Vanity of Vanities: Insulting God's Handiwork

Vanity, and the insecurity that goes with it, is one of my recurring faults.  Perhaps it's because as a child I really admired the physical beauty of my birth mother and my aunt--I now see that my grandmother, who raised me, was clearly the source of this beauty, but she was already middle-aged by the time I was born, and when you're a little kid the mid-forties seem "old."  Anyway, the women in my family all, particularly in their heydays, tended to look striking enough that they'd not have looked out of place on the silver screen.  I am not just looking through nostalgia or bias:  I've had friends visit me who, upon seeing pictures of these relatives (and at least one particularly glamorous picture of my grandmother even into her fifties), make extended conversation about their beauty.  The irony is that each of these women considered herself homely and plain, despite what everyone else could see.

It may seem odd that I would look up to the women this way, rather than to a man.  But the man who was ultimately a father to me was not related to me by blood.  There was no "growing up to look like my Dad," because as a child I didn't even know who my biological Dad was, let alone what he looked like.  Besides, people always told me I looked like my mother, so my hope was clear, at least once I hit puberty and became more conscious of my own appearance;  I wanted to be as handsome a man one day as she was a beautiful woman:  A man who looked as if he could be an A-List movie star.

Yet I never felt like I measured up.  I would go through a laundry list of reasons why I felt that I was not the male equivalent of my mother, but it occurs to me that some of the characteristics that cause me to be hard on myself might be shared by some of my readers, and I don't want to inadvertently insult anyone.  Suffice to say that, while I rarely ever feel ugly, and often do in fact feel that I'm fairly handsome, sometimes I nonetheless feel forgettable, like someone who wouldn't really catch your eye in a crowded room.  Since I felt my mother, and other women in my family, did have that "eye-catching" quality, I felt like I was a step down from their good looks.

One step, a whole flight of steps, who's counting?

What I just said?  It's insulting to God's work; to think that I'm "a step down" just because I may not meet a societal standard that defines what it means to be a "head turner" is to scoff at the very craftsmanship of God.  And I need to stop it.  Maybe you've done the very same thing.  If so, you need to stop it too.  The sin of vanity, I believe, is not committed by wanting to be beautiful.  As human beings, as I'm about to demonstrate, I think beauty is our birthright, so it's only natural that we desire it.  Vanity occurs, however, when we think that we have to measure up to a certain shallow standard to be beautiful, and spend inordinate amounts of energy trying to meet that standard, all the while judging others who do or don't seem to meet it themselves.  Vanity does not do beauty too much honor, it does the opposite:  It fails to give beauty enough credit.

Who are we to insult ourselves or to insist that we are "less than impressive" if we don't measure up to the standards of Hollywood, or whatever else?  Consider:  Who is the artist behind our creation?  God.  Who "knit" us together in the wombs of our mothers, according to scripture?  God.  When I fret that a man must be taller or more imposing than I in order to catch the eye, I'm questioning God's handiwork in ever creating men who are not up to those standards.  When I fret that my nose is too big, I suggest that God's genius was suspect when He gave me such a nose.  Does God, the omniscient and glorious, make "duds," that I could consider myself one of His "less successful" works?

It's my own belief, with which I'm well aware that some sharply disagree, that each human being is a masterpiece.  Yes, even physically.  Don't get me wrong, there can be defects or distortions in the human form that mar its beauty, but I'm talking about the fixed traits that define a person's appearance.  If we imagine any given person as he (or she) would be at his healthiest, with no deformities or defects--much as I imagine he will look in Heaven--then I believe it would be totally accurate to say that each person is truly beautiful, breathtaking, a real eye-catcher.  There is not a human being who is not worthy, by way of God's handiwork, of "oos" and "ahs."  I think that we don't see that because we are fallen.  So we see some features as "less desirable" or as "less pleasing to the eye" than others, even if those features are in no way defective or unhealthy.  If we saw with the eyes of God, we would find that each human being has a beauty all his or her own, so that calling one human being less beautiful than any other would be like comparing apples to oranges.

