Step Three

Recently, I was discussing my various religious experiences, in particular the powerful emphasis placed on the individual conscience by the group I grew up with. Very sharply the person I was talking to juxtaposed that teaching with the crushing conformity that was required of me by the same group. "How could a group that believed so strongly in the individual conscience deny you anything?" he asked. I was stumped. The two had lived together side by side for so long that I hadn't ever wondered about it. Since then I've been puzzling it over.
It turns out that that question works in nicely to bring out one of the reasons for my conversion. My church felt strongly that each person must "work out their own salvation with fear and trembling." The way they understand that means that you have to read the Bible and figure out what to do for yourself, no one else can do it for you. There is some truth to that. We are each accountable to sort out for ourselves the moral choices that lay ahead of us in life. We can't let someone else take responsibility for our ethics. However, and it's a big however, puzzling out the Bible is a very difficult task. It is demanding in every possible way, and the fact that several religions haven't given up working away at it is undeniable proof. Requiring such a huge task from ordinary people whose gifts may lie in such diverse areas as carpentry or nuclear physics or veterinary medicine is unfair. When even such greats as St. Paul and St. Thomas Acqinas called their precious and amazing theological achievements crap, how is a regular guy supposed to get it right? Even if you are firmly convinced that the regular guy can and must get it right, such an idea causes tremendous anxiety to everyone but fools.
I believe that the conformity that so often prevailed in the group I was raised in is a response to that anxiety. The fact that everyone else was living and interpreting the Bible as you did was the easiest and most direct source of corroborating evidence for your chosen understanding of what God wanted from you. If all the skirts were the same length. If all the beards were shaved off. If everyone gathered as a family for a devotional period each night after supper, then you were in good company--you were getting it right. Foundational to each individual's peace of mind was this sense of cooperative correctness. In other words, authority other than the Bible assured them that they understood the Bible correctly.
Another interesting aspect of this is the tendency of fundamentalist/evangelical groups to glom onto a "bright light," a person who seems or actually is, rather intelligent and to accept his say so, after all he's an expert. Superstar preachers take the place of the settled elegance of the Catholic Magisterium. In either case, it's more about the freedom to choose the theology each person feels comfortable with than it is some great theological insight, or so it seems to me.
I prefer to let dedicated, talented people, who have sacrificially devoted their lives to the work, puzzle over the ins and outs of theology. I like that Catholics have been thinking productively about all these things for 2,000 years now. I may not understand or agree with all the conclusions they've come to, but I don't think anyone can argue that they haven't put enough thought into it. They keep thinking about it too, and they trust God that he will give them the right answers as they work cooperatively to discover his truth. Catholics have formalized the informal agreements that every church I ever belonged to lived by unacknowledged. I believe that this has given them great strength and benefited their theology with generations of faithful servant's discernment and inspiration. I also like it that three women are formally recognized contributors to that tradition.
So what about my individual conscience, now that it's not busy trying to wrestle orthodoxy out of the Bible on its own, what keeps it busy? The much more important matters of living an orthodox Christian life. I've exchanged the amazing dung for the greater riches of knowing God and serving Him. Letting Pope Benedict and all the bishops bear their great burdens frees me to bear mine. I have enough to do discerning God's will in my work with my children, in my writing, in my charity work, in my willful sinful life without trying to do that job as well. I'm content to be an organ contributing to the body, rather than the entire body by myself.
This is a series that begins here. The series continues here.