Chapter 28: The Insufficiency of Man

1. The Insufficiency We Fail to Notice
   • The Insufficiency of Our Being
     • Because so many of our troubles result from the misuse of our natural powers, we may be inclined to think that if we just used our powers properly, our problems would be solved.
     • This line of reasoning is saying, in effect, that “man has the secret of sufficiency within himself if he will but use it” (382-3).
     • On the contrary, the fact of the matter is that “there is a radical insufficiency in us flowing altogether from our being” (382-3).
2. Man’s Dependence on God
   • Our Nothingness Countered Only by Omnipotence
     • Note: From 383-1 and up to 385-2, Sheed is speaking of the case where man has chosen to live apart from God, as he says explicitly in 385-2. This is indicated by the multiple references to phrases such as “apart from God,” but his wording is not always consistent with his intent.
     • Man’s insufficiency is based on the reality that without God man would not exist. “It is easy for man to think himself autonomous, [but only] if he does not think very much,” for man cannot bring himself into existence, and man cannot take himself out of existence (383-1).
       • In the man who “should think that it is by any power of his own that he is maintained in existence [we have] a sign that his mind must be engaged upon other matters” (383-1).
       • A man can kill himself, which terminates his existence in this world, but that only brings about a temporary separation of body and soul, and, during the separation, the man continues to exist and will be reunited to his body on the day of the General Judgment.
     • “For fullness of being, man must have a knowledge of and a cooperation with that which maintains him in existence, that which is the very condition of his be-ing” (383-1).
       • This is because there are degrees of being. It is evident that the degree of being of an infant is less than the degree of being of an adult, for the adult is closer to the perfection [i.e., completeness] of a human person than is an infant.
         • Note that this takes nothing away from the dignity of the infant. Human dignity is intrinsic to (ontological) personality. It cannot be increased or decreased, and is, thus, unrelated to the human person’s degree of being.
       • One’s degree of being increases in proportion to his physical and, especially, his spiritual development, which is dependent on the gifts of Truth and Life.
       • Hence, a man’s fullness of being is contingent on cooperation with “that which maintains him in existence,” for there is no access to Truth and Life apart from one having a relationship with God.
     • The reality of our existence is that there is an abyss of nothingness at the heart of our being, for we were made from nothing. However, the Infinite is also at the heart of our being, for He brought us into being and holds us in existence (383-1).
       • “To be ignorant of [the need to counter our nothingness with the Infinite] is to live in unreality, and there can be no satisfaction for ourselves or any adequate coping with anything” (383-1).
     • Hence, the nothingness at the heart of our being can only be and must be countered by “the fullest possible use of our kinship with the Infinite” (383-1).
   • The Glory of God Is Not at Stake
     • “Apart from the will of God, man’s action is doomed to frustration, since the ground-rule of all things . . . is the will of God,” who brought all things into existence, including His law for the operation of the universe (383-2).
     • We can disobey His law, but we cannot break it anymore that we can break the law of gravity.
       • If we ignore the law of gravity, we get broken, but the law itself remains unbroken.
       • The same is true if we ignore the law of God. His law remains unbroken regardless of whether we choose to live and act in a manner that is contrary to that law.
     • If we act according to God’s law we glorify God and the wisdom of His law shines forth in our good actions. We, in turn, are glorified by God.
       • “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Mt 5:16).
       • “If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him” (Jn 12:26).
       • “Behold, I have taught you statutes and ordinances, as the LORD my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land which you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them; for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people’” (Dt 4:5-6).
     • If we act contrary to God’s law, we are degraded, but He is still glorified, and in two ways:
       • First, the wisdom of His law is seen in the calamity resulting from the sin that would have been avoided had we followed His law.
       • Second, His glory is seen in the mercy He extends to us after we sin, for He continues to draw us to Himself.
     • In either case, “God’s glory is not in question: only ours” (383-2, 180-3).
