From Within

 "From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts..."  That's a line from this coming Sunday's Gospel, Mark 7, but it feels more like the writing of some ancient, sinister author.   

The reading goes on to say, "Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile."  That doesn't feel like the Bible. That feels like a guide on how to depress someone who is already feeling bad about themselves.  I know it isn't, but that can be our first impression.  

Here's what the reading makes me think.  It makes me think that we need to take responsibility for our own actions, which we don't always do.  When we've done something wrong, we know it, and that's good.  What's bad is that our next step can be to try to figure out how somebody else caused us to do that thing, or at least contributed to us doing that thing.  That inclination is destructive, and we need to fight it.

You see, I think that what this reading is saying to us is that no other person or thing can defile us; we can only defile ourselves.  

We can be libeled and slandered and hated and tempted and abused, and that will not defile us.  What can defile us is how we react to those outside forces.  If we are libeled and we libel back, we are defiled by our reaction.  If we are slandered and we slander back, we are defiled by our reaction.  And so on.

So, these are our difficult assignments: to absorb defiling things without returning them to the sender; and to absorb defiling things without passing them along to an innocent third party.    

And these are also our difficult assignments: that when we fail, when we let defiling things come out of us, that we acknowledge our failure to control our actions; and that we not pass the buck to someone else for something that we did wrong.  That way we can try to do better next time. 

That's how I see it, anyway.

I pray that the Peace of Christ be with you.  Please pray the same for me. 

- The Older Brother