“Now you know when to stop.”
In 2013, Nissan promoted it’s latest Altima model with a novel feature. When filling the tires with air, the horn beeps when the pressure reaches the optimal level. No more struggling with pressure gauges or guesswork, the car itself will let you know when to stop filling the tire with air. Not a ground-breaking innovation, but one that certainly appealed to the general car-buying public. Anything that gives any kind novice more confidence is a mark in the plus column. Engineering aside, the more brilliant move was the marketing. Imagine an alert every time you crossed a line, an important boundary between appropriate and inappropriate; a boundary that one rarely knows has been crossed until looking back with regret. The television commercial followed a man in several common situations where crossing the boundary would be (humorously) disastrous. From shaking the hand of a new employer to hygiene to gambling to a first date, the everyman is saved from certain embarrassment by the helpful beeping of a horn. “Now you know when to stop,” the announcer assures us. If only.
St Thomas Aquinas, building on St Augustine, tells us that “well ordered self-love, whereby man desires a fitting good for himself, is right and natural; but it is inordinate self-love, leading to contempt of God, that Augustine reckons to be the cause of sin” (Summa, Ia-IIae, 77.4). An ordinate self-love, a love without boundaries, leads to contempt of God which is the cause of sin. I am neither a philosopher nor a Thomistic scholar, but as I understand it, Aquinas begins with the Aristotelian position that every act is done for some good. In fact, Aquinas argues that no one desires evil, even in doing evil acts. Sin, he argues, comes from our inordinate desire for some good or our inordinate desire to avoid some evil. The instinctual longing of the human person is to meet our intended end - our good - for this is the destination of happiness. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, we are told, and there is real theological backing to this. It’s worth a real think, but every act, even heinous ones, have some good as their intended end. This not, at all, to justify anyone’s actions. Rather it is make the case that evil, heinous actions, are at their core a violation of a boundary. The more boundaries that are crossed in seeking some good, the more heinous the act. The sex offender seeks companionship, intimacy, and love; a desire that when properly ordered is good. This desire without boundaries is devastating. Without proper boundaries the resulting crime is unrecognizable from the original longing.
I think we see this with some clarity in the Garden of Eden. “So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that was a delight to the eyes, and that the three was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate” (Genesis 3.6). The desire was wisdom and pleasure. Properly ordered, these desires are not only appropriate, but right. God had established the proper ordering, “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you will die.” The sin of Adam and Eve was an inordinate, boundless, desire that resulted in contempt for God. Why does it result in contempt for God? Because God is the one who establishes the boundaries.
I think this vitally important, both for our understanding in addressing the evils in the world and in recognizing our own transgressions before our acts end up grossly disassociated from our intended good. If it is true that no one actually desires evil, our pastoral response should reflect our understanding that we desire the good, but that desire is unregulated. Instead of berating people for their sins, we should help each other see the good we are actually seeking and the consequences when we violate boundaries. This does not excuse sin, but if our aim is reconciliation (which it must be) then surely this a more sound, biblical approach. Is this not what St Paul did on the Areopagus? I see how religious you are, you are desiring to know the One who holds all things in himself. But your boundless desire has led you to so many gods that you even erect an altar to the ones you don’t know. Using their desire, St Paul showed them the loving boundary that is Jesus Christ.
But what about those of us within the Church? What about our inordinate desire for safety during this pandemic that we’ve sacrificed our mission to provide pastoral sacramental care for those in our charge? Can we ever speak with any integrity about our need to be with those on the margins of society again? I’m worried that our well-intentioned desires for safety and health during the past year has bred contempt for one another - six feet away, put your mask on! No one wants anyone to be ill, much less hospitalized or to die. But has that good desire, been so inordinate that our pastoral approach is isolation? Instead of respecting boundaries, have we made artificial, and spiritually harmful, ones?
I’m even more worried about our contempt for God. Never for a moment do I think anyone sets out to show contempt for God. Our people have been without the grace of the Holy Eucharist for so long that we have rightfully sought ways to safely offer the Sacrament. That is the good. Without boundaries that protect us from contempt, the Sacrament, I fear, has become a gimmick. Mailed, wrapped, left for pickup, it often seems the Host is a party favor and not the Real Presence. Never has this hit home more than when I knelt before the Sacrament in the monstrance after having being handed a wrapped host through a car window in a parking lot. When our pastoral desire crosses the boundaries of reverence, we have indeed made the act more about our creativity than Christ. The Cure d’Ars tells the priest that if we actually knew what was happening in the Mass, we would die, the gift is so profound. “God doesn’t care”, one frequently hears, but how can we say that? Is that not knocking loudly on the door of contempt? Surely Scripture is quite clear that God cares very much about our prayer, not for his sake, but for ours. Our good desire for our people cannot cross the boundaries the Church has given us to save us from contempt. We end up hurting both our people and ourselves.
How wonderful it would be if we all had an alarm that beeps when we cross a line; to hear a voice that says “Now you know when to stop.” We are not a car. A properly formed conscience sounds the alarm when we cross a boundary. It is properly formed according to the truth of Holy Scripture, the teaching and practice of the Church, and a life of sincere prayer. We will live near the boundaries and daily cross them. That’s sin. We confess, repent, and seek the consolation of the Good Shepherd within the confines of His Will for us. I have certainly done things, with good intentions, during the pandemic that pastorally I now regret. Heaven knows we all have. To cross a boundary is one thing, to institutionalize it is another.
We all want what is good, let us sincerely affirm this. To reach the good, we need God to proper order this desire. We need him to tell us when to stop.