A Great Mystery

After all the thinking, and praying, and reflection is done, I keep coming back to one simple paradox. It seems radically true to me, and yet at the same time I cannot understand it. And yet, I know at every level how useless and silly it is to say that the incomprehensible is true. If I do not understand it, I cannot say it is true. Yet incomprehensible it remains, and true it seems. I reflect on it, I try to come up with the best approximation in my own mind of what it MIGHT mean, but in the end I stand in darkness before it.

It is a truth that I first encountered in Fyodor Dostoevsky's great works. It is stated explicitly in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and is illustrated most succinctly in THE DREAM OF THE RIDICULOUS MAN. It is this truth: "that all men are responsible for the sins of each man, and each man is responsible for the sins of all men."

Here is a line from BROTHERS: "And that we are all responsible to all for all, apart from our own sins, you were quite right in thinking that, and it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in very truth, so soon as men understand that, the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality."

Dostoevsky thought that once we all take responsibility for the sins of all others, we will be free. Moreover, when the individual comes to accept this truth, he can see, finally, that heaven is already here. That despite appearances heaven is all around us, and in us, and through us. 

Father Zossima, one of the main characters in BROTHERS, having come to see this radical truth about himself, goes on to see the life-giving truth about the world: "look around you at the gifts of God, the clear sky, the pure air, the tender grass, the birds; nature is beautiful and sinless, and we, only we, are sinful and foolish, and we don't understand that life is heaven, for we have only to understand that and it will at once be fulfilled in all its beauty, we shall embrace each other and weep."

This, on the face of it, is terribly irrational. For it seems a foundation of rational ethics that one cannot be responsible for what cannot do. Kant called this the "ought implies can" principle. If I cannot do it, it is not incumbent on me. If I can do it then it is at least possible that it is obligatory for me. The impossible cannot be obligatory. We all live this way most of the time, and we cannot but live this way most of the time. It seems like this is true to me. But it also seems true to me that Dostoevsky is on to something. In fact I spend time meditating on the idea that I am responsible for the sins of the whole world. This may seem morbid or self-mortifying to some, but it is strangely freeing. Having accepted responsibility for all, I can repent for all, and repenting for all I feel the world renewed. 

The secret Zossima learned has been a very liberating truth for me. Yet, I cannot live moment-to-moment as if I am responsible for the sins of the world world. I can believe this for moments, but it cannot permeate my life. This is a big problem for me, as one of my reasons for being religious is to bring my living and believing together. So most of the time I live as if I do not know, what I in fact do know, that I am responsible for the sins of all, and thus life is Heaven. I cannot preach this nonsense, though I will discuss it from time to time. I hate the idea of true nonsense. Yet true nonsense it seems to be. 

Actually this may be more in line with a Jewish sensibility. After all, rabbis confess the sins of the entire community to God as a way to seek His forgiveness. They proclaim each sin as their own, in order to overcome them. Moreover, there is a similar paradox at the heart of Paul's teachings. For Paul teaches that while Adam is the man through whom sin came, each person is responsible, held accountable for that sin. May this not be an idea lurking behind the Original Sin? Perhaps the attitude of being the cause of all sin, as if we are are all Adam, hides the truth that Dostoevsky is pointing towards. No doubt Paul influenced Dostoesvsky on this point. Not that this helps much. For it means that the Ought Implies Can principle, foundational to rational ethics, is absent from Christianity. The paradox, then, reigns supreme. 

So I sit with this problem, I meditate on it, and I am freed by it, even as I on another level abhor it and run from it. Perhaps it is not for me to know, but simply to live, in this case.