So the messages we hear, exhorting us to build up our self-esteem, are correct, but they go astray when they tell us to do so through an unbridled self-pampering, especially through unchecked consumerism.
How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff
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Imminent death sharpens Markel’s self-understanding, before God and the world. He acutely perceives the fall of humanity and his own particular place within this total picture. In this, Markel also perceives the deep interconnectivity of all people and things. The dividing line between himself and “the other” is being erased. In this way, his perception of his deep fallenness brings him neither maudlin wailing, nor pathos, nor self-loathing. Instead he experiences joy, compassion, and love. Having come to this awareness, he can’t comprehend how he ever lost his temper with anyone.
How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff -
Better that it create in me a sense of my own responsibility before the world, which can lead me through faith in God into holiness of life, peace of soul, and joy of heart. Dostoevsky captures this concept in The Brothers Karamazov, when the Elder Zosima recounts a conversation between his dying brother Markel and his mother: “[ I] tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” . . . “How can it be . . . that you are the most guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have you managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?” “Dear mother, heart of my heart . . . you must know that verily each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything! I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me. And how could we have lived before, getting angry, and not knowing anything?” Thus he awoke every day with more and more tenderness, rejoicing and all atremble with love.
How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff -
The mistake might have taken one second, perhaps when we impulsively press “send” on a really bad e-mail. It might have taken years of festering in a toxic relationship. But suddenly we realize that we have totally blundered, and are filled with regret. Such failures can lead us into vain replayings of our mental tape-loops, about how stupid I sounded when I made that remark about my colleague. But compunction over our serious errors can sometimes serve as a promising lead-in to a more thorough and constructive inventory of our lives.
How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff -
He is describing what ideally happens when we place ourselves in front of goodness: not destructive shame, but the sense of possibility. The built-in potential for good is ultimately a sense of the true inner self. It contains the sense of how sin is utterly contrary to that inner self.
How to Be a Sinner
Peter Bouteneff
SO GOOD QUOTES 