     • We, on the other hand, are degraded by our disobedience, for acting contrary to God’s law moves us away from the perfection (i.e., completion) that necessarily results from acting in accordance with God’s law; hence, our degree of being decreases when we sin (383-2, 383-1).
       • “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:8).
     • In this degradation that we foist upon ourselves we have the reason for the moral axiom: “The end does not justify the means” (383-2).
       • Scripture states the axiom definitively:
         • “And why not do evil that good may come? – as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just” (Rom 3:8).
     • But, “more profoundly still, it is not possible to achieve a good result by evil means . . . because, in a universe directed by supreme intelligence and supreme goodness, evil means of themselves must produce an evil result” (383-2, 3).
       • Consequently, any action of ours that is contrary to God’s law can only end in frustration. It may issue in a momentary success, but the action itself will eventually terminate in frustration (384-1).
3. Dissatisfaction of Mind and Will
   • Frustrated Actions Usher in Dissatisfaction
     • Man’s action is frustrated when it is not in harmony with God’s will. But there is a more profound frustration that accompanies man’s frustrated actions. This more profound frustration shows in our highest faculties; it is the dissatisfaction of the mind (intellect) and the will (384-2).
     • “The mind is doomed to dissatisfaction unless it sees things in God” (384-3).
       • Apart from God, the mind sees everything wrongly; thus, it cannot get to the meaning of the things it sees and it finds itself “living in a world of bits and pieces” (384-3).
       • The mind has a natural hunger for order and purpose. This natural hunger cannot be satisfied by seeing the world as a collection of disjointed bits and pieces in which it is impossible to find purpose (384-3).
       • In such a state, the mind “can have no over-all sense of what reality is all about, and is ultimately brought to a stand-still by a sense of futility” (384-3).
     • “Similarly the will is doomed to unsatisfaction insofar as it aims at things separate from God” (384-4).
       • Our desires are fixed on things by the action of our wills. We can fix them on anything from nothingness (e.g., sin) to the Infinite (384-4).
       • But note that apart from God, all “things” are “nothing” (i.e., “shadows”). That is, they could not exist without God.
       • It follows that to love things without loving God is to love shadows and to “expect from shadows what only reality can give” (384-4).
         • “One most tragic result is the disappointment of men and women in each other, each expecting what the other cannot give” (384-4).
         • This expecting from shadows what only reality can give “is the reason for the horrible disproportion between the ravenous not-to-be-denied hunger and the [lack of] enjoyment” (384-4).
     • “The shadowiness of things apart from God” . . . is generalized over all life. We constantly experience the pleasure that ends too soon and the pleasure that lasts too long (385-1).
       • On the one hand, we find it hard to contemplate a beautiful sunset even for the short duration in which it takes place. On the other hand, we cannot tolerate a beautiful piece of music that is repeated indefinitely (385-1).
       • The problem here is that when we see these things apart from God, we make them into ends, rather than means to an end. Their beauty should be leading us to God; when seen apart from God they lead us to a dead end.
   • The Actual State of Affairs
     • The actual state of the world, apropos God, is not so drastic as that of a total absence of God from man’s conscious relation with reality (385-2).
       • However, “if [the world] has not forgotten that He is, it has so largely forgotten what He is that it sees no function for Him and therefore in the actual conduct of life tends more and more to omit Him” (385-2).
       • “There is only a step from this to actual atheism” (385-2).
       • Since the time Sheed wrote this, there appears to have been a marked increase in the number of people who take that step. However, that may be a media-driven illusion. Recall from the notes for chapter fifteen:
         • “In 1944, the Gallup Poll asked a national sample of Americans if they believed in God. Four percent said “no.” Since then the question has often been asked and the percent of atheists has held steady at about four percent and never exceeding six percent” (Sociologist Rodney Stark quoted on StrangeNotions web site:
         • http://www.strangenotions.com/how-religion-benefits-everyone/
     • “Omitting God leaves man on top, but of a diminished universe; and to live in a diminished universe diminishes oneself” (385-2).
