Freedom from Within: Part 2
Last week we talked about the importance of detachment. This week we’re going to address how we can experience it.
It is an impossible task to slowly disengage ourselves from every errant passion. What we need instead is a powerful war of engagement, which we find by attaching ourselves to something else. That’s the “secret” behind the virtues; instead of trying to stop sinning, we focus on practicing a virtue, and the positive takes the place of the negative.
When I proposed to my wife, out of love for her I was rejecting every other woman as a possible romantic partner. My affection for Lisa was such that it eclipsed any other romantic interest. Intense love for something inevitably leads to the rejection of something else.
John of the Cross teaches, “A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of one’s heavenly bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites. . . . By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, one will have the courage and constancy to deny all other appetites.”
Detachment thus begins with an active, vigorous life of worship. If you don’t earnestly worship God, you’re going to earnestly and passionately sin against Him.
One of the surest (but not, admittedly, one of the most mature or most advisable) ways for me to have broken my emotional attachment with Sharon in high school (see last week’s post) would have been to “fall in love” with someone else. It’s easier to leave something if you believe you’ve found something better. As humans, we don’t exist very well in vacuums; we’re sucked one way or the other by our passions, so—spiritually speaking—instead of seeking a passionless existence, we need to more intensely focus our affections. John of the Cross points out that the lure of the world can be so strong that “if the spiritual part of the soul is not fired with other more urgent longings for spiritual things,” the soul won’t be able to deny its appetites for the wrong things.
The more I read the classics, the more I’m reminded of how vulnerable we are to sin when we don’t take the time to delight in God, gaze at His beauty, meditate on His loveliness, sing songs of worship as we go about the day, and hang on to the truths of Scripture. The more we set our minds on God—His beauty and His truth—the less enamored we become with the things of the world.
Be aware that this takes time. The enjoyment of our “replacement” may feel artificially forced at first, but we’ll develop a taste for it if we don’t give up too easily. Affection is built over time. If you have fed off an illicit practice for a while, it will take some time to learn to live without it; you can’t expect the desire to immediately die. This is where discipline can be marginally helpful, for habits become less forceful the longer we stay away from them.
Many Christians struggle with their desire for God largely because they’ve never been taught how to love Him; or when they are taught to relate to Him, they’re given a simplistic formula.
My book Sacred Pathways explores nine different “spiritual temperaments,” which are really nine different ways to build your love relationship with God. You might look there if you need some more insight in this regard.
The idea is to build a complete life with constructive recreation, spiritual adoration and wisdom, and meaningful work and relationships so the yearnings that so often lead to sin have less of a place in our lives. This is part of the ancient practice of mortification—removing the cause of sin even before temptation strikes. The ancients recognized that while it is possible to deny strong desires, it is more productive to empty these desires before they present themselves.
A Surprising Trade
In sixteenth-century Spain, a man named Nicolas became exceedingly wealthy, and that meant exceedingly powerful as well. Nicolas loved and sought money, and he made more of it in banking and financial transactions than other men made in peddling goods and services.
Nicolas’s skill became so pronounced that an archbishop asked him to patch the shaky hull of the archbishopric’s financial ship. Nicolas succeeded so spectacularly that the king took notice and invited Nicolas into his court. The king reasoned that what Nicolas could do for God, he could also do for God’s servant, His Royal Highness.
Nicolas increased the king’s holdings to such an extent that he became a daily presence at court. By the age of thirty-seven, he had reached the highest strata of society. He could afford anything he wanted, and his words were taken seriously by the highest powers in the land. Then he met a tiny, penniless, balding, and seemingly powerless man, whose teachings we have already encountered—John of the Cross.
In league with a nun named Teresa of Avila, John had started a new order of Carmelites, known for their austerity, poverty, and simple rule of life. While Nicolas had everything most people desire, John lived the common man’s worst nightmare—he wore no shoes, he traveled cross-country with minimal clothing and often without food, and he was pledged to sexual abstinence.
Yet after meeting John, Nicolas left the court, gave away his money, and entered the Discalced (shoeless) Carmelite order. The man who once walked on palace floors now by choice walked barefoot on the stony, sometimes snowy, roads of Spain.
Nicolas responded to the same call that led fishermen to drop their nets and follow Jesus. It was the same inner detachment that centuries later would lead my friend Bob Patton to change his career when he was just reaching his prime as a professor and accept a position with a small church.
Throughout the centuries, Christians have found great meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in spurning the very things that so many people crave. But it would be a gross distortion to define Nicolas’s new life by what he left behind. The truth is, he embraced something even better, and that’s the real key to detachment. By opening his heart to adopt the spirit and attitudes of Jesus Christ, he began removing himself from the lusts of the flesh. His heart was touched by prayer in a way it was never touched by gold, power, or influence.
Detachment is about far more than merely abstaining from sin. Its practice begins with the delight of our soul, Jesus Christ. When we look at the model of Christian living—Christ Himself—we can immediately see how central detachment was to His existence.
Jesus detached Himself from heaven to become man. He detached Himself from His parents to take up the public ministry of the Messiah. He detached Himself from His people’s favor to become their Savior. He detached Himself from life on earth to die for our sins. He detached Himself from spiritually experiencing His Father’s presence so He could become sin for us.
Everything that matters most, Christ gave up. And He is the model for how we live the faith. Do you want to experience Jesus in a new way? Look for Him in the virtue of detachment.
When we learn it is better and more fulfilling to give than to receive; to encourage than to be praised; to love than to hate; to be gentle than to be harsh; to forgive than to hold a grudge; to serve rather than control; to lift up rather than manipulate; to worship than to lust; then we are truly entering the blessed path of detachment.
God calls us to learn detachment, and it is no shame to admit we are still in kindergarten where this is concerned. Most of us struggle with petty sins, jealousies, and attitudes that make us miserable. This is where I suggest we begin: by allowing God to search our hearts and show us truthfully what it is we are craving. Don’t just examine what you do; examine what you desire or even crave.
The detached Christian is the one who experiences inner freedom. Shorn of ambition, greed, jealousy, avarice, gluttony, lust, or manipulation, the detached Christian is able to enjoy a new dimension of happiness very few ever find in this world. Ironically, spiritual detachment is the only way to truly enjoy the physical world, which God made for our pleasure. Without the gap we build by detachment between us and created things, our desire for the objects and pleasures of this world may consume us.
There is so much strength to be found in detachment. Fall in love with God, and let Him shape your desires. Refuse to feed off errant passions and allow God to give you your life back from the cravings that have distressed you thus far.
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