Although I am partial to apples...

Let's be clear:  I am not saying that, if humanity had never sinned, everyone would be sexually/romantically attracted to everyone else.  Attraction serves a function, and it would be chaos if all human beings were equally attracted to each other human being.  But to recognize beauty is no more synonymous with being sexually attracted to someone than one is sexually attracted to a breathtaking sunset.  After all--here's a perfect example--I was never attracted to my mother, despite having recognized her beauty and finding her highly aesthetically pleasing.  I believe that, in an ideal world, that is the sort of recognition we would have of everyone's beauty.

It's true that the beauty of the soul matters far more than the beauty of the body.  No contest, even, for as good as the material world is, spirit is consistently affirmed in Christianity as better still.  However, we mustn't forget that God made both.  We Christians believe in the resurrection of the body.  Our souls are not going to be disembodied for eternity.  The body has an eternal dignity.  So the answer to body insecurities, at least insofar as they apply to fixed traits that inherently part of us, physically, is not to say "it's only the inner beauty that counts" but to reject the notion that our inherent physical traits are less than beautiful.

It's easy for pagan dualism or Gnosticism, which believes the body is just incidental to one's identity, to say that "only the soul matters."  But in Christianity the body is just as much a part of the human's eternal makeup as the soul.  Yes, it will be glorified, it will be perfected, but there is every reason to believe that it will be, more or less, the same body.  So if we suggest that some people really are objectively less beautiful, then we also suggest that this is their eternal lot.  By this implication, some people even in Heaven will be gorgeous in body and soul, while others--to absolutely no fault of their own--will only have one blessing of the two.  I just don't buy it, personally.

So in the end, I dare to believe that even if I myself don't see it (and I am just as fallen as anyone else:  There are plenty of people to whose beauty I am sadly blind), each individual human being is beautiful.  Not just sorta pretty if I look at them the right way, but breathtakingly, epic-poem-worthy, eye-catchingly beautiful.  That includes you, dear reader.  Because when He makes a human being, God never makes anything less than a masterpiece.  And in Heaven, I think we'll all see that reality for what it is.

The Limited Usefulness of Fire and Brimstone

We've all seen it, or at least been given a mental image for it:  The bold, itinerant preacher travels the streets, and warns poor sinners that, unless they repent, they will perish in the flames of Hell for all eternity.  I have to admit, I've often looked at such men as heroes, even though our modern world would frown on such methods:  I say, after all, that it's compassion to warn someone in a burning building that he should get out of the building and into safety.  If done with kindness and tact, there's nothing fanatical or judgmental about warning someone to flee the path that leads to eternal damnation.

...it's somewhere just to the left.  Hence the fleeing.

Yet there's one thing which becomes a problem:  Many Christians believe that their duty is merely to go out into the world and warn people to "flee the wrath to come."  They believe that, if they go to an unbelieving world and tell them "If you don't repent, you will perish!" then they have "done their job."  But preaching fire and brimstone to a bona fide unbeliever is not enough, on its own, because they have no reason to take the danger seriously.  The fact in the Gospels is this:  Jesus Himself preached about hell, but He also did a lot more than that in order to convince people to believe in God or the true religion.

I've read, time and again, the witty (and true) claim that Jesus mentions hell (or Gehenna, the eternal lake of fire) far more often in the Gospels than He mentions Heaven.  So surely the message that we must repent or else go to Hell is an indispensable part of preaching the Gospel, right?  Sure.  I agree.  But when preaching to those who do not already believe in the true religion, we cannot expect such a message, by itself, to change hearts.  "Indispensable" does not mean "sufficient."

