Q. ram! Sorry I had asked you this a while back but I guess you needed time to think about it...
Do you remember the question on the mind and the soul I asked you?
A. Nope… Remind me please!
Q. The one where when someone has a mental disease like mine, which aspect of them does God judge?
What I mean to say is like for example at certain times one may be prone to changes in personality due to like hormonal imbalances. Or like in the case of multiple personalities and you find it’s just confusion between the two.
A. Man as a free being can only be moral or immoral, he can only do good or evil when his thoughts, words, actions or omissions involve his will. That is to say, when through the exercise of his freedom he chooses to do (or not to do) something. It is only when his free will is so engaged that he is said to be morally responsible.
Thoughts, words, actions or omissions that proceed from him without involving his free will cannot be termed good or evil, meritorious or damnable. For example: digestion is amoral; actions done from strong overwhelming emotion or when the mind is at that moment unclear due to drug/alcohol abuse or some mental illness also carry no responsibility. So do actions carried out under duress or while one is possessed.
But if in the first place you got high, or drunk on purpose, then that is morally reprehensible.
Q. Ok… I guess what makes up the soul is what I am asking... because in the end... you did do those things... and it’s really really hard at times to know if it’s you who made the final call to do them or if it wasn’t because when you think back everything happened in a flash.
There must be a blanket thing that God looks for. Something specific. Something that he chooses to base his judgement on. And in my mind the only thing that I can possibly think of that JUST MIGHT scrape through is “I tried”
But I don’t know if that’s enough.
A. It is! That you tried your best the way you know how to: that’s all that God is asking of us. He does try and teach us the best way though… But beyond that, all he asks is that we try our best.
One saint phrases it this way:
"As long as there is STRUGGLE , ascetical struggle, there is interior life. That is what Our Lord is asking of us: the will to want to love him with deeds, in the little things of every day. If you have conquered in little things, you will conquer in big ones." (Emphasis mine)
Q. Is trying to love really enough?
A. Yes.
To be continued…
3rd Feb 2019