The gravest error of the nice people in all ages is the denial of sin. Yet this is always a hopelessly illogically stand for any person to take. Even in the natural order, laws cannot be broken without disastrous consequences. Gravitation will help a person if he builds the side of his house straight and plumb; but gravitation will opposes him and make his house fall down if he builds it out of plumb. Disobedience to natural law brings punishment. Astronomy reveals that now and then certain stars get out of their orbits; as a penalty for that deordination, they burn themselves out in space.

It is a law of nature that the higher shall control the lower object in God's whole hierarchy. In the biological order, death is the domination of a lower order over a higher order. For death ensures when the vital forces no longer can integrate, in the interests of the whole being, those physical and chemical processes that go on continuously in the cells of the organism. Life has been defined as the sum of the forces that resist death, that prevent this revolution of the amoeba.

Gradually, as we grow old, the process of life wears away the substance of the cells and diminishes the power of our various vital functions. Our chemical processes become more and more independent of the controlling vital forces; and their rebellion makes it increasingly difficult for the organism to harmonize their activities in the interests of the whole person. At that precise point where there is a balance of forces in favour of the purely chemical processes as against the vital controlling powers, death ensures; the chemical processes, having achieved full independence, have been able to disrupt the integrity of the organism. Such is the history of all terrestrial beings.

In human life the hierarchy extends higher - there is a superstructure above the physical, and the same great law applies here, too. For man (human being) is so made that, when all is in order, the moral order holds supremacy over the instinctive and the physical. At that moment when the carnal gains mastery over the spiritual in a person - when the ego overcomes the social impulses, when the material dominates the ethical - a domination of a lower order over a higher order has occurred.

Again, this results in death - the death called sin. "For the wages of sin is death." - Rom. 6:23 -

Humanity cannot with impunity break the laws of its own nature; the punishment that invariably follows such attempts at rebellion may be most apparent in the psychological order. For instance, it is clear that every self-centered person is a frustrated person. Why must this be? It is because frustration results when a natural longing encounters an insurmountable obstacle. Every natural longing, to find satisfaction, needs to be turned toward an object; until that occurs, it remains a longing - an inclination for a certain sort of performance. But actualization of the longing can come only through something that itself actual; the longing, such as, being a mere potency, cannot procure its own satisfaction. What does procure it is the object toward which the potency is ordained. As long as the person remains concerned exclusively with himself, instead of giving himself to the objective world of tasks and duties, such actualization cannot take place. Frustration and discontent ensue.

Every man and woman alive experiences a sense of guilt when they break a natural law. As Seneca said, "Every guilty person is his own hangman." Every guilty person is also fearful, for "Conscience doth make cowards of us all." Instead of calling it a fiction, it would be truer to call it a fiction, a "rubbing the wrong way." Guilt over unadmitted sins accounts for many of modern man's psychological ills. Yet it would be unsound to say that the moral factor is always behind mental disorders; for it is not. mental diseases, using the phrase in the strict sense of the term, may have physical causes, such as organic alterations of the brain, disturbances in the endocrine glands, malformations of the central nervous system, and the like.

Here we abstract entirely from all theories concerning the origin of schizophrenia, such as that which holds it is due to abnormalities on the "molecular level" and the theory of psychogenetic causes of "manic-depressive insanity." We are here treating the philosophy of frustration; we criticise only those psychiatrists who, acting as philosophers, go beyond their proper medical or scientific sphere to deny the possibility of guilt and sin.

To use a razor to hew down a mountain, to direct our lives toward any other road than that which ends in our ultimate perfection, is not only to damage our minds, but it is also to miss the happiness that comes from living right.

Yet it is sometimes asserted by psychiatrists and sociologists that sin is nothing more than a deviation from the accepted ideals of society at any given moment. Now, there is no doubt that person's ethical code is to some extent determined by the society in which he lives; but this is not to say that sin and guilt are products of a "herd instinct" or of the environment made decisions of society. If this were true, how could the individual conscience often call itself wrong and know itself to be wrong, even when society says that it is right? Conscience knows that right consists sometimes in repudiation of the social standards of a given time (such a time as 1938 in Nazi Germany) If someone can be right when he acts against the herd and wrong when he acts with the herd, or with society, then it follows that there is something more to sin than social disapproval.

The denial of the existence of objective guilt by materialist psychologists is due to a false understanding of human nature. About four hundred years ago, some errant theologians said man was intrinsically corrupt and therefore was incapable of justification by works. From this flowed the idea that man is justified by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Whose merits are imputed to the corrupt man. Later, other errant theologians said that, since man is intrinsically corrupt, he is incapable of being justified either by faith or by works: His restoration was made dependent on predestination, or the Sovereign Will of God Who elects or damns.

