September 21, 2009
Interior Castle, part 2
This second portion of Teresa of Ávila’s work is quite short. She explains that this is because she has covered much of this material in a different book. However, I don’t really feel compelled to go and seek out that book, and want to just stay focused on what she’s given us to chew on in this book.
In the second mansion described by Teresa , we have progressed deeper into the human soul, but not too deep. We are still in an area of the castle where the broods of vipers and wild animals (as she is so fond of talking about) can still enter and seek to bite us, in other words we can still be tempted to sin quite readily. However, in this second phase of our journey inwards, we start to see a change in intention. If prayer is the doorway in which we begin our pathway towards uniting Christ and our soul, then it is in the second mansion that we start to perfect our steps through the denial of sin.
Our primary concern in this portion of our journey is to understand how we can start to discipline ourselves to give up those sinful pleasures of life that can distract us from Christ. This often is neither easy nor what we’re used to in our modern worldview. We live in a culture that encourages possession, materialism and desire, and allows us to think that we can in fact have it all. Often it just seems too difficult to struggle against the prevailing winds of society, but that is what we are called to.
Something, however, that might seem counter-cultural to not just modern Americans, but even to various brands of Protestantism is this truth: that sometimes, God allows us to suffer in our struggles against sin. Suffering is a topic that is foreign to most modern Protestants (* see comments for more clarity on this statement), yet it’s a topic that we sorely need to remember. Too often when people come face to face with real adversity, and find that God doesn’t show up and snap His fingers and make everything right again, we come to a crisis of faith. A crisis for which much of what we read in Christian literature, has little to offer us in terms of hope. Many people have struggled in this torment, struggling with suffering, and simply decided to give up believing that there is a God that loves them at all.
This is a crisis of faith, brought on by our own desire to seek a path that is easier to walk. Yet, we can feel let down by God, that it was somehow His fault that we sinned… yet again. In a society that has come to devalue personal responsibility, it becomes so easy to simply push off our troubles on someone else. However, for a person seeking to grow deeper in their own self-awareness, and deeper into their journey into their very being to encounter intimacy with Christ… personal responsibility is what is called for.
I’ll leave this mansion with a quote from Teresa…
You may think that you will be full of determination to resist outward trials if God will only grant you inward favours. His Majesty knows best what is suitable for us; it is not for us to advise Him what to give us, for He can rightly reply that we know not what we ask. All that the beginner in prayer has to do — and you must not forget this, for it is very important — is to labour and be resolute and prepare himself with all possible diligence to bring his will into conformity with the will of God.
Written and posted by Jamison on September 21, 2009, 9:40 pm.
Filed under: General Discussion, Reflections, Transformation
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Nat said,
September 22, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
Jamison, I read your posting one time through early this morning. Then I read it again and again and I want to respond.
First of all, I am glad you have found wisdom in earlier Christian writings. As a new learner of Orthodoxy, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of the early Saints and deeply profound observations of the human mind and soul. But I want to know what your journey has been and your personal review of the book. I want to read how this affected your brain and your thought process.
If the theme of her book was how our brains try to deny sin, therefore making some behaviors and thoughts acceptable or inevitable and we, as Christians, need to endeavor to conform our will to the Lord’s, time and time again, I was wondering why you gave examples of generalized suffering and the Protestant lack of resources. I vehemently disagree with your statement that “suffering is a topic that is foreign to most Protestants”. This is a blanket statement, is not specific to struggles with the sin nature and left me with the impression that you just generally don’t like modern Protestantism( read Evangelicals), their teachings, and probably hold some bitterness about your experiences with THEM. You went on to say that most Christian literature “has little to offer us in terms of hope”. May I suggest the “boundaries” book. Totally not mocking, I just think you are exaggerating and I think you are exaggerating because you are angry.
