What the Christian Psychotherapist can bring into the room that the secularist clinician just can't

  From a speech delivered to a clergy group in Switzerland by Carl Gustav Jung

 People forget that even doctors have moral scruples and that certain patient’s confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow yet the patient does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him is accepted too. No one can bring this about by mere words. It comes only through reflection and through the doctor’s attitude towards himself and his own dark side.

If the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a step of the way, he must feel with that person’s psyche. He never feels it when he passes judgment. Whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference. To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient offhand is also of no use. Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity.

This sounds almost like a scientific precept and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract attitude of mind, but what I mean is something quite different. It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’s life.

 

The truly religious person has this attitude; he knows that God has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass and seeks in the most curious ways to enter a man’s heart. He therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the divine will. This is what I mean by unprejudiced objectivity. It is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor who ought not to let himself be repelled by sickness and corruption.

 

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow sufferer. I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgment when we desire to help and improve. But, if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is and he can do this, in reality, only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.

 

Perhaps this sounds very simple but simple things are always the most difficult. In actual life, it requires the greatest art to be simple. And so, acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life. That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yay the very fiend himself, that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy whom must be loved, what then?

 

Then, as a rule, the whole truth of Christianity is reversed. There is then no more talk of love and long-suffering. We say to the brother within us, Raka, and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide him from the world. We deny ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves and had it been God himself who drew near to us in this despicable form we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.

 

Healing may be called a religious problem. In the sphere of social or national relations, the state of suffering may be civil war and this state is to be cured by the Christian virtue of forgiveness and love of one’s enemies. That, which we recommend with the conviction of good Christians as applicable to external situations we must also apply inwardly in the treatment of neurosis. This is why modern man has heard enough about guilt and sin. He is sorely beset by his own bad conscience and wants rather to know how he is to reconcile himself with his own nature, how he is to love the enemy in his own heart and call the wolf his brother.

 

The modern man does not want to know in what way he can imitate Christ but in what way he can live his own individual life, however meagre and uninteresting it may be. It is because every form of imitation seems to him deadening and sterile that he rebels against the force of tradition that would hold him to well-trodden ways. All such roads for him lead in the wrong direction.

 

He may not know it, but he behaves as if his own individual life were God’s special will which must be fulfilled at all costs. This is the source of his egoism, which is one of the most tangible evils of the neurotic state. But the person who tells him he is too egoistic has already lost his confidence, and rightly so, for that person has driven him still further into his neurosis.

 

If I wish to affect a cure for my patients, I am forced to acknowledge the deep significance of their egoism. I should be blind indeed if I did not recognize it as a true will of God. I must even help the patient to prevail in his egoism. If he succeeds in this, he estranges himself from other people, he drives them away and they come to themselves, as they should, for they were seeking to rob him of his sacred egoism! This must be left to him, for it is his strongest and healthiest power.

It is a true will of God that sometimes drives him into complete isolation. However wretched this state may be, it also stands him in good stead, for in this way alone can he get to know himself and learn what an invaluable treasure is the love of his fellow beings. It is, moreover, only in the state of complete abandonment and loneliness that we experience the helpful powers of our own natures.

When one has several times seen this development at work, one can no longer deny that what was evil has turned to good and that what seemed good kept alive the forces of evil. the archdemon of egoism leads us along the royal road to that ingathering that religious experience demands. what we observe here is a fundamental law of life: enantiodromia or ‘conversion into the opposite’. and it is this that makes possible the reunion of the warring halves of the personality, and thereby brings the civil war to an end.

 

From a speech delivered to a clergy group in Switzerland by Carl Gustav Jung

Image from C.G Jung Red Book

 

The Creation Myth and the Structure of Desire

 The Creation Myth and the Structure of Desire

This essay is a reflection on a few of the primary symbols from the biblical story of the Garden of Eden as seen through an archetypal lens. I focus on four specific symbols:

1. God
2. the Garden of Paradise/the Wilderness
3. the Serpent
4. the Forbidden Fruit,

for which I will offer an archetypal analysis and psychological interpretation of the way in which they structure our unconscious creation myth. With any symbol it is important to keep in mind that it has both a subjective personal dimension and an objective archetypal or mythological dimension.  Both dimensions of meaning are relevant in any analysis of the symbol, and both have psychological and spiritual currency.  