       • This is roughly analogous to the case where one chooses to ignore the best of music and poetry, for “then we are not humbled by the comparison of our own more mediocre equipment with the greater power of the musician and the poet” (385-2).
         • Our egos are, thus, spared the “wound” of recognizing our mediocrity relative to their artistry, but we also lose the benefit of their music and poetry (385-2).
       • Similarly, if we fail to see the universe as an act of infinite creative genius, we are not humbled before His omnipotence and omniscience, but neither are we fed by the divine pedagogy through which He desires to lead us to everlasting life (385-2).
     • Cutting God out of the picture is analogous to cutting off a man’s head. “Cutting off the head leaves the neck on top, but of what a body. Ignoring the head, leaving it unused, is almost as bad: there are so many things the head can do that the neck cannot” (385-3).
4. The Danger of Devitalization
   • Hope Dies in a Universe without Purpose
     • Because God is the cause of the existence of all things, all things become inexplicable without Him (386-1).
       • This is not merely a matter of being unable to find the explanation of things. Rather, without God there simply is no explanation (386-1).
     • Hence, “apart from the knowledge of God, man really is doomed to live in a meaningless universe, and he can but grow weary of the effort to live a meaningful life in a context that has no meaning” (386-1).
     • If man does not know God, then . . . (386-1)
       • He does not why he exists.
       • He does not know where he is supposed to be going (he lacks an ultimate goal)
       • He does not know how to get there (he lacks the instructions for obtaining the ultimate goal)
       • He is on a journey, but does not know it.
       • He has a destination, but does not know what it is.
       • He has neither a map of the road nor knowledge of the rules of the road.
     • “Lacking this indispensable knowledge, men occupy themselves with other matters, beer or women or rare stamps or science” (386-1).
       • For example, one man is a great authority on butterflies and will speak of them endlessly and admirably (386-1)
       • But if you interrupt his discourse on butterflies to ask what he is, where he is going, and how he will get there, he will tell you those are religious questions and he has not the time for them, because he is so deeply engaged with butterflies (386-1).
       • “The little creatures should be flattered. But the man is hardly sane. And he is the perfect type of our world” (386-1).
     • The result of this unawareness that the road of life has a particular destination is that hope dies (386-2).
       • Quoting Henry David Thoreau, Sheed writes: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” (386-2).
         • Notice that he says “quiet” desperation, that is, “not so much active despair as the absence of hope” (387-1).
       • In this case, hope does not die because a goal is unobtainable but, rather, because there is no ultimate goal (387-1).
     • Men live from day to day in the hope that tomorrow will be better than today, but these are merely transitory hopes (387-1).
       • God has created man such that he is motivated by “purpose.” But, without a goal there can be no purpose.
     • Consequently, the great mass of men are “are not living toward anything.” There is nothing in the future to which they are being drawn (387-1).
   • The Occasional Surge of Hope
     • Occasionally a society will have a surge of hope, as sometimes happens with individuals who pursue some endeavor, be it intellectual, athletic, financial, or of some other variety (387-1, 2).
     • When this happens, “for a long moment the air is electric with new hope. But new creeds become old creeds and the fire dies out of them. . . . The golden moment passes and hope with it” (387-2).
     • And when hope dies, vitality dies, for they are bound up together (387-2).
   • Devitalization: Two Causes
     • Note that we do not have to be aware of a dying hope to be devitalized by it. “Many have died of malnutrition who never heard of vitamin B. Men are dying from lack of hope who do not even know that they are hopeless” (387-2).
       • “The hold upon life is pretty precarious when men are living only for lack of any specific reason for dying” (387-2).
     • When hope dies, devitalization sets in, but a dying hope is not the only cause of devitalization. A second cause is that of malformed (badly formed) consciences that fail to steer us away from misuse of the things of the world. When these things are habitually sought for their own sake, they too lead a person to a state of ennui, which is another word for devitalization.