Since I am wanting personal reflections from you I have to give one of my own regarding general suffering and sin suffering. My younger sister has Schizophrenia and lives in a group home for the mentally ill in Duluth, MN. For years, I prayed, fasted and pleaded for God to heal her. I know my mother did the same. My sister’s care and therapy was one of the major stresses in my parent’s marriage and one of the reasons they divorced. I had to come to the the realization that God may never heal her on this earth; she may only be fully healed in heaven. Was it my crisis of faith, because God seemingly didn’t answer a prayer the way I wanted Him too, the only right way to answer a prayer? No, I never denied God was in control, loved me or Clarissa or cared about my parent’s dissolving marriage. And I found the answers in the Boundaries class at my old Evangelical church. Suffering, generalized and sin-specific is very real in the Protestant faith and grace and mercy from that sin, are common topics. I think of Horatio Spafford’s hymn It Is Well With My Soul.
If there was a sin that I think I suffer with it would probably be a continuing anger with my father. Again, I realized that there will never be an apology from him. He will still have heretical views and say things that hurt me. I have learned to quell my reflex of anger and hold back a biting retort. It’s taken me 30 years to truly learn that a “soft answer turns away wrath’. It’s not God’s fault that he is this way.
So what I’m trying to sum up is that my initial impression at reading your post was dismay. I think there is some Catholic theological elitism here. I don’t think that is Teresa of Avila’s voice; I think it is your own. I read this and I think you have prejudices about Protestants; albeit thinly-veiled with a covering of helpful hints of dealing with the sin-nature.
Jamison said,
September 22, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
Natalie, thank you for the comments, I really appreciate your honesty. I certainly wasn’t intending to offend, and was trying to cram a lot of thoughts into a small space without becoming more wordy than I already am. In reading what I wrote I see that I worded things completely wrong in that section. What I should have said is “The idea of Redemptive Suffering is foreign to most Protestant theologies of salvation”. I certainly wasn’t trying to say that Protestants don’t suffer, that was the furthest thing from what I was trying to communicate. So what I was trying to say is that in most Christian (even some Catholic) literature about suffering, it is described as something to be endured, can maybe strengthen us, yet it is still seen as something to be avoided.
To the Orthodox and the Catholic theology however, suffering is a part of life, and is in fact a part of our salvation. It is in suffering that we take up our cross and follow Christ and conform more completely top His will. As St. Basil the Great (4th Century) stated, “because through suffering we can at last wake up to our true condition, repent, be purified by Christ, and in that purification become a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.” So at the end of all things, suffering is an instrument in our own salvation.
The notion of Redemptive Suffering is really what Teresa is trying to get at, and what she’s writing about here, and I apologize for not explaining it better, and generalizing too much. She’s trying to be encouraging that God is not a vending machine, and in fact we need to trust Him that he knows what’s better for us. In this case, that may mean perhaps suffering under the weight of struggles and temptations. So as we move closer to Christ in our souls, we understand that we do so in a state of continuing to discipline our lives, minds and hearts. That’s never easy, nor fun, and often involves deep suffering, but it’s what Teresa is trying to encourage us towards in our faith walk.
So I guess if I were to respond in regards to my feeling on Protestants, it really has more to do with a worldview that a great deal of Protestants (and yes, some Catholics and Orthodox) have chosen to embrace. A worldview that at its extreme says that we can have anything we want if we just pray hard enough. A worldview that denies suffering and embraces a type of ‘me-ism’, where our own self-importance becomes tantamount. It’s also a worldview of some people that if God doesn’t answer our prayers it’s because either He doesn’t exist or He doesn’t love us (and yes, I had someone say that exact thing to me the other day).
My bitterness is more focused on this worldview. And I’m pained by how this worldview seems to have permeated a great deal of Evangelicalism. But frankly I don’t feel anger towards them. I wouldn’t be the person I am without my time in the Protestant world, and I feel like I understand things that Catholics who’ve never been inside a Protestant church don’t understand.
So again, thank you for the comments, I appreciate people trying to keep me honest, and next time I’ll try to be more specific and less general.