Maturing into Vulnerabiltiy

[I'm thinking as I type, so bear with me.]

On Sunday I spoke to a church group on the topic of being a servant. Within the discussion we spent a few minutes on the theme of "vulnerability". The Gospel, I contended, calls us to a form of service to one another that is vulnerable. There is, in contrast, a form of service that is always invulnerable, always keeping some form of structure between the neighbor and oneself. I think there is a parallel between this mundane distance and what they call in psychology/psychiatry "non-transference". In our case it may be either a physical or emotional distance; we might just say that we keep danger "at arm's length". This may be, for example, the relationship that a one-off server at a soup kitchen has with the local homeless: a well-defined relationship of server to served, on opposites sides of a plexi-glass sneeze guard, fulfilling roles for a specified length of time. One of the dangers of this sort of model is that the "good deed" is often just another luxury one may enjoy, the luxury of noblesse oblige, of doing something good for the less fortunate, etc. It's dangerous because it feeds the ego and the ego eats away at the soul.

So, I challenged this group to be vulnerable to their neighbors, rich or poor. Give to him/her who asks of you. Walk the extra mile. It sounds easy and straightforward. I'm just quoting Jesus after all. But what happens when your neighbor asks of you at an inconvenient time? What if befriending a homeless woman makes you late for work a month later because she has now asked you to sit with her at the doctor's office as she gets a test run? When your boss says, "Get your act together" what will you say or do? My impression is that few employers have much sympathy for the uncertain schedules that arise when one is selfless. The assumption of the workplace is, after all, widely recognized as being driven by the capitalist microeconomic mentality which boils down to self-interest. The self-interested employee will follow the instructions of a boss because he can choose between being fired and being promoted (and sometimes perhaps just staying put, but they want you to believe that if you're not on your way up you're on your way out).

We can become very vulnerable very quickly if we act selflessly in some very simple ways. Looking back, Adam raised this issue in a slightly different setting almost exactly a year ago in his post Scarcity and the Gift (Mar 27, 2009). If your family depends on you to bring home a paycheck while a homeless friend depends on you for companionship in the tough times generating a certain unsatisfactory evaluation of your work ethic in the office, what do you do with a finite amount of time? And, as one astute listener posed in our discussion at church, we obviously can't be vulnerable to every person we meet. Emotionally we'll be spent in no time, and it's just impracticable to be "close" to that many people. What do we do?

With regard to the scenario with the unhappy boss, I have heard repeatedly in my time the argument of managing multiple obligations, being a good steward (read "manager") of one's time, etc. All of these, it seems to me, are derivative of an economic view of time in which the central assumption is that time is scarce and thus the problem of "stewardship" is to figure who gets how much of my time and when in such a way as to... ??? well, what determines the optimum??? maybe: in such a way as to maximize the happiness in the world weighted by my emotional attachment to those I am obligated to, or something equivalently convoluted. That's to say, I don't buy the claim that we only have so much time and so we need to spend (time? effort?) becoming more proficient managers of our time all the while leaving the utility function that goes into this proficiency explicitly in the shadows (so that we don't have to admit that this is utilitarian?).

That said, we do have obligations to our bosses. They're paying us for 40 hours of work each week (even if sometimes they unofficially expect more). So, it seems only right that if we're late for work because we were helping a homeless friend we should make up that time somewhere else in the week. Right? But then one's wife begins to get frustrated that time with the homeless person is taken instead of time with the family (scarcity again!). So what to do? Well, why not just give back that time's worth of money to our boss? Seems just to me. The fact is that most of us want the money more than we want the time (that's why we "make up" time elsewhere if we are late to work). While the adage is "Time is money" maybe it should be "Money is better than time". Some will not be able to survive on less money, but that's also what the church is for. But for most of us, I think we can survive on a little less money, and probably a lot less. We just don't want to, and we kid ourselves into thinking we can get all the money that we want and still be selfless when our neighbor asks for our time. In the end, this isn't selflessness, it's just greed and the sin is transferred to one's boss or one's family.

I suppose I should just be up front: I don't think it's a sin for a family to be poor because the parents serve their neighbors. The Gospel assures us that these will be provided for.

Now what about being vulnerable to too many people? We can't be best friends with everyone. Certainly. Vulnerability does not necessarily mean emotional attachment, but it does mean that we feel an obligation to our neighbor, that we suffer when they suffer, we mourn with them, and we laugh with them. It also means that we are willing to bear their burdens, even if it means bearing them AS a burden (see Gal. 6). It seems to me that there are to modes in which we can bear another's burden. We can do so on the back of our ego or we can do so through grace. What's the difference (besides pious language)?

When we bear burdens with our ego we do so under our own power and by our own self will. The fruit of bearing burdens in this way is that we feel empowered, that we have performed a tremendous work for the good of our neighbor. It's the fruit, I think, that so easily identifies this mode. On the other hand, if we bear another's burden on grace, it means that we recognize that we have not born anything by our own power, but that we have been able precisely to move our egos out of the interaction sufficiently that God might carry the neighbor's burden through us. The fruit of this is that we recognize that we have done nothing but be a vehicle of God's grace, that by some effort and training we have held our sinfulness in check that another might experience God. And the work seems almost fleetingly simple because we have had to bear no real weight. The Way is difficult, but the burden is light.

It is here that I want to introduce a notion on which I have not heard anyone else speak but which seems clear to me: there is a very real and practical difference in spiritual maturity among Christians. Call it spiritual maturity or just holiness, it amounts to the same. And the practical difference that I allude to is that those who are holier have had much practice in putting the old man to death and thus are living ever more fully in Christ and Christ in them, and thus they will be able to bear more of the burden of this world than will novices in the faith precisely because it is not them but Christ in them that bears it. The perfect man can bear the whole sin of the world, but He is one and He is Christ. In the holy I think we see the fruit of Christ's work as the burden of sin on a poor soul is shared by another. The holy take up their cross on which hangs the sin of their neighbor.

We cannot be vulnerable to everyone, but the measure to which we can be vulnerable is the measure to which we have combated the evil in our own hearts so that we might be filled with Christ's love. This is why the way is narrow and difficult, because we must train ourselves against sin and combat the evil in our own hearts, not so that we can save ourselves or save our neighbors but so that Christ's love might find a vessel to be filled and so that that vessel might be poured out for the love of neighbor.

If the burden is heavy, then we are bearing too much of it ourselves. We need to pray earnestly and with urgency "Thy will be done". The way is difficult, for we must kneel and pray through temptation, but the burden is light because it is not ours to bear.

We have lost, I fear, a consciousness of maturing in the faith, a consciousness of the immense practicality of that process and the tremendous danger of leaving the novices in the faith without protection and guidance.

We are called not to adopt vulnerability but to mature into it.