This brings us to the contrasting Christian philosophy of self-expression. Christianity, like modern paganism, believes that repression is harmful, but it makes a necessary distinction. Christianity says that the repression of evil thoughts, desires, and acts - such as the urge to kill, despoil, calumniate, rob, injure, covet, hate - is good for the soul; it deplores the repression of guilt or sin through a denial of the need of confession. And it states that the repression of actual graces, inspirations to a good life, and the urge to sacrifice self for neighbor is bad for soul.

Christianity does not believe that the repression of the sex instinct is good. But it does believe in repression the abuse of these instincts, so as to prevent lust in the one case and gluttony in the other. The Church has never taught that a human being is made up of principally of two levels, the conscious and the unconscious; she states that there are three levels, body, soul, and the desire of God. Man is not just a beast, subject to the claims of his animal instincts; he has also ethical and spiritual selves that demand expression according to their natures. But this is not always easy.

The Church states that there is not an automatic subordination of the human body to the soul and of the whole personality to God - an ideal of ordered living that constitutes, for the Christian, the essence of self-expression. Both man and nature appear to have departed in some way from their original pattern or essence. Something has happened to damage human nature, and all the evidence points to the fact that this came about because man himself in some way abused his freedom. Both the world and man seem to have fallen; they are on a lower level than they were destined to be, and the responsibility for this fall cannot be placed upon God.

It must be man. Because of this fall, there is a bias toward evil in man; as a result, the body does not always submit itself to the soul, nor does the soul always look, for its commands, to God. Sometimes the body makes claims that are very imperative, although they are against the best interests of the soul. Sometimes the soul, in its turn, is willing to concede primacy to those libidos, on the grounds that the return will be much more immediate than the returns of the spirit.

Because there are three and not two elements involved in human personality, it follows that the Christian doctrine of self-abandonment is radically different from the philosophy of abandonment to the animal instincts. Those who believe in carnal self-realization "do not seem able to grasp the fact that to embrace any and every experience is the easiest thing in the world, whereas to refuse some experiences for the sake of possessing others is an infinitely harder but truer method of attaining self-realization. Moreover, it is fatal to talk smoothly of the necessity of self-realization without taking the slightest thought as to what sort of self is to be realized."

Materialist psychology believes in a passive abandonment of the soul, in which the higher part of the personality gives free rein to the lower part and its spontaneous appetites. It falsely believes that, by living according to animals inheritance, personality will receive back from the mysterious animal forces those gifts of creativity that the sick soul has lost. The Christian, on the contrary, believes, not in a passive abandonment, but in an active abandonment that consists in an effort of self-control. The soul takes itself in hand, disciplines the lower errant passions to bend them to higher aims. Just as the farmer could not live unless he had domesticated the animals and made them subject to himself, so man cannot live with himself unless he trains the wild beasts that are within him, makes them subject to himself, and then, in turn, surrenders his whole personality to God.

Happiness consists in overcoming the bias to evil by realizing one's Divine vocation and by overcoming the urge of nature; and this is not achieved through the orgiastic release of primeval forces, but rather through an askesis that amounts almost to violence. This is what Our Blessed Lord Jesus had in mind when He said that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and only the violent will bear it away. To the Christian, the way of perfection is the way of discipline, because he or she understands perfection as the satisfaction of personality in its highest reaches - namely, the attainment of life and truth and love, which is God. If a person passively abandons himself, he is doomed to death in his present condition. To recover health, he must take a bitter medicine and undergo a kind of operation.

When Our Blessed Lord Jesus spoke of His doctrine as a yoke, He asked His followers to be pure in a world full of Freudians; to be poor in spirit in a world of competitive capitalism; to be meek amid the armament makers; to mourn among the pleasure seekers; to hunger and thirst after justice amid the pragmatists; to be merciful among those whose would seek revenge. Anyone who does these things will be hated by a world that does not want God.

The Christian law of discipline is very different from both the Hindu and the Greek ways of perfection, which were based upon a kind of self-induced indifference. Generally, the Hindu was indifferent to the world. The Christian rejects the idea that a person ought to work either for the extinction of his soul or for a complete detachment from the world order. His Church tells him that self-expression is inseparable from the salvation of the world and of the individual soul. That is why the essence of the Christian system is seem in Sacraments that utilize the disordered elements of the universe by sanctifying them, so that they are made to serve the purpose of the soul and the furtherance of human personality. By accepting the supreme worth of both the world and of humanity, the Church says the purpose of our saving ourselves is also that of saving the world.

A further forgotten point on the subject of Christian asceticism is that self-discipline, which is the condition of self-expression, is seen not as an end, but a means. The end of all self-discipline is love. Anyone, therefore, who makes the taming of animal impulses the end and prime purpose of his life - as some of the Oriental mystics do - achieves the negation of the flesh but not the affirmation of the spirit. Saint Paul told the Corinthians that, if a person should deliver his body to be burned, it would profit him nothing unless he had Divine Love.

The Christian uses mortification to liberate himself from the slavery of his fallen nature, freeing himself to live in God's Love. Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ never said that carnal desires in themselves were evil. He said only that we must not permit them to burden the soul with such anxiety for their satisfaction that we lose the greater treasures. The end of Christian living is the attainment of love, and there is a double commandment touching this love: one, to love God; the other, to love neighbor. To realize either aspect, some asceticism is required. The only way we can help ourselves to love God is by conquering our selfishness, and the only way that we can ever conquer the evil in our neighbors is by making them feel the beneficent power of our love.

That love can be choked and nearly destroyed by other weeds besides lust. Worldliness is one of these. An almost forgotten truth, even among some practicing Christians, is that it is never the physical world, but only the spirit of the world, that is evil; therefore the soul must detach itself from the world. "Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in Him." - 1John 2:15 - This word that Saint John castigates is not the world of our bread and butter existence, but rather the secular spirit that regards time and space as a closed system from which God is excluded. Politics and economics divorced from the moral law, education without religion - these are some of the manifestations of the worldly spirit, and all of them are harmful.

                                                                      Page 2
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless. 

By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -