“The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of a surprising act or word. They stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinacy of nonexistence. We are inextricably bound to the plot, and wearily God forces us, here and there, according to his attention, characters without poetry, without free will.”

– Graham Greene in “The End of the Affair”


Freshman year of college I read “The End of the Affair” and came across this paragraph. It is one of Greene’s tangential reflections that grabbed hold of my imagination. And since then I have been caught up in the idea that saintliness and freedom and originality may be one and the same thing.

I have always had a desire to seem original. In high school I felt so incredibly transparent and uncomplicated that I would go out of my way to know information that most 16 year olds would know. My life felt so predictable that I filled my head with unpredictable information. I did not want others to be able to accurately assume all of my beliefs at one glance. And thus began my lifelong mission of avoiding cliché.

Clichés are either very honest or very dishonest. The dishonest ones are trying to fit a particular image because they want to be perceived as part of a certain class of people, be it cheerleader or youth group leader. The honest ones fit a particular image because they do not have the energy for individuality. Both honest and dishonest conformism appear the same; there is no clear delineation. Reacting against cliché is a sort of dishonest conformism. You look like all the others nonconformists but you pretend you’re different. There really is no escaping conformism. It’s like trying to escape language. You can invent your own in protest, but then no one understands you and the whole point is lost.

I would rather have an honest cliché than a dishonest original. Original thinkers are still trapped in sin. Their actions are as predictable as the final rhyme in a Hallmark card. They do not have a freedom of movement. Who are they but rebels with the obstinacy of nonexistence? When our self-created meaning fails to satisfy, we choose to live in the hell of nonexistence, to lock the doors from the inside, so the heaven is barred from us forever. We sit in this eternal self-created box, walls built firmly around us by our own hand. Walls too strong for to be to torn down with hands. These are ugly walls, no real architecture at all, just uninspired concrete slabs. But they are ours. We choose our fate rather than our destiny. But the dishonest originals call it destiny.

I do not want to be trapped in my sin. I want the freedom that comes from joy and trust. Samuel Wells believes that freedom comes when we learn to respond automatically, when we internalize the precepts of the gospel, when we unconsciously act in a Christ-like way. He writes, “Those with the relaxed awareness, who take the right things for granted, are what the church calls saints.” And in this state of unselfish, unself-consciousness, the saints are able to move beyond themselves into something new. In them, the glory of creation, the glory of newness, is displayed.

I want to be a saint. I want to live without pondering every implication, live in the freedom of the knowledge that I am doing the right thing. But how do you learn to take the right things for granted? How do you learn hope in a world that teaches despair or life in a world full of death? Perhaps for me it begins by learning to risk action. If I do not take this risk I will fail to engage the world because I am looking for some undiscovered, original way of avoiding failure. And to do so would be to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, a prophecy in which I am an unsuccessful Messiah, unable to deliver salvation. Instead, I must trust that I myself do not have to work things together for good. I step forward and fall and believe that my scrapes will be healed and my blood will be wiped up and something good will come of the fall. But the learning is difficult and it stretches before me as long as I battle my own obstinacy.