A good place to start this analysis is to revisit the outline of the myth.

The basic structure of this myth then is something like this:

The story of the Garden of Eden is a theological use of mythological themes to explain human progression from a state of innocence and bliss to the present human condition of knowledge of sin, misery, and death. According to the Genesis account (2:4–3:24), God created Adam from the dust of the ground and then planted the Garden of Eden with the “tree of life” and the forbidden “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” at its centre. God tasked Adam with tending the garden and naming the animals therein and gave him the single command to not eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Lacking a helper for his work, Adam was put into a deep sleep while God took from him a rib and created a companion, Eve. The two were persons of innocence and lived unashamedly without clothes as husband and wife. However, an evil serpent in the garden deceived Eve, who ate of the prohibited fruit and gave some to Adam. With newly opened eyes, they recognized their nakedness and donned fig leaves as garments. Immediately God saw their transgression and proclaimed their punishments—for the woman, pain in childbirth and subordination to man and, for the man, relegation to an accursed ground with which he must toil and sweat for his subsistence. God clothed them with animal skins and then cast them out of the paradise garden, posting an angel armed with a sword of fire there to prevent their return.[1]

Adam and Eve exist in a state of innocent (childlike) bliss in the Garden of Eden, wherein all their needs are met, and they do not know or experience any suffering. The only moral injunction they need to follow is not to eat from the tree of knowledge, which, of course, they do. In so doing their eyes are opened and they recognise “their nakedness”. This has a few unfortunate consequences: they are expelled from the Garden, take on the burden of suffering, and are barred from eating from the Tree of Life, i.e., they are now condemned to mortality and the experience of death. 

On the upside they know something they didn’t know before. They now know right from wrong, so there is an evolution in consciousness.

Recently a student of mine had an experience that symbolically echoed this myth and in reflecting on this I recognised the following simple archetypal structure in the myth.[2] Before I unpack this for you, understand I am not suggesting that this is all these symbols mean, or even that these are necessarily their primary meanings. Rather I am suggesting that the following  interesting and illuminating archetypal structure is contained and evident in the ambit of these symbols and their relational structure in the myth.

The Symbols:

The Garden of Paradise symbolises a status quo. A certain situation that is, if not without any issues, still ideal or idealised in some sense. It is the state of bliss that we enjoy when we are ignorant of a certain truth or knowledge that once we know it is disruptive. It symbolises the containment we once felt in the world (the garden) when were children and the “burden of knowing” was carried by our parents, teachers, and our elders. When the home we once lived in, think of the home you were born into for example,  was “perfect”, where you felt safe, contained, “at home”. It could also be a bed, a room, a space, your body, a relationship, a physical space, a place of worship, nature, an environment. The topos or locus, physical or symbolic, within which the subject experiences communion with divine as a benign presence, innocence, security, beauty, or transcendence. The Garden is ordered, curated, and predictable. It can surprise and delight us on occasion, but it doesn’t overwhelm us. The mysterium tremendum[3] is held at bay and does not overwhelm us. The garden constitutes a Temenos[4] that contains and protects us from the terror of the mysterium tremendum.

The wilderness is where we are we find ourselves have been ejected from the Garden,

Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken.  He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.[5]

The symbol of the wilderness in its biblical context is of a place where the symbolic structure and  the Law break down, Cultivation, curation, and care by the Father are absent, or at least not readily present,  in the wilderness. We have left the side of the Shepard and are left to fend for ourselves. “The voice of one crying in the Wilderness”[6] It is a transitional space when we have left our Father’s home but not yet necessarily come home to ourselves.

“God”, of course is a tough nut to crack in the game of symbolic hermeneutics. For the purposes of what I am going to propose though, “He” is best thought of as a supreme personal value, an overarching belief, which informs and governs your value system and morals. An overarching meta-myth or value. The nom du père (name-of-the-father) from Lacan.

The Serpent is a little more intuitively accessible. We all get a sense of who and what the serpent is. The serpent is not without wisdom, on the contrary it is said of the serpent that it “….was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.”[7] And this wisdom not without value, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” [8] But as a mythological character, and as lays out  the Edenic myth  it can lead us into temptation, “and he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’, ” [9] and dire consequence. [10]

The serpent as a symbol might be thought of as libido itself, the fiery energy and impulse of desire.

