CC42: Humility: Vice or Virtue?

Ah, the joys of humility, that most cherished of Christian virtues! O ye wondrous affliction, scourge of my heart, desiccator of my soul! How could I envision Original Sin without you, you who from ancient times have trampled all that is good and true and beautiful within me! You who are the very face of Christian orthodoxy! You who demands that I obey my earthly leaders! Fair Humility, you are an idol beyond compare!

Humility, your justness and righteousness have been proved again and again within orthodoxy's precincts. To you we owe a great debt, for you have protected the Church throughout the centuries from the evils of independent thought. Even more important, you have locked the door to Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven to ensure that people of true faith and good heart can't get in. Verily, you are one of the rocks upon which the orthodox Western Church stands.

Hear now a modern summary (written by this humble author) of the famed Rule of St. Benedict, first written in Latin in Italy in the early 6th century. (The reader is referred to the following text: Timothy Fry, ed., The Rule of St. Benedict in English (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982)).

Abbey of Monte Cassino, Italy, site of the early 6th century CE monastery founded by St. Benedict of Nursia. Monte Cassino was the first monastery founded by Benedict, author of the highly influential Rule of St. Benedict. The buildings were reconstructed after being largely destroyed in the WWII Battle of Monte Cassino. Photo credit: Monte Cassino – wide view by Pilecka – Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

FIVE CORE CHRISTIAN VIRTUES IN THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT

For St. Benedict, author of The Rule, the most important Christian quality is to place the love of Christ before all else, a point he returns to several times in his book of instructions for beginners (for example,Chapter 4:1, 20; Chapter 72:11). Benedict takes a two-pronged approach – faith combined with good works – to this religious vocation (an approach which turns out to be particularly effective, too, if we are to consider the fact that his Rule is still used by many religious orders today). First, he creates guidelines that affect how the monks will think and feel about their relationships with themselves, each other, and God; in other words, he tries to fulfill the needs of faith. These are the instructions that pertain to renouncing the self and to humility, both great virtues in Benedict’s opinion. In order to follow Christ, monks must renounce themselves, taking no notice of anything good in themselves except to give the credit to God, not themselves (4:42). No one is to follow his own heart’s desire (3:8). Neither should monks expect to have free disposal even of their own bodies and wills (33:4; 58:25). Private ownership is a vice (Chapter 33), and, along a similar vein, a monk may not exchange letters, tokens, or gifts with anyone – or be found to be in possession of such items – without the abbot’s consent (Chapter 54). These rules, if followed, draw the monk’s thoughts and feelings away from anything that makes him distinct or different from his peers, and make it easier for him to practise humility. "Humility" is one of the core features of Benedict’s Rule. Chapter 7 outlines the 12 steps of humility, and many other chapters of the book exalt humility as well. A monk who ascends Benedict’s ladder of humility will find at the twelfth and highest stage an awareness that he is always guilty on account of his sins, and through this awareness of his true unworthiness, he will be able to receive cleansing of his vices and sins through the grace of the Holy Spirit (7:62-70). In this way, the monk will finally know the perfect love of God.

Second, Benedict creates a set of strict guidelines that governs what monks do, when they do it, and how they do it. In other words, he tells them exactly how to perform good works – how to act. Monks who agree to these rules, which can be thought of as the day-to-day tools and practical routines necessary to the vocation of loving Christ, will acquire the essential Christian virtues of obedience and self-discipline. Obedience to the abbot and the rule is profoundly important in imitation of obedience to Christ. Indeed, the abbot is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery (2:2) Moreover, obedience must not be blighted by the evil of grumbling (5:14; 34:6; 53:18) but must be given always with gentleness (Chapter 68) and purity of heart (20:3). Monks who take their final vows must promise three things: stability, fidelity to monastic life, and obedience (58:17). From that day forward, they are no longer free to leave the monastery (58:15), although they may be cast out or excommunicated after due process if they are sufficiently disobedient. It is therefore in the monks’ best interests to exercise self-discipline, which could perhaps be defined as being "not slothful, not unobservant, not negligent" (the vices that Benedict lists in his concluding chapter, 73:7). In Benedict’s monastic communities, this self-discipline meant more than just "a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love" (Prologue: 47). It meant remembering all the rules, and practising all the rules, even on rare occasions when monks were travelling or were working far away from the oratory; so, for instance, monks on a journey could not omit the prescribed hours (50:4), nor could monks sent on a day errand presume to eat outside the monastery on pain of excommunication (Chapter 51). Self-discipline may also have been helpful when it was time to get up in the middle of the night to celebrate the Divine Office! [from an unpublished paper by the author; italics added] 

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The apostle Paul would be proud of you, noble Humility. For you are the theological sleight of hand that keeps good, pious Christians in their place, doomed to feel unworthy, sinful, desperate to be saved, and constantly separated from God.

You are a proud and cruel goddess, Humility.