     • Consequently, there are two causes of devitalization, and two sources for those causes:
       • Hopelessness has its source in a person not knowing the goal of life’s road.
       • A malformed conscience has its source in not knowing the rules of the road, so when God is not sufficiently acknowledged, man is left without a standard of conduct (387-3).
   • The Nature of Conscience
     • The second cause of devitalization necessitates a discussion on conscience.
     • It is the universal experience of man that we possess an inner “voice” that tells us we should do some things and should not do other things (388-1).
     • However, this “voice of conscience” can be misinterpreted; “conscience is not the voice of God but of our own intellect” (388-1).
       • Note: Sheed’s statement appears to be in contradiction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which refers to conscience as the voice of God in paragraphs 1776 and 1777, but we can see that it is not in conflict if we follow Sheed’s exposition carefully.
     • Consider the origin of conscience. God did not make us and then impose a set of rules on us. Rather, He created human nature according to a law that already existed in Him. Consequently, His law is woven into the fabric of our being. It is called the natural law (388-1).
     • Hence, as one would expect, actions contrary to the natural law tend to provoke a revolt in our nature, and the intellect expresses that revolt in the judgment of conscience (388-1).
     • There is a problem with man’s conscience: we are no longer the way God made us, as a result of Adam’s sin (388-1). Hence, our fallen nature affects the intellect’s ability to clearly express the natural law.
       • Sheed follows the above sentence by saying: “the generations have introduced distortions, so that no one of us has in his nature a clear clean copy of God’s law” (388-1).
       • This could be misunderstood to mean that the consciences of individuals in every successive generation are further removed from the law as woven into the makeup of Adam and Eve than the previous generation’s consciences, merely as a result of biological reproduction, which is not the teaching of the Church.
       • Sheed may have been saying that the moral standards of societies tend to become more degraded with each passing generation and, as a result, it becomes more difficult in each generation for one to recognize the voice of God in one’s conscience. However, this is not a generally valid statement.
       • It would be better to say that our “copy of the law” is distorted or smudged because of our fallen nature.
     • If our intellect judges only by the “copy” of the law within us, a copy that is smudged as a result of our fallen nature, it can judge erroneously (388-1).
     • It follows that in order to have certainty in moral judgments we must have an objective guide that is external to ourselves and is reliable in all circumstances (388-1).
     • “Conscience must always guide us, but, if the intellect has not this surer knowledge of God’s law, conscience may guide us wrong[ly]” (388-1).
       • According to CCC 1777, for a person who is not exercised in the virtue of prudence, the voice of conscience is likely to be mingled with other “voices” from the world, the flesh, and the Devil and, thus, not be truly representative of the voice of God.
       • The result is that we may misinterpret what the voice of God is telling us, in the same way that people misinterpret Scripture according to their own personal biases.
     • “God’s law is the foundation of the intellect’s moral judgments,” not our own copy of His law, and we find His law fully expressed in the teaching of the Catholic Church (388-1).
   • Excursus: Conscience: The Voice of God or the Voice of the Intellect?
     • There appears to be a contradiction here between what Sheed says and what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says. Compare the following:
       • Sheed: “Conscience is not the voice of God but of our own intellect” (388-1).
       • CCC: “Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (CCC 1776)
       • CCC: “Moral conscience, present at the heart of the person, enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil. It also judges particular choices, approving those that are good and denouncing those that are evil. It bears witness to the authority of truth in reference to the supreme Good to which the human person is drawn, and it welcomes the commandments. When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking” (CCC 1777)
     • The apparent contradiction is reconciled by noting the following.
       • Conscience is the voice of God, it expresses the natural law and, as such, it is the Word of God.
       • However, just as Scripture can be and often is misinterpreted, the Word of God expressed through the conscience can also be misinterpreted.
       • Per CCC 1777, one exercised in the virtue of prudence does hear, via the conscience, the voice of God. On the other hand, one who is not exercised in the virtue of prudence hears the voice of God intermingled with other “voices” so that it cannot be said that the conscience is exclusively the voice of God for such a person.