The Forbidden Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge is apparent object in the myth. Or at least its object is for Eve to taste the Forbidden Fruit and thereby commit the first heretical act. So, the Forbidden Fruit is the object of desire, that which illuminates, at least to the extent it bestows knowledge and abolishes ignorance. And sampling it has dire consequence, permanent expulsion form the Garden.

Armed with these reflections, let’s classify our four symbols in the following fashion:

1. God as the deep structure of meaning, value or belief.
2. the Garden of Paradise or the Wilderness refers to our relative psychospiritual location.
3. the Serpent is the character (NB, not object) of our desire.
4. the Forbidden Fruit is the object of desire, i.e., its symbolic form.

What I am proposing is that by reflecting on these the character of these four symbols we might learn something about the structure of our own personal creation myth.

Two examples

A)  a woman in her early thirties.

1. Non-duality.
2. Lives in the Wilderness, expelled from the Garden.
3. Actions-without-consequences.
4. Her own immaculate image.

B) a man of middle-age.

1. Meaning.
2. Locates himself in the Garden of Paradise.
3. Greed.
4. Pleasure and power.

Don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of the examples. A lot of reflection and self-insight allowed the two subjects in the examples above to arrive at these seemingly simple formulations. Identifying the structure, one’s own creation myth in this fashion illuminates a central subjective motif, telos, and orientation, which, once done, will afford you greater self-understanding and  consciousness.  It is axiomatic in these types of psycho-educational exercisers that your primary aspiration should be truth rather than “virtue”. Don’t be invested in looking good to yourself, or anyone else, the real virtue here is honesty. It is the essential ingredient and character necessary to make progress in any self-reflective endeavour, most especially one that attempts to illuminate hidden areas of the psyche or soul.

The Primal Wound

Building on the above we can use this structure to reflect on our “primal wound”. As the name suggests, this idea refers in the field of depth psychology to an early and lasting psychological wounding or trauma, typically related to the parents. It is also sometimes referred to as the experience of “castration” which is, at least in the Freudian framework, the form of the primary wound. This refers explicitly to the “castrating father”, but more broadly and accurately to the infant’s initial recognition of the hard cap or limit to the satisfaction of their desire.

How can the symbols and their structure, as detailed above, illuminate this question?

These symbols also reflect something about the structure and essence of our core beliefs and desires. This juxtaposition should illuminate our typically quite opaque primal wound. I won’t go as far as to say it makes it fully explicit, which would be too strong a claim, but it does, or should, if you have been able to authentically identify these symbols in your own psychic economy, offer some insight.

To do this, let’s slightly reframe and carefully reconsider the relationship of the 4 symbols slightly:

1. God in the myth, or the supreme meaning in our analytical usage above can also be framed as expressing our cardinal value or belief. This is the transmission of a spiritual truth from “the Father” and also expresses what Freud called the Superego’s position.
2. Our relative locale in the Garden or the Wilderness speaks to the presence and our fidelity to this guiding principle in 1.
3. The character of our desire is an expression of instinct, the body and is anti-spiritual and anti-symbolic, it is the antithesis of spiritual culture and gives voice to that which has not fallen under the jurisprudence of the supreme meaning or value.

1 to 3 is the structure and character of the primal wound.

4. The symbolised desire is an expression of the dissonance (wounding) of 1- 3). It is a synthesis or symbolisation of that dissonance and attempts to bridge the gap opened up by this dissonance.

Although it is speculative and also to some degree draws on data not available in this analysis, applying this analytical method to the two examples provided above, we get something like this. In the case of A) one might speculate that narcissism compensates an infantile sense of helplessness/impotence, which would be the character of the primal wound. In the case of B) greed and gluttony compensate the unmet need for meaning, which would be the basic character of the primal wound.

Happiness vs. Meaning and the structure of desire

There is another potential use of this analytical tool that I would like to highlight for you. It is worth reflecting on the two consequences of obtaining and ingesting the forbidden fruit, which, within the symbolic framework I have suggested, is the object, or “object cause” if you prefer, of your desire. The two consequences that are I suggest essentially linked are: illumination and consequent expulsion for the garden.