"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o'clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them,' You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o'clock, he did the same. And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, 'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' He said to them, 'You also go into the vineyard.' When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, 'Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.' When those hired about five o'clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, 'These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.' But he replied to one of them, 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?' So the last will be first, and the first will be last" (Matthew 20:1-16). Photo credit JAT 2025.

 

CC10: The "Mind" of God

I'm really sick of hearing about "the Mind of God." 

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that God the Mother and God the Father are brainless. I'm saying there's a lot more to our Divine Parents than 100% pure mind power. Well, sure, you say, of course God is more than just mind power -- God has a loving heart, too! And you would be right . . . except the church wouldn't agree with you officially. Off the record you'd probably get some senior church officials to agree with you that God has both mind and compassion. And lots of regular Christians instinctively understand this. But none of the mainline churches, either Protestant or Roman Catholic, have yet been willing to reexamine their official belief systems about God's "substance." As far as the church is concerned, God is a transcendent and trinitarian being who values "reason and righteousness" above everything else. God is "oneness" with three different forms of expression. This "oneness" is serene and detached and highly logical -- just the way Plato described God four centuries before Jesus!

This portrait of God is very convenient, because it gives people an excuse to ignore the reality that God has feelings. According to the church, however, God doesn't have emotions. Therefore nothing you think, say, or do can make God cry. You can make God angry, says the church, but that's different. God's anger is simply his (its?) logical reaction to your disobedience. There is a divine book of laws, you see, and even God is required to follow those laws. It's all very logical.

Hah! 

Not only do I personally disagree with this assessment of God (because my work as a mystic has shown me a very different understanding of God), but I also think that Jesus himself was teaching his followers that God is more than pure, transcendent "Mind." I think Jesus knew about the Platonic teaching of God as "One Mind," and I think Jesus was trying to overturn this idea. I think Jesus was talking in a truly radical way about God as a "he and a she" who together watch over all Creation: Abba and Ruah.*

"Happy are those who find Wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called happy. The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew. My child, do not let these escape from your sight: keep sound wisdom and prudence, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck. Then you will walk on your way securely and your foot will not stumble" (Proverbs 3: 13-23). Photo credit JAT 2025.

Biblical scholars who study "the historical Jesus" have often tried to figure out what Jesus actually said and did that could have provoked such a strong reaction among both followers and adversaries. Some of these scholars see Jesus as an unextraordinary wisdom sage whose "golden rule" teachings weren't much different from the teachings of his contemporaries.

Hah!

While it's certainly true that "golden rule" teachings had been around for centuries before Jesus taught and healed in first century Palestine, it's not true that Jesus' own understanding of God was a rehash of ideas found in all major Ancient Near East religions. Jesus had a rare understanding of God shared only by the Jewish teacher we know as Job. It might be called "Modified Monotheism" -- but it certainly wasn't the monotheistic understanding of Judaism's post-Exilic Yahweh, nor was it the monistic understanding of Plato's Divine Truth. Jesus' understanding of God was inflammatory in its first century context. That's because Jesus thought of God as two people -- a Mother and a Father -- whose chief attributes were not transcendence, power, and Mind (as in both Hellenistic philosophy and in Second Temple Judaism), but instead were immanence, trust, and Heart.

True, there had been a minority religious voice in Judaism that saw God as immanent. But in the Zion Covenant that appears in the writings of early Judaism (e.g. certain Psalms), this immanence meant something particular: it meant that God physically lived in a specific location on Mount Zion. Since God had chosen to live in the temple built on Mount Zion, great status was conferred upon the people of the Zion Covenant.

This idea of God living on a particular mountaintop was not unique to early Judaism. Other Ancient Near East religions taught the same thing, except that the holy mountain where God lived was, of course, a geographical site within their own political borders. Yet in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 9:2-9), Jesus rejects the idea of living on the holy mountain in the company of Judaism's revered prophets Moses and Elijah, both of whom had followed a spiritual path of ascent. For far too long, Christian commentators have overlooked the significance of this passage in Mark. They focus on the fact that Jesus suddenly appears in dazzling white clothes, but they forget the fact that Jesus wants no part of the holy mountain. He immediately returns to the community below, a community of real people in need of real healing. There he wades into the crowd and unflinchingly heals the epileptic boy without any care or concern for religious laws. In this way, he emulates the compassionate devotion that loving parents share with a sick child.

For Jesus, who spent little time in Jerusalem (Jerusalem, not coincidentally, was the site of Mount Zion), the traditional claims of a male god who lived exclusively in a man-made temple were nonsense. For Jesus, the distinct male and female attributes of God were visible everywhere. So, too, God's emotional attributes were visible everywhere you looked. How could people look at the wonder of all Creation and believe that God had no feelings? 

"Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, 'Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.' He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, 'This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!' Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen" (Mark 9: 2-9a). People come to shores of Lake Minnewanka in the Alberta Rockies to feel the beauty of earth, water, air, and love painted by the hearts of our beloved Divine Parents. Photo credit JAT 2015.