Now I want to re-emphasize that I fully appreciate the importance of warning people about hell.  This post is not the work of a modernist, or a flimsy sort of Christian who believes we mustn't risk "offending" unbelievers by preaching God's word.  I believe that Hell is very much real, a place of literal suffering that will never end for all eternity.  And I believe that only by belief in Jesus Christ, which necessarily leads to also taking His commands seriously, can one find salvation from that fate, and so we have a duty to try to lead people to Him.  As a Catholic, given that Catholicism teaches that the Catholic Church alone contains the fullness of Christ's teaching and commands, I even want to lead people to this Church, which we believe to be founded by Christ.

I'm clearly a radical hippie.  Why, just look at my coexist sti--Oh wait...

So needless to say, I believe evangelizing matters.  I do not hold the vague convictions of one who would say that preaching and conversion of souls is unimportant, that if we're just "nice" to people and we treat them kindly, that's all that matters.  We must thirst for the conversion of souls.  We must have a passion for bringing others into the Lord and His Church!  And part of that is warning unbelievers about the dangers of Hell.

And yet I still stand by the statement that shouting fire and brimstone at unbelievers is useless if not combined with more, and if used by itself it's not even in following the model of Christ nor the early Apostles.  Jesus did preach about Hell, but He also won people over with the beauty and wisdom of His teachings, and with His miracles.  And isn't this, after all, what makes the most sense?  If I preach to an atheist that he risks going to Hell for his unbelief or his obstinate sins, what use is that on its own?  He doesn't believe in Hell!  Even if I preach to someone who does believe in some sort of Hell but who doesn't believe in our religion, what use is that on its own?  He believes in Hell, but if his own religion permits the behaviors or omissions mine would call sin, he has no reason from his point of view to take me seriously!

Now, if I preach to a fellow Catholic, someone who knows what the Church teaches and yet goes against it anyway, then the doctrine of Hell is at its most effective.  Like the Israelite of Jesus' day, he should know better.  If he is in fact a Catholic, then whether he admits it to himself or not, he has the information he needs to know that Hell is a real place and to know what roads lead there.  The same applies to a Protestant who shares my belief in a Divinely inspired Bible, yet who staunchly commits to an ethic that goes against it; he has enough information to know he's violating the commands we do believe in common, and to know what Scripture says the consequences are.  The point is, it's most readily useful to talk about Hell as the consequence of certain actions or of unbelief to those who already believe enough to take that possibility and the wrongness of their deeds seriously.  Otherwise it's similar to a scenario where someone preached to you that the great ZiMah would leave you to some terrible fate for all eternity if you committed the grave sin of, say, eating beef and never repented.  You simply have no reason to take that seriously unless you were already a believer in ZiMah and his hatred of beef.  You need more than a mere proclamation of danger.

It's what's for dinner...in HELL!

What about the others, though?  How must we reach out to them?  We must do what Jesus and the Apostles did:  We must preach not only about Hell, but also of all the glories of Heaven, the joys of Christ.  It's also true that we should appeal to the sense of reason.  But that's not enough.  The greatest sign of the authenticity of our message will be shown by our works.  Even Jesus said, "If you do not believe Me, believe My works!"  If we preach our Faith with great conviction and soundness of reason, and back up that preaching with works of beauty and charity which surpass that of the world, the unbelievers will notice, just as surely as people took notice when the apostles did great works.  It's a tall order though:  Our works and way of life--enabled by Christ's Grace and the Holy Spirit living within us--must shine so brightly that no other way on earth, neither of any other religion nor any secular philosophy, can be said to match them.  We can't do this on our own, of course, but we can "do all things through Christ Who strengthens" us.

In addition to this, the best way to convince unbelievers that perhaps their sins will lead them to Hell is to draw their attention to the "Hell on Earth," that their sins reap, things they can actually see if they admit it to themselves; we for our part must suggest that maybe these earthly miseries are signs that an eternal misery awaits those who walk such paths without repentance.

