Some twenty years ago, a neighbor who then lived across the street from us made a snide remark about me that I found, at one and the same time, irritating and instructive. Like other such bad-spirited observations, this one from a fellow with a reputation for being quite curmudgeonly told me something important about myself.
The neighbors had gathered outside after dinner, and the question of my absence from the gathering came up. When told that I was talking a course at a university that evening, the fellow observed with almost a sneer: “Richard is always trying to improve himself.”
This kind of remark lends itself to an obvious retort – “ Would that you, dear sir, might do something to improve your own disagreeable personality.” But this kind of rejoinder is not the point here.
Whatever his motive, that man had correctly identified one of my main impulses. And in holding it up to ridicule, he did me the service of revealing one of my traits that, in fact, had loomed large in my spiritual history.
Of course, it was more complicated than that – I have always been interested in knowledge for its own sake, as well as whatever learning might lead to self-improvement. But, still, his stinging remark pointed to an issue important during much of my life.
Long before that incident, in the early days of my introduction to the spiritual life as an adult, I had set out at self-improvement by systematically rooting out my own imperfections. At that point, the desire to be perfect was so strong in me that I took pains to rid myself of every fault. My constant effort was to better myself morally and spiritually.
Some journal entries from those days long ago now make for embarrassing reading. I blush with shame when I read such passages. One sentence, written during a retreat lasting thirty days, reveals my quest for self improvement.
In a reflection after a meditation on Judgment Day, I wrote:
“I see now that the delusions of my own heart are very real and very dangerous for my future safety unless I can ferret them out from their secret recesses.” This sentence, overblown in its rhetoric, suggests that I was involved in an all-out effort to tear myself apart in searching for my own faults.
Only many years later did I become reconciled to the stark fact that I would never become perfect and would have to live like other people, with a combination of personal virtue along with a fair number of bad impulses and actions. After deciding that the quest for abstract perfection was not what the spiritual life really meant after all, I settled on becoming merely human as my ideal.
Too many Americans consider spirituality as a means to self-improvement. Such a mistake comes easily: if you walk into a book store and look for books on spirituality, you will often find them shelved under the heading “self-help.” And there is no doubt that genuine spiritual life can better our character, making us more loving and honest.
But, still, spirituality is something worthwhile in itself and using it for other purposes can distort its meaning. Elizabeth Lesser, the author of The New American Spirituality, lists three reasons why the drive for self-improvement can even prove harmful. 1)You can become morbidly obsessed with yourself; 2) it is self-defeating to try to escape your basic character; and 3) you may cease to care about the welfare of the community.
Instead of being focused on any self-fix, Lesser advises her readers: “Don’t worry about being good. Instead, discover how both good and bad live within you. Deeply accept the shadows even as you seek the light.”
Similarly, in a journal passage written years ago on the occasion of a vacation visit to New York City, I made something of the same point, not without some rhetorical exaggeration about allowing myself to behave badly.
This is how I framed the issue then: “To me, the moral dilemma of life is the fundamental choice to live by faith or not. When you do live by faith, then you can behave badly, but you will not necessarily go wrong. Trusting yourself, and the merciful love at the heart of the world, you can find your way.”
Richard Griffin