In thinking about this, and notwithstanding the narrative framing in the biblical story, i.e., expulsion from the Garden of Paradise as a punishment imposed by a wrathful God, we recognise two highly identifiable and universal psychological axioms. Now whether we should infer from this that God baked his wrath in perpetuity, or rather consider the biblical story as allegorical of an archetypal structure I will not propose to judge. Either way, the structure is as follows.

The object of our desire is always forbidden! At least psychologically speaking.  And this status of being forbidden is precisely what makes it desirable.

As John Milton sardonically put it in the Devil’s Advocate (1997),

Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste, don’t swallow. Ahaha. And while you’re jumpin’ from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He’s laughin’ His sick, fuckin’ ass off! He’s a tight-ass! He’s a SADIST! He’s an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!

As you well know, a desire obtained is a far cry my dear friends from the sweetness of the one just out of reach.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action: and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad.

Mad in pursuit and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream.

   All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. [11]

In “eating” the forbidden fruit I come to know something I did not know before. Knowing this, I am expelled from the utopian state I previously existed in the Garden of Paradise. I now recognise my containment as containment, my symbol as mere symptom. I am ready to spit on that which heretofore I considered sacred. In eating the forbidden fruit, I crack open the symbolic structure which previously held me so securely, lovingly, and benignly. I expose a certain malevolence, malignancy, and verdigris, previously absent or unseen in my utopia.

What, one may reasonably ask here, is the answer to this archetypal conundrum of our desire? Are we forever fated to be the racing greyhound who dare not catch the (mechanical) hare? The answer to this question exceeds my capacities, so I will not pretend to know.  More modestly though,  what I can point out is it’s a perennial trade-off between happiness and meaning, between satisfaction and desire. We trade one in at the expense of the other. I leave you with one of my favourite dialogues between Daniel Linderman and Nathan Petrelli from the classic TV series, Heroes.

Linderman:

There comes a time when a man has to ask himself whether he wants a life of happiness or a life of meaning.

Nathan:

I’d like to have both.

Linderman:

Can’t be done. Two very different paths. To be truly happy, a man must live absolutely in the present, no thought of what’s gone before and no thought of what lies ahead. But a life with meaning, a man is condemned to wallow in the past and obsess about the future.[12]

I’ll leave it there and hope you find this mythological/archetypal lens of some value in identifying the structure and character of your own creation myth.

Until we speak again,

Stephen.

---

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Garden-of-Eden

[2] Out of respect for the student’s privacy and given the recent nature of the incident I cannot share the events of the story even anonymously, at this time.

[3] Terrible mystery. “the mysterium tremendum (“mystery that repels”), in which the dreadful, fearful, and overwhelming aspect of the numinous appears,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/mysterium-tremendum-et-fascinans

[4] a temple enclosure or court in ancient Greece : a sacred precinct

[5] Genesis, verses 3:23-24.

[6] Mathew 3:3

[7] Genesis 3:1

[8] Mathew 10:16

[9] Genesis 3:1

[10] “Do not look on the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup, When it goes down smoothly; At the last it bites like a serpent. And stings like a viper.”   Proverbs 23: 31-32

[11] William Shakespear, Sonnet 129, a favourite sonnet of my late teacher the 19^th Duke de Chatillon.

[12] Heroes S1E1, 2006, Tim Kring,

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The Great Delusion

 In the Book of Revelation, God is seen pouring out His just wrath on an unbelieving world.  In Revelation 6:16-17, wicked mankind tries to hide under rocks just to avoid Jesus.  They do not want Him to come and force them to stop their sinful ways and wicked existence.  They realize His power, preeminence, and coming judgment, but they absolutely hate Him for it.  They love their wickedness so much that they hate the only One Who could set them free from eternal condemnation and a life enchained to the devil (2 Timothy 2:26).  Their minds and hearts are clouded by a great delusion.

