A Sin of Security

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and my mind is a whirl. A brain fever, maybe. The other night just such a thing happened, but I was in the midst of prayer when I awoke, and prayer is never secluded to the brain.

My life has been suffering from a strain, but until now I haven't been able to name it. When I awoke, I could.

In my relationships with women, something was not right. I wanted something from them. This quarter-life crisis has found me attempting to hold onto things -- the past, mostly. But why? I've been trying to build a shelter to protect me from the gathering storm. With the right woman, I thought, I could create this shelter. False security.

I had been desiring security. This was my sin.

When I desire Woman A or Woman B, it's out of a presumption that I can be complete, on my own -- but isn't this a paradox? "On my own" and partnered with a woman? These do contradict, right? Not quite. Because it is by my own invention that I'm made secure.

By my own will and not by God's will for me, I would be granting myself security. This is the central temptation.

I perceive, when I desire, that this security would be far-reaching -- this is the romantic notion: that a woman could so re-align my life as to grant me freedom from emotional insecurity. I could protect myself from fear and danger, if only I could have the woman I choose. Right? No, wrong and worse still, I would be the Oedipal child, eh? Hiding in the folds of my surrogate mother's dress. No, to be a man, I cannot seek security.

If we are honest, we accept that there is no security in this life. We certainly cannot demand this from a woman. Perhaps this is the root of chauvinism. Nonetheless, it is for me a false path. Wisdom might have us hear all voices offering safety, protection, or freedom from fear as false. This is the path of the Cross. The only true safety we are offered in this world is following the Cross into the unknown.

But why is this "sin"? I haven't answered this. This is the temptation of self-sufficiency. It is the end of the morality of Nietzche and Rand, but only a starting place for Christianity.

For what need have I of the cross, if I am an island complete unto myself? I am denying the essential human condition.

To find love, we must become vulnerable. Obviously, this is the Christian path -- look to the infant Jesus. This is His season, after all.

«God made his Word short, he abbreviated it» (Is 10, 23; Rom 9, 28) As Pope Benedict pointed out in his sermon of Christmas Eve 2006, God made himself small, unprotected, and entirely vulnerable in the form of an infant. The infant's poverty, as He lay in the manger, was complete. What security did He have? But love came to Him.

My own pursuit of love has been nothing like this. It has been an attempt, through the partnership of a great woman, to render myself invulnerable. I have lost sight of the Giver in exchange for the gift. I have put a god before God. It is not the woman, though. It is myself that I'm propping up, my own will and my own agency.