   • The Necessity of a Moral Code’s Visibility
     • If man is to live according to a moral code, it must have a clearly seen foundation (388-2).
     • “A society can accept a moral code without any conscious awareness of its foundation, provided the code is of long standing and not questioned” (388-2).
     • However, in a generation such as ours where everything is questioned, the foundation of its moral code must be clearly seen, but apart from God the moral foundation cannot be clearly seen (388-2).
     • If the foundation is not clearly seen, when faced with temptation the average man is essentially left with nothing by which to judge the temptation, and his first reaction is “Why shouldn’t I?” (388-2).
     • The reason for this is that conscience is the judgment of the intellect, but it is precisely the intellect that is confused (389-1).
       • Modern “science” has worked diligently to explain away conscience. This puts a man who is without a clear and certain moral guide in a weak position against temptation (389-1).
       • “Why shouldn’t I?” quickly becomes “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” which is the whole point. Of course he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t, for “he doesn’t see anything, because he has turned out the lights, or had them turned out for him” (389-1).
       • “He is simply conscious of a lot of urges and appetites in the dark, and there is no mistaking their direction. . . . It is the line of least resistance. It is the following of one’s inclination: it is the avoidance of suffering, the avoidance of effort” (389-1, 2).
     • The simple principle, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t,” begins by justifying divorce and promiscuity and goes on to accept every kind of sexual perversion (389-3).
       • How many people would fight against things that promise pleasure in the absence of a moral law explicitly forbidding them? (389-3).
       • For most of mankind, unless there is the clearest and most compelling reason for avoiding such things, we will choose to follow our inclinations (389-3).
       • Thus, devitalized by not knowing either our intended destination or the rules of the road, and having only flabby and unmuscular souls with untrained intellects, we are in danger of a complete moral collapse (389-3).
5. An Unhappy Generation
   • Devitalization Thwarts Happiness
     • Relative to what happiness really is, it is fair to say that the mass of humanity is definitely not happy (390-2)
       • Sheed defines unhappiness on the next page: “Happiness is not to be defined as the absence of unhappiness. It is a splendor resultant from spiritual energies functioning at their maximum” (391-1).
     • The reason for this unhappiness is that happiness results from the proper use of the spiritual energies God designed into our nature (390-2).
     • In a devitalized society, it goes without saying that our spiritual energies are ill-used or unused; hence, our society’s lack of happiness (390-2)
       • On the contrary, the saints are always recognized as the happiest people around, despite the many hardships they endure or, better yet, because of the way they endure their many hardships, that is, in patience and charity, uniting their sufferings to the Passion of Jesus.
     • When a man’s spiritual energies go unused, “[they] can only turn in upon the man and rend him” and lead him into despair (390-2).
   • Despair and Apathy
     • There are two sins against hope: presumption and despair (390-3).
     • Regarding despair, we might say there are two alternatives: hope, which raises us above despair, and apathy, by which we fall below despair (390-3).
     • Having no hope, for the reasons described above (i.e., no goal, no purpose, not knowing the road of life and not knowing the rules of the road), man despairs, but this is not the end of his fall into unhappiness; he can fall one more step into apathy (390-3).
     • Whereas despair is the result of a man’s spiritual energies having gone unused, apathy is the result of an absence of spiritual energies (390-3).
       • These spiritual energies are intrinsic to our nature, but Sheed is indicating that if a person leaves them unused for a long enough period of time, they become sufficiently atrophied that they essentially go dormant (390-3).
     • Those who have sunk to the state of apathy might regard themselves as happy, but this is only because their “spiritual energies are so reduced that they are not conscious of, [and] still less tormented by, their unsatisfaction.” Hence, they are not actively unhappy (390-3).
     • However, no one who knows what authentic happiness is would mistake the state of being “not actively unhappy” with the state of genuine happiness.
       • “Happiness is not to be defined as the absence of unhappiness. It is a splendor resultant from spiritual energies functioning at their maximum” (391-1).
