By MoristotleIt’s Sunday, and more than a few of my neighbors have gone to church. I know they have good reasons for going (and possibly a few not-so-good ones – “What might the Joneses, or my parents, think if I don’t go?”).
For one reason or another, a person goes to church because he needs to go. He derives some benefit from going. I accept that, and I respect it.
Mostly I do. But, as I was happily weeding in my garden this morning and not going to church, I became aware that I was feeling – at that moment anyway – smug and mildly superior about not needing to go to church. I know feeling this way is not right. At least, I don’t want to feel this way.
It’s almost enough to make me wish that I believed in God, so that I might pray for help to not feel this way. Then, if help actually came, I wouldn’t have this confession to make to myself.
| Copyright © 2018 by Moristotle |
After my self-confession, I now feel refreshed and liberated from the tendency to feel superior about the topic in question. I hope it lasts, and maybe even extends to tendencies to feel superior in other ways....
ReplyDeleteI love your personal honesty, Morris. For me, and I suspect you too, (perhaps without recognizing it), you feel "better" because you spent a little time contemplating YOUR universal Truth using wondering and inner questioning. At least, that for me, spawns many positive feelings and enjoyments. And is emotionally fulfilling.
ReplyDeleteIt would be most interesting to know the precise psychological reason (I suppose that’s what it is, rather than, say, theological) I feel better, or you or anyone else feels better after confessing to oneself (i.e., really owns up to the wrongness of what is being confessed). The reason, whatever it is precisely, might even be operative in a Roman Catholic’s “going to confession” – if the person actually sincerely owns up as well as “says the words” to the priest. And probably (that is, in my opinion) a person who confesses privately “to God” effectively owns up to himself, because one’s belief that he is “talking to God” heightens one’s awareness of the significance of the act of confessing. And, of course, this dynamic operates whether or not God exists.
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