Before Christ’s final descent to earth at His second coming, God will send two witnesses to proclaim the gospel throughout the earth.  After their ministry is done, God will allow the antichrist to kill them in the street.  Revelation 11:10 says, “And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and celebrate; and they will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.”  God will resurrect the two prophets, but, during the period in which the people of the earth think that they are finally done with having to listen to gospel preaching, they will throw a party and exchange gifts in celebration.  They will love evil so much that Jesus and the good news of heaven and salvation will seem to them as torment.  Jesus said in John 3:19-20, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.”  It is those who practice the truth who respond to the gospel invitation, and this proves that God has been at work in their hearts all along (John 3:21).  However, those who do evil and love evil hate Jesus and His Light because it exposes them.  Not only does it show them how corrupt and filthy they are in light of His holiness, but it reminds them that they deserve to be punished for their wickedness (John 16:8, Romans 1:32).  Furthermore, there is a sense in which a defiled conscience (Titus 1:15), a deluded mind, and a deceived heart provide the sinner with an “enhanced” ability to enjoy corrupt behavior.  They don’t want the Light to make them see reality because then sin won’t be as fun to them any longer.  Darkness makes delusion easier.

Wicked people delight in their perversities (Isaiah 66:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:12), even though sin is dangerous, harmful, and leading to death.  Proverbs 8:35-36 says, speaking of wisdom, “For he who finds me finds life And obtains favor from the Lord.  But he who sins against me injures himself; All those who hate me love death” (italics mine).  The delusion of the wicked is that they see death as life, and they willfully and continuously injure themselves with their sin.  The thief, who is Satan himself, comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but God gives life to the full in Christ (John 10:10).  Yet the world thinks that sin is as good as it gets, and they hold it tightly even to their grave.  It is an unreasonable conclusion and an irrational decision given that eternal life in Christ is way better than any passing pleasures of sin in this life (Hebrews 11:25).  This life is so short, like a vapor that is here and then gone, yet the wicked put all of their eggs in the basket of the here and now and of enjoying the world system.  Their spiritual investment strategy is terrible (Matthew 19:30), yet they think it is worth defying God just to be able to sin now.  The prospect of eternal bliss doesn’t hold the weight that it should in their minds. 

In Revelation 16, as God pours out the final seven bowl judgments, mankind still refuses to repent.  Revelation 16:9 says, “Men were scorched with fierce heat; and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory.”  Verse 11 says, “And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they did not repent of their deeds.”  The beast, whose mark they had taken and whose image they worshiped, will not be able to deliver them from the wrath of God, but still they will follow him and not the One Who alone could save them.  It is a delusion of the highest order, but this was foretold in the Scripture.  2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 says, “For this reason God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false, in order that they all may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness.”  The delusion Scripture speaks of is a result of sinners refusing to humble themselves and respond to the truth that they know in the creation, in their conscience, and in the Bible.  Thus, God will give them over (Romans 1:24) according to their wicked desires to defile themselves and store up His just wrath.  Proverbs 10:23 says, “Doing wickedness is like sport to a fool, And so is wisdom to a man of understanding.”  Whereas believers come to see sin as not just wrong in God’s sight but harmful to themselves and others in addition to not providing the joy that practicing wisdom does, unbelievers who refuse to practice truth like the very thing that is killing them to the extent that they will follow Satan who is powerless to save them even as he is proven impotent before God.

Jesus said in John 12:25, “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.”  Jesus exposed the great delusion perfectly for any with ears to hear.  He warned people that if they live exclusively for their own benefit and love themselves more than others that they would find themselves in a losing situation.  This is because they will never find true satisfaction in this life by being selfish, and they will suffer eternally for failing to submit to and love Christ.  It is only those who deny themselves, who sacrifice for others even at great cost, and who follow Christ who will enjoy the benefits of eternal life.  Sinners, in choosing to love their lives, demonstrate that they actually hate themselves and will eternally suffer.  Being deluded, they don’t see this for what it is (Proverbs 26:11), but those who seek truth will find that there is a more excellent way. 

Most hate the Light, but those who come to know the Light will be able to recognize that their love for darkness was a delusion of the devil.  Only in Christ can a person live delusion-free, for only in Christ are hidden all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).  Everywhere else, delusion reigns.

 

Sacred Marriage described in Matthew 19:4-6, similarly described as a core concept in Jungian psychology:

 In Jungian psychology, the integration of the Anima and Animus (the syzygy) or the Sacred Marriage, is an essential aspect of the Jungian individuation journey.

