Heart of Man

The lowest point in the spiritual cycle comes after the Paradise, after the Fall, but long before Redemption. This is a time that seems made for reflection, and yet reflection leads to only one conclusion: you are broken and you must change. This is an awful place to be, though we have all been there. By now we should know the cycle, know that joy comes with the morning. It is true that you must change the way you live. But you have, you must, and you have, many times. There is a positive trajectory to your life and there is great cause for hope. Yet, if we choose not to hope there remains a difficult alternative.

We don't do what we know that we should do. Instead we do the wrong that we know we should not do. But, not always. We have good days too, governed by wisdom. This time, there was something that pulled us away from wisdom, and that is in fact always pulling, sometimes lightly that we can resist, sometimes with overwhelming force. In desperation I want to cut myself loose for once and for all. I will cut all my bonds, but I won't stop there: I will cut out every corrupted part of me. What is left will be complete and beautiful. It seems tantalizing, and possible. So, putting away hope in the status quo I reach for the surgeon's knife.

Where to begin? Some of the cords trailing away from me are so clearly black, and these are severed easily enough, though always leaving a dangling root. How close to the flesh do I dare to cut? After the first simple strokes the task becomes convoluted. There are no clear lines any more. And I remember something that I once heard: "If your eye causes you to sin, then cut it out; if it is your right hand, then cut it off." So. This is not going to be a surgery without complications. Still, it is my soul that we are talking about. The prospect of complete freedom from the shadow is worth both eyes, or many right hands. I'm ready.

Then, with the knife point an inch from my eye, the greater part of me screaming in protest, I remember something else that I read: "that the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man." Now I know the true cost of complete spiritual freedom. It explains why there are no survivors of the surgery alive today. Good and evil within us appear to have a tense but symbiotic relationship. That one is the host and the other the parasite is an article of faith only. There is little within us or throughout the created order to reassure that faith, but without it there would be nothing but chaos.

We do have some control over our spiritual trajectory. It is a matter of degrees, not absolutes, but it is movement towards the dominance of one extreme over the other. The image of the angel and the demon on opposing shoulders is surprisingly applicable to everyday life. With little difficulty, I can imagine a being who is myself but also given completely over to evil, devoid of any of the good within me. It is an ugly and depraved being, but without a doubt it is me. More happily I can also imagine what I would look like, finally free and good, a being far nobler and more beautiful than I, but just as clearly me. The two beings are not visitors from heaven and hell perched on my shoulders, but they are one hundred feet tall, and intimately personal.

I have no idea if we will one day have to forsake one of these completely and become the other. That part of the process, if it occurs at all, occurs away from mortal eyes. Here on earth there is no knife or laser precise enough to sever us from evil (or good), for who can survive an incision straight through the heart? A person with half a heart is no person at all. The earth remains therefore a dangerous place, and living here remains a matter of life or death. It is best, then, to keep both eyes and both hands.

"You must change the way you live" is not a moral imperative, but an inescapable fact. With this realization, hope has returned, but with it more responsibility than we might have hoped.