The Religious and the layman

Here I want to look at the relationship of the Christian to the society he is in in terms of a kind of distinction between the Religious and the lay states of life, because a major difference between the Religious and the layman is that the former joins a special society whose function is his Christian development, while the layman is, Christianly speaking, on his own. I realize that the layman belongs to the society called the Church; but this is a very special kind of society that does not have some of the characteristics that a normal society has; and so I will treat the layman in the Church separately.

The distinction I am interested in here is that, whether or not a Religious lives with his community (and in the normal case, he does), his spiritual life turns on the fact that he belongs to it; but the layman has no special group on which his Christian development depends, and so if he belongs to a Christian group, this is incidental to his life as a layman.

It would be well to keep this in mind, because in our age of group-think, we more or less automatically feel that in order to succeed in anything, you have to organize. But I submit that it is this attitude more than anything else which is tending to turn laymen into rather inefficient Religious, and preventing them from standing on their own secular feet. I am not against laymen joining groups and societies, even those that are avowedly Christian; but the layman should recognize that "belonging" is not the way for him to find the truth about his lay life; and so he really ought to have some other purpose in mind than "advancement in perfection" or "Christianity" or whatever the current phrase is, if he decides to join something.

But in spite of the fact that I am distinguishing the layman from the Religious here, it should also be kept in mind that much of what is said about Religious will apply to laymen insofar as they belong to groups, Christian or not. What I want to do is to use the formality of speaking about the Religious life here to contrast it with the on-his-ownnnes of the layman; and in this way I can kill two birds with one stone.

Now then, Religious congregations have many different goals, but among them is always the fact that they exist for the advancement in Christianity of the members. It follows from this that the Religious' advancement in Christianity depends on the interaction and cooperation of the other members of the group with himself; they must at times help him in being Christian, and he must at times help them. The Religious, then, just because of his state in life, cannot be Christian on his own; if he tries, he is contradicting the fact that he is a member of the community. I mean this, of course, in a negative sense: he cannot resent or try to prevent the interference of others in his spiritual life, precisely because one of the goals of the group's cooperative activity is just this interference.

Here is the major difference between the Christian and the layman; the layman can quite consistently say that his spiritual life is nobody's business but his own, while the Religious has made it (by joining the congregation) in part the business of the other members of his community.

Note that it is a misinterpretation of a marriage as if it were a small Religious community that says that one of the functions of the marriage is to "help each other attain Christian perfection." The function of the marriage is rational sexuality, not "attainment of Christian perfection." It involves love for the other person, not "desire for his advancement in holiness," which is an imposition of one's own standards of goodness on the other person, and is a refusal to respect the other's self-determination and goal-setting. Love, and especially marital love, is a respect for the other person as he is, not a "desire to see to it that he improves." It is ready to help the other when he asks for it, and to be there when he needs encouragement, and to be willing to be used, but it is precisely not interference, curiosity about his spiritual state, evaluations of "progress," and emphatically not "correction of faults." All of this is an essentially Religious attitude, not a lay one; and if you find it in Christian marriage manuals, this is because they can trace the origin of what is said in them back to thinkers who were Religious.

But in a Religious congregation, this involvement of others in one's most intimate relation with God is precisely what the congregation is about. But the caveat here is that it is an involvement by the congregation as such, and this does not mean an indiscriminate busibodiness of each member in the other members' lives. The involvement is a structured one, governed by the laws of the congregation, and is fundamentally an involvement by the authority and delegates of the authority. And therefore, it is quite legitimate for a Religious to have a healthy resentment when some other member of the congregation takes it upon himself to set him straight about some fault of his (usually in the name of "fraternal correction"); but he has no right to feel put upon when the rules tell him he has to reveal his conscience to a spiritual advisor and listen to his advice.

This is a hard saying, I realize, in several senses. There are many Religious today who feel that one's personal relation with God should be untouchable; but in this, they have the lay attitude, not the Religious one. There are also many who have the "democratic" view of Religious life, and think that everybody else's spiritual development but their own is their business, and who spend their lives going around and seeing to it that everyone else lives up to the mark. Group sessions with such people in them (and why is there at least one in every group?) are not calculated to promote Christian joy.

Notice that, even in the lay life, when you join a society, then the actions that deal with the purpose of the society are in some measure taken out of your hands. The goal is to be achieved together, which means that each person must do at times what does not seem best to him, and submit to the involvement of others in what he is doing. This would be interference if one were not in a group; but it should be regarded as something like "team effort," where you don't make the spectacular play because it doesn't advance the team's goals.

That is, a person in a group should foster the attitude that "we" are doing what he is doing, rather than that "I" am; then the fact that things do not always go the way he planned them is consistent with, not contrary to, his orientation.

For the Religious, the cultivation of this attitude is especially necessary, because one's own spiritual development is what "we" do, rather than what "I" do. Or rather, God in any case is doing it in and to us; but in the lay situation, God is doing it to me and in me directly, as it were; and in the Religious life, God is doing it to me and in me through the externality of the group's interference in my life. When the layman belongs to (secular) groups, God is making him Christian in the context of the secular purpose of the group, by having him take over the Divine attitude toward the task of the group, the people in the group, and the respect for authority; but this "advancement in Christianity" is not explicit; what "we" are doing is not advancing in Christianity, but making music, say, and what "I" am doing in making music in the group Christianly, is advancing in Christianity. But in the case of the Religious, what "we" are doing is advancing in Christianity together, and I am cooperating in this advance of us all.