I recently began re-reading Frank Sheed's Theology and Sanity, which treats of "living mentally in the real world." From the Forward, Sheed writes:
"Sanity, remember, does not mean living in the same world as everyone else; it means living in the real world. But some of the most important elements in the real world can be known only by the revelation of God, which it is theology's business to study. Lacking this knowledge, the mind must live a half-blind life, trying to cope with a reality most of which it does not know is there. This is a wretched state for an immortal spirit, and pretty certain to lead to disaster. There is a good deal of disaster around at this moment."
Indeed, ideas have consequences. If right thinking leads to right action, then certainly wrong thinking leads to wrong action. So how do we come to "right thinking"? By seeking the truth--that is, trying to "see" all that is, and not overlook any aspect of reality. To do this, Sheed maintains, we need to purify our concepts, especially our concept of God, of the influence that imagination has played on them, since some concepts, like that of God, are beyond what one can imagine--though not beyond what one can conceive.
For many people, God is like a "venerable man with a beard, rather like the poet Tennyson, or perhaps Karl Marx." Because of this, it is difficult to take seriously the notion that God is an infinite being--that, as Creator, He is totally transcendent to His Creation. This image, then, has produced a curious tendency among people of today to treat God as an equal.
First, the tendency to treat God as an equal, the failure to grasp the relation of the creature to the Creator, may be stated very rapidly. It is commoner in the semi-religious fringe than among practicing Christians, but it is liable to show up anywhere. The commonest form of it is in the feeling that God is not making a very good job of the universe and that one could give Him some fairly useful suggestions. Another deadly effect of it is in the diminishing, to the point almost of disappearance, of the sense of sin. In the past, Catholics have not been much affected by such ideas; but in recent years those ideas have taken root. At any rate nothing would be lost by some kind of examination of intellect in this matter of the dwindling difference between the Infinite and ourselves. To take an obvious example. When some man well known to us who has lived a full and devout Catholic life for fifty or sixty years falls suddenly into serious sin, somewhere amoung our reactions will be the feeling that it is rather hard on him, after having given so much to God for so long, now at the end to lose all. It is a natural enough reaction and might seem to do some credit to our heart, but it does no credit at all to our head. The man has not been giving to God all those years: he has been receiving immeasurable gifts from God all those years. The malice of his sin is far greater precisely because of the immensity of God's gifts to him.
We all do things we know are wrong. I do more often than I like to admit. But this short paragraph of Sheed cut me to the heart, for I know that he speaks to me as did Nathan to David: "Thou art the man" (2 Samuel 12:7). Even when I do something I know is wrong, I don't think of myself as such a bad person. But the reality is, when I deliberately choose to sin, my ingratitude is all the worse--for I have received many gifts from God.
Nathan continues saying to David: "Thus says the LORD God of Israel: 'I anointed you king of Israel. I rescued you from the hand of Saul. I gave you your lord's house and your lord's wives for your own. I gave you the house of Israel and of Judah. And if this were not enough, I could count up for you still more. Why have you spurned the LORD and done evil in his sight?" (2 Samuel 12:7-9).
Is this not what Sheed is talking about? The modern response is to think, "Poor David, he was so close to God and served Him so well. Just one slip and he has lost so much!" But what does David say? "I have sinned against the LORD" (2 Samuel 12:13). David is living mentally in the real world because he grasps the reality of what he has done; and he admits his sin for what it is.
After the coming of Jesus the Christ, I have more for which to be grateful than even King David. By baptism I have been joined to Christ and made a partaker of the divine nature (see 2 Peter 1:4). The divine nature! And yet it is still only like a seed within me, "for what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing" (Romans 7:19).
At the very least, then, like King David, I can begin to "live mentally in the real world" and see my sin for what it is--an abuse of the freedom that God has given to me. And in seeing this, I can cultivate gratitude for what I have been given. So the next time I am tempted to sin, I can thank the Lord for His gifts and reject the tendency to live in my own little world. How much larger, how much more free and wonderful, is the real world. And that is what theology helps to give us.
