Wretched Humility, II

Teresa calls the false humility a “gross temptation.”  It may be tempting to read those words as a moral condemnation of anyone—surely most of us!—who experiences some degree of false humility.  There is something in the modern sensibility that looks upon temptation as pejorative in and of itself.  To confess to being tempted to do some evil is tantamount to confessing oneself a bad person; and so we tend to keep our secret thoughts carefully tucked away.

Teresa would have considered this a bit foolish.  Of course we are all bad people! she would have said, except for our Blessed Lady and her Son.  What a silly thing to have to state, as if it were not obvious!  And to think that we take the trouble to hide it from men, when it really only matters to God, and he knows it all anyway!

But Teresa would have denied (I think) the idea that we are somehow worse bad people for the fact of having been tempted.  Part of the reason is that Teresa has a solid notion of the demonic.  A good many temptations, her writings imply, come from sources outside of oneself, and thus one is not to be blamed for them—any more than a modern psychologist would blame a child raised in an abusive home for displaying certain phobias.

But there is a difference between displaying a phobia and engaging in destructive behavior; and Teresa would have insisted on a difference between being tempted to do something wrong and actually doing it.  The temptation, like the phobias, might decrease culpability; but ultimately as long as free will remains—as long as there is no actual insanity—there is choice.