continually notes, God is incomprehensible. He is the Incomprehensible. Even Moses, who it is said God spoke to “face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Ex 33:11) – whose interaction with God it should be noted, was the exception and not the rule among the Israelites – was not able to see God face to face, could not bear to encapsulate the divine in one image, in one moment in time.

We are Inherently Ethical
I want to suggest that, loving well is not just the goal of emotionally healthy spirituality; it is actually the beginning. Let me repeat that: our relationship to the Other is not just the goal of emotionally healthy spirituality but it is actually the beginning.

What do I mean by that? I mean that our existence is defined by Others. Think about it for a moment. What makes us humans unique? What about us is essentially human? We might ask, what does it mean to be made in the Image of God? Aristotle defined man as a “rational animal.” Descartes called man a “thinking thing.” By these definitions, our mind is what distinguishes us from everything else in the world. Monkeys, for instance, cannot perform calculus. Well, most of us cannot perform calculus.

But to reduce man to a “thinking thing” is problematic as well. For one thing, it continues the dualism that I mentioned before, the idea that what is really real, what is most important about us humans is what cannot be seen, that our bodies are relatively unimportant and not integral to who we are. To be a thinking thing reduces the Christian life to a mental activity, to aligning our mind with the mind of God. For another, we could point out that if the progress of technology continues as it is, there will be robots in the world plenty capable of thinking better than we can, capable of logic, capable of placing every action into a certain equation.

So is humanhood reducible to the fact that God breathed his breath or spirit of life into us that we may be a living being? No, because Gen 1:30, 6:17, and 7:15 tell us that the animals also have this breath of life. Are we essentially human because we have language? Ants and dolphins and parrots communicate by means of signs. Is it that we are social beings, that we crave and depend on interaction for our sanity? Wolves hunt in packs, geese fly in flocks, and elephants gather together to mourn their dead.

Instead, what makes us essentially human is that we are a particular kind of social being, and that our minds are put to a particular use: We are inherently ethical beings. I am responsible for the Other before any agreement or contract. Before I even know the Other's name, her face commands me: “Thou shalt not kill.” We are moral beings. The existence of Others and responsibility they inherently establish upon us is what ultimately makes us human. Like the Trinitarian God, the Father, Son, and Spirit, who in their humility—which is a moral quality—are endlessly looking out for the interests of each other, we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think but rather honor one another above ourselves. Like the Father, Son, and Spirit, we are to live in harmony with one another.

Ethics is not an afterthought. It is not the byproduct of right thinking. Ethics is who we are, what defines us. It precedes right thinking. That ethics even precedes thought can be seen by those moments when split second actions are necessary. A child runs into the road in front of my car and I slam on the brakes or swerve around him. I do not know this child but I have an ethical responsibility for him.

But in in the real world, there is more than just me in my car and this singular child in front of me. In our lives, we must adjudicate between a variety of decisions, multiple layers of ethical responsibilities that barrage us from a million faces. We have an infinite number of responsibilities that we can never fulfill; we must choose. But in this situation, choosing is what makes us human. How can one choose between two immeasurable responsibilities? How can one choose between two priceless lives? This impossible choice, the ability to make decisions beyond the outline of a textbook, mathematical theorem, or logical equation is what makes us human, is what makes us more than a machine.

Robots think in the black and white. They cannot practice grace, justice, mercy, compassion, and love. Robots can figure out logical sequences, make decisions based on probability and statistical analysis. But there is not a list of equations that we simply learn and then we know how to solve all the problems in the world. Equations are for machines. Ethical humans make decisions that break out of the system of logic. There is no logic to love.