Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Give up victimhood for Lent
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
February 2002The Devil made me do it. For most of us, that expression is a joke or a child's evasion of responsibility. It is worth thinking about, however, as February brings us Lent's call to look within ourselves. Who are the "devils" we invoke to avoid responsibility?
Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the snake. Some people blame psychological "addictions" or other boutique disabilities. Others blame their parents, their bosses, their relative wealth or poverty, their supposed experience of victimhood or oppression.
Unprincipled defense lawyers and well-paid expert witnesses of the type lawyers consider prostitutes argue that nobody is ever at fault except, perhaps, those who seek justice.
Something in us would rather establish convoluted theories or complicated patterns of alibi, rather than simply say, "I was wrong. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better."
Clarence Thomas could have made short work of his confirmation hearings with those words, but ended up contradicting his own principles by playing the race card. Bill Clinton could have said the same thing, and would be remembered very differently.
From cop-out to perjury, human nature seeks any tool to avoid taking responsibility -- and deprives itself of grace and growth.
There may be otherwise normal people who are so ill that they have no power to avoid taking the first drink, the first snort, using the first credit card, or whatever. I haven't met any.
For very complex reasons we may construct patterns of behavior that feel good or at least stop the pain. When the patterns are entrenched enough to be habits or ways of life, we feel out of control. Then, of course, we want to say we are not responsible for what we do. But the pattern began with an act, a decision, a curiosity, a response to a hunger or a hurt.
Perhaps a mother, a fifth-grade teacher, or a physical pain had something to do with a person's establishing a pattern of destructive behavior. Those outside "devils" were the stimulus. Adults, however, have the ability to examine what patterns of response they allowed to develop or stay in place.
A fifty-year-old huffily clinging to a nine-year-old's behaviors is pitiful. A fifty year-old taking responsibility to learn new patterns of behavior is noble and courageous.
There can be little grace where people insist they don't need any.
Every one of us has a set of hurts, habits, and vulnerabilities that make us more likely than some other people to commit bad behaviors of one kind or another. That is merely sin, and is fairly easily dealt with. When we lie to ourselves about it, we risk becoming worse than sick; we risk becoming evil, and that is hard to deal with.
The perpetrators of the Holocaust knew exactly what they were doing. They had a detailed theory about why it was justified. They had lost sight of the point at which they found believing and thoroughly assimilating a lie easier than taking responsibility for a culture that had made a series of bad turns over decades (perhaps centuries).
On a small scale, the self-examination of Lent is an opportunity to risk peeling the onion of the layers of convenient half-truths, evasions, and self-serving distortions beneath bad behavior. Though this may involve the companionship or guidance of a trusted friend or professional, it is work no one can do for us.
"Dead to sin" is a New Testament expression for studied insensitivity to our own special pleading -- alive to the life of strength and grace abundantly available only to those who admit they need it.
I pray that all of us may have a happy and arduous Lent.
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