Similarly in Matthew 19:4-6 -  King James Version – “And he answered and said until them. Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave Father and Mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

W. Wesley Howe - October 5th, 2023 

Overcoming Envy

 WESTMONT MAGAZINE

Training Our Brains and Our Hearts to Overcome Envy

by Gayle D. Beebe, Ph.D., President

As humans, we face a tension between envy and contentment. We get preoccupied with comparing ourselves to others, which ruins how we celebrate and enjoy the gifts God has given us.

One of my favorite authors is Walker Percy. He trained to be a doctor but developed tuberculosis and was never able to practice medicine. He turned his considerable gifts to writing novels. The philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, influenced Percy, who picked up the Kierkegaardian theme that the way we make choices fundamentally determines and reveals the kind of person we are and the life we’ll lead.

In one of Percy’s later novels,“Lost in the Cosmos,” he explores how people embody themselves. Percy shows us that we can become so preoccupied with who we want to be that we miss the greater meaning in life. He presents the proud self, the selfish self and the envious self, focusing on the latter. He raises the question: Why do we get greater joy from the misfortunes that happen to our archrival instead of our own accomplishments?

Evagrius of Pontus, a great thinker in the early church, identifies eight deadly thoughts (gluttony, anger, greed, envy, pride, lust, indifference and melancholy) that derail our life with God.They’re pivotal in helping us understand what goes on inside our mind and how that influences our behavior. How do we develop the spiritual energy to resist temptation and our self-centeredness to avoid patterns that ruin the life God intended for us?

Scripture describes envy’s disruptiveness:“A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones” (Proverbs 14:30). It also presents the alternative:“Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).

Envy destroys our capacity to live in community and get along well with others. It often gives rise to petty jealousy, gossip and an inability to celebrate the gifts that God has given to others.

Recent literature in neuroscience and psychology helps us understand how the eight deadly thoughts re-channel our brain. For example, research identifies two kinds of envy: inferiority and schadenfreude.We either feel inferior toward others and that sparks envy, or we find delight in the harm our archrival suffers. Evagrius noticed this trait in the fourth century and identified contentment as the way to overcome envy, build community and control our natural tendency to prefer ourselves to others.

The story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 illustrates envy. For some reason,Abel’s sacrifice pleased God, and Cain’s didn’t. Cain can’t control his disgust, and he murders Abel. Envy holds that kind of power: the capacity to destroy the gifts of others because we don’t feel accepted ourselves.

How do we cultivate contentment and overcome envy? We must begin with our own attitude and recognize that we can control our attitude and effort. Spiritual disciplines can help us reroute the natural inclination of our hearts.

Devoting ourselves to a life of prayer is important. We can think about people we deeply resent and begin to pray for them. Prayer will change us and the power these individuals hold over us.

In “How God Changes Your Brain,”Andrew Newberg explains the impact of prayer and spiritual disciplines. He writes,“You will have a more joyful, happier life if you believe in God and begin to live your life as if God exists.”This book isn’t explicitly Christian, but it makes a compelling case for the Christian life, which enhances our social awareness and compassion.

Being kind to people helps us realize the graciousness and mercy of God as we extend ourselves to others. Such acts strengthen the anterior cingulate in our brain, the connecting link between the limbic system and the frontal lobe, balancing reason and emotion so we can make reasonable responses to disruptive behaviors.

The single greatest problem adults face is our inability to regulate ourselves. We get in situations where we self-destruct. So another way to develop contentment is to learn to self-regulate.

I believe some people are inclined to be contented and others aren’t. But wherever we fall on this spectrum, we can learn to understand our life with God well enough to discipline disruptive moods, behaviors and tendencies, re-channeling them so they make a great contribution to our life.

Another important action is serving others, which cultivates the channels for developing empathy. I believe that one of the great needs of our culture is the capacity for empathy.

To cultivate contentment, we must build communities filled with love, communication, and sensory and intellectual stimulation. That’s what we seek to do at Westmont. Evagriusencouraged us to pursue contentment to overcome our inclination to envy, and neuroscience helps us understand that we’ll be healthier if we learn to re-channel destructive emotions. Thankfully, God provides the resources and guidance we need to accomplish this goal.