3.3. Risks and contradictions: immobility and mediocrity

But that model also hides a risk, basically linked to the closure of the ego within itself, and a reading of one’s reality that deals only with the imminent.. .the risk that the self-acceptance ends up causing a sort of tacit and practical assent to one’s negativity, like an ever more peaceful and tranquil self-absolution, or what modern psychology calls a situation of egosyntony, or of a progressive self-justification of one’s situation, with a parallel loss of a penitential conscience, or with the danger of losing a sense of guilt and especially a consciousness of sin (even while the psychological limitation is different from a moral one), with all that such consciousness signifies: sorrow, bitterness, repentance, shame, resolve… On the other hand, no one is blind to the fact that this is precisely the culture in which we are living, a culture more and more apathetic about ethical indifference, which even laughs at those who in some way feel guilt and does not believe  those who repent; a (pseudo)culture which cannot distinguish good from evil, nor dares anymore to ask  renunciation and sacrifice in order to get out of certain habits and be corrected. In this sense I remember an observation of the rector of a regional seminary:  “my young clerics heard their first ‘no’ in the seminary…”  An evil effect of this accommodating and confused  culture would in fact be, along with the egosyntonic attitude toward one’s limitations (opposite of the egoalien attitude), the loss even of the motivation to be changed, to be converted, with a consequent situation of a stall, an immobility on a psychic and spiritual level. What reason is there to change and be converted, as a matter of fact, if the goal, more or less implicitly understood, is self-acceptance, which is much simpler and easier, if one keeps hearing and repeated that the greatest thing in life is “to be oneself”?  What’s more, sometimes self-acceptance triggers a mental process that even tends to condition the conscience and its judgements, making one think that a certain behavior is licit or at least not very serious.

A consequence as serious as it is inevitable, as well as rarely evidenced, is mediocrity. The model of self-acceptance reassures and tranquilizes. It does not provoke nor cause healthy disturbance; and if it becomes the destination or implicit formation model, in practice, it blocks any possible journey forward; it places the person in a condition of being satisfied with what she is and the point that she has reached. It deceives her into thinking she…is “herself” and convinces her that she is not capable of more, it even makes her understand that striving further might even harm her health and be artificial…

We do well to remember that still today, self-acceptance is being offered and indicated, by a certain psychology, as a solution to many problems, as a concluding point of arrival, it seems like who- knows-what innovative and strategic discovery; while at times, on the spiritual side, it gets confused with authentic humility, with abandonment and placing oneself into the hands of God. It is important to be able to distinguish during the initial formation journey: a genuine self-acceptance is only a stage that opens one to the courage of change and the pursuance of the journey. It is in service to growth, not to an immobile and passive standstill.  And as to Christian humility, it has nothing to do with inertia and a lack of enterprise: a humble person is creative and ingenious, especially because he knows whom to confide in and on whom he can count…

If, therefore, the perfection model favors the ideal ego with the rigor of its objectives, while the self-fulfillment model reduces everything to the measure of the subject’s (creator of self) talents and personal qualities, the self-acceptance model seems to stress exaggeratedly (and reassure) the actual ego without any tension toward growth and conversion, and therefore shows all its insufficiency and ambivalence for a formation plan.