The false conception spread and did much to destroy man's belief in human freedom. Finally, totalitarianism came on the scene to say that, since man is intrinsically corrupt, he cannot be justified by faith, or by works, or by the Sovereign Will of God, but only by the collectivity that absorbs man; this, we are told, will do away with human depravity by substituting state conscience for individual conscience and a dictator for God.

The materialist psychologists, in rebelling against the notion of total depravity common to this tradition, were right: Man is not wholly depraved. But the psychologists often erred in not investigating the traditional concept of man, which stands midway between the false optimism that promises to make him a saint by evolution and education and the false pessimism that goes far toward making him a devil.

The sense of sin is a reality everyone knows. It is more than just a violation of law; its poignancy would not be present except for man's intuition that sin also involves a breaking of a relationship between persons. Some people who steal from a great corporation do not feel that they have done anything very wrong (although they actually have) because they cannot think of the corporation as anything but impersonal. They have a flickering intuition of a truth - that the essence of sin is not a negation of a code but a rejection of a person toward whom one feels bound through his goodness and his love. Sin is an affront by one spirit against another, an outrage against love. That is why there is no sense of sin without the consciousness of a personal God. Isaiah had a deep sense of guilt when he saw God and said, "Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of hosts." - Isa. 6:5 - "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." - Job 42:5-6 - "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." - Luke 5:8 -

Because sin is the breaking of a relationship with Love, it follows that is cannot be treated exclusively by psychiatry. (We are not here saying that all mental disorders are due to a sense of sin. They are not. But there are some that are; and when materialist psychiatrists assume that distresses due to sin can be treated in exactly the same way as other nervous and psychic diseases, with no reference to spiritual resources, they are adding to the complexities, derangement, and frustration of the patient's life.) It is not enough to analyze the sin in order to break down the consciousness of sin or to cure it. If the dentist learns that the decay in the tooth is due to eating candy, it does not follow that the tooth immediately becomes healthy. Digging about an oak tree to discover the rottenness of the acorn from which it originally came is not strengthening the tree itself.

To uncover the motives of sin, by studying the patient's past, is no cure. Sin is not in the understanding alone, nor in the instincts; sin is in the will. Hence it cannot be broken up as another complex may be broken up by dragging it into the consciousness. Psychic diseases may arise from repressed complexes; but sin must be regarded as an act of the will that implicates the whole personality. Mere intellectual comprehension will not destroy its effect or restore the patient's health.

It is not true that acknowledging our sins as sins induces a guilt complex or morbidity. Because a child goes to school, does he or she develop an ignorance complex? Because the sick go to the doctor, do they have a sickness complex? The student concentrates, not upon his own ignorance, but upon the wisdom of the teacher; the sick concentrate, not upon their illness, but upon the curative powers of the doctor; and the sinner, seeing his sins for what they are, concentrates, not on his own guilt, but upon the redemptive powers of the Divine Physician, They is no evidence whatever to sustain the position of some psychiatrists that consciousness of sins tends to make a person morbid.

To call someone an escapist because he asks God for forgiveness is like calling a householder whose home is on fire an escapist, because he sends for the fire department. If there is anything morbid in the sinner's responsible admission of a violated relationship with Divine Love, this is a jovial sanity compared with the real and terrible morbidity that comes to those who are sick and who refuse to admit their illness. The greatest refinement of pride, the most contemptible form of escapism, is to refrain from examining oneself, lest sin be discovered within.

As a drunkard will sometimes become conscious of the gravity of his intemperance only through the startling vision of how he has wrecked his own home and the wife who loved him, so, too, sinners may come to an understanding of their wickedness when they understand what they have done to Our Divine Lord. That is why the Cross has always played a central part in the Christian picture. It brings out what is worst in us by revealing what sin can do to goodness and can do for sin - forgive and atone at the moment of sin's greatest cruelty. The Cross of Christ does something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.

Everywhere else in the world we are spectators; but facing the vision of the Cross, we pass from spectatorship to participation. If anyone thinks that the confession of his guilt is escapism, let him try once kneeling at the foot of the Crucifix. He cannot escape feeling involved. One look at Christ on the Cross, and the scab is torn from the ulcerous depths of sin as it stands revealed in all of its ugliness. Just one flash of that Light of the World shatters all the blindness that sins have begotten and burns into the soul the truth of our relationship to God. Those who have refused to go up to Calvary are those who do not weep for their sins.

