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“Two Souls, Alas ...”
Luke 18: 9 – 14 |
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Summary
“Two Souls, Alas ...” In February 2007, Lisa Nowak was arrested after driving from Houston to Orlando to assault a woman in a romantic rivalry over a man. She was so intent on getting there that she wore diapers so she wouldn’t have to take bathroom breaks on the way. That story falls into the category of bizarre things humans do, but one aspect that made the story especially surprising was that Nowak belonged to the elite group of highly screened people who make up our national space-shuttle crews. If I had to guess what sort of a woman would engage in this weird behavior, my first thought would not have been of a member of the astronaut corps. Maybe I would envision a lady mud-wrestler or a roller-derby queen, but surely not an astronaut. Nowak belonged to an elite group who are assumed to have their heads screwed on straight, so the news surprised us. But if, we had told Ms. Nowak what she was going to do, a year earlier, she probably would have been surprised, too. And here’s why: Most of us are conscious that we are not exactly like the public image of ourselves. We all think thoughts we’d just as soon not have everybody else know. We also know the expression, “putting our best face forward,” means that we have a couple of other faces we think are best left in the closet. At the same time, however, most of us who try to be decent people do not usually conceive of ourselves as doing something especially bad. When we are not feeling wild passion, as apparently Nowak was on that crazy day, we cannot picture ourselves behaving in a strange passion-driven way. But if something happens and we cross that line we shouldn’t, a new reality about ourselves confronts us. More than likely since that day, Nowak has had to face the reality that she is not the person she had thought she was. A truer self-discovery, however, would be for her to understand that she is both the person with high goals and dreams of serving her country and the woman in a diaper out to do something nasty to her rival for the affections of a certain man. She is both the woman in the official NASA photo with a mane of flowing hair and a bright smile, and the woman in the police mug shot with her hair in disarray and a scattered look on her face. As the case against Nowak proceeded, there was talk of using a temporary-insanity defense, but in the end, she didn’t. There are mental problems with names like dissociative personality, schizophrenia or suicidal ideation that involve a splitting of one’s identity, a misfiring of one’s thinking process or an inward struggle between one’s instincts for survival and self-destruction, but those are not what we’re referring to here. No, we’re talking about a spiritual duality that most of us can recognize when we are facing a crucial moral decision or significant temptation. It’s not unlike those cartoons and commercials where a man is torn about what to do, and that is dramatized by a tiny angel standing on one shoulder advising him to do the right thing, and a tiny devil standing on the other shoulder advising him to do the opposite. And in case you think that is too silly an image, listen to these words of the apostle Paul from Romans 7: “For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Paul was not mentally ill, but he was aware of an inner conflict where he was being pulled in entirely different directions. And then there’s Faust, the magician and alchemist in a German legend who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for power and knowledge. At one point, when he is wrestling with himself, he says, “Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, / And one is striving to forsake its brother.” The parable But rather than seeing our inner selves as angels versus devils on opposing shoulders or two siblings at war in one person, consider the way Jesus provided in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. In that story, both of those men went to the temple to pray. The Pharisee was highly regarded, scrupulously religious and a man of stature in the community who thanked God that he was better than other people, especially the tax collector, or “publican” to use the older word, praying at the other end of the alter. The tax collector’s job involved working with the Roman government to exact taxes from his own people and that made him an outcast in his community and considered a moral misfit. But he, too, prayed, saying, in all humility, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And Jesus concluded the parable by saying that that man, rather than the proud Pharisee, went home justified by God, made right with God. That’s the gist of the parable, but we should not miss how Luke introduced it. He wrote that Jesus “told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” In other words, they were people, not unlike many of us, who did not conceive of themselves doing something really bad or holding unsavory attitudes. So Jesus told this parable to help them view themselves more honestly and to discover their need for justification. Since that was Jesus’ intention, it might seem logical for us to assume that character-wise, the haughty Pharisee was representative of those in Jesus’ audience that day. But, that’s unlikely. Jesus wasn’t implying that all dutifully religious people were boastful like this Pharisee. It’s also unlikely he was suggesting that all sinners are humble like the tax collector. In fact, if we could go back to that time and place, we’d probably be hard pressed to find any Pharisee who was that obviously self-righteous or any tax collector who was that modest. Rather, Jesus gave us two caricatures. He exaggerated both of these men as types to make his point. In fact, maybe what Jesus was doing was giving his audience two views of themselves — wanting them to recognize that each one of them were both the Pharisee and the tax collector. “Two soul, alas,” in one individual. Now if that is the case, then it follows that in order to be justified, the members of Jesus’ audience needed to get in touch with their publican side, because their Pharisee side was quite unable to recognize its need for justification. The Pharisee in the parable went home at the conclusion of his prayers without being made righteous because he thought he already was. A place to stand You see, if we take this parable only to mean that we have to become humble to receive God’s righteousness, then we are in trouble. How does any one of us “become” humble? There is no program to make us humble, and if there were, and we attempted to work that program, we would probably take pride in the fact that we were trying so hard to achieve humility. No, we can’t make ourselves humble. But something happens to us when we take a good hard look at that other person within us. When we look at ourselves with our worst face on, when we think about the part of ourselves that we don’t want others to see, then we have a place to stand where we can honestly and without reservation pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” You see, it wasn’t that the Pharisee was a particularly bad person. In fact, he probably had a well deserved good reputation. He may well have been a good husband and father, a contributing member of society and a regular giver of alms to those in need. Surely, Jesus was not suggesting that this man stop being any of those things. He just also needed to acknowledge the darker side of himself so that he could pray with true humility as the tax collector did. Likewise, there were no doubt many things in the tax collector’s life that Jesus would want him to discontinue, dishonesty for one, and cheating for another, for both of those practices were standard procedure in tax-collecting methods in first-century Judea. Jesus didn’t want the Pharisee to become the tax collector; nor did he want the tax collector to become the Pharisee. Rather, they each needed to become a whole man; not two souls in one breast, but one integrated soul. Think how wonderful it would be to have a man who was as good a family man, as good a citizen, as good a giver as the Pharisee, but with as clear-eyed a view of himself in relationship to God as the tax collector. The sad fact is, if we look at the two men in the parable as individuals, it is going to be a lot harder for the Pharisee to become that wonderful man than it is for the tax collector. Since the tax collector has already owned up to how far short he falls from the image of God, he now knows what changes he has to make in his life, and he’s got plenty of incentive to make them. The Pharisee, however, sees no need to change and so has no incentive to change. That’s why, in the parable, only the tax collector goes home justified. Going home justified And so, it is for each of us. As long as we acknowledge only the Pharisee within us, who, we say, is basically a decent person, spiritual justification eludes us. But when we can also see the tax collector inside, the part of ourselves that harbors hatred, lust, greed, pleasure when others get what they deserve or some other darkness, and let our voice arise to God with the words, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner,” we can go home justified, made right with God. |
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