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Clutching Pearls and Owning Our Own Mess On Clutching
Pearls and Owning Our Own Mess On Clutching Pearls
and Owning Our Own Mess

On Clutching Pearls and Owning Our Own Mess

In the gospel this coming Sunday, Jesus gives us a parable about a Pharisee and a Tax Collector, both praying to God in the Jerusalem Temple. The Pharisee’s prayer is one of thanks that he is not sinful like other people, especially the Tax Collector whom he has noticed in the corner. The Pharisee reminds God how he carries out his religious duties faithfully, fasting and tithing as the Jewish Law required.  The Tax Collector, on the other hand, all too aware of his sinful mess of a life, simply beats his breast and asks God to have mercy on him.  Jesus’ conclusion is that it is the Tax Collector, not the Pharisee, who goes home sorted with God!  As with any parable, there are several layers of meaning, but chief among them is the danger of the sin of pride, that sense of superiority that comes from comparing oneself with others (an ever-present danger especially, though not exclusively, for religious people). Pride means ignoring at least two facts: 1) that we all have faults, failings and things we would rather others did not know about, and 2) that we are not the sole source of our own goodness and achievements, without help from anyone else (especially God).

Religion comes from the two words re-ligare, which means ‘to bind/link again’ (think of ligaments that bind joints). Religion is meant to connect us to God and to each other.  Sadly, as the parable from God’s own lips points out this Sunday, it so often does the opposite.  Instead of connection and community, religion often leads to comparison, competition, division and dishonest self-delusion.  As I have already hinted, such failings are not limited to religion (lest we be tempted to sneer at religious hypocrisy and overlook the other kinds that exist). Consider the various departments and individuals within the same business, political or educational project and how they compare and compete with each other, doing each other down, not caring whether the collective fails, so long as individual egos and careers stand out at the expense of others.  But many religious practitioners play this same game, throwing up their ladders of success and failure, rather than seeing one another as siblings in God’s unfolding project.  (You do not need to have lived and worked in seminaries and in Rome to know that seminarians, priests and bishops frequently try to stitch each other up in the Church - just when you thought they were all working on the same side for Jesus!)

One of the potential problems with religion is that the more some people practise it, the more they tend to think it makes them better people than others.  Of course, this might actually be the case - if their religion makes them more loving, more holy, more like God than those others are better people.  But it is not the case if their religion makes them less loving, less holy, less like God than others are.  Any Christian who goes around thinking they are a better person than someone else simply isn’t!  They are full of the sin of pride, a false sense of superiority. Such religious people tend to forget that Christianity teaches that 1) God is the source of all goodness and 2) any goodness in us is therefore only there by God’s grace.  When we are tempted to feel smug (like the Pharisee) that our life is not as big a mess as that person’s over there, that old line should be brought to mind: “There but for the grace of God go any one of us!”  And yes, as a religious person, you might pray and tithe (read, go to Mass and the sacraments), but what has happened/is happening in your life that you hope no one ever finds out about?

The truth is that genuine holiness (= being like God) is evident not in the proud, but in the humble and in the virtues displayed by the humble – virtues such as love for others, compassion for others, a desire to help others stand up and move on after they have fallen (not sneer at them), and gratitude to God/life/the universe (delete as appropriate for you) for granting them experiences that have helped bring them closer to wholeness, maturity, God. Experiences that make us more holy, more loving, can also sometimes include, counter-intuitively, sin and falling flat on our face! Much wisdom comes from making mistakes and committing sin, if we learn the lessons!  Any way at all in which we come closer to wholeness, loving, holiness, God, is what Christianity calls a grace, a gift from God.  And when all’s said and done, no matter how holy we are, we are wise to remember that none of us comes up to scratch before God – we are all a mess and imperfect in the divine light. This is why true saints are compassionate to their fellow human disasters on the messy journey called life (even if the degrees of messiness vary from person to person)!

When discussing the messiness of the world (“What is wrong with the world?”), GK Chesterton replied, “The answer to the question, ‘What is Wrong?’ is, or should be, ‘I am wrong.’  Until we can give that answer, our idealism is only a hobby.”  In other words, we are only playing at it, only pretending to improve the world, or the Church, or our family or our workplace, if we do not first look at ourselves, rather than pointing the finger at others. We all need to start telling the truth (at least to ourselves) and shaming the devil. Remember the skeletons in our own closet, rather than rejoice at the ones that tumble out of other people’s closets!  Confess our own sins rather than the sins of others!  Our prayer should never be that of the Pharisee - “Thanks, Lord, that I’m better than him or her, or at least I’m not as bad as him or her!” It should be that of the Tax Collector - “Lord, sorry about the mess; may an awareness of my own mess make me more understanding about the mess that others make.”

Whether we are religious or not, clutching our pearls, pursing our lips and gossiping about other people’s less-than-perfect lives, rather than owning our own lives, is sheer hypocrisy and a classic pharisaical diversionary tactic.  We are all in the same boat - not one of us has got this loving lark sorted.  Religious people in particular tend to like their life, religion and God neat, tidy, squeaky clean - but there’s nothing squeaky clean about cooperating with grace, becoming a saint and learning that life is Toute de charité.