Second Terrace

resolution and desire

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” This is the most famous opening line of any novel. It’s from “Pride and Prejudice,” of course, by the matchless Jane Austen.

I’d like to turn it into the language of self-help literature:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a New Year’s resolution, in order to be kept, must be an attainable goal.” Every counselor worth their salt preaches this, not only at the turn of the year but in every goal-making moment.

It’s also a truth sure as shootin’ that unattainable resolutions fly off like litter out of unsecured trash from a pickup bed just a hundred feet from the recycling center. Just like bags, wrappers, and french fry cups splayed out on the sides of exit ramps (you know where), unkept resolutions, still displayed in journals and on refrigerator doors, stare bleakly at us with persistent reproach.

The difference between a resolution and a decision is like the difference between a policy statement and an item on today’s to-do checklist. Governments and corporations make policy statements. But regular people? It seems unnatural, maybe even inhumane, thing to do.

It is a far better thing to break down big tasks into smaller, more do-able jobs. Big decisions are a lot less tense if they are divided up into a chain of smaller ones. If you want to get fancy and make yourself a flow chart, go right ahead.

But no matter what your preferred style is, it is generally a good thing to make molehills out of mountains, not the other way around.

The main difficulty with unattainable resolutions is that we keep making them, every year. Why do we do this?

Let’s open the hood of the resolution-making machine and see what’s going on. There’s a reason why this engine keeps running. What’s the fuel that keeps that fire going?

In a word, desire.

Hmmmm. Let’s check this theory. The most common resolution has to do with exercise and weight loss: “I hereby resolve to lose ten pounds a month, and I therefore will run five miles a day on my elliptical and do twenty reps on my rowing machine every morning. Plus, I will replace my burger intake with celery.”

Upon reflection, it’s pretty clear that under this resolution, which is obviously doomed to a quick demise, is a simple desire. As in, “I want to be healthier and I want to look better.” Not at the level of Lionel Messi. But definitely somewhere in between the World Cup champion and Cousin Eddie. 

There’s nothing wrong with such desire. It’s when desire becomes iron law that things get messed up. It’s one thing to say “I want to be more like Lionel.” It’s quite another to promise yourself “I will become like Lionel – so in 2023 I resolve to eat celery and run five miles a day.”

There are obviously bad desires in the world. But there may not be so many as we think. Most people for most of the time are motivated by good desires. Maybe they get distorted and they get derailed by the mean end of fortune’s stick – but at bottom there is usually a desire for the good. 

If you look deep enough and look far enough, all desires – even the nasty rotten ones – can be traced back to a primordial desire for the Good. Plato and Aristotle said this. Later on, in the first century, Philo and Justin Martyr identified the Good as God Himself. And two centuries later, my favorite saint – Gregory of Nyssa – proposed two most intriguing ideas:

The first point is that bad desire and bad behavior happen out of a distortion of knowledge of the Good.

The second is even a wilder proposition: If anyone ever sees God the Ultimate Good – or if one ever comes to know Him as He really is, then one cannot help but to love Him. And that is true for one’s fellow human being: if you ever come to know him or her as they really are, without the masks and the costumes, then they are no longer just the “other.” They are your neighbor as they always were. They are brother and sister. They are, essentially, friend.

At the points of extremity – like at the Great Feasts, or especially when faced with one’s mortality – all the disguises fall away. The number of enemies quickly subtract toward zero.

This is a handy method for making attainable New Year’s Resolutions. It’s helpful for steering a good passage through conflict. Consider two opposing parties of protesters, lined up on opposite sides of the street. Ask yourself: “What do those guys over there ultimately want?” Looking under the surface of slogans and banners and shallow partisan opinion, what is the deepest eternal desire? Is it possible at the Beginning and the End, the desire is the same? For real goodness, for real life, for the real God?

Sure, that essential desire often gets distorted and detoured into bad existential application, even bad resolutions. But maybe, just maybe, if we get to know each other better, and listen to each other’s real stories, we can recognize a neighbor, even a friend.

After all, that is precisely why God Himself called us “friend.” He reached out over a much wider, much deeper divide, a much higher wall of enmity. 

And that simple fact should make all the difference.

the christmas samaritan

– James Tissot, Le bon samaritain

This most famous parable, even though it is probably the one most familiar to everyone, remains a deep and beautiful mystery.

It is mystery – not in being unknown or secret, but that overwhelming and quiet sense that we’re touching upon a vast, fathomless Reality. In Orthodoxy, the Great Mysteries are like cosmic icebergs – what we know about is the tip that rises above the water, but below, submerged in the blue bottomless depths is that real enormous mass of the berg: hundreds, thousands of times greater than what can be seen and measured.

We can better appreciate the Mysterious dimension of the Parable of the Good Samaritan – and how it is related so intimately with Christmas – by thinking about a few questions:

Who is the Good Samaritan?

Who is my neighbor?

Who is the priest or the Levite?

