Moralism and Love: Conversion of the Korrekt

I have been awash in "naru hodo" moments lately. (You know, those times when things suddenly converge in your mind and you say "Oh! Ok, now I get it.")

I'm going to share just one right now, and hopefully others later on.

Deacon Scott's post Deus caritas est and our little chat in the combox gave me eyes to see my personal journey of conversion in a drastic and simple new light: the journey from korrekt Christian to person of love. Even before I had realized that Deacon Scott had written about this topic elsewhere, and that he was making a specific literary reference, I intuitively gathered that to be korrekt, one must adhere strongly to an ideology that dictates certain patterns of behavior. The idea of korrektness is not to fall in love with Christ, not to be enlivened by His Church, but to shape one's life around a standard of behavior. Rules. I see that my personal journey of conversion has been spiritual warfare: God's fiery love vs. a raging moralism that I clung to out of tremendous insecurity, nurtured by dwelling in loveless wastelands. This explains to me now the cause of several moments of pain in my past.

During Lent this year, I wrote a chronology of the events in my personal journey of conversion, so I spent a lot of time thinking about those events that shaped my faith life. There was a time up through my mid-teens when Christianity was for me something that helped me feel righteous. It was a platform on which I could stand apart from other people and feel safe and superior. At the same time, I was (whether I always was feeling it or not) all shredded up in my heart and soul due to loneliness and isolation, compounded by the trauma of my parents' divorce and my father's alcoholism. A Christian faith such as mine (which was real, despite being very moralistic) gave me a sense of control in my world. It was a helpful tool at the time, but only like the barrel of a pen is a helpful tool for breathing if there is nothing else on hand during an emergency tracheotomy.

Now I can see how the series of events in my life that brought such great light and hope to me stood out -- they were events of God's love breaking through, breathing real life into me. I've written about two of the major events a couple of times.

Then there was the most upsetting show-down of all: when I was called to enter the Catholic Church. It was part of my moralistic identity that Catholicism was more or less a religion from hell. If I had to identify Catholics as anything in my pre-Catholic days, it would have been people who followed a religious form and religious rules without any personal relationship with Christ and no knowledge of the Divine. They were stupid, duped religious idolaters. I was sure of it. I was sure of it with a tinge of sadness for them, of course (how could I not be, you know, being a Christian and all). I started the habit very young to read the newspaper obituaries, and I always grieved to read of Catholics dying, because I figured there was a very high likelihood that they were in hell. Yes, I was pretty hard-core.

But a funny dissatisfaction crept into my spiritual life even while I was healing and thriving in my charismatic fellowship. I began to sense an oppressive sense of what I thought of as "religiosity" (I throw in the term to amuse my CL friends) and prayed for freedom from it. What I wanted to be rid of was this sense of following a form, following ritual, following "a religion" instead of following Christ. I had absolutely no idea what Christ was about to do in response to my prayer!

To tell a long story briefly, friends of mine who entered the Church before me required me to come to grapple with the reality of the Catholic Church. It took some time before I realized that in all my formal instruction about Catholicism (yes, I had plenty from my Lutheran schooling and even my missionary training at my fellowship), I had never read one scrap of anything written by a Catholic. I came to the logical conclusion that Catholics had a self-understanding so different from my understanding of them, which allowed them to believe doctrines that were, well so obviously stupid and wrong. I realized that the only way I would be able to see with this (wrong, ugly) Catholic paradigm was to study Catholic documents. I did (reading first the documents of Vatican II), and was blown away by the intense Scriptural and evangelical heart of Catholic teaching. After months of reading, I attended Mass. And there was Jesus. He was calling me, as if to leap from the trashed, burning building of my moralistic religious life, into His waiting arms. Would you believe that I hesitated for about 48 hours. But I jumped. It felt like jumping into a black abyss, with no certainty, no identity, no companionship but the cross. (When is the cross not enough certainty, identity and companionship?)

And what can I say of my path since coming into the Church (which happened some 16 months later)? I definitely did not drop all the scales of being a korrekt Christian at my Confirmation! There were some barnacles so deeply embedded that special years of surgery were required. I had pretty firm (and completely irrational) rules for myself about how I related to people, especially the opposite gender, and the role "being religious" played in my life. Let me just say this paradigm makes complete sense out of why I have felt my early Catholic years were a time of moral failure. They were, in many ways! I needed that failure, so that I could become more fully human. I needed to come to my senses.

Then, about two years ago, I met Fr. Giussani in CL who actually gives language to these realities I have lived. It is an amazing, astounding thing, and hardly an accident.

And here I am. Far from being a finished product, it is better to say that I am just beginning, just barely beginning to truly say "naru hodo" on this one.