Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [124]
Not that pride impels them to attach an undue importance to their social image; it is merely that they are to such a degree swayed by the (real or imaginary) impression they produce on others that their genuine experiences and spontaneous impulses are crushed beneath the weight of that all-comprehensive dependence.
The perspective in which they suppose others to see things destroys their contact with the objects that solicit their response. Hence, their behavior becomes the function of whatever, at the moment, happens to be their environment. In the company of people whom they know or suspect to be irreligious, for instance, they will be ashamed to cross themselves at table or to say their Breviary in the train.
Love may sometimes call us to moderate the display of our convictions
Of course, it is not a good thing either to lack all faculty of empathy—of sensing and being in tune with other people’s emotions—and, confining oneself entirely to the thematic object of one’s attitude, to be wholly unconcerned with the effect it is bound to produce. As has been hinted above, both natural ingenuousness and a primary emphasis on being in harmony with other people’s states of mind are inadequate.
True freedom means, not either of these, but the habit of seeing everything in conspectu Dei, and hence giving heed to the state of mind prevailing in one’s environment.
Thus, there are situations in which charity requires me to exercise particular discretion lest I should perplex or repel others; in which, that is to say, the emphatic profession of my faith might act as an irritant to such persons around me as are neither firm believers nor perhaps very decided unbelievers, and embitter their opposition.
Love, then, may secondarily compel us to ponder the impression our behavior is likely to produce; but on no account must the thought of that impression substitute itself for the free unfolding of our own experience and thus automatically govern our conduct. We must never, from natural weakness, become dependent on the anticipated and often, in fact, merely imagined impression on others. This secondary, shadowy, and false aspect must not come to dominate objective reality to the point of making us unable to give adequate response to God or values because others might misconstrue it.
This automatic deformation of our own experience, this illegitimate dependence on the errors and delusions of others, has nothing in common with a conscious and superior consideration—sanctioned by our free personality—for our brethren of an infirm faith, which causes us to omit certain manifestations of our religious allegiance in the sense of an express sacrifice.
As we have said, this second form of human respect is an offspring not of pride but of a general weakness and an excessive receptivity to impressions. We can overcome it, too, however, by the spirit of a basic surrender to God. It depends on our free will whether we simply deliver ourselves to its compulsion or withstand it. By yielding to this tendency in our nature, we become more and more slaves.
On the other hand, if we combat it resolutely—if, again and again, we follow the spontaneous impetus of our experience, for the sake of God and in conscious disregard of our environment—we shall not fail gradually to free ourselves from the tyranny of that extraneous domination.
Only let its magic circle be pierced frequently (and with conscious design, not merely by accident owing to the intensity of our emotion) and it will ultimately fade away.
Pliability of views may hinder freedom
Close to this second form of human respect, we find a further type of unfreedom: that which results from too great a receptivity to outside influences as such. Certain people are inclined to