I’ve been listening to the Daily Homilies on the Hallow App for about six weeks now more like five months now!, and one of the priests whose reflections have particularly stayed with me is Fr. John Burns. His most recent One of his homilies back in August…left me thinking long after it ended…AND this post sat in drafts for even LONGER! I drafted this sometime in August. Life with twins leaves things hanging on the back burner a lot longer than they used to. I’m also burning more things… Oh well… 🤷♀️
The Gospel was the beheading of John the Baptist, but Fr. Burns approached the passage from an angle I hadn’t considered before. He focused on the way sin can distort our perception of reality—so much so that we can begin to perceive the good itself as a threat. As a psychologist and student of Thomas Aquinas, I really enjoyed this reading of the reading. If you don’t mind scrolling back a few months to go find, give it a listen.
For context, John the Baptist was not a violent preacher. He was challenging. He wasn’t plotting against Herod. He wasn’t trying to overthrow him. He simply spoke the truth, but that made him dangerous!
Not objectively dangerous, of course. But dangerous to Herod’s way of life.
John’s words challenged something Herod wanted to protect. And once Herod became more concerned with protecting his reputation, his position, and his standing before others, the truth became something to defend himself against.
That is a deeply human tendency. We have a natural instinct for self-preservation instinct that has helped us with this thing called survival. It’s generally a good thing when rightly ordered.
We can get protective of all kinds of things that we link to our survival, because – insert attachment theory – our social connections become intimately intertwined with our sense of safety in the world! Thus, we can become protective of our reputations, our plans, our relationships, our sense of control, our image of who we are and how we think our lives should unfold.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to protect what is good. In fact, self-preservation is deeply wired into us. The problem comes when self-protection becomes our default posture—when we begin to interpret anything that threatens our comfort or control as something that must be resisted.
That is when protection can become defensiveness.
And defensiveness can become destructive.
When the Good Feels Threatening
Herod’s tragedy is that he seems to recognize something good in John. He knows John is righteous. He listens to him. Yet when the moment comes, Herod is trapped by his own need to preserve his image.
He has made a promise in front of his guests and has created expectations… Now, his reputation is now on the line!
And rather than endure the humiliation of breaking his word, he chooses to preserve his standing—even though doing so means taking the life of an innocent man…
Think about how twisted that is.
That is what makes the story so uncomfortable. Because while few of us will ever face a decision as horrific as Herod’s, the underlying temptation is familiar.
How often do I defend myself when I should listen?
How often do I protect my pride when I should apologize?
How often do I cling to control when I should surrender?
How often do I become irritated by the person who tells me something becuase it’s something truthful—not because they are wrong, but because it threatens the version of myself I would rather defend?
Sometimes the thing we perceive as a threat isn’t actually threatening us.
It is threatening our attachment to something we should be willing to surrender.
We Can Even Become Defensive Toward God
The Gospel readings that followed made this theme even more striking.
In Sunday’s Gospel, Jesus begins telling His disciples what awaits Him in Jerusalem: suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection.
Peter immediately objects and rebukes Jesus.
Think about that for a moment…Peter loves Jesus. He has left everything to follow Him. He believes in Him.
And yet Peter rejects God’s plan because God’s plan threatens his understanding of what should happen next.
The Messiah shouldn’t suffer, shouldn’t be defeated, and certainly shouldn’t die.
Peter is trying to protect Jesus—and perhaps, in some sense, protect himself—from a future he cannot understand and does not want to come to pass!
But in doing so, he finds himself resisting the very plan through which Christ will save the world!!!!
The Cross looks like a threat, but it is actually the path to salvation.
And perhaps that is one of the great spiritual dangers of self-protection: we can become so committed to preserving the life we know that we resist the life God is trying to give us.
What Are We Afraid to Lose?
This has made me think about the ways I can become defensive in my own life.
What am I afraid God might take from me?
What am I afraid I might have to surrender?
My plans? comfort? reputation? independence? expectations?
My idea of what a successful or happy life should look like?
We can become so attached to these things that God’s will begins to feel threatening.
And yet, what if the thing I’m desperately trying to protect is actually the thing keeping me from receiving what God wants to give me?
That is the paradox.
We think we are protecting ourselves, but sometimes we are protecting the very attachments that keep us from true freedom.
We think we are defending our lives, but sometimes we are defending a life that is smaller than the one God is inviting us into.
We think surrender means losing something. But with God, surrender is often how we finally become capable of receiving something greater.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have boundaries, wisdom, prudence, or appropriate self-care.
It means that we cannot make the preservation of ourselves the highest good.
Because when self-preservation becomes the highest good, everything else becomes subordinate to it—including truth, love, obedience, and sometimes even God Himself.
The Christian life asks us to become less defensive and more trusting.
Less concerned with protecting our image and more concerned with becoming holy. Less attached to controlling the outcome and more willing to follow. Less afraid of what we might lose and more attentive to what God might be asking us to receive.
Because sometimes what feels like a threat is actually an invitation.
Perhaps the question isn’t simply, “What am I protecting?”
Perhaps the deeper question is:
“What has my need to protect myself prevented me from receiving from God?”