For those biblical scholars who wonder why Jesus provoked such a strong response in people, they need look no further than his teachings on the nature of God. Even today, people are infuriated when you tell them that God is not a distant, unemotional, trinitarian "he," but instead (and quite obviously) a "he and a she" who together infuse their love, courage, trust, devotion, and gratitude in everything they create. (Take the Son out of the Trinity, and what do you have? Abba and Ruah, except that in Jesus' time the Aramaic noun Ruah was always feminine!) 

That's why I can safely say that "God don't make no junk." Our God is way too amazing to allow something so stupid as the "law" of Original Sin. 

To our beloved Mother and Father I want to say to you today and always . . . you both rock!

* Abba is a masculine-gender Aramaic word for "father" or "papa." Ruah is a feminine-gender Aramaic word for "breath, "spirit," or "wind." Because words in the English language don't have gender, English-speaking people often forget that gendered languages give subtle shades of meaning through the choice of nouns. As in Romance languages such as French, Italian, or Spanish, the gender of the noun (that is, its status as male, female, or neuter) determines the conjugation of other parts of speech in a sentence.

CC6: Why I'm Hard On Scholars Who Study Mystics

One thing you're bound to notice as you read my posts is that I'm very hard on mystics.

I'm also very hard on scholars and academicians who write about mystics.

Let me put it this way: in one of my recent theology classes, a senior professor recommended that we read Evelyn Underhill's book Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness if we wanted to understand more about the nature of Christian mysticism. The problem I have with this book is twofold: (1) Evelyn Underhill was not a practising mystic herself, and was writing from an academic perspective, and (2) Evelyn Underhill first published her book in 1911. That's one hundred years ago, folks. I can't imagine in all honesty that I would be urged to study a 100 year old textbook in any other field. (Can you imagine what that would be like in a field like chemistry?) Yet this book is still in print, and is still available on the bookshelves of regular bookstores. (I bought a spanking new softcover copy at an Anglican bookstore in 2009). This kind of stubborn denial in the world of theology makes me want to metaphorically pull out my hair by its little grey roots.

For the sake of scholarly balance, a much more recent book that is well researched is The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, edited by Bernard McGinn (New York: Modern Library-Random House, 2006).

McGinn's book is a collection of short pieces written by well-known and lesser-known Christian mystics over the past two millennia. He provides a short introduction to each mystic, but he allows the reader to hear the mystics speak in their own words. His approach is in sharp contrast to Underhill's approach. Underhill, in my view, does not show an understanding of her own limits, and seems to believe she is within her rights to make factual claims about the characteristics and interior experiences of Christian mystics.

Thank you kindly, Ms. Underhill, but some of the mystical experiences you describe in your book sound to me an awful lot like various forms of serious mental illness, and I wouldn't be recommending those pursuits to anybody who cares about their mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional health.

Of course, I understand that Underhill was writing her book at a time when research in the fields of psychiatry and psychology was still young, and advanced investigations in neurophysiology and neuroplasticity hadn't yet been contemplated. I get that. What I don't get is the church's refusal to revise its theological understanding of mysticism in light of new neuro-psychiatric research. The Christian church was founded on prophecy (revelation) and mysticism. There would be no church without the claims made by early prophets and mystics. You'd think the church would desperately want to know how to use modern scientific advances to help them better understand what makes prophets and mystics tick.

"Again they came to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him and said, 'By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?' Jesus said to them, 'I will ask you one question; answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.' They argued with one another, 'If we say, "From heaven," he will say, "Why then did you not believe him?" But shall we say, "Of human origin"?' -- they were afraid of the crowd, for all regarded John as truly a prophet. So they answered Jesus, 'We do not know.' And Jesus said to them, 'Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.'" (Mark 11: 27-33).  Mystics who take themselves too seriously will be reminded by God to be more humble and more aware of their personal limitations. Mystics are no more important to God than any other human beings. Photo credit JAT 2015.

 
But, of course, if the church took the bold step of researching its closetful of prophets and mystics, some of its traditional heroes might not look so good anymore. And then the church would have to start rethinking some of its doctrinal positions.

You know, stuff like . . . oh, Original Sin. Adam and Eve and the Fall. The Devil. Judgment Day. All that paranoid, obsessive-compulsive, DSM-IV-TR Axis I and II stuff. The kind of thinking that responds really well to a properly managed treatment course with olanzapine.*

Yeah, well, call me a cynic, but when you've had five years of experience working in a lay capacity in the field of psychiatry, it's pretty hard not to think in psychiatric terms when you read some of the things that Christian mystics have written over the centuries.

As a practising mystic, I would never say that mystical experiences don't exist or can't exist. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are the result of mental illness. I would never say that all reported mystical experiences are pure fabrication, either. But some reported experiences are caused by mental illness, and some reported experiences are pure fabrication.

The trick is to be able to sort out the genuine mystics from both the tragically mentally ill and the enthusiastic fakers. We need science on our side to do this.

That's why I would like to see an introductory course on neuroscience as a requirement in the theological curriculum.


* olanzapine is the generic name for an atypical antipsychotic medication that is particularly useful in the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar 1 disorder.