Category Archives: Spiritual direction

Jesus was born again in the year of King Donald

A life in the Spirit, Poetry, Spiritual direction, The Mission, , , , , , , , ,

Jesus was born again in the year 2025,
in the reign of King Donald, who
commandeered the airwaves to recite
his pack of lies once again and again,
vainly propping up his house of cards.
No one watched.

The prophets echoed like memories of angels:

When tyrants tremble in their fear
And hear their death knell ringing,
When friends rejoice both far and near
How can I keep from singing?

In prison cell and dungeon vile
Our thoughts to them are winging,
When friends by shame are undefiled
How can I keep from singing?

“Pauline T” in 1868 (Civil War) and Pete Seeger in 1978 (Vietnam War)

Jesus was born again in the year 2025,
a time when the jester, Pete Hegseth,
sent drones to kill the unsuspecting,
smugglers and fishermen on the open sea,
like Herod searching Bethlehem.
No drugs were found.

The prophets echoed like magi in the night:

Herod the king, in his raging
Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight
All young children to slay

That woe is me, poor child, for thee
And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing
“Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

Robert Croo (ed.) in 1534 from 1456 (War of the Roses)

Jesus was born again in the year 2025
when Old King Donald faked emergencies
and Congress sat on their wall, never
to stop him “Stop Him!” and his illegal tariffs,
and his slicing the world into spheres.
His mania spiked.

The prophets echoed like shepherds telling the news:

Said the shepherd boy to the mighty king
Do you know what I know?
In your palace warm, mighty king
Do you know what I know?
A Child, a Child shivers in the cold
Let us bring him silver and gold

Said the king to the people everywhere
Listen to what I say!
Pray for peace, people, everywhere
Listen to what I say!
The Child, the Child sleeping in the night
He will bring us goodness and light

Gloria Shayne Baker in 1962 (Cuban Missile Crisis)

Jesus was born again in the year 2025
When King Donald and his minions
vainly tried to stop the tale of Epstein
from being told across the land.
He protected pedophiles.
He pardoned felons.
He profited billionaires,
and called it hope for the poor.
No one believed him.

The prophets echoed like John the Baptist preparing the way:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
and in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
let all within us praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! O praise His name forever!
His pow’r and glory evermore proclaim!

Placide Cappeau in 1847 (2nd French Revolution)

Jesus was born again in the year 2025
when King Donald begged for a peace prize
and an arch to validate his vapid life,
and placed his name on someone else’s memorial
prophetically putting himself
in the grave.

The prophets echoed like a memory of Mary’s great song,
like the worms that ate Herod cried out for lack of enough voices:

But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring; –
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!

Edmund Sears in 1849 (Fugitive Slave Act)

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Angels Appearing before the Shepherds, c. 1910

Jesus was born again in the year 2025:
born in us who hear the angels sing,
born in us worn down with woe,
born in us subject to sociopaths,
born in us bound by bloated oligarchs,
born in us who amplify your voice,
louder every day, as the dawn rises
and the Son shines through the veil,
the Light of our restoration.

The prophets cry out with the prophets of old
and with all who relay the music of your sphere:

The original final verses:

VII
Come, Desire of Nations, come,
Fix in Us thy humble Home,
Rise, the Woman’s Conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in Us the Serpent’s Head,

VIII
Now display the saving Pow’r,
Ruin’d Nature now restore,
Now in Mystic Union join
Thine to Ours, and Ours to Thine.

IX
Adam’s Likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thy Image in its Place,
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy Love.

X
Let us Thee, tho’ lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the Inner Man:
O! to All Thyself impart,
Form’d in each Believing Heart.