     • One service we can render to unhappy men and women is to make them aware of their own unhappiness, for a man who does not know he is hungry will not seek food (391-1).
   • An Unhappy Generation’s Need for Distractions
     • Man has always sought, and found, distraction from his own emptiness in sin. But the modern world has provided man with “a further distraction, special to itself, in science” (391-2).
     • Science is uniquely paradoxical in that it is capable of keeping man from thinking of his fundamental unhappiness though its parade-like succession of marvels, “[the] electric light, phonograph, motor car, telephone, radio, airplane, television, [computers, cell phones, space travel]” but it is utterly incapable of doing anything to remedy that fundamental unhappiness (391-2).
       • In this, science imitates the mother who tries to distract her crying child by “offering it sugar-sticks and making funny faces at it” (391-2).
     • “The leaping stream of invention has served extraordinarily well to keep man occupied, to keep him from remembering that which is troubling him.” As a result, he is only troubled; he has never gotten around to analyzing his sense of futility, “but he is half strangled by it” (391-2).
   • The Distraction of Sin
     • Though science has kept man distracted for better than a hundred years, its ability to distract may pass away some day.
     • The same cannot be said for sin, which has distracted man since the time of Adam, and there is no reason to think that sin will not go on distracting him till the end of the world (391-3).
       • The concern here is with sin that comes about through indulgence of the body so as to quiet the mind’s appetites: sinning through sheer futility rather than through passion. “That is the gaping wound everywhere” (391-3).
     • Men are either tormented by their sense of futility or their vitality is quietly sapped by their sense of futility (391-3).
       • This takes us back to the quote from Thoreau on p. 386: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
     • Hence, some seek revolution (the most energetic of the tormented), but those whose vitality is sapped tend to indulge in bodily pleasure, especially immoral sexual pleasure.
       • There is something in the very nature of sexual pleasure that makes it especially effective in giving “a kind of reassurance to the battered and discouraged ego,” even when conducted in immoral circumstances (392-1).
       • However, the reassurance it gives is only momentary and is followed by pangs of conscience that wipe out whatever was thought to have been gained by this act of perversion.
     • The end result of such pursuits is “a further dispersal of man’s powers, leaving him less and less master of himself” (392-1).
6. The Result of This Devitalization, Despair and Apathy
   • The Effect on Social life
     • The man who knows neither where he is going nor the rules of the road is in a bad state for himself, “but it is more chaotic still for society” (392-2).
     • This is because a man can choose a goal that provides him with some level of satisfaction and unifies his efforts (392-2).
     • However, society is a mass of individuals pursuing a variety of goals that can have no unifying element apart from the individuals having a right relationship to God, which provides society with its necessary fundamental unity (392-2).
     • If this fundamental unity does not exist, secondary unities (i.e., secondary with respect to the human race as a whole) such as marriage, social order, international relations cannot be healthy (392-2).
   • Working for Second Best
     • Men cannot be coerced into having a right relationship with God. Hence, we cannot bring into being a healthy fundamental unity of society by force (392-2). This leaves us with the “bleak but inescapable . . . job of working for a second best” (393-1).
       • By second best, Sheed is referring to the good of the “secondary unities” such as marriage, social order and international society that he mentions in 392-2.
     • Our task is to work for the re-Christianization of society, beginning with ourselves. We do this by working for the good of the secondary social reality as well as the primary social reality (393-1).
     • Civilizations rise and civilizations fall. “No one looking honestly at [our civilization] can fail to see the danger signs” (393-2).
     • But the greatest danger of all is that of a man’s “mere drift, seeing nothing, shaping nothing, living for nothing,” for this is a recipe for one’s spiritual death (393-2).
     • If we aren’t working for the fundamental unity of our society, we are necessarily contributing to society’s chaos, and one only needs to follow the news and compare today’s society to that of a few decades ago to see just how chaotic, and unstable, our society has become. At some level of chaos, society loses its balance.