God and Mammon

What is man's will apart from God, and what is this that we call "free will"? Simply put: It is the condition of being divided against oneself; into a lower and higher nature; the lower being an egocentric contraction into self, and the higher being a transpersonal expansion into God. Moreover, it is the ability, arising from this condition of dividedness, to follow (or to allow one's whole self to be led by) either of these two parts. In all situations, whatever thought we entertain or action we perform, we are electing to align our whole self with one of these two sides; the good or the evil. In every moment, there is a choice, and in every choice there is both victory and surrender; one side advances, the other retreats.

"No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

This is the scriptural verse which most perfectly illustrates the principle. It appears twice, once in Matthew and again in Luke, where it is identical. It is the only saying of Christ's, that I know of, which is not worded differently by the different evangelists. Without being able to say exactly why or how this is so, I nevertheless believe that this lack of variation is not entirely coincidental. The importance of the verse, which is itself a categorical declaration, seems to be underscored by the insistence of one evangelist not to paraphrase the other. Indeed, those who heard this saying from the mouth of Christ may have heard and remembered it identically because Christ himself may have been careful to stress it, and not to vary his wording of it during his various discourses.

We must not shrink from stark distinctions between "God and mammon", good and evil, the spirit and the flesh, the divine life and the life of the world. While we might like to seamlessly weave together these two wills, to find a balance, or a compromise between them, so as not to push ourselves into some extreme, rigid asceticism, we must remember that it is only as a concession to our present weakness that we allow such an indulgent attitude. We must not compromise the ideal, or corrupt the truth, in order to make it fit our compromised and corrupted lives; it is better to be hypocrites and to accuse ourselves, than to distort the wisdom of God; but, of course, it is best not to shrink at all from that high calling.

While moderation deserves praise, we should remember that the moderation of saints is something very different from the moderation of worldly men. For a saint, moderation means eating only a dozen (or less) mouthfuls of healthy food, once or twice a day, rather than fasting for days on end, or eating only bread and water. If he partakes of alcohol, it is to drink one sip of wine during the Eucharist, or perhaps a glass or two at a wedding celebration, such as the wedding in Galilee. For him, this would be moderation as opposed to the strict refusal to drink any alcohol, ever. But to a man caught in the snares of the world, the saint's moderation appears altogether extreme. The worldly man believes he is being moderate when he intoxicates himself only a little, or on the weekend, and when he eats large, unhealthy meals, provided they are not "overly" toxic, or "very" expensive. The terms are relative, as we can see.

What is essential to the Christian approach towards moderation is that we are always making efforts to bring our will closer to God's. We may be excused from doing what is best, provided only that we endeavor to do what is better. In this sense, there is some moral relativity. Christ was more lenient with respect to the confessions of thieves and murderers, than he was to the pride of the Pharisees, who, though outwardly good, had become complacent. We must not compare ourselves to our neighbors, for there are always some who are better and some who are worse; but we must endeavor to be better than ourselves; to be more righteous tomorrow than we are today. This is all that Christ asks of us. For some, it means following in his very footsteps; renouncing the world, spending forty days fasting and praying in the desert, and/or laying down one's life -- even for the lives of one's enemies. For others, it just means drinking a little less, giving a little less time to superficial chatter, or not cutting somebody off in traffic.

We must understand that, in all cases, there is a division between the higher and lower will. What is higher to one man may be lower to another, but, nevertheless, each man has his own higher and lower will, and his own choices to make between them.

Now, some people teach that free will is a gift from God. My own understanding is that the gifts of God are such as to draw us into alignment with His will; that is, with our own highest will. To my mind, God is purely good; He is not the creator of evil, and He would not plant this division in our hearts. If Christ brings "a sword of division", it only so that we may finish the business, by cleaving away the lower will altogether. It is as Shakespeare's Hamlet has said it, when Gertrude cried out that he had "cleft her will in twain": "Then throw away the worser part of it, and live the purer with the other half." Gertrude accuses Hamlet of creating this division, when all he has really done is alert her to it; he has demanded self-honesty from her, while she has insisted upon remaining in denial. So it is with Christ. He does not make us enemies of ourselves, but he shows us wherein we are already divided against ourselves.

While we insist on healing this division through some form of compromise, Christ makes it clear to us that this is a false hope, and a denial of the true nature of the rift. We are like wounded soldiers, with gangrene eating away at one of our arms, who refuse to recognize the seriousness of our condition. We beg and plead with the surgeon; we want to keep both our arms. But a true physician will tell us strait that if we do not amputate the infected limb then the infection will inevitably spread to our whole body. Christ, who is, for all Christians, the greatest physician in the world, tends not to our bodies, but to our souls; which is to say, he tends not to where the symptoms manifest, but to where the disease has its root. His advice to us is the same, but on a much higher level: to bear up, to grit our teeth, and to amputate that sickly part of ourselves which we have already lost, though we continue to cling to it at our own expense; to amputate the lower will. Healing will come, and wholeness with it, only when we have been purified of the lower will; when we have consented to be small and clean, rather than large and contaminated; to serve in heaven, rather than reign in our own personal hell.

I ask again, what then is free will? If it is merely the freedom to make poor choices, as well as wise ones, -- to make choices influenced by ignorance, foolishness, weakness, and depravity, as well as choices influenced by knowledge, understanding, strength, and righteousness; -- well, then, it is more of a disability than an ability. Ought we to be so proud of this "free will"? It is like that same soldier being proud that he has two arms, and not one, despite the fact that his second arm is the enemy of his whole life! Is this what we call freedom?

Many people mistakenly believe there is something shameful in following another; in being a servant and having a master. The shame, however, is in that pride which honors its own foolishness rather than the wisdom of another. Though we may be intoxicated with a distorted vision of equality, the fact is that we are all inferior to the likes of Jesus Christ. We cannot fail to see this, provided only that we take an honest, humble, and objective look at the matter. We are equal, in that we are loved by God no less than Christ was, and that we, like him, may each become saviors of worlds. But we are not the saviors of this world. At best, we are the saved. At worst, we are the lost sheep, who insist on going their own way, proudly ignorant of the dangers, only to be swallowed up by wolves.

Just as the blind cannot lead the blind, no man can shepherd himself. Those who are wise will light their own way only until they have found another whose light burns brighter than their own. They will know it when they have found it, and will not be blinded by their own light. As an expression of true leadership, they will allow themselves to be led by the absolute greatest of leaders. But a man who insists on leading himself is a man who is content to be led by one in need of a leader.