Good Morning fhansen,
The self is beautiful-and remains so-to the degree that it’s subjugated to its Creator: Him first above all else. Again, that’s lesson #1 for man. Once that knowledge and the obedience it calls for is ignored and dismissed then the self tends towards disorder, towards a lower state of being.
The mystery you are addressing here, I think, are these passages: from John 3:
19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
As much as we have the discipline to “love the sinner and hate the sin”, our love naturally follows where we find beauty and value. When we see sin, we naturally see something ugly and dark in the sinner. Is it necessarily a “lesson” for man that we not find beauty in all people, regardless of their behaviors, obedience, beliefs, etc.? The lesson#1 does not necessarily follow from the mysteries presented above. It can, but not necessarily so.
Is enslavement itself “a lower state of being”? Well, it certainly is not a desirable state when one looks at the whole, but being enslaved does not change the observation that people are beautiful. Is a person who hates the light no longer beautiful? This will depend on the observer.
“through the Spirit we see that whatsoever exists in any way is good” -St Augustine
So, through the Spirit we can see beauty in people even when they misbehave or are disobedient; of course the behaviors are to be corrected.
And how do we correct the behaviors? Well,(1) the most natural way is to express non-acceptance to the person, we could tell them that they are not good when they misbehave. This way is very much in line with a reason for upholding the “badness” of those who misbehave. A second way to correct behavior is to show the individual the harm of the behavior, appealing to the human’s natural desire to love. While it is true that “men love darkness” when they are ignorant, the enlightened person avoids doing what causes harm.
Note: “enlightened” includes much more than simple knowing of rules, it includes a knowing of* value*. The tricky part is that when we are in a natural punishment mode (#1 above) our minds are blocked from seeing value (part of #2).
That lesson, that understanding that we must, ultimately, love God with our whole heart, soul, mind, and strength comes before any consideration of particular moral acts-how humans might best behave, even as bad behavior should at least point us in the direction of looking for an answer as to why it takes place. That was the role of the Old Covenant, BTW, to demonstrate that man needs grace, to put it simply. And the New Covenant provides the answer.
Is it a “tampering” if we observe that bad behavior takes place because people are blind and ignorant, especially when they “love the darkness”? Is the mystery undermined?
I’m thinking Stephen may have omitted a better reference for mysteries. A more pertinent mystery may be this from the CCC:
518 Christ’s whole life is a mystery of recapitulation. All Jesus did, said and suffered had for its aim restoring fallen man to his original vocation:
When Christ became incarnate and was made man, he recapitulated in himself the long history of mankind and procured for us a “short cut” to salvation, so that what we had lost in Adam, that is, being in the image and likeness of God, we might recover in Christ Jesus.185 For this reason Christ experienced all the stages of life, thereby giving communion with God to all men.186
Does i.e. describing the “fall”, that is the fallen state of man, using “Original Ignorance” as a definition of “Original Sin” comprise a tampering that undermines the mystery?