Years ago, a spiritual director listened closely to my story, and told me: “You are more than your sins.”
His words were as unforgettable for me as they were ironic, because at that time, I felt like nothing more than my sins. I felt as though my wrongs were the truest and most important thing about me. And I didn’t know the difference between what I had done and who I am, or am becoming.
To be clear, my director was not excusing my actions or relieving me of responsibility for the pain I had caused. He was helping me find a way to face that pain without being destroyed by it. If my worst actions were the sole substance of my identity, there would be nowhere left to go. I’d have no room for repentance, repair, healing, or growth.
His words helped me understand that grace does not deny the truth about us. Grace makes it possible for us to bear the truth by placing our misdeeds within a larger framework that includes the full context of our lives, and of God’s love.
Then I began to recognize the same distinction in a smaller, everyday habit. Sometimes, while driving, I’d find myself replaying some foolish thing I had done, and I’d hear myself say, “You’re such a stupid idiot.”
This happened over and over, until one day, I caught myself in mid-sentence.
“Wait!” I thought. “I am not a stupid idiot. I did a stupid thing.”
That small change in language opened an unexpected door for me. To say, “I’m a stupid idiot,” was a final verdict on what I am. While, “I did a stupid thing,” was an honest assessment of an action—and actions can be examined, learned from, apologized for, and changed.
I was responsible for what I had done, but I was not reducible to it.
This has helped me understand what Carl Jung meant by the “shadow.” The shadow consists of those parts of ourselves we do not want to acknowledge—anger, envy, selfishness, fear, neediness, ambition, or weakness. But it may also contain good qualities we have never permitted ourselves to claim, such as courage, creativity, tenderness, or authority.1
What we refuse to recognize within ourselves does not disappear. We often begin seeing it everywhere else.
Jung called this projection. If I cannot tolerate my own anger, I may become preoccupied with the anger of others. If I cannot admit my own desire for control, I may see controlling people everywhere. Sometimes the fault I perceive is real. But the intensity of my reaction may reveal that something more is happening within me. When people really bug me, or arouse my anger, or fear, or jealousy, or something else, it’s time for me to wonder whether this is really about them, or perhaps about me.
Richard Rohr captures this in a familiar saying:
“We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.”
That saying reminds me of Jesus’ humorous and unsettling image in the Sermon on the Mount:
“Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”
Jesus does not say that there is no speck in the other person’s eye. He says, “First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly.”
The log does more than make me a hypocrite. It interferes with my vision. Something unexamined within me affects how I perceive the person standing before me.
Taking out the log is therefore not an invitation to moral indifference. It is preparation for moral clarity. Self-examination may reveal that I have projected something of myself onto another person. Or I may discover that I have correctly identified something harmful, but have done so without compassion, humility, or an awareness of my own capacity for the same failure.
George W. Bush once expressed a related insight:
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”
We do this as individuals, and we also do it collectively.
When someone in our group behaves badly, we see that person’s behavior as an individual exception to the rule. When someone in another group behaves badly, we treat that person as representative of the whole group. Our failures become unfortunate departures from who we really are. Their failures reveal all the evidence we need to know who they really are.
Yet, our good intentions do not erase harmful consequences. And harmful actions do not disclose the whole mystery of a human being, or a group of persons.
A more truthful and merciful way of seeing holds both realities together:
I am more than my worst action, but I remain responsible for it.
You are more than your worst action, but you remain responsible for it.
My intentions deserve consideration, but so does the effect of my behavior.
Your behavior must be taken seriously, but your motives deserve curiosity rather than automatic condemnation.
Perhaps this is one way of understanding Jesus’s Golden Rule: I must offer others the same moral complexity I instinctively claim for myself. I should not define another person by a single act when I hope to be understood in the context of my entire life.
None of this asks us to excuse cruelty, remain silent about injustice, or abandon accountability. It asks us to resist evil without pretending that evil belongs only to other people. It invites us to speak truth after examining the place from which we speak.
The deepest accountability may become possible only when we know that we are more than what we have done. Otherwise, we will spend our energy hiding, defending, blaming, and projecting.
Grace says something more demanding and more hopeful:
“You are not permitted to deny what you have done. But neither are you permitted to believe that what you have done is all that you are.”
I’ll say more about this on a future post.