The Prince with the Big Nose and Personal Transformation

There is a “factoid” going around about American education. The factoid says, when the performance of American students is compared to the performance of students in other industrialized countries, they come out near the bottom in every area except . . . self-esteem. We lead the world in self-esteem. In other words, Americans may be dumber than dirt, but we feel good about ourselves.

Having spent a lot of time with people who were crippled by their low self-esteem, I have always felt that it doesn’t hurt to help people feel good about themselves. But I’ve recently begun to wonder if positive affirmation is really the path to living your best life now?

In the passage from Romans that I began commenting on last week, Paul talks about transformation. He even uses the word “metamorphosis” in the original Greek to emphasize the radical nature of this transformation, which begins with a “renewing of you mind” (Rom. 12:2).

In the “motivational literature” section of your library, the books will tell you that you need to think of yourself as capable of great things. That may be, but that’s not what Paul says. He says that real transformation comes when we “do not think more highly of ourselves than we ought, but to think with sober judgment”.

The Greek word, translated as “sober judgment” is often contrasted with Greek words for “crazy”. It implies a deeply sane and realistic approach to life. And when we adopt that approach to life, our lives really do change. But it isn’t always easy to get real – especially about ourselves.

This truth is illustrated by a French fairy tale. I invite you to leave this blog and read it yourself, but in case you don’t have time, here is the thumbnail version:

A king overcame the spell of an evil sorcerer in order to win the love of his future wife. The sorcerer then pronounced a curse on the king. The child that would be born to this couple, he said, “will never be happy until he discovers that his nose is too long.”

Well, as curses go, this beats being turned into a frog, or sleeping for 100 years after piercing your finger on a spindle. The king thought, “How would he not know his nose is too long? At the very least, I will tell him as soon as he is able to understand.”

Unfortunately the king died just before his son was born. In many ways, he was a beautiful child. He had his mother’s eyes and his father’s strong jaw, but he had a schnozzle that covered half his face. His mother who did not know of the curse because the sorcerer forced the king to keep it a secret, was taken aback, but her ladies-in-waiting assured her that it was simply a strong Roman nose. All the best people have large strong noses, and his mother began to see it as an asset rather than a liability.

Nevertheless, no one was admitted into the young Prince’s presence who did not have a very large nose – although even the largest didn’t come close to the Prince’s in size. Portraits of his ancestors were “touched up” to emphasize their noses. He was also pointedly taught by his instructors that Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and other heroes all had very large noses. Cleopatra was an object of desire because of her nose.

At the age of 21, the Prince’s mother commissioned paintings of all of the eligible princesses in the lands surrounding their own, so the Prince could make a suitable choice for a wife. The Prince immediately fell in love with one princess, who, although she had a small nose, struck him as the most beautiful one of all.

The Prince set off to win her hand, but as he passed the boundaries of his own country, people began to laugh and point and hold their noses as he passed. He noted that all of them appeared to be nasally challenged compared to the people in his own retinue, and he assumed that they were jealous.

When he arrived at the home of the princess with whom he had fallen in love, the king, her father, welcomed him. The Prince had the resume of a fine potential son-in-law, but the king was taken aback by the size of his nose. He decided to let his daughter make the decision and summoned her, but before she arrived at the throne room, the sorcerer who had cursed the Prince before he was born, kidnapped the Princess and ran off with her.

The king told the Prince that if he could rescue the Princess, he would give her to the Prince as his wife. The Prince rode off in pursuit – a pursuit that was slowed every time he had to stop and ask people if they had seen a sorcerer carrying a princess pass by. Every time he asked for help, people would laugh so hard they could not answer for several minutes. This cost the Prince valuable time and he fell further and further behind.

Finally, unable to follow the track any farther, the Prince was in despair. Right then he met a good fairy who had been a friend of his father’s and who was willing to help. She could not, she said, absolutely defeat the Sorcerer, but she could get the Princess out of his hands by encasing her in crystal. All the Prince needed to do was kiss her hand – the one part of her that was not in crystal and the Princess would be set free to marry him.

The Prince followed the Good Fairy’s directions and found the Princess – encased in crystal, with only one small hand sticking out. He raced to her and bent to kiss her hand, but he could not. His nose got in the way. Turn which ever way he might, the Prince’s lips could not touch the Princess’s hand.  Finally, the Prince said in exasperation, “My nose is too big.” At which point his nose was immediately changed to a normal size, he kissed the Princess’s hand and she was set free.

They not only lived happily ever after, but the Prince turned into an exceptionally fine king because he had such a realistic view of himself and his faults as well as his strengths.

