I remember a young family sitting in front of me at Mass some years ago. With no warning, one of the little girls chose a quiet moment in the service to wail loudly, “Mommy, she’s looking at me!” gesturing with frustration at one of her sisters. Even if the charge was true (highly doubtful), the accusation said more about the accuser than the accused. The girl’s young imagination, piqued by sibling rivalry, tinged the way she saw the world. She saw malice where there was none. It was a childish instinct, but an instinct we all know.
As adults, we hide our tendency to assume things about others under layers of complexity that we mistake for maturity. But biological maturity does not mean that we have come to full stature in the spiritual life. Very few of us have grown out of all such unjustified accusations. We might not proclaim these at the top of our lungs during Sunday Mass, but our confessions include words such as “rash judgments” and “uncharitable thoughts.”
Tuning into the stream of our thoughts reveals all sorts of unjustified accusations, neediness, pride, and ugliness. We perceive slights where there are none: “He didn’t respect me!” We often see only our strengths—“I’m quite literally the best”—or only our weaknesses—“I can’t do anything right.” And we tell ourselves all sorts of falsehoods about God: “He’s not there for me; he can’t be known; he doesn’t care what I do; he won’t forgive me; he can’t change me.” The fundamental problem is that we tell ourselves lies—lies about others, lies about ourselves, lies about God.
So what are we to do? One way to deal with the lies is to tune them out. But this is not a solution. Just because the thoughts are buried doesn’t mean they’re gone—they continue to shape our emotions, our responses, our whole way of seeing and living in the world.
The Desert Fathers had another approach. In the quiet wilderness, they heard the ugly words that dominated their thoughts. Instead of fleeing from the ugliness, they decided to fight, armed with the words of Scripture. They called this approach Antirrhetikos, or “Talking Back.”
This way of pursuing a life of truth and freedom before God is just as effective today. How does it work? It involves taking a verse, memorizing it, and deploying it whenever a temptation arises.
Let’s say that we want to eat or drink more than we know we should, Scripture has words for us: “Is not life more than food and body more than clothing?” (Matt 6:25). Or perhaps it’s something more emotional, like a raging desire for revenge: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all” (Rom 12:17). Even issues that might seem particularly modern—depressive thoughts, for example—we can confront with words of Scripture: “Why are you cast down, my soul; why groan within me? Hope in God; I will praise him still, my savior and my God” (Ps 42:6). And while the Desert Fathers’ lists go on and on, I’ll close with words effective against that impulse to see malice in the eyes of others: “The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
By constantly using Scripture to talk back to wayward thoughts, the Desert Fathers found that over the course of their lives, their interior monologues began to sound different. Truth replaced lies. Light replaced darkness. Confidence in God replaced a disposition of frightened self-preservation.
We too can set out on this way to spiritual freedom. By taking God’s Word as our own, by memorizing verses, mulling over them, repeating them throughout the day, we can talk back to all those childish lies we tell ourselves and be set free to live in the truth.
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Photo by Александра Туркина from Pixabay
