MANY times in
the course of talking with people, I hear
the rationalizing expression that at least they were true
to
themselves, to their feelings and understanding of things
even if what
they did was actually not good.
On these
occasions, I needed to pause for a while before
slowly explaining to them that while acting on the basis
of their
feelings and understanding of things certainly have some
value, it is
not enough. In fact, it can be very wrong.
To act on
subjective candor alone does not automatically
translate into getting into the objective truth. And
that’s simply
because truth and goodness and everything that flows from
them can
only come from God, not from us.
Of course, in
explaining this delicate topic, I make sure
that the culpability of one’s mistakes depends on the
degree of
responsibility one has with respect to knowing the
objective truth
that can only come from God. There are those whose
capacity to know
the truth in God is so compromised that they could not be
guilty of
the wrong they did. This is the case of those with
invincibly
erroneous conscience.
All this
distinction between subjective candor and
objective truth is somehow treated in the gospel of St.
John
(14,15-21), where we read that Christ promised to send us
the Spirit
of truth, the Paraclete or Advocate, who will always be
with us as
long as we love God, that is to say, as long as we follow
God’s
commandments, which is what loving actually entails.
In that gospel,
Christ reassured us that he would never
leave us orphans. He will always be with us and would
even manifest
himself to us in the Spirit, as long as we love him by
following his
commandments.
This is a piece
of Good News that we need to spread around
more widely, because many people are of the belief that
especially in
matters of opinions, like in business and politics, they
do not need
to refer themselves and things in general to God. For
them, it would
just be enough if what they think, say and do correspond
to their
common sense, or to some worldly values like
practicality,
profitability, etc.
our life as it would easily lend itself to injustice and
inequality,
to a culture where the strong dominates the weak, the
rich exploits
the poor. Injustice and all kinds of abominations can be
defended and
promoted under the protection of law.
That’s the case
of legalized abortion, for example, where
the completely defenseless baby can now be eliminated,
since the baby
in the mother’s womb would already be defined as not
human yet, or
that it is just a bunch of tissues.
and all goodness can be found. We may not be able to know
all the
truth because of our limitations and also because of the
mysterious
character of a phenomenon, but as long as always refer
ourselves to
God, at least we do not go beyond what his clear
commandments have
already defined.
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