We often don’t see our own “big noses” and how they are getting in our own way, partly because the people who love us try very hard to tell us that our noses really aren’t that big – and besides, a lot of good people have the same characteristic.

However, nothing is as transforming as seeing the truth about ourselves. It may be painful, but in the end, it can be amazingly freeing to own a fault, a habit, or a particular way of looking at life that has been getting in our way.

One way to do this is to listen closely to our “enemies” who, unlike our friends, are often only too happy to tell us the truth about ourselves. Or they may, indeed, be friends who love us enough and have too much integrity, to not tell us the truth. At any rate, this may be why Jesus tells us to love our enemies (Matt. 5:44). 

Religion: Like a Rope in the Storm

Before powerful electric lights punched through the rural darkness, farmers in the Upper Midwest would often tie a rope between the house and the barn – especially if they knew a blizzard was coming. There were stories of men and women who had lost their way in whiteouts only to be found frozen a few feet from their front steps when the storm ended.

Our word “ligament” is related to the word “religion”; both of them come from a Latin root meaning “to tie” or “to bind”. So I think it’s legitimate to say that anything we use to keep our bearings in the blizzard of modern life’s challenges and distractions is like that rope the farmers used to follow from the barn to their home – and thus is our religion.

Let’s examine some of the ropes that we use – and that human beings have always used – to find their way through the blizzard of life:

Ritual: Rituals are usually associated with religion and complexity as illustrated by this video. But people who have just lost a loved one or gotten a cancer diagnosis can tell you that sometimes it’s the rituals that get them through the day. Brushing your teeth, feeding the cat, walking the dog, taking out the trash are humble reminders that life goes on. If the ritual is infused with deeper meaning, such as lighting the Sabbath candles or taking communion, people can find an even deeper meaning. Memories of holiday meals and kneeling beside a loved one at the altar rail come flooding back both to hurt  . . . and to heal. But ritual alone can also get in the way of real life, as anyone knows who has ever had to break the news to Mom that you are going to your fiancé’s house for Christmas so you won’t be joining the family for breakfast on Christmas morning.

Rules: Rules help us get back on the path or keep us from losing the way, in the first place. Theists and atheists all have made some decisions about what they will and won’t do even when no one is looking. All of us know the temptation to break those rules. Most of us, looking back, are glad for the times we were true to our sense of morality and are sorry for those times we weren’t. But rules alone can keep us from living a full life, as well. How do we relate to people who have different rules?  (You probably ran into this question the first time you slept over at a friend’s house).  How do we live with ourselves if we have broken our rules? If our rules are “sacred” how can we adapt them to new circumstances? If we chose our own rules, why would we follow them when the going gets tough? And as you can read in last week’s blog, we break our own rules even when there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to do so.

Reason: Since the 18^th century in Western culture, we have used reason as our rope. Indeed, all the others, including rules and rituals have to be “reasonable” if we are going to follow them. Reason works – usually – in the blizzard of life, if we really will sit down and think things through. No matter how much the advertisers and politicians and powerful interests want to snow us, 2 + 2 still equals 4.  And St. Augustine once said if your reading of the Bible says that 2+2 = 5, you need to read the Bible again. But, reason can quickly become rationalization. Few cultures were as “reasonable” as early 20^th century Germany, yet it produced World War II and the Holocaust. Reason can get us through the blizzard or it can be part of the snow.

Tradition: Traditions are contained in religious rituals, but especially in the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, traditions are also contained in sacred texts and the whole history of the interpretation of those texts in theological treatises, sermons, hymns, pious stories, ethical codes and even legal doctrines. Traditions inform rituals. Without a Haggadah, Passover is just a big dinner. Without a cross or an empty tomb, Easter is just a sugar rush. Without the Qur’an , Ramadan is one very long month of fasting. As Tevye will tell you, a fiddler on the roof is able to scrape out a happy tune without breaking his neck because tradition helps him keep his balance. But it is that same tradition that causes Tevye to disown his daughter, Chava, when she decides to marry a Gentile.

Spiritual Experience: Human beings have experiences that can be so vivid that they actually change the direction of their lives. These experiences may become like the bright electric lights that now guide farmers from the barn to the house in the middle of a blizzard. One things traditions do is to give people a way of understanding what has happened to them. Whether they refer back to Moses talking with the burning bush; Jesus in the wilderness; Muhammad in his cave; or the Buddha under the Bo tree, the “Wow! What just happened?” quality of these events can take on meaning and help a person understand that he or she isn’t crazy or alone. Rituals can sometimes be the contexts for such experiences. Isaiah is doing whatever priests do in the Temple when he has his vision. John Wesley was in church when he has his heart-warming experience. Unlike rules, rituals, or even reason and tradition, spiritual experiences never make people feel like crap. They may make people feel VERY humble, but that’s a lot different than feeling long-term shame, and despair, because no matter how humbling the experience may be, you also know – if you have such an experience – that the spiritual world exists in ways you never dreamed and that something or more likely, Someone, cares about you who is a whole lot bigger and more wonderful than you ever imagined.

