I think The Courage to Be speaks to me in my theology because I am an individual who often experiences those existential anxieties that are associated with the human experience.
Doubt? I’ve been there. Meaninglessness? I’ve been there. I will probably see the anxiety of doubt again at many different points in my life. I’ll again feel that way. It will happen. How hard is it for an engineer – who is an individual who spends most of their time assessing systems and seeing machines as sums of parts – to simply just see themself as a sum of parts and as a part in a larger machine? I’ll be there again; I’ll again see the machine without the mysticism and I’ll again be blind to the sacredness of the material and the natural.
Fate? I’ve been there. Death? I’ve been there. Who doesn’t fear illness or imminent danger? It is a very human experience to come upon the realization that we are all, in many ways, at the mercy of forces beyond our control. It’s terrifying. That anxiety will return to me again in the future, and I again will definitely have to face it with my racing heart, irrationally anxious mind and everything.
Recently, though, I have had to face an anxiety of guilt. An anxiety of guilt of the realizations that, in various scenarios, I most certainly did not act in the best, or perhaps healthiest, manner. And that I am not the only one who might have had repercussions of my actions in missing the mark. I have felt the guilt of realizing I may have terribly hurt another.
And this anxiety is scary, especially as it approaches condemnation, and as my mind races and my sense of value and merits deteriorate, and then everything in me begins to feel cold. It is scary to feel that freezing fear in my soul. How much hurt have I caused? How can I even see myself as a force of good, when I may have done so much bad? Can I forgive myself? These are all questions that haunt me.
Historically, it can be argued that a widespread human experience of the anxiety of guilt reached its apex at the onset of the Reformation. It was at that moment when humanity grappled with the anxieties related to failure of virtue and the realization that we often fail to do what is just and right and moral.
And while we have gone far in progress – we have done so much to learn how to treat each other better, and to do what is right and honor each other’s rights – we still even now we see the most toxic behaviors in our humanity exhibited every day, as is evident in our social media, and in the countless news stories published each day. We see it in our colleagues and in our governments and in the hatred spewed.
A champion of the Reformation – but also most certainly a man of many troubles and hatreds and sins that I, with others who hold to a Protestant identity, must grapple with in examining our history – Martin Luther was said to have done great strides in shifting thought and relationship to the existential dread of anxiety. Sola Fide and Sola Gratia. It is solely by faith and grace. Psychotherapists many centuries later confirmed the existential power of such lines of thinking.
I accept myself, despite the fact that I am unacceptable. I will hold my faith to that.
But, when it’s not sucked into dread of meaninglessness and overcome with the Courage to Be rising from the Ground of Being, the anxiety of guilt and the dread of condemnation rise up in invasion repeatedly until a sense of reconciliation is achieved or until one can courageously hold to the faith of grace. A psychological phenomenon that Martin Luther reportedly felt throughout his life was of an image of Satan telling him that his whole sense of grace and faith and acceptance was a meticulous lie. He often reported facing this, a phenomenon that is fairly consistent with observed psychological experiences related to accepting and moving on from guilt and condemnation in the fields of psychotherapy.
And, that’s what I am facing. The dread returns like an existential shadow that follows and haunts me. I accept myself, and need to trust that I am accepted despite the fact that I am unacceptable.
But perhaps there is other work that needs to be done. Perhaps personal rational acceptance is not it. Or perhaps I actually do not accept myself.
Perhaps I need to reflect on this guilt more, and perhaps I need speak to more people who I trust about my guilt and anxieties.
Let’s pretend that a human’s life is a power system, and an inductive load in this power system is like a moment where one is growing, changing, and really living life. The reactive power that arises and is lost in this inductive load is like the existential and psychological harms that we experience as a result of this load. If we keep on going with this metaphor, then an offsetting capacitor is like the theological and psychotherapeutic ideas and practices that help us cope and overcome the harms to our psyches. In most power systems, there are tons of inductive loads, as a power system usually has multiple transformers and loads running to and from the grid. Each of these loads require a new and different capacitor, as each load is unique and different in each unique grid. As I face this new load, then I might need a new capacitor. As I face this awful and scary dread I have been feeling the last few days, I perhaps need more than an internal lip service to the idea that “I accept myself, despite being unacceptable.”
And perhaps this idea or practice will arise in the theological stream from waters unfamiliar to the ones I usually draw from.