THE TRUTH WE SEE

Developing an overly critical disposition is, I suppose, an occupational hazard for one who spends his days studying theology. The line between critical and overly critical is a thin one, and one I’m certain I cross more often than I even realize (as I often also do with respect to the line between critical and insufficiently critical). But what I really fear is failing to include myself in my own criticisms, that is, being overly critical of others while being overly generous with myself. Jesus’ famous line about the log in you own eye and the speck in your neighbor’s makes it clear that precisely the opposite is supposed to be the case.

In this vein, I was struck today when reading the words of the seventeenth century French devotional writer François Fénelon. The book Meditations and Devotions is a collection of Fénelon’s prayers and homilies. Reflecting on 1 John 2:15, where we are told, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” Fénelon writes:

“How wise these words are. The world is that heedless and corrupted multitude that Christ accuses in the Gospel. Everyone criticizes the world and yet each of us carries it in his heart, for the world is made up of those people who love themselves and who love others without relation to God. We are the world, for we love ourselves and seek in others what comes from God alone. Let us admit that we do not have the spirit of Christ. How shameful to say we renounce the world and yet to keep its values. Desire for power, love of prestige, self-indulgence, pursuit of pleasure, cowardice in Christian practices, neglect of the truths of the Gospel – here is the world. It lives in us; and we want to live in it, else why are we so desirous that it love us and so fearful lest it forget us?” (Meditations and Devotions, 18)

Wow. Need I say more?