August 2010
ElPasoFishNet
By Randy Limbird
A friend of mine recently published a biography about her mother’s cousin, a nurse who dedicated her life to caring for orphans in China.
This woman probably would meet almost anyone’s definition of a saint: She had a fervent desire to serve God and sacrificed comfort and safety to enrich these helpless children.
Reading about such a life is inspiring, of course, but can also be a bit discouraging. I cannot help but think of how much my own life falls short of such moral excellence.
I recalled a college philosophy professor’s lecture about human goodness. He defined a saint as someone who knew the good, desired the good and did the good. By contrast, an evil person knew what was wrong, desired it and did it.
Most of all fall somewhere in between. That same professor categorized as “carnal” someone who desired what was wrong, knew it was wrong and did in anyway. A “continent” person wanted to do what he knew wrong, but didn’t do it. The “disciplined” person knew and did what was right, even though he or she would rather do something else.
The “moral middle” was quite slippery — you had to go one way or the other. The “continent” person can slip into the “carnal” state by giving into evil desires, or rise to “disciplined” by learning what is good and trying to do it, despite temptations to do otherwise.
Even the edges of the middle are hard to hold onto. If you keep desiring to do something wrong, you either must lose that desire or you will likely surrender to it. If you don’t desire the good, all your discipline eventually erodes.
Our actual lives are more complicated than that, because most of us incorporate different moral categories at the same time. We may be saints at work, but sinners at home. There are areas where desire, knowledge and action are completely in step, but others where they seem completely at odds. We’ve witnessed the moral collapse of presidents and priests, yet also have heard of the heroics of people who were considered failures in their everyday lives.
Jesus had no patience for the moral middle. Read his Sermon on the Mount and you realize that there is no such notion as “good enough” in his teaching. Even his disciples were perplexed by the seeming impossibility of his words, asking, “Who then can be saved?”
A saint is not someone who is “good enough” or “as good as can be.” A saint is someone who wants what God wants and refuses to be satisfied with anything less.
Randy Limbird is editor of
El Paso Scene. Comments?
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