This is, after all, what the apostles themselves did:  The apostle Paul, for example, appealed to pagans not merely with talk of Hell, but by pointing out how beautiful and reasonable the Gospel was, and he confirmed his message by doing good and beautiful works which--just as Christ promised--pointed to the authenticity of the message.   He also pointed out the emptiness of sin, which predisposed his listeners to take more seriously the eternal emptiness sin might breed.  If we proclaim and defend that our Lord is the way of true peace, joy, and life, while the way of sin leads to emptiness and loss, and if we then demonstrate these truths by actions that really point to the reality we proclaim, people will begin to at least consider that maybe there's something to this religion of ours.  As they see the emptiness that sin sows in their lives (and indeed in our lives, when we sin--we mustn't pretend to be perfect), compared to the peace that is found only when one walks with God, they may begin to hunger for the latter and to leave behind the former.

From the Heart of Despair: Reflections on Suicide

With the passing of Robin Williams, the topic of suicide seems to be on the hearts and minds of a lot of people.  It's also been a source of controversy as two opposite reactions to the tragedy have emerged.  On the one hand, we have a professional blogger Matt Walsh who has taken Williams' suicide as a chance to speak out on how suicide is a choice, that the suicide victim is not a "victim" in the same way as a cancer victim or someone who dies of some other disease.  There were some good points made, and I especially liked that he pointed out that depression has a spiritual component as well as physical.  Especially given his follow up post, I believe the message he intended to convey was a positive and compassionate one, and the vitriol and hatred he has received is uncalled for.  Yet his delivery could have used some work at certain points; that's only natural, as it's an emotionally charged topic and when a man writes from the heart not everything he says is going to be polished.  Still, the post came across (if incorrectly) even to some civil and level-headed readers as at the very least a bit harsh toward Robin Williams himself, even if compassionate to those contemplating suicide.

On the opposite end, there are those who are posting the already-viral meme, a screenshot from Disney's hit animated film "Aladdin," with the caption:  "Genie, you're free."  This well-meaning approach, perhaps unintentionally, paints the passing of Robin Williams as no different than an accident or natural causes.  It portrays his fate as something almost serene, the welcome release at the end of a long and terrible battle.  This can easily make the option of suicide appear dangerously poetic in the eyes of those actually contemplating suicide.  Having hope that those who die from suicide have found peace, by God's merciful grace,  is one thing.  But attempted assurance of it makes suicide a more seductive choice for anyone suffering depression.  After all, if suicide almost certainly leads to freedom, then there's little to stay the hand of a soul burdened by misery at every turn.  This is the sort of thing that Matt Walsh rightly wanted to discourage, even if some of his wording in the post distracted many readers from that message.

We need a balance that consoles the grieving,
but resists romanticizing this choice so that still more will have to grieve.

It's a good time to say this:  I have been suicidal before.  I've often vaguely thought of suicide, and even more often have I wanted to die by God's hand.  And at other times, the thoughts of suicide were very intense, but still without any concrete plans.  But on at least two occasions, one more severe than the other, I have gone beyond "vague" thoughts and into the danger zone.  The first time was brief and ended up resolving itself as quickly as it came:  I was to the point merely of planning out the suicide note.  The second time, I was actually resigned to the deed.  I knew how I was going to do it, and I knew when I was going to do it.  I didn't want to tell anyone about it, because I didn't want anyone to try to talk me out of it.  If not for a small twist of fate, which I truly believe was God-led, I feel that, as hard as it is to believe looking back on it, I really would have gone through with it.

So while I can't speak to what the experiences are of any other person, I can speak out on what was true for me.

Suicide for me wasn't about "killing all men," as much as I admire G.K. Chesterton, who said that the man who kills himself does just that.  Because, for as desperate as I was, I really did still believe in a next life.  To me, all men would not be obliterated, then, because I would still continue to exist.  And my Catholic beliefs were still intact, meaning that, if by some slim chance I made it to Heaven, I would still be able to watch people here below, and help them, which is far from wiping them all out.  Make no mistake, I was hoping against hope that God would have mercy on me.  In my particular case, my suicidal episode did not displace or disregard my Christian ethics.  I knew suicide would be wrong.  My morality had not "checked out."  But I was holding out some desperate hope that God would forgive me, because I simply saw no other way out.

I should explain that in my case I knew that my death would cause pain to those that I loved, but I'd also found myself in a situation where I'd exaggerated a small transgression (something that was, in hindsight, more unwise than outright wrong) into an enormous one; it played on my already depressive tendencies to bring me to the point of desperation and despair that led to my plan of action, and it also made me feel certain that my wife and others who know and love me would probably feel more disgust with me than love.  So I thought that, whether dead or alive I would be bringing pain to others.  This was not a decision born of not caring what sort of pain I brought others, it was a choice springing from a place where I thought causing such pain was inevitable.

When living feels like a burden to others and ourselves,
suicide can look far too much like a sound choice...

So I really don't think we can say, as a blanket statement, that those who commit suicide are selfish, at least not in the sense that they don't care about the pain they bring upon others.  We just can't judge that.  It's fully possible that some really don't.  But it's just as possible that, in that desperate, miserable, illogical state of mind, any given suicide victim might honestly have thought that, at the very least, his dying wasn't going to cause more pain than his life might already cause to his loved ones.

On the other hand, I don't want to sterilize the harsh reality of my suicidal episode for even a second:  In hindsight, if I had committed suicide, I don't know--even given my state of mind at the time--that I would have been "free."  I hoped that God would forgive me, and the Church certainly emphasizes that there is hope for suicide victims, but at least for me personally, I'm not sure what would have become of me.

Now, I am in no way saying that this gives me any grounds to judge someone else, especially in light of the Church's current policy of always entertaining hope; I'm just saying that even knowing where I myself was at that point, I am not prepared to say that "God would have understood," and that I would have achieved a "happy ending."  I just don't know that.  That's one reason, among so many, that I'm glad I didn't commit suicide that day.  And it's one reason that, if you are a depressed  person of faith and you still have any sense of reason whatsoever--even if it's slipping, due to your despair--I hope you will have the presence of mind to realize that suicide is not a safe option of escape.

Always give others who succumb to this terrible tragedy the benefit of the doubt but, if you have any capacity to do so, hold yourself to a higher standard, the old approach of "better safe than sorry."  I believe it was that faintly held conviction that saved my life, because somewhere inside of me it prompted just enough fear and uncertainty that I forced myself to tell my wife about my plans, which broke the spell.  Incidentally, she'd volunteered to come along with me on an errand, because "something told her to do so."  It was during that errand that she suggested a fun little outing, and something in me reawakened to the possibility for joy in life.  Then I opened up to her.  If not for that, even the faint fear I felt might not have been enough to stop me, because up until then I'd been desperate enough to risk it.  But without the fear, I don't think I'd have spoken up and broken the spell regardless.  Because in that state of mind, if I'd seen nothing to fear from suicide, I'd have seen nothing to lose.

One small token of kindness or companionship might literally save a life.
It saved mine.

Finally, I want to say that there are far more reasons than fear and uncertainty that I'm glad I'm alive today, even if none of these occurred to me then.  There has been so much beauty in my life, since then, that I would never have witnessed.  My daughter has grown so much in the year since, and now I have a son who could be born any day now.  I have experienced love and forgiveness and friendship beyond that which I ever imagined possible at the time.  I've found out that even worse mistakes (far worse) than the one "straw that had broken the camel's back" have failed to make my wife or others closest to me lose even one bit of love or respect for me.  They really would rather have me alive.  There are hopes and dreams on my horizon that I would never have even seen from afar if my life had ended that day.  I'm glad I'm here to see it.

And if you're facing the darkness and hopelessness that has brought you to the brink, I want you to be here to see better things for yourself too.  Life is always a cycle.  Please know that.  Joys are sometimes fleeting, but they are there.  I promise that, no matter how brief or small, you will know some sort of joy again.  But you have to give it a chance.  Hang in there.  Pray.  Don't give up.  Because you're too dear to give up on.  If you weren't, you wouldn't already be here.