[The following is the second of a six part blog, and is a revised version of a Lenten reflection given to my Lay Dominican Chapter on March 11, 2024. All italicized names are references to sources, which will be fully listed at the end. While I am a fan of gender inclusive language, for various reasons, I found it easier to stick to Paul’s terminology for purposes of this discussion.]
In the last blog, we defined the spiritual life as becoming one with God who is love, we laid the foundation for understanding that some part of our fallen nature resists such union with God, and we used Paul’s Old Man metaphor to describe this part of us. Today, we will pick up with the question – who is this Old Man?
We can say that the Old Man is the part of us that wants to live in the flesh. He is enamored with the goodness of creation, and, instead of giving the Creator praise for such goodness, he seeks to usurp such beauty for himself. For reasons I will explain later, he likes to hide in our subconscious, while he tries to trip us up. Barthelemy.
In John 3:19-21, Jesus talks about living in the light, and a part of this means allowing the Old Man, his beliefs, and his sabotage to come into the light. We have to see the good, the bad, and the ugliness within us. Self-awareness is an important part of the spiritual life. We need to look at the fallen part of human nature, and how the Old Man seeks to sabotage our efforts to live the divine life in Christ.
There are many ways one can describe the Old Man. From the perspective that life is about becoming Christ who is love, then we can see the Old Man in our pride; in how our thoughts, desires, and inclinations are predominately focused on ourselves:
“my conveniences, my pleasures, my preferences, my possessions, my prospects, my plans, my sufferings, my desires, my aspirations, my reputation, my freedom.” Dubay.
It can also manifest as self-rejection. Our subconscious might experience something like this, “[a]s soon as someone accuses us or criticizes us, as soon as we are rejected, left alone, or abandoned, we find ourselves thinking: ‘Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” Nouwen.
In addition, there are some who think that there is a deep seated fear in the subconscious of all humans, something buried in the dark, that we are worthless. The Old Man might be whispering to all of us – “if people really knew me, would they still love me?” He might be whispering, “I am no good.” Nouwen. Some would say that the prideful self is a means of burying the fear of worthlessness by projecting a self-confident facade into the world. Nouwen.
The truth is, I am broken, you are broken, everyone is broken. Nouwen. The only way to heal this brokenness is to give birth to the New Man, and in the next installment, we will look at how and why the Old Man seeks to sabotage our attempts to give birth to the New Man.
In Him,
dw
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