Trial and Error

Trial and Error

Ephesians 5:8-20[1]

There is a tension in the Scriptures regarding the moral standards for the life of faith. In some places, the “precepts” of the Lord about right and wrong are presented as absolute. It would seem that what Scripture teaches on how we are to live our lives is clear and unchanging. On the other hand, there are other places where the Scriptures seem to speak with a different voice. In those passages, the will of the Lord is expressed in general principles more than clear-cut rules. Indeed, those of us who embrace the New Testament are used to hearing that we are set free from rules and regulations. It can be confusing to try to know just what it is we’re expected to do.

That tension translates into two basically different approaches to the Christian life. Some of us believe that all the teachings of Scripture are indeed rules for living, with all the authority and finality of the Ten Commandments. Therefore, to depart from any of them is to depart from God’s will. Unfortunately, life tends to be messy, and we all make mistakes. And so that has led some of us to embrace the opposite extreme: we cannot possibly keep all the commands the Bible presents, so we think we are free to live as we choose. In the process, however, we can go so far as to abandon the Scriptures entirely as the basis for our life and faith.

Our lesson from Ephesians for today presents us squarely with this problem. On the one hand, in the preceding verses St. Paul speaks about the behaviors that must be avoided, indeed must not even be mentioned, as well as those which prevent any who practice them from having an “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (Eph. 5:5). In our lesson, he speaks in seemingly absolute terms of the contrast between those who are “disobedient” because they are in the darkness and we who are “children of light.” If you only pay attention to what our Scripture lesson negates, it would seem that the matter is clear and unambiguous. Those of us who practice the Christian faith are to separate ourselves from the behaviors of those who walk in darkness.

But the problem with this is that it’s hard to make such an absolute separation when it comes to human behavior. Whether we like it or not, we all contain both darkness and light, and there are times when our behavior reflects one or the other.[2] Those who cannot accept this typically have not had much experience with the brokenness of life. And even if they do, they only cinch up their resolve even tighter and refuse to admit that they might ever “fall short of the glory of God.” But the attitude that sees the speck in the other’s life and is blind to the log in one’s own is itself a part of the darkness in us all. We just cover it up with a veneer of piety.

Despite our best efforts at avoiding this difficult truth, the fact of the matter is that we all fall short. We all make mistakes. We are all human, which means we are all fallen and flawed and fallible. And oftentimes we fail precisely at the point where we think we are invulnerable. I think that’s what Jesus’ saying about the speck and the log is about: recognizing that none of us holds the moral “high ground,” and if we think we do, it should be a warning signal that we are headed in the wrong direction.

So if we cannot construct an air-tight absolute set of life laws from the Scripture that any flesh-and-blood human being can possible keep perfectly, what are we to do? Many in our day have decided that the thing to do is to ignore the Scriptures. After all, they do come from a time and a place that is very different from our world. The logical conclusion would seem to be to think of the Bible as a historical relic, one that might have some snippets of wisdom. But since it’s basically out of touch with our lives here and now, we are free to take it or leave it. Since it comes from a very different setting, we can view its teaching, especially its moral precepts, as descriptive of a way of life that no longer really applies to us. But to make that assumption would be to abandon one of the essential foundations for our faith.

What are we to do then? If we look at the positive teachings in our lesson for today, I think they may point us in the right direction. We are to “live as children of light”, which means practicing “all that is good and right and true” (Eph. 5:8-9). We are to “be careful” how we live, seeking to be wise, “making the most of the time” (Eph. 5:15-16). We are to “understand what the will of the Lord is” and seek to “be filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:17-18). And I think the guiding principle behind all of this is found in the appeal to “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:10).[3]

If you’re like me, you may be wondering just how specifically we’re supposed to do that. But that’s where the heart of what the Scriptures have to say can be challenging to us. There are indeed some very clear-cut teachings, but the Bible doesn’t tend to prescribe specific actions. Instead it teaches us principles for living, principles like “you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” and “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” Our job is to “try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” That may sound frustrating. We’d much rather have a clear-cut list of do’s and don’ts. But that’s not the way God works in our lives. The call to follow Christ is a call to live intentionally, every day.[4] It is a call to continually seek God’s will in every aspect of our daily lives.[5] In a very real sense, it is a call to a life of trial and error—figuring out how God wants us to live our lives as we face each situation, each crisis, each opportunity, and then doing our best to put that into practice.[6]

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[1] ©2015 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/16/2015 at Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 38, where he offers the suggestion that for ministers to truly offer others a way to connect with God we must “enter ourselves first of all into the center of our existence and become familiar with the complexities of our inner lives.” I think this applies generally to all, and he says that when we do this we will “discover the dark corners as well as the light spots.” Cf. also Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 15-16, where he says, “Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. … Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter—the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.” Cf. further Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 34-35, “Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self. … All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.” Cf. Richard Rohr , Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps, 33, where he says that the “ego” or the false self “wants to think well of itself and deny any shadow material.” He continues, “Your shadow self is not your evil self. It is just that part of you that you do not want to see.”

