Tag: devil

CURING INDIVIDUALISM

Scripture says Satan, the Father of Lies

loves to deceive mortals

and so all private revelations/claims of visions/voices

are subjected to rigorous discernment

by Vatican authorities

Teresa of Avila had a private revelation

a vision of an Interior Mansion inside everyone

and we progress from one inner mansion to another

and riches/treasures/joys are in the fifth mansion

and the majority of people gain admittance there

and the devil is kept out

and the Vatican approved this vision 

as far as visions go, believers cannot trust society

to tell us the ways of God and Satan 

because society is confused/blown about 

by constant winds of change/

only concerned with pragmatism/and immediate consequences

and so, believers must somehow learn

to trust God again 

and there is objective good/objective truth

society cannot save us for 

“It has become normal to feel ill-at-ease

as we watch the fraying rope

of our culture unravel strand by strand

and slowly break” – Bruce Cockburn

families tie society together but individualism unravels them

curing individualism comes from recognizing

we are essentially social beings

we are all subjects before God

we are interdependent

and called to unity/accountability for others/the world/ourselves

the best way to be accountable is thru contemplation

for the essence of contemplation 

is to experience God’s “I AM” which:

illumines your own “i am”

ties us all together as one family of daughters/sons of God

being loved by one Eternal Mother/Father

being mindful of the Holy Spirit/the Present Moment/

healing of all our mental/physical wounds/

awareness of Jesus the Great Healer/the healing of the Trinity.

EVER-ADAPTING CHRISTIANITY

In the triad of world/flesh/devil

it is almost always the sins of the “flesh”

that are attacked by churches –

birth control/adultery/abortion/pornography

and seldom do sermons preach about the sins of the “world” –

the lust for wealth and prestige that the ego loves.

 

But the difference between the True Self

and the False Self is the difference between

“True Centering” (on God) and “Ego Centering” (on Self).

 

In fact, the True Self can include the False Self

because the way we become whole as humans

is by embracing every aspect of our existence –

our weakness/failures/mistakes

by humility/not taking ourselves too seriously –

we grow by wholeness not by absolute moral purity

which we never reach anyway.

 

Still, we consign to the unconscious

all fantasy, all psychic associations connected with

words/numbers/stones/plants/animals –

but for primitives all these things had numinous power.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche dismissed all primitives

and fancied himself to be a Rational Existentialist –

one who has the courage to stare into the abyss of non-being

and discover complete loneliness, complete aloneness

if God is dead.

 

There have been many Rational Christian responses

that have deconstructed the “death of God” movement

and people like Marcus Borg and Bishop John Shelby Spong

have also helped us deconstruct Bibical Fundamentalism

and there are many Postmodern Christian thinkers

like Brian McLaren with his book A Generous Orthodoxy

and others have developed The Postmodern Bible

and The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology.

 

As usual, Christianity has adapted to/learned from/gone beyond

whatever the world/the devil/the ego throws at us –

we always include and then transcend

all attempts to deconstruct the Truth.

RETHINKING GOD AND EVIL SPIRITS

The older I get the harder I find it to say what our “ineffable” (unsayable) God is like. A long time ago I dropped the “God is an old man in the sky waiting to punish me if I do wrong” narrative. That god is really Zeus not the God of the Bible. All that the old man image needs is some lightning bolts.

Christians often say that “God is love” and indeed it says that throughout the scriptures. Lately I have been thinking that God is not just love, God is also wisdom, patience, forgiveness, trust, etc. In fact, the Dalai Lama said “My religion is kindness.” God is all virtues.

So, whenever someone is engaging in virtues or “spirits” like gentleness, peacemaking, compassion, justice, fortitude and goodness, God is manifesting through them. God is incarnate (embodied) in them. God is all these good spirits. This liberates God from being restricted to any one church or religion. Anyone engaging in these virtues/spirits, whether they are a believer in God or not, has God working in them, whether they acknowledge God or not.

As a believer, I can therefore comfortably relate to atheists or anyone who exhibits these spirits, basically to “all people of good will.”

On the other hand I am starting to think of evil spirits not as beings in red tights with horns and pitchforks (I never thought of them that way but I did not know how to say what they are either) but rather as spirits of lust, anger, gluttony, pride, deceit, greed, fear and so on. Anyone engaging in these vices has an evil spirit working in them.

God is manifest or incarnate in the world in anyone who has the good spirits/virtues working in them. And evil spirits are manifest/incarnated in anyone who has chosen to let the evil spirits listed above to go to work in them. So devils/evil spirits might manifest themselves as a greedy banker, corrupt politician or lawyer, schoolyard bully, etc. There are indeed evil spirits among us, just as God is among us.