The problem with spiritual experiences is that they too can be falsified. Any teenager who grew up in an evangelical culture knows the pressure to “be born again” and how much you need to be able to “testify” to meeting the Lord Jesus personally. There is also a very fine line sometimes between these experiences and mental illness.

My own “tradition” within the Christian tradition is Wesleyan and it is part of a larger Anglican tradition that tends to balance out all these “ropes”. The rituals, rules and texts of tradition get balanced against reason and direct spiritual experience. I can check those spiritual experiences against the tradition, and the rituals keep me going when the experiences run dry, and the rules keep me from going over the edge, until I break them, and then the spiritual experiences pull me, one more time, out of the pit of despair. It’s kind of crazy, but it’s my rope. 

Conviction and Civility

The President appropriately did not blame anyone who uses phrases like "Lock and load" or "take out the opposition" in political debate for the shootings in Tucson. It appears, in fact, that the president managed to turn the whole debate around and some very thoughtful people have taken up the challenge of suggesting exactly what "civility" would look like in public discourse in our society. 

Senator John McCain used the same approach in a  Washington Post article. 

Jim Wallis and Charles Colson are easily identifiable as representatives of the "Religious Left" and the "Religious Right", respectively, but they coauthored an article in Christianity Today in which they wrote:  

" . . . we affirm the politics of conviction. Conviction is not  inconsistent with civility, which is far deeper than political niceness,  indifference, or weakness. We recall the example of Dr. Martin Luther  King Jr., who could never be accused of a lack of passion; yet he  persisted in the non-violent treatment of his adversaries, hoping to win  them over rather than to win over them.   

Perhaps the most helpful article I've read comes from Martin Marty, a noted historian who has watched and commented on current events for decades. He finds guidance in Martin Luther's Shorter Catechism (Dr. Marty is a Lutheran and P-R-O-U-D of it!).  Luther is explaining the commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor" to what we would today call "teenagers".  

Martin Luther says this commandment means:  

"We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light." 

Now here is a spiritual exercise. Just as a litmus test let us suppose that you choose either Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin as your subject, whichever one rubs you the wrong way the most, and try it out. 

Maybe we can handle the first part: "We are to fear and love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander them, or destroy their reputations."  

But, what about that second part? Instead we are to come to their defense, speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible light." 

Not so easy, is it? Or maybe I'm just speaking for myself.  

It shows how much our souls are affected by what passes for public discourse these days that we may not feel a need to strictly "fact check" the criticisms we make of people we disagree with and even actively dislike. (I've read and passed on so many emails that I later learned were "urban legends" that I now check even the most plausible with Snopes.com .) And it is even sadder that we are almost proud of our suspicion and cynicism about public figures with whom we almost always disagree.  Indeed, many of us, I suspect, would feel that we would be betraying our own integrity if we ever " come to the defense, speak well of, and interpret everything [the public figure we despise] does in the best possible light." 

It is precisely here that we see and experience a spirituality that can counter the spiritual poison that often claims a bizarre caricature of Christianity as its basis and authority.  Christian "conviction" is not an excuse to put the cross-hairs on anyone, even metaphorically, and it precludes a self-righteous presumption (and I mean both those words theologically)  that we are completely right about any issue. 

Christian moral and spiritual conviction, in fact, demands non-violent discourse and action. It demands truth. Truth may not be comfortable for those who don't want to hear it. And the truth places two obligations on those who would speak it.  

One is that the speaker must be open to the possibility that he or she may not have the whole truth or even be mistaken. John Wesley used to preface some of his statements of deepest conviction by saying, "Until I am better instructed, I will believe . . . "  

The second is that the speaker of the truth must seek the ultimate good of the person being addressed. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that the white racists' souls would be saved if they were confronted with the truth about the evils of their racism, even though, in the short run it might deprive them of an economic or social advantage.  

Colson and Wallis give us an alternative that is open, I think, even to those who are not conventionally religious and it is liable to make those of us who are conventionally religious to become unconventionally open-minded and open-hearted:  

The scriptural admonition to pray for those in political authority is  more than a religious duty, it promotes good civic behavior. It is more  difficult to hate someone when you are praying for them. Jesus'  commandment to love our enemies, including those with whom we  politically disagree, is even more challenging and defies the ideologies  of both left and right.