Perhaps the most dominant moral mistake of the modern age is the assertion that we are – or fundamentally ought to be – in control of our lives. This does not take the form of acknowledging the importance of agency for moral action. It certainly is true that we are responsible for the way we form our lives and thus for the moral choices that flow from that formation. Rather, the modern conceit is that any obligations to which our lives ought to conform is an affront to the radically autonomous self. The only moral principle guiding our lives is that nothing infringes upon our exercise of autonomous individual assertions of personal choices. The idea that we ought to conform our lives to something outside ourselves, so the notion goes, is an inhibition of freedom, and therefore immoral.
Catholic Christians are not immune from the contagion of this theory of morality and freedom. Indeed, I suspect that readers of the paragraph above may be thinking, “Well, what’s wrong with that?” We have learned to resist anything that might seem to be an infringement on the radical individual autonomy at the heart of modern moral anthropology. This takes the form of asserting individual rights, without a preliminary consideration of how those assertions are already conditioned by contingencies that we have not chosen, nor of how the exercise of those rights might harm ourselves or the communities around us. All that matters, so we tell ourselves, is that we assert control.
One manifestation of this problem, as we approach Easter, is that we have built an implicit resistance to the need to be forgiven, because it puts someone else in control over us. The need to be forgiven necessarily implies both that we are not in control of every aspect of our lives and – more importantly – that someone else is. In his excellent book, The Peaceable Kingdom, theologian Stanley Hauerwas suggests that “our first task is not to forgive, but to learn to be forgiven”. In fact, he explains, “often to be ready to forgive is a way of exerting control over another”. As such, Hauerwas continues, “[w]e fear accepting forgiveness from another because such a gift makes us powerless – and we fear the loss of control involved.” The need to be forgiven requires vulnerability. It requires us to acknowledge that we have hurt others and that we cannot be made whole until we offer ourselves to be forgiven for our offences. This is also to face the reality of the contingencies that make claims upon our lives, but which we resist in the name of a false autonomy. The need to be forgiven reminds us that our lives are not entirely under our own control, cutting against the grain of the atomism in the heart of the modern autonomous self.
And, of course, the obverse temptation always lurks: offering – or withholding – forgiveness precisely as a mechanism for control over our offenders. Playing on the preternatural fear of surrendering the control that being forgiven requires, we might use “forgiveness” as a mechanism of putting another person in our moral debt. Of course, this is not an offering of forgiveness, but an attempt to strike a dark bargain. And rather than to benefit the offended or offender, it drives both further into the slough of sin.
These twin temptations – resistance to surrendering control to those from whom we need forgiveness, or using forgiveness as a weapon to control others – have an obvious implication. They undermine the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, the source of our very salvation.
Before we can receive the forgiveness offered by the self-gift of Christ, we must acknowledge not only our sin, but also the loss of control that our sin entails. Often the latter impedes our ability to recognise and confess the former. But there is no forgiveness without repentance, and there is no repentance without surrendering the myth of the autonomous self. Among other things, this is one way of considering the crucifixion. As he prepared to face his trial and death, Jesus expressed his wish that this cup would pass from him. But he immediately submitted himself to the will of the Father. Of course, Jesus did not need to be forgiven. But he presents himself to us a model of vulnerability, teaching us that autonomous willing is not the sum of morality. Jesus surrendered his claim to human autonomy for the sake of his divine mission.
John Paul II summarised this in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor. “[I]t is in the crucified Christ that the Church finds its answer to the question: how can obedience to universal and unchanging norms respect the uniqueness and individuality of the person, and not represent a threat to his freedom and dignity?” And the answer is precisely opposite the one that secular morality suggests: “The crucified Christ reveals the authentic meaning of freedom; he lives it fully in the total gift of himself.” Thus, by submitting to the authority of the Cross – learning how to be forgiven – are we truly equipped to give ourselves to the other who may need our forgiveness.
<em>This article first appeared in the Easter 2022 issue of the </em>Catholic Herald<em>. <strong><a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/subscribe/">Subscribe today.</a></strong></em>