Who are the robbers?

Who is the man who got beat up, robbed, stripped naked, and left for dead in a gutter?

As far as the last two questions are concerned, most of the Orthodox fathers, writing on this parable, say that the victim represents the human soul. The robbers are the passions that darken the soul and deform human nature, weakening and corrupting it.

This is a true interpretation, and is not to be disregarded. But it is not the only one.

There is another complementary interpretation as well.

Indeed, the victim in this parable could be you or me or anyone else. And that’s just it. It is not just the “soul” or the self – it is the other.

That is, it is your neighbor.

And the robbers? 

We need to pay attention to not only what the Parable says, but also to what it does not say. Nowhere does the Lord mention that the victim did anything to deserve being robbed. He was simply and innocently on his way to Jericho, minding his own business. 

There is no hint of fault or moral irresponsibility here, which would seem to be necessary for the onset of sinful passion -- i.e., the "psychopathological" interpretation.

So the robbers who rob and beat and abandon, abandoning the victim for dead, may be just and only a hard symbol of the cruelties of life.

In the fallen world, life can get harsh and especially unmerciful. All around us, caught along the wayside, the highways and byways, tangled in the hedges, are those who’ve been “beaten up by life.” 

This is the repeated and very clear theme of the Psalms. King David, the Shepherd Poet, wrote frequently – and I mean a lot – about being beset by the “enemy,” being beaten up, lacerated and bruised, and abandoned. He lamented that no one came to help, that those he had counted on for friendship either failed to show up or even ended up playing him falsely. 

“Have regard, O God, for Your covenant,” David prayed, “for the dark places of the earth are full of the houses of cruelty” (Psalm 73.20 LXX).

Recall that Jesus Himself was steeped in the Psalms. From boyhood, the Psalms was His Prayerbook, His Hymnal, His theological text. Indeed, the Psalms came ultimately from Him in eternity and through the Holy Spirit to David and the Prophets.

But as a human and Jewish Boy, Jesus sang it and memorized it and the Psalms passed into the deep layers of His human mind.

And thus you can find the Psalms everywhere in His words – in the Beatitudes, in the Lord’s Prayer, and in every single one of His Parables.

It is impossible to interpret the Gospels without the Psalms running constantly in one’s mind.

The victim left by the wayside is simply anyone that we might come upon. Someone that you know about. Someone that you recognized as being beat up by the cruelties of life. Someone beset by the Enemy. It is really not our immediate business to determine just who or what that Enemy is: whether it is demonic, foolishness, cultural or natural catastrophe, or completely irrational and unknown.

This sort of premature "theological pathologizing" may be essentially what the Lord is condemning when He denounced judgementalism so often.

It’s not for us to determine how they got beat up, or whether it’s their fault or whether they deserved it. It’s not even up to us to “lift up the hood” and to try to figure out what passions have left them in such a state. It's not for us to ask "Who sinned that this man was born blind?" 

The robbers in this Parable are “whatever in life” left our neighbor in such a tragic condition. Our neighbor is either someone like us or unlike us, even “the other.”

In any case, though, our neighbor is obviously, according to the Parable’s own terms, someone other than you or me. Our neighbor is our fellow human, our fellow bearer of the Image of God. 

Which means that “all of humanity” comprises the Neighborhood, and every human being is our Neighbor. “Inasmuch as ye have done unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it also unto Me” (Matthew 25.40).

This is a Parable less about interiority or introspection: it is a Parable about love, about kenosis (i.e., pouring out ourselves in self-sacrifice), about servanthood. According to the Lord's own terms in this Parable, the victim is not ourselves, but other than self. The victim is our neighbor -- whether or not we recognize him or her as such, whether or not we recognize the world and all of humanity, even creation, as the "neighborhood."

As we should.

The Good Samaritan Parable is about the giving of mercy. It is rather less about psychopathology.

Here’s the pivot, the “eu-catastrophe” of this Great Story. Here is the Mystery that has been thundering in the deep:

If humanity, beaten up by the fallen world, is the victim, the “man fallen by the wayside,” then who is the Good Samaritan?

Well, obviously, the Son of God. Jesus Himself. He bathed our wounds – deserved or undeserved – with the sweet oil of His mercy. He set us upon His beast of burden – all the prophets and the apostles and saints who established His covenant and His Gospel – and took us to the Inn, which is obviously the Church.

What happened at Bethlehem was the great Good Samaritan Who came – and Alone, He recognized our pain, our poverty, our lostness in the darkness.

From Bethlehem to Nazareth, to the desert temptation, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, to Golgotha, to Hell, to the Empty Tomb, to the Right Hand of the Father.

And at every place He saw you and me, and He didn’t pass by. He stayed, and remains in co-naturality with us. He is truly the Christmas Samaritan.

Let’s do the same.

As the chiefest of Good Samaritans, as the Gift of Christmas, He said, at the end of this Parable: "Go and do likewise."