Charles Wesley in 1739 (War of Austrian Succession)

We cannot “skip grades” in spiritual development

A life in the Spirit, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, ,

Let’s start with Morton Kelsey, the agnostic pastor who met God through Jungian therapy and became a spiritual guide for others. He knows quite a bit about not graduating from previous “grades” in spiritual development, yet he is positive about our capacity to keep moving along the inner way. Here is a quote from one of his more than 50 books:

“We can grow at any time. The human being is far more plastic than most of us ordinarily believe. However, the task that we need to learn, the development we need to achieve, can only be accomplished earlier or later at a much higher cost than at its proper time. Much of psychotherapy consists of providing the environment in which people can live through a stage that they missed before. Spiritual direction…will involve this kind of direction and counseling and companionship for the simple reasons that the various stages each provide essential elements in a full and mature religious life. We cannot skip grades in spiritual development.” – Companions on the Inner Way

Inhibited spiritual development

The metaphor of “skipping grades” does not completely suit Kelsey’s point, since we don’t pass tests to get from one stage of development to another and no one can really judge what our final mark should be. But the metaphor does picture our need to cross boundaries of maturation to get into further stages. Jesus called the process moving along the “narrow way that leads to life.” And we know he was well acquainted with people who  stubbornly stayed on the way that leads to death.

As a psychotherapist, I am accustomed to exploring the past to find unfinished psychological issues. As a spiritual director, I accompany my companions on their parallel journey into wholeness. Along the way we bump into incomplete loves and assumptions that inhibit their growth and joy. As a developing person, I am also on the way. None of us are managing to skip grades, as much as we might like to.

We might start exploring entire sides of ourselves at 50, even, and wonder what we were doing at twenty. Whenever we become aware, some of us get excited to see the new possibilities; but others are daunted at the work they see ahead. My client’s development may start very basically: they need to survive and get to square one. Soon they may feel some confidence and receive some affirmation. Then they are likely to discover that the  lacks they note and the abundance they feel both hint at the possibility of trust and happiness. God wastes nothing; it can all come to good. My own experience and the experience of others convinces me we often have unfinished work from the past stages of our development that either blocks us from progressing or taints the development we have achieved. What needs to get finished can cause us a lot of suffering. But God is with us.

One thing that helps us keep moving through the suffering on our narrow way is  understanding the stages of how we develop so we can identify what we are still carrying  or even reliving from our past — especially from our childhood or adolescence. Exploring the way we grow also helps examine our adult development (or lack of it), which is often left unpondered, as if becoming an adult were the end point. Kelsey inspired me to look at it all again in seven stages and look for the kind of things that keep us “held back” so to speak.

The seven stages of our spiritual development

Nothing I am about to list is particularly new. I’ve written about it myself, many times. But I found it useful to explore it again, now that I am where I am today. You are probably down the road to life somewhere new, yourself. Let’s see if we can note what is unfinished and could use some love from you and maybe some new choices.

Stage 1

Knowing what you now know about how your family was working when you were born, imagine how you were being prepared for your spiritual journey.

Children are like tender plants. They can be educated, but mostly they must be allowed to unfold so they are open to relating to a loving God who can give them confidence in the ultimate nature of the universe. Faith takes root early. If they are not tended with grace  they can be closed to that possibility and live in deep-rooted fear or worthlessness because of what they have experienced with the humans on which they relied. Fear and shame also take root early. The most essential element in early Christian nurture is consistent human warmth and understanding, kindness and love. Unless people receive these things as children they find it very difficult to believe in them as adults.

We learned a lot by the time we got to kindergarten. How did you learn to see the world? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Sunday school – Christ Church Denver

Stage 2

Try to remember being you in elementary school. By the age of 3-4 we are able to store memories, but first-hand experiences are more likely to be stored when we have language more developed in our growing brain. How did you experience God as a child? Did your environment encourage spirituality?

In the stage of early childhood we begin to develop our sense of personhood and distinguish between inner and outer awareness. That “I am who I am” is called the ego. We need that self awareness to differentiate our spiritual awareness within it. Later on, we may need to let go of aspects of the view of self we developed as a child, but you can’t give up what you have not achieved. At this stage we learn language to express ourselves. We develop our left brain with reading and math, and our right brain with music, painting and stories. A great need in this stage is acceptance by others for who I am becoming. If I am nurtured with warmth and love I will take on the values of my parents and develop a conscience. If I am controlled and punished or violated, I may turn to violence and fear. We should avoid leading children to dig into the unconscious at this point. We’re not ready for that.

We developed an enduring view of self through reflection and comparison by 4th or 5th grade. Can you remember what is was like to see yourself and be seen (or not)? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 3

Think back on your teen years and your early twenties. Our struggle for autonomy took a winding road to get where we arrived. We needed to rebel against the structures that formed us to either make them our own or go another way. What did you do? Did you have anyone to trust with your spiritual journey?

Sometime between 11 and 15 (and earlier all the time, it seems) our hormones push us into puberty and we come to the first bloom of our sense of autonomy. During this stage we test everything and are tested, this includes psychologically and spiritually. In the U.S. we have generally lost the formal initiation rites traditional cultures have, so many are left alone to find their own way. At this point in life, it is useful if caring adults are understanding of the process: parents and, especially, another trusted adult who can help us deal with fears and doubts about ourselves and God. Rebellion against the religious values of parents is almost necessary if we are ever to have faith of our own. It is during this stage that young people become open to the unconscious and to spiritual awareness. Check our Robert Johnson’s take on the process in He and She.

The pressure to become adults may have resulted in a significant season of depression by the end of our teen years. Who had you become by then? How did it feel? Who or what did you trust? Did you experience God? Make a commitment? Set a direction? Get derailed? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 4

You can probably remember your late twenties (if you aren’t there right now). You may never have really moved beyond them. Early adulthood often includes our most life-changing and enduring experiences of God and community, but sometimes results in our long-lasting distance from both. You may be in the middle of the troubles associated with finding your own way and deciding how to align.

The process of differentiation and reorientation that began with puberty may take a long time for many people, and some get arrested at this point. Young adulthood is a continuation for the foundation of sexual intimacy, vocation/career, individuality and mutual responsibility. We must be led by our own convictions and establish our own patterns. We may have many professions over our lifetime, but we should complete this stage by becoming proficient in one. In the postmodern era, it seems like this is one of the most emotionally trying stages of development. The fruitless search for meaning young adults face and the gnawing sense that their present work and future opportunities are slim often lead to despair and avoidance. All the drawing power of our screens does the greatest damage here: porn, games, gambling, shopping, presenting our image, comparison, and relationships apps. The confusion and despair can be met with spiritual direction and companionship, but many churches are dominated by inattentive old people, so that can be hard to find.

How are you doing or how did you do? Did you come to a full sense of yourself? Find a place in the world? Did you form an adult relationship with God? Or did you get sidetracked or are still in the middle of it? By this time you have a life story. How do you tell it? How did you tell it? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 5

Can you name what your middle age has been like, if you are there? The transition can be confusing. Middle age is when we are most likely to experience running into the wall of the unfinished development of our previous stages. It is a struggle to get into the future or into deeper realms of ourselves when we are stuck in our past.

This fifth stage might hit precociously spiritual people during puberty or young adulthood, but more likely comes between 35 and 50. It is often called the midlife crisis. We have developed and achieved some status, perhaps. But we are not satisfied and death is becoming more real. The children may be less needy or gone and the profession may feel old or unsuitable. Some people may return to childhood faith and move beyond it into deeper meaning. Others may look at their struggle and pronounce it purposeless. Toggling between beauty and boredom, bounty and bitterness is not uncommon. Our society gives little help with a search for meaning, and religion seems coopted by the endless power struggle all around us. Some accept fundamentalism in the Christian or political sense and give up their independence and critical capacities, as we can presently see. This is a time in life when fellow strugglers and spiritual directors are crucial. We are confronting our inner depth but also looking into the abyss.

How are you doing or how did you do it? Did you get into the second half of your life or are you still working on that? By this time, others may have saddled you with a life story. How do they tell it? Are you stuck in their view of you?  Are you disappointed that your idealization of yourself is not accomplished? Can you connect with God and others with a deeper spiritual awareness yet? What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 6

Eventually, our bodies tell us we are old. Most of us do not have a plan for that time and many of us realize we need to develop the spiritual and relational resources we are missing.

Old age is not always a golden age because we have not successfully passed through the first five stages effectively. Most of us have more time to explore the possibilities, however. We may have less family obligations and more disposable income. We can simplify our lives and focus on what is most important to us. Many people allow their religious and creative impulses to emerge. Many interesting books and biographies are written by people in this stage because we are drawn to remember and take stock of our lives. Most of us become more able to accept our flaws and reconcile with others. But some of us are overcome by the fears that