A Revelation

     I’m going to do something a bit out of my usual practice. I hope you’re braced. I’m not sure I am, but here goes.

     Just yesterday, Sarah Hoyt posted this:

     One of the greatest gifts from reading Jordan Peterson — for me — was being made aware of how little I value myself. And also that this is normal....

     [Long, cat-related digression follows]

     Which, to get away from cats (sorry for the digression) brings us to Dr. Peterson and “Treat yourself as though you were someone you love that you’re responsible for.”

     In fact, one of the things he pointed out was that people pill their animals more assiduously than they do themselves, spend more on their animals than on themselves, and in fact, look after total strangers than they do themselves.

     That is because we know ourselves. We know all the times we fall down, we know all the times we fail, we know everything we did wrong and we know — each of us — that massive potential locked inside each of us, which we fail to realize because… because we’re lazy, venal, too preoccupied with immediate satisfaction. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves, right?

     At the time, I thought it an interesting observation, but not particularly germane to me personally. But just a few minutes ago, the following short conversation occurred:

FWP: What do you have in mind for dinner?
CSO: I won’t be having dinner. (Describes large lunch out with coworker to explain this.)
FWP: Oh, okay.
CSO: What would you like? We have plenty of food in the freezer.
FWP: Don’t worry about it.
CSO: No, sweetie, I’ll make you something! What would you like?
FWP: No, don’t bother. I’ll make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
CSO: Come on, sweetie, what would you like?
FWP: No, don’t bother if it’s just for me.
CSO: [Falls silent.]

     And having reflected on that little exchange, I feel very, very bad.

---

     To think very little of oneself is...well, it’s not wise. Each of us is imbued with a soul custom-crafted for the life he’s intended to live. No lesser order could say the same even if they could talk! As usual, one of my fictional characters put it better than I ever could:

     “Father?”
     “Still here, Chris.” Ray stretched the kinks out of his neck and shoulders, squeezed her hands a final time, and released them. “Still here, and still reeling from shock. What about yourself?”
     “A little better,” Christine said. “Were you talking to the Nag again?”
     He nodded. “He confirmed everything you’ve told me. Not that I would have disbelieved you, but...well, you know the Nag.”
     She chuckled. “I should. Most of my life he was the only, uh, person I could talk to. So what do you think?”
     He cocked an eyebrow. “About what, dear?”
     “About having a golem for a parishioner.”
     Ray’s laughter surprised them both. “You’re not a golem, Chris. If I remember the legend, a golem was created from mud, inscribed on the forehead with a Kabbalistic symbol, and sent out to do physical labor its owner didn’t want to dirty his hands with.” He peered at her theatrically. “No Kabbalistic symbol on your forehead, and having hugged you, I’m pretty sure you’re not made of mud.”
     She laughed in response. “That would make it pretty hard to keep my clothes clean. Okay, so I’m not a golem. What am I, then?”
     Ray took his time over it. She watched him intently as he composed his answer.
     “A superwoman,” he said at last. “That is, a human woman with powers beyond what other humans possess. And according to the Nag, you have a mission to go along with them. Does something about that bother you?”
     She sat back and let her eyes slide closed.
     “I’m a made thing. Not like you or anyone else, except...my mentor. Maybe I have a couple of extra abilities, and I’m not ready to argue about the mission.” Her eyes opened and stabbed into his. “But what about what I’m missing?”
     “What would that be, Chris?”
     She looked away as if in thought. Ray steeled himself to wait patiently. Presently she spoke the most plaintive words he could have imagined.
     “A soul.”
     Ray gasped. “Why would you think you don’t have one?”
     She frowned. “Frankenstein’s monster didn’t.”
     “That’s your standard for comparison? Christine, that was fiction. Anyway, Frankenstein was a man. He assembled his monster from bits of corpses. Your maker created this entire universe. He just got around to making you a little after the rest of it. Why should you think you have no soul?”
     “Because—” She halted, plainly baffled by the seeming contradiction. Ray reached across the table and took her hands again.
     “Christine, I’m a priest. I have to work from certain postulates. According to those postulates, the soul is the seat of conscience, of an individual’s real and unalterable identity. Creatures without souls are also without moral choice. They act strictly from innate drives, motivations built right into their flesh. You can’t have a moral nature, the ability to know right from wrong, unless you have a soul. You can’t love, or be grateful, or understand loyalty or duty or justice. So either those postulates are wrong, or your soul is as real and valuable as mine.”
     An intensity Ray hadn’t felt since his ordination flowed into him and through him. He pressed her hands together between his own and chafed them gently. “A very wise man once said, ‘You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.’ The soul is the individual, the only part of you that really matters. Let’s imagine for a moment that your maker—Evoy?—didn’t possess God’s power to make souls. Actually, that’s a good assumption: the soul eventually returns to God, so it would make sense that it must be from God, not from any lesser source. All the same, God gave Evoy the power to make you. Can you really believe that once Evoy was done designing your flesh, God wouldn’t step right in and take care of the rest? Would a God Who sent His only begotten Son to suffer and die for our sakes—Who allows us to exist at all—be so cruel?”

     [From Shadow of a Sword]

     Every individual human being is / has a soul – and the mere possession renders him more valuable than any lesser creature or object on Earth. That’s why the Second Great Commandment is so important, and so profound in its implications:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
     And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

     The gift that God has given you, He also gave to your fellow men. It’s the most important thing about either of you – and it entitles you to think of yourself in the highest imaginable terms, to wit: as a child of God.

     And we are commanded to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. But there’s a prerequisite that a lot of people tend to miss: Seeing oneself as worthy of being loved. In other words, loving oneself.

---

     For Beth to offer to make dinner for me, even though she didn’t intend to eat, was a gesture of love. Now, Beth is not a Christian. But she understands love. She understands that many of the gestures that pass between us, as is the case between the members of families throughout the world, are expressions of love. She made such a gesture – a sincere one – in the little exchange above.

     And I, in my reflexively self-deprecating way, spurned it.

     I had to retreat to my little home office and actually think before I had a grasp on what had happened and how churlish I’d been. Mind you, thinking’s “what I do.” You could call it my specialty. I do it better than most. But for sure I wasn’t thinking when I rebuffed her offer to make dinner for me.

     So why did I do it? I love my wife. I think she knows it. But for a moment there I forgot to love myself. That resulted in my crudely waving aside an act of love from the woman who loves me.

     That’s what comes of thinking little of oneself.

---

     As Sarah noted in her piece, Professor Peterson struck the jugular. As is often the case, G. K. Chesterton got there first:

     There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.

     We are taught to undervalue ourselves in consequence of a complete misunderstanding of what the virtue of humility is all about. Very nearly from the cradle we’re made to feel that we should underweight our abilities, our insights, and our very selves. It’s even worse for men. As Paul Elam, the founder of the Men’s Rights site A Voice For Men, once told documentarian Cassie Jaye, men’s lives are systematically undervalued by First World cultures! We’re taught to accept that undervaluation as Gospel truth! And why? So we’ll be willing to sacrifice them for some “higher” cause!

     That’s at the root of the dismissal of gestures of love we ought to accept with gratitude...and with reciprocal love.

---

     There is no Last Graf. I have nothing weighty or portentous with which to conclude this out-of-left-field disclosure. But it struck me as significant. It seemed the sort of thing from which others might draw important insights. So I suppressed my innate inclination to keep my personal life private and have left it here for your consideration.

     Be well.