Hugo Schwyzer

When it comes to most issues, I have very little in common with the revered Catholic neo-conservative, Richard John Neuhaus. But in 2001, at the recommendation of my friend Steve, I started subscribing to his First Things magazine. I’ve renewed my subscription faithfully each year since, as I find the seriousness and the liveliness of the writing to be desperately good. (I wish that there were an equivalent publication on the religious left; Sojourners may match up better with my politics, but I rarely find articles within its pages that make me gasp at the beauty of the prose.)

Like a lot of First Things readers, I read the last thing in the magazine first: “The Public Square”, Neuhaus’ long, biting, frequently uncharitable but always delicious commentary on all sorts of matters political, ecclesiastical, and moral. And every once in a while, just when I’m about to get completely fed up with this ageing reactionary, he writes something so dead on right I leap to my feet in excitement. Last night, during chinchilla out time, I read this:

We are all uncertain about what God wants us to do. That is to say, we do not know for sure. Of course it seems silly, when you’re well past middle age and have spent your life doing what you believe you’ve been given to do, to always be getting up in the morning or suddenly stopping in the middle of the day’s work to ask, “Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” I mentioned this to a young man who is discerning whether he has a call to the priesthood, and he was shocked, perhaps scandalized. He said, in effect, “You mean after all these years of being a priest, of writing books, of editing and lecturing, of organizing so many projects, you still aren’t sure you’re doing what God called you to do? How am I ever to know that God is calling me to the priesthood?” The answer is that we act in the courage of our uncertainties. I am fond of pointing out that the word decide comes from the Latin decidere, “to cut off.” You face choices—whether to be a priest, whether to go to this school or that, whether to marry a certain person, whether to pursue this line of work or another—and then you decide. And, in deciding, you have cut off the alternatives and pray you have decided rightly. But you do not know for sure. Or else you are trapped in the tangled web of indecision. In this connection, I have had frequent recourse, both homiletically and personally, to one of the most liberating passages from Saint Paul—1 Corinthians 4. He has been trying to explain himself and his apostolate to the Christians in Corinth. He doesn’t know whether he has succeeded, and then he says this: “But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. . . . Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” Do not judge before the time! I do not even judge myself! These are the words of a life set free from the tangled web of introspection and indecision.

We act in the courage of our uncertainties. That’s good stuff. Better than good; it’s perfect.

I’ve written before of the great mistake of “waiting to be struck by certainty”. Deciding — where to go to school, whether to make a romantic commitment, what job to take, whether to have children — is hard. But as Neuhaus reminds us, God does not make our decision for us; he gives us certainty (if it comes at all) long after we have chosen, not before. Certainty, if it comes at all, is a reward bestowed on those who had the courage to “cut off” other options, to close forever the doors to rooms they won’t be coming back to.

I do a lot of mentoring in my business, as Neuhaus does in his. I spend a lot of time with folks half my age (and these days, closer to a third my age.) They want advice on what to major in. They want advice on where to go to school, on whether or not to live at home while parents pay the bills or live on campus and incur loans. Some have more intimate worries, about pre-marital sex or abortion or “coming out” or addiction or ending an abusive relationship. I’m not averse to giving advice, but I try and remind my students and mentees that the certainty and confidence that they attribute to me wasn’t a gift given at random. Whatever certainty I have (and I am, like most, still plagued by debilitating attacks of doubt) is the result of both grace and effort — the former from God, the latter from me.

In one instant on the phone with the dean of human resources in 1994, I chose a community college career and lifetime tenure. I turned my back on a life of publishing and scholarship to work “in the trenches”. I cut off one whole set of dreams, knowing that I had reached a pivotal “deciding moment”, a moment when I needed to prune the branches of possibility. It took me several years to be certain I’d made the right choice.

In 1992, I was miserable in my first marriage. The child of two divorced parents, I had sworn to the highest heavens that I would marry once and once only. I married my first wife in a high Catholic ceremony, in a church that teaches that the marriage bond is dissoluble. After not-quite two years, I was deeply and profoundly unhappy, and so was the woman to whom I was married. For months, I agonized about what to do, about whether to stay or to go. I contemplated having a series of extra-marital affairs, hoping to have fulfillment on the side while maintaining the public fiction that I could do what my parents did not, which was have a marriage that would last until death itself.

Finally, one blazing hot Sunday afternoon, driving through the Sepulveda Pass, I made my decision. I had no blinding flash of light, no “road to Damascus” moment. What I had on that day (July 19, 1992) was the sudden realization that “waiting to be struck by certainty” would mean years and years of living a wasted shell of a life. I had a sudden understanding that the God I loved would be waiting for me, to comfort me and sustain me (and my soon-to-be-ex-wife) — but He was waiting on the Other Side of the Decision. The comfort and certainty I sought would come only after I chose. It would not and could not be the catalyst for the decision itself. And so I went back home, to a dusty apartment in a dingy part of Van Nuys, and made a decision. And in time, the blessed certainty came.

All those memories came back to me reading Neuhaus last night.

Hurrah, hurrah, for the courage of our uncertainties.