“The times are bad!
The times are troublesome!” This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let
us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times.
---Augustine of Hippo
This quote in today’s liturgy for Common Prayer could not
be more appropriate, and yet, its author, Augustine of Hippo, lived from
354-430, in a time and place far removed from us. To read this quote in the
aftermath of the Las Vegas shooting, and in a world that seems increasingly
filled with violence and tension, I realize that there really isn’t any such
thing as “the good old days.”
We are our
times. . . Such as we are, such are our times. What we tolerate in
ourselves grows. What we excuse in ourselves overtakes us. We are often quick
to speak of what Satan is doing in the world. But evil isn’t simply “out there.”
To blame evil on Satan keeps us from taking responsibility for our part in the
perpetuation of evil.
The desert abbas and ammas, those early Christians who
have much to teach us today, understood that spiritual growth and transformation
happen only as we battle the demons within ourselves. The capacity for any kind of evil lives in each one of
us. Why do you think Jesus stated that calling someone a fool was the same as
murdering them? What we carry inside, what we allow within us is what determines
the state of the times in which we live.
When we fail to understand our own capacity for evil, the
seed of evil grows within us. What begins as a thought eventually is acted out
through words or deeds—our judgment of someone who is different from us, our
unwillingness to act for the common good because it will cost us something to
do so, our sense of superiority over others—so the seed grows into a weed that
we fail to even recognize as such.
Recognizing our capacity for evil is not the same as
saying we are bad or saying “I’m only human.” These excuse us from taking the
hard road of growth. Excusing our evil is like running a weed eater over weeds—it
does not eliminate them but instead strengthens the unseen roots, causing the
weeds to come back stronger than before.
Teresa of Avila understood that spiritual growth was not
always easy or pleasant. In her book on spiritual growth, The Interior Castle, she uses the metaphor of a castle for the
spiritual journey. She notes that when many people encounter the snakes and
bugs of the basement, they turn away rather than persist through what is
unpleasant within themselves. It is helpful to have a spiritual companion who will
accompany us through the stages of growth, encouraging and challenging us. I
have found spiritual direction a safe and grace-filled place to look at the
parts of myself I’d rather ignore.
We may not have pulled the trigger in Las Vegas, but we
have all wished ill for another. When we can acknowledge that, and see it for
the evil it is, our world will begin to change. Such as we are, such are our
times.
