I can only imagine that a true scholar would be rolling their eyes at much of this, given my amateur and immature understanding of theology, philosophy and the history of the Catholic Church. Likewise, I don’t expect that I’ve stumbled onto anything new and that this may read as a typical recovery story. It’s unlikely that someone will say, “Stop the presses: Here’s a leftover that found God after trying everything else. Wow, and an ex-drinker too?!” How unoriginal, I know.
Still, I’ll continue in case one person out in the ether finds any of this pertinent to their own life situation. The major events that drove me to this spot in life where I’m writing this at all are as follows: the faith of my childhood, the discovery of drinking, the pursuit of knowledge, my varied and failed attempts to quit drinking, the arrest for drunk driving, my subsequent search for meaning, and the eventual return to faith.
Which takes me to my next stumbling block, “The Fall of Man” and original sin. These loaded terms were always a sticky point, and I would guess might be for other religious “nones.” I thought this took a negative view of humanity, and that we actually had more goodness inside than evil. Back in college I felt this smacked of an “opiate of the masses” argument. Then I spent 20 years trying to behave myself and failed miserably.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil, when taken literally, does seem a bit simplistic, but when taken literarily becomes genius. As I mentioned in one of my prior takes on drinking, the apple on the tree of knowledge could have been a bottle of Jack Daniels, or Coors Light, or a fancy cocktail. As Jim Gaffigan said, “An apple? Have you ever been tempted by an apple? I would have been like ‘put some caramel on it and come back to me.’”
Strange, but it seems familiar to me, this path of innocence, temptation, knowledge, suffering, separation from God, focusing on self, and wandering in search of meaning…and…wait a minute. I have heard this before. It’s the summarized version of my entire life!
Obviously the author of Genesis didn’t need as many words as I do to make a point. Using only a tree, serpent, and apple, the whole tale of “What’s wrong with me?” was told in a few pages. Yet I need many thousands of words and asides to get to the same point. Apparently I write much like I swim, zig-zagging instead of aiming directly for the buoy.
The apple is not an apple. The apple is the source of temptation and the vices we cannot give up. The apple is drink, drugs, porn, news, possessions, fame, fortune, jealousy, hate. It’s one or more of these, or additional items not included on that list, but in summary it’s something other than God.
G.K. Chesterton said “…the only dogma for which we have empirical evidence is the dogma of original sin.” Watch the 11 o’clock news at night, or even better, watch what’s going on inside of you. You’ll see the evidence…of original sin there. This deep level dysfunction that we can’t solve on our own. And that is an enormously important door into Christianity. (WOF Episode 270 at 11 minutes in)
St. Augustine famously said, “Lord let me be pure - but not yet!” There is a yearning for goodness, somewhere, inside everyone, but we want to cling to our will and vice because it’s fun or we believe that these sideshows represents freedom. I didn’t want to let go of drinking even though I knew that drinking continually disabled me from living the life I wanted to live. With alcohol in my life, I could never live up to the morals that I pretended to hold. I could not stick to an exercise program, could not be honest with people. Every regret in my life came from a night of drinking. Without exception, every hurt I caused in this world could be drawn directly back to drinking. Removing my “freedom” to drink gave me all of the good things that I wanted and I became more free precisely because of self-denial.
Unfortunately, vices and sin can be like a game of whack-a-mole, where you knock one vice down and another pops up. Pride, vanity, lust, anger, the urge to dominate others - knock any of these down and they will re-emerge in another form, shape shifting, always looking for cracks to crawl back into. Like a house, the slightest of gaps in windows or doors allows the outside air to seep inside and you never notice the draft, until suddenly you are shivering on a bitterly cold night. Only then you will notice the source of the problem, but it’s been there the whole time, even during the days of fair weather.
There is much chatter in the past two decades about being “Good without God.” Sure you can be good without God, but the hollowness of that state crumbles under duress. I recall the time I saw Richard Dawkins speak at a bookstore. At the time I thought he was cool. I liked how he was undermining the faithful Pharisees of the modern age and sowing discord among the Christian hypocrites.
But in watching and listening to Dawkins it dawned on me after only about ten minutes how miserable he seemed, even in his arguments. The smugness filled the room. In contrast I thought of my grandmother with her rosary and the never-ending joy in her that she brought to her family. I thought of the billions of people who found hope in faith. His uninspiring message made me leave that talk feeling empty, the opposite of how I felt around my grandmother and other Christians. I entered as a Dawkins fan, only to leave repulsed by his message. This put me in a no-man’s land because I couldn’t accept God, nor could I reject God. If the “selfish gene” was the driver of all motivation, then we are selfish, and therefore sinners anyway. Worse, without redemption we are hopelessly evil. If there is only the rule of law to constrain our actions, put on your seatbelts, things will continue to get bumpy. Some people may be good without God, but not for long, and not when times get hard. Yes, plenty of people pretend to be Good with God, too, and I know some atheists and agnostics that have a stronger moral compass than some Christians I know. But without God, in the end, it’s every man for himself.
What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn towards what is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator. (CCC 401)
By my own experience, I am cognizant of this problem. If and when I remove my focus from God, I will soon start to scowl and stew, and distrust people and hate them for their foibles. When I keep prayer and hope alive, when I turn toward God, I can love my neighbor and expect nothing in return. My story is like that of Peter being invited out of the boat to walk on the water. “Courageous in the boat, but timid on the waters*” I too will sink when faced with fear and uncertainty if I lose focus. I take my eyes off of Jesus and fall, letting doubt discourage me, and I will quickly turn my back on the one place from which I can draw strength. The dysfunction takes over, the creature within rises, and I look for my apples, the ones I like to eat when I think God is not there. My favorite apple is knowledge. It’s like a HoneyCrisp apple to me. And I can only think of the Screwtape Letters, # 1, as the method of distraction to pull me away from what is good, back toward sin. To wind me up with doubt, I only need to apply racing thoughts:
Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about. *
I already know that I will lose focus and return to negative thinking and trip myself up over political, theological, or personal diversions. It’s inevitable. Other Christians will likely be the ones that push me away, but instead of letting that happen I need to hold the focus. Because after spending two decades searching for God, it would be a shame to do it all over again, when I already know the answer. Maybe Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings said it best, summing up the condition: “the hearts of men are easily corrupted.” The Catholic Church and Pat Benatar agree: Love is a battlefield.
Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield, man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity. (CCC 409)