[3] Cf. Pheme Perkins, “The Letter to the Ephesians,” New Interpreters Bible XI: 437: “Christians will be active moral agents in their world. They are to ‘try to find out’ [dokimazo, ‘discern’ or ‘test’] what is pleasing to the Lord (v. 10). This implies that believers must determine what is suitable behavior in concrete circumstances.” Since the main idea is one of “figuring out” what is pleasing to the Lord, I like Gene Peterson’s translation of this verse in The Message: “Figure out what will please Christ, and then do it.”

[4] Cf. Perkins, “Letter to the Ephesians,” NIB XI: 443: “Believers must attend to their own conduct. Ephesians never suggests that such attention requires detailed moralism and legal observance. It does require consistent turning away from the old way of life.”

[5] In this regard, it seems to me that the highest example of this approach to life is the one modeled by Jesus. As the Declaration of Faith, 1978 PCUS (adopted by PCUSA in 1991) puts it: “Jesus lived with a constant sense of his Father’s presence. He put God’s claim on his life above all else.”

[6] I think one of the best expressions of this approach to life is a prayer written by Thomas Merton, in Thoughts in Solitude, 79: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I’m going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. There for I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.” (emphasis added)

Peace and Joy

Peace and Joy

Acts 10:36; Ps. 118:14-24[1]

  It seems there’s precious little joy in our world these days. I’m not talking about “happiness.” It seems we’re obsessed with happiness. Everywhere you go, people are making every effort to make sure everything and everyone is “upbeat.” You walk into just about any public place and you’ll hear plenty of laughter. And we love a good party, where we can let our inhibitions go and let our spirits soar. But it never seems to last. We always have to have one more “hit” of good feeling to keep up the appearance of “happiness.” In fact, it seems like many of us are spending a great deal of energy chasing the next dose of “feel good.”

  Joy is something else altogether. If happiness is fleeting, joy is lasting. It doesn’t come and go. We don’t have to go around chasing after it. Joy is a frame of mind that you choose. You choose joy when you choose to be content with your life just as it is, without having to change anything in order to be “happy.” You choose to be satisfied--satisfied with your past, present, and future without feeling the urge to control any outcomes.  You choose to be comfortable in your skin, because it’s the only “skin” you’re going to have in which to live your life. Joy is the result of coming to the place where you can say, “it is well with my soul,” regardless of your circumstances or how you might feel at the moment or what anybody else may say about you. Joy is lasting because it’s a decision you make.[2]

  One of the features of our Scripture lessons during the Easter season is a repeated emphasis on joy.  The Psalmist expresses the confidence that, “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Ps 16:11).  The Gospel of John says that after Christ was raised from the dead and appeared to the disciples, they “rejoiced when they saw the Lord” (Jn. 20:20).  And this was a joy that wasn’t just for a day or two, because in the book of Acts is says that they continued to spend time together in the temple, and “they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts” (Acts 2:46).  Finally, Peter says to the believers who had never had the chance to see the risen Lord, “even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with indescribable and glorious joy” (1 Pet. 1:8).

  But how do we find joy in this world of ours where there seems precious little of it to be found?  I think the Scriptures in the coming weeks will provide us with some answers to that question. This week’s answer comes from the Book of Acts, which says that the message Jesus came to preach was one of peace (Acts 10:36). In the Bible, peace is the wholeness that comes from knowing God genuinely and living the life God intended for us.[3] This kind of peace is not simply the absence of conflict. It’s the peace that the Bible calls Shalom , which might better be translated as “well-being.”[4] This kind of peace represents all that God wants to give us in terms of new life. You could even say that the “peace” that Jesus came to bring to us is synonymous with salvation: peace with God, peace with others, peace with ourselves.

  That is the focus of our study of Henri Nouwen’s book Reaching Out in Sunday School. It’s not an easy book to read, because it brings us face-to-face with many of the ways in which we lack peace in our lives. We lack peace with God. We’re not sure what to even make of God sometimes. Especially when life seems so full of suffering and hardship. We lack peace with others. In our dog-eat-dog world, it feels much safer to keep others at arm’s length. And at the heart of it all, Nouwen argues that we lack peace with God and peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves.

  You might think that talking about peace on Easter Sunday would be the simplest thing in the world. But if we’re honest about it, we have to admit that it’s a difficult topic. The reason for that is there is a depth dimension to life that many of us never discover in the frenzied rush to get through life.  Many give it different names, but I choose to call it the abiding presence of God. Unfortunately, we tend to fear the path that leads there: the path of silence and solitude. But if you are willing to endure them, when you discover the Presence of God that always accompanies you, you have discovered an unshakable foundation for your life.[5]

  I can think of no more solid basis for finding peace in life that this constant abiding presence of the God of love.[6] And I can think of no better basis for joy than the peace that comes from the presence of the living Lord in our lives.[7] Easter is the day on which we joyfully celebrate what God has “made:” new life out of rejection and death (cf. Ps. 118:24).[8] Throughout the Easter season, not just today, we celebrate the good news that our growing faith in and experience of the abiding presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ provides us with the kind of peace and joy that last, no matter what may come our way.

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[1] © 2014 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/20/2014 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX.

[2] Cf. Henri Nouwen, Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, 27: “Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

[3] Cf. John Paul II, Homily at Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, January 27, 1999: “If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. It you want life, embrace the truth–the truth revealed by God.”

[4] Cf. Diana Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith, 110-111, where she speaks of shalom as “God’s dynamic wholeness” that is the “central vision” of the Bible. Cf. also James L. Mays, Psalms, 311. Cf. also Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.2:197, where he suggests that this kind of peace can best be illustrated by Jesus’ quoting Isaiah 61:1-2 in Luke 4:17-19 as the one who was fulfilling the peace and freedom in human life spelled out there.

[5] As Thomas Merton says it, "The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of the false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls." (New Seeds of Contemplation, 25). He speaks a great deal about this topic throughout this seminal work.  Cf. also Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, 44, where he says that in solitude “we can slowly become aware of a presence of him who embraces friends and lovers and offers us the freedom to love each other, because he loved us first (see 1 John 4:19).”

[6] Cf. Nouwen, Here and Now, 27, where he says that joy “is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”

[7] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, Passion for Life, 19: “Where Jesus is, there is life. There is abundant life, vigorous life, loved life, and eternal life.”  Cf. also Barbara Brown Taylor, “Surprised by Joy,” The Living Pulpit (Oct-Dec 1995):17. She says “Joy happens when God is present and people know it.”

[8] Cf. Mays, Psalms, 380: “In the church’s liturgical use of Psalm 118, “the day the Lord has made” (v. 24) has become the day of rejoicing and gladness over the resurrection of Jesus. ... Read, sung, and heard in this way, the psalm becomes the language of the risen Jesus and of his community, celebrating the wonder that God himself has become our salvation through the resurrection.”

Finding Peace

There is a depth dimension to life that many of us never discover in the frenzied rush to get through life unscathed by fear or pain.  Call it what you will--awakening to our true nature, a connection to with the compassion at the heart of all things, a sense of unity with creation--I choose to call it the abiding presence of God, Father, Son and Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  Unfortunately, many of us fear the silence and solitude that leads to this discovery, because they can be painful.  But they are necessary, because we have to quiet the inner dialogue that is constantly dragging us into the past or into the future or anywhere but this present moment.  In fact, it eluded me for years for that very reason--I was afraid of the silence and the solitude of this present moment.  But if you are willing to endure the fear and pain, when you find this depth inside you, you have discovered an unshakable foundation for your life.  You need never again fear being alone because this Presence is with you always.

As Thomas Merton says it, "The only true joy on earth is to escape from the prison of the false self, and enter by love into union with the Life Who dwells and sings within the essence of every creature and in the core of our own souls." (New Seeds of Contemplation, 25)

Merton on the Devil's "Theology" and those who are "devoted" to it

"The devil has a whole system of theology ... that created things are evil, that men are evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that men should suffer evil. According to the devil, God rejoices in the suffering of men and, in fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God has willed and planned it that way."

He continues by saying, "the devotional life of those who are 'faithful' to this kind of theology consists above all in an obsession with evil. As if there were not already enough evils in the world, they multiply prohibitions and make new rules, binding everything with thorns, so that man may not escape evil and punishment." From this perspective, "the Cross ... is no longer a sign of mercy" and "not love but punishment is the fulfillment of the Law."

He concludes that this is a "theology of punishment, hatred and revenge" in which "there must be no mercy."

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 90-91

Merton's thoughts on "The Pure Heart"

"No man can live a fully sane and decent life unless he is able to say 'no' occasionally to his natural bodily appetites." One who does not do this "has renounced his spiritual freedom and become the servant of bodily impulse." The one who lives "under the power of his appetites" "is not 'sinning' but simply makes an ass of himself, deluding himself that he is real when his compulsions have reduced him to a shadow of a genuine person."

"One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today."

"Keep your eyes clean and your ears quiet and your mind serene. Breathe God's air. Work, if you can, under His sky."

"The virtue of chastity is not the complete renunciation of all sex, but simply the right use of sex. ... Nowhere is self-denial more important than in the area of sex, because this is the most difficult of all natural appetites to control and one whose undisciplined gratification completely blinds the human spirit to all interior light. ... The very struggle for chastity teaches us to rely on a spiritual power higher than our own nature, and this is an indispensable preparation for interior prayer."

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 85-88

No More Shame

No More Shame

Rom. 10:8-13; Lk. 4:1-13[1]

The spiritual life is a pilgrimage for us all. Like me, you can probably look back on your journey and find beliefs, actions, and words that you’re probably embarrassed to admit. For me, it’s the way in which the good news was presented as a kind of magical formula. If you said the right words, it was like a spell that would miraculously make everything alright. And this approach was even backed up with Scripture! It was called “the Roman Road to Salvation.”[2] Basically, this was a pamphlet that took selected verses from Paul’s Letter to the Romans and came up with a summary of the “good news.” It starts with “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23) and goes through “the wages of sin is death” to this very passage from our NT lesson for today: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9-10)!

In my opinion, the result of this approach to the gospel was and is a kind of magical way of looking at faith and salvation. Innumerable “evangelists” repeat the appeal that “all you have to do is pray this simple prayer” –with the promise that you will (automatically?) have a new quality of life. One of the reasons why this approach to evangelism was so “successful” is that most of us tend to have some sense of guilt or shame about our lives. Most of us can point to something about our lives that just doesn’t quite measure up. Whether we fall just a little short or a lot short of what we would like to be, the shame we feel is a powerful motivator. In our despair over the prospect of ever finding the freedom to live life with joy, we turn to these spiritual illusionists in the hope that they have the power to save us.

Among the many problems I have with that whole approach to the gospel is that I don’t think Paul was that simplistic in his notions of God and faith and salvation. So what is there about “confessing ‘Jesus is Lord’” and “believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead” that translates for us into “salvation? Well, among other things, I think that the willingness to acknowledge Jesus or God or anyone besides “me” as sovereign in my soul is a very important first step in finding the freedom to live life with joy and purpose. It means acknowledging that I cannot save myself; it means admitting—at least to myself—that I need a Savior.

Of course, the biggest obstacle to that life-changing recognition is my big, fat, German-American ego! I think there is a lot of confusion out there about the “ego.” Is it the fundamental element in the human psyche, or the “inner child” that must be nurtured in order to thrive, or the root of all kinds of evil? It may be that the answer is more complicated than just one of the above. But when it comes to religion, it seems that the ego has always exercised an influence that can only be called “sinful.”

Thomas Merton calls the ego the “superficial external self” that is false and imaginary. He says that it deludes us into making it into an “idol” that demands all our devotion and all our energy.[3] In reality this “false self” that seeks to rule our lives cannot satisfy our longings because they are directed not to the Creator but to created things.[4] Rather than providing happiness, this selfish preoccupation only corrupts everything around us and leaves us alone with our selfish desires.[5]

This is a reality we all struggle with. We all know the voice that tells us that in order to be “good enough” we have to attain a certain level of success, or our kids have to turn out a certain way, or we have to look just so, or we have to have more and better stuff than our neighbors. We think we are “taking care” of ourselves when we obey these dictates of the false god within, but in reality we are simply locking ourselves in the prison of our own selfish desires. I think many people hate the prison of selfishness that keeps them from enjoying life, but they are afraid. One of the most effective tools that this false self uses to keep us imprisoned is shame. I don’t mean by that the embarrassment we all feel when we get caught doing something we wish we hadn’t done. Shame goes much deeper. It is the notion that somehow we don’t deserve to live, or we are unwanted, or we are unworthy of basic human dignity.

One of the tragic dimensions to this story is that we tend to respond to that voice of shame by trying to “prove it wrong.” But in that very act we are actually giving shame more power over our lives. Even when we turn to the spiritual gurus who promise to take all our shame away with a wave of their magic wand, we are still feeding the selfish idol within us that demands all our attention. Only by recognizing the illusions that bind us in the prison house of shame can we find the freedom to live the life God intends for us.[6]

Acknowledging Jesus as one through whom God brings the life and joy and love of God’s rule into our lives can be a step toward that freedom. Taking that step requires that we recognize that when we obsessively pursue our own selfish agenda,[7] we remain imprisoned in our shame. The way to begin the process of becoming free from that voice of shame is to acknowledge that there is one who loves us unconditionally, irrevocably, undeniably—throughout time and eternity. To this one we are always of infinite worth, we are always wanted, chosen, and loved. To this one we can turn and know that “No one who believes in him will be put to shame” (Rom. 10:11).

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[1] © 2010 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 2/21/10 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Apparently, Rev. Jack Hyles, pastor of one of the first true “mega-churches” in Hammond, IN, at least claimed to have originated the “Roman Road” as a means of evangelizing people. Cf. Kathleen Boone, The Bible Tells Them So: The Discourse of Religious Fundamentalism, 101

[3] Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 7, 21, 33-34

[4] Merton, New Seeds, 26: “Instead of worshipping God through His creation we are always trying to worship ourselves by means of creatures.”

[5] Merton, New Seeds, 21-22; cf. 34-35: “All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.”

[6] Merton, New Seeds, 38: the “true inner self must be … rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.” He continues, “To be ‘lost’ is to be left to the arbitrariness and pretenses of the contingent ego, the smoke-self that must inevitably vanish. To be ‘saved’ is to return to one’s inviolate and eternal reality and to live in God.”

[7] Merton, New Seeds, 47: “People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites.”

Merton on Hatred

In New Seeds of Contemplation, 73-74, Merton says that in contrast to self-hatred which is directed toward one's own unworthiness, "There is a proud and self-confident hate, strong and cruel, which enjoys the pleasure of hating, for it is directed outward to the unworthiness of another. ... Strong hate, the hate that takes joy in hating, is strong because it does not believe itself to be unworthy ... . It feels the support of a justifying God, of an idol of war, an avenging and destroying spirit. From such blood-drinking gods the human race was once liberated, with great toil and terrible sorrow, by the death of a God Who delivered Himself to the Cross and suffered the pathological cruelty of His own creatures out of pity for them. In conquering death He opened their eyes to the reality of a love which asks no questions about worthiness, a love which overcomes hatred and destroys death. But men have now come to reject this divine revelation of pardon, and they are consequently returning to the old war gods, ... . It is easier to serve the hate-gods because they thrive on the worship of collective fanaticism. To serve the hate-gods, one has only to be blinded by collective passion. To serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one's neighbor."

Merton on the Illusion of Pride

Merton warns against the selfish pride that tends to imagine we can only be fully human by "asserting [our] own desires and ambitions and appetites." Those who take this path to "find themselves" thing the only way to achieve it is to build "a barrier of contrast and distinction between themselves and [others]." Their pride manifests itself in thinking, "I have what you have not. I am what you are not. ... Therefore you suffer and I am happy, ... you are nothing and I am something, and I am all the more something because you are nothing."

Merton observes that this tendency is most dangerous when it becomes spiritual pride--thinking that my good deeds constitute a "sweet distinction" in me "from the common run of sinners in this world." Merton describes it as "the complacency of a will that loves its own excellence," to "burn with self-admiration" and think it is one's love for God, to relish "acts that make [us] admirable in [our] own eyes" and think our satisfaction is "the unction of the Holy Spirit." In short, Merton says such a person "thinks his own pride is the Holy Ghost"!

It seems that the antidote for this temptation may lie in Merton's observation that "I must look for my identity, somehow, not only in God but in [others]. I will never be able to find myself if I isolate myself from the rest of [humankind] as if I were a different kind of being." New Seeds of Contemplation, 47-51.

Merton on Seeking God

Another jewel from Merton: to "seek God perfectly" means, among other things, "to rest in humility and to find peace in withdrawal from conflict and competition with [others]; to turn aside from controversy and put away heavy loads of judgment and censorship and criticism and the whole burden of opinions I have no obligation to carry" and "to gather all that I am, and have all that I can possibly suffer or do or be, and abandon them all to God in the resignation of a perfect love and blind faith and pure trust in God, to do his will." New Seeds of Contemplation, 46.

Thomas Merton on "Salvation": "To Live in God"

In New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 37-38, Merton contrasts the "vapid" and "hackneyed" concept of salvation that is so prevalent with "the beautiful Christian metaphor." He says that "salvation" means to "be full of [God's] actuality and find Him everywhere in myself." When that happens, Merton says, "I shall be lost in Him," but what that really means is that "I shall find myself." That is what it means to be "saved."

He contrasts this with being immersed "in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent."

He summarizes: "To be 'lost' is to be left to the arbitrariness and pretenses of the contingent ego, the smoke-self that must inevitably vanish. To be 'saved' is to return to one's inviolate and eternal reality and to live in God."