[The following is the third 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 two segments, we talked about how our spiritual life is about becoming one with God who is selfless and self-giving, and about how a part of our fallen nature resists this union. We named this part of us the Old Man, a term used in Paul’s letters, and how we have to give birth to the New Man. Today, we want to talk about how and why the Old Man sabotages our efforts.
The Old Man sabotages our efforts because he knows that the birth of the New Man is his death. In his efforts to stay alive, uses a lot of tricks. It is important to know that he is sly and cunning. He stays in the dark of our subconscious because he knows the conscious self would reject his thoughts. He puts on the guise of religion, and offers our conscious self various idols or false images in hopes that the conscious self buys into a watered down versions of God; watered down versions of what it means to be Christian. He tries to sell our subconscious on a God who is comfortable and easy to live with. He is so subtle that we can buy into these false gods without even knowing it. We are capable of living for a long time without suspecting that he is gradually tainting our image of God, and he placates our conscience by remaining faithful to a god, but a god far removed from the true God we think we are worshiping. Barthelemy.
There is nothing he won’t do to stay in the dark. He wants to go on living as “a parasite in the bosom of our good intentions, in the bosom of all that passes for what is noblest in man’s heart.” There is nothing he cannot make use of or twist to his own ends. Barthelemy.
Let me show you an example. I recently read the following description of the church in Galatia, which summarizes what was going on in Galatia and why Paul wrote to them:
The Church at Galatia found freedom too demanding and too indefinite. They sought to return to the Old Law. In the Old Law, they found control and safety. There was no need for humility or vulnerability. In effect, the freedom found in charity was too ambiguous and bereft of the kind of certitude they were used to. Olson. We can see in this description the wiliness of the Old Man who seeks to convince us that:
– we need to take charge of our relationship with God, and make up our own rules on how to live it;
– we need benchmarks or standards against which to judge our progress, and sometimes these benchmarks are about comparing ourselves to others, which can result in the sin of judging others against our benchmarks; and
– God’s gift of salvation isn’t gratuitous; that there is some amount of doing that is required.
The Old Man wants us to forget that the doing [how we live our Christian life] is about becoming, because becoming what we were made to be [one with God who is love] is the means by which we put the Old Man to death. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to bring the Old Man’s works into the light so we can watch out for his tricks. We need the Holy Spirit to heal our perceptions of God and any watered down ideas that limit our ability to live the fullness of life Christ purchased for us.
In the next segment, we will look at why the Old Man resists.
In Him,
dw
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