Once a soul has gone there, it can no longer say that sin does not matter.

If the sense of guilt is an estrangement from God and sorrow at having wounded someone we love, if the ache of self-reproach is a symptom of our rejection of love's invitation, then our emphasis must be not so much on the guilt as on the way to remove it and find peace. It takes love to see that love has been hurt. Divine Love always rewards that recognition by forgiveness; and once the forgiveness is given, a relationship is restored in a much more intimate way than ever before. There is more joy, Our Lord said, among the Angels of Heaven for one sinner doing penance than for the ninety-nine just who needed not penance.

When love is understood aright, we do not feel sorry for sin in order that God may forgive; rather, we feel sorry at accepting that forgiveness. God offers to forgive us before we repent. It is the sorrow on our part that makes that forgiveness available. The father did not begin to forgive the prodigal son when he saw him coming down the roadway. The father had already forgiven the son from the beginning. The forgiveness could not become operative until the son became sorry for having broken the relationship with his father and sought restoration. Just as there has always been music in the air that we do not hear unless the radio is attuned to it, so there is always forgiveness available, but we do not receive it so long as our soul lacks sorrow and a purpose of amendment.

We find only what we seek: Nature has many secrets to give us, but she will not surrender them until we sit down patiently before her and obey her laws. Only by such submission do we receive. So long as there is no prayerful wish for a different relationship with God than that distant, fearful one that sin has caused, the sin cannot be forgiven. To be a sinner is our distress, but to know it is our hope.

Nice people must see themselves as nasty people before they can find peace. When they exchange their proud and diabolical belief that they never did anything wrong to a hope for a Divine remedy for their mistakes, they will have attained to a condition of normality, peace, and happiness. In contrast to the pride of those who deny their guilt to escape self-criticism is the humility of God,  Who made a world that added not to His glory and then made man to criticize Him. The nasty people are the convertible people; aware of their own imperfections, they sense within themselves an emptiness. This may seem to them a meaningless vacuum like the Grand Canyon, but in reality its emptiness is more like that of a nest, which can be filled. They have a hunger and thirst for something not of themselves. Their sense of sin does not beget a forlorn despair but a creative despair, once they know that they can look beyond themselves for loving relief.

Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ was very fond of nasty people. He told so many stories about them. One of the charges the enemies made against Him was that He ate with nasty people and with sinners. One of the greatest of all the Apostles came to Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ through hate. It is the prodigal who was placed before his virtuous brother; the son who rebelled and repented was preferred to the one who pleaded loyalty and then disobeyed. The lost sheep was put upon the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, and the ninety-nine were left in the field. The lost coin was found and made an occasion for rejoicing, but there was never any part or celebration for the other nine.

The Saviour turns out to the buyers and sellers from the Temple and then takes a child upon His knees and says that he will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the wise university professors. He washes the feet of disciples who seek first place at table, talks freely to women whom the whole nation hates, and intervenes to protect an adulteress from stoning at the hands of those whose adultery has not yet been found out. The announcement of His Incarnation was made to a Virgin; but the atonement of His Resurrection from the dead was made to a converted sinner.

Because Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ preferred the nasty people to the nice people, it is very likely that if we could look up into Heaven we should see some sights that would scandalize us. We should say, "Well, how did the woman get there?" or "How did he get in? I knew him when..." There will be many in Heaven whom we never expected to see there. The surprises will be numerous. But the greatest surprise of all will be to find that we are there ourselves.


Nasty people may come to happiness this side of Heaven, too; their humility makes it possible. Many who come to the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ, when asked why they embraced the Church, answer, "I joined the Church in order to get rid of my sins." Those who refuse to admit their sins, who deny that they are sinners, will find this very difficult to understand. Indeed, it is difficult for the nice people to understand, for they fail to realize there are two very devastating things that happen to those who come into contact with Our Lord Jesus Christ: an overwhelming sense of shame, and a glorious feeling of liberation.

No one who denies personal guilt is happy, but there is not a person who has admitted it, and been forgiven, and lives in the love of God, who is unhappy. A sense of moral unworthiness has never saddened a soul, but many souls are made sad and frustrated by their own self-love. The greater the consciousness of our misery, the greater our confidence in the goodness and mercy of God. God could not show the attribute of mercy unless there was misery. God would have been Infinite Goodness if He had never made the world; but unless nasty persons had existed, He never could have shown His sweet Mercy for our sins.

BY  ARCHBISHOP  FULTON  J.  SHEEN  ( 1895 to 1979 )

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -