the fallible man - 4th sunday lent B 2015

Last week I was assigned as reader to a thesis defence on Ricoeur’s concept of the fallible man. There is in us a tension created by the upward pull of the spiritual and the downward pull of the bodily; the upward pull of the ideal and the downward pull of the empirical; the upward pull of our desires, dreams, ambitions and imagination and what we can possibly become and the downward pull of our realities and who we really are.  Because of this tension there will always be a disproportion between what we could have done and what we have done; a tension between what we want to do and what we in fact do.  We will always fall short.  Thus we carry with us the possibility of committing error, we are prone to make mistakes because ontologically we are “the fallible man.”

In the paper presented what struck me was the struggle and desire of the seminarian to lessen the tension between these two poles, and thus lessen and perhaps even eliminate the possibility of man falling into error and making mistakes.  But alas perhaps this is a concrete evidence of the reality of the disproportion within us.  We desire to reach something and we always find ourselves always falling short.  The seminarian struggling to earn a high grade fell short and took a revalida instead.  The fallible man - we always fall short.

I suggested to him that perhaps instead of looking for a way out of this tension and eliminating this inherent possibility of making mistakes, he should zero in instead on our capacity for mutual esteem and respect.  The possibility of making mistakes and errors is common to our humanity.  You make mistakes, I make mistakes, she makes mistakes.  Since it is common, instead of banging our heads in an effort to eliminate these, perhaps we can be more forgiving instead, perhaps we can learn to be more tolerant, perhaps we can become more compassionate, perhaps we can learn to live even with each others mistakes.  We are mistake makers.  All of us.  This is our nature. 

And yet consider our readings today.

We are saved not because we eliminate sins.  We are saved because God is merciful. 

We are made children of God not because we are good.  In fact we were loved even before we became good.  And we will still be loved even long after we have not been good.  Because in God you don’t have to be good in order to be loved.  This is the mystery of God’s love for us.  And perhaps this is also our way as human persons to live in community despite the fallibility that is common to all of us.  Not able to eliminate mistakes even within us, perhaps we can love like God and become forgiving like God.  Forgive yourself, forgive others.  We are bigger than our mistakes, we are worth more than our faults because of God’s love for us.