Between scrupulosity and laxity

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

WE have to do our best to have the right conscience which is where we can hear the voice of God who guides us throughout our life. We should not just depend on our light, no matter how brilliant and smart we think we are. We have to realize that God is  always guiding us with the Holy Spirit’s constant promptings that we should learn to discern quickly and correctly in our conscience.

Simply relying on our estimation of things will most likely lead us to fall into some extreme cases of scrupulosity on the one hand, or laxity on the other. Both extreme cases are clear signs that we have not understood the promptings of God, or worse, that we have ignored him completely.

To have a scrupulous conscience is to be too severe or  unduly strict with ourselves as a result of our misinterpretation of  what is true, right and moral as taught and shown by Christ, and now  taught by the Church. It is to be too focused on our weaknesses and  sinfulness that we miss the all-powerful mercy of God.

To be scrupulous is to have a perfectionist attitude,  overly sensitive to the unavoidable weaknesses and mistakes of people in general, including himself. A scrupulous person is usually  rigid in his character, often afflicted with the obsessive-compulsive  disorder, and with a strong urge to control others and things in general. This makes him uptight most of the time. He tends to over-think and over-react.

He usually gets stuck with the letter of the law while missing the spirit of the law. He can be very judgmental as he  projects his fears, doubts, limitations, and weaknesses on others.  He finds it hard to deal with others as they are. He wants them to be  like him.

A lax person, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. He may appear to be carefree, but he knows that his life is quite empty and that it is simply following the ebb and flow of his emotions and moods. He is quite shallow and merely reactive to the different events of his life. We cannot expect him to have a long-term plan or any plan at all.

Concerning his religiosity, he tends to unduly rely on God’s mercy without giving due importance to the effort he has to make to correspond to God’s love for all of us. He is quite presumptuous in this regard. He forgets that while God is always merciful, he wants us always to “enter by the narrow gate.” (cfr. Mt  7,13)

He often cherry-picks only those parts of the Christian life that are convenient to him. Like the scrupulous person, the lax person is quite self-centered also. He is mostly indifferent to other’s affairs and concerns. The worst scenario is when he loses the sense of  sin.

If ever they come to a lax person’s mind, the promises, vows and commitments are usually not taken seriously. They may be good and hot at the beginning, but they cannot maintain that state for long. As they say, they are good only at the start. They only give the appearance of fulfilling their promises but their heart is not in them.

We have to try our best to stay away from these two extremes. God is always merciful but he wants us also to do our part because we are supposed to be like him. He only wants what is good for us, but he does not impose it on us. We have to accept it freely and  lovingly and act accordingly.

To do the right thing, we have to have a personal, intimate relationship with God, studying the doctrine of faith and morals, developing the virtues, engaging in a lifelong ascetical struggle, availing of the sacraments like confession and Holy Communion, having spiritual direction, etc.

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God has the final word. We always have to defer to God for everything that we say or affirm. Even if we are fully convinced that we are right in affirming something, we have to realize that we cannot be fully right unless we affirm it together with God.

God has the final word, and his word is such that it will always transcend our human understanding of things. We can try to conform our mind and will to God’s mind and will as we should try our best to do, but we cannot and should never equate God’s mind and will with ours.

While it’s true that we are God’s image and likeness in the fullness of our humanity, and therefore our mind and will are meant to reflect God’s mind and will in our most ideal condition, we cannot and should not confuse the mind and will of the Creator with the mind and will of the creature.

Despite the similarity between God and us, there’s an infinity of difference between the two. The distinction should always be maintained, so we will always be aware of who we are in relation to God and avoid falling into thinking we are God ourselves. We are only creatures, and a creature cannot be without his Creator.

Relevant Bible passages to support this point would be the following:

• “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is 55,8-9)

“For who among men knows the thoughts of man except his own spirit within him? So too, no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.” (1 Cor 2,11)

This clarification is important because in our dealings with others, we should realize that while we always make judgments since that is how we get to know things, our judgments cannot be final. It is only God who can make the final judgment. He has the final word.

And while we have laws, rules, standards, criteria to guide us in our dealings, we should never regard these instruments to be the ultimate guide in making judgments. No human law can fully capture the richness of the wisdom of God which is the ultimate basis of the justice proper to all of us.

Thus, while our judgments and sense of justice are guided by these human laws, we should always defer to God’s law whenever we make judgments. We should not allow our human laws to replace God’s law, if not God himself. Doing so would constitute what is termed as self-righteousness.

Our human laws should be understood simply as guides and not as the ultimate end itself. They cannot be the basis of the final judgment of a person. We have to remember that we can find many exceptions to our human laws because of their inability to capture all the possible situations that we can get into, let alone, the complete measure of our human dignity which only God can know.

That is why many of our human laws become obsolete after some time, or are even outrightly rescinded, or at least updated, modified, fine-tuned, etc.

Even the sacred laws can suffer changes as situations demand. Take the example of the Sabbath law of the Jews as dramatized in Matthew 12,1-8. Some Pharisees faulted Christ’s disciples for picking and eating grain on a Sabbath. But Christ immediately corrected them.

He explained that exceptions can be made. “Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry,” he said, “when he and his companions were hungry, how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering, which neither he nor his companions but only the priests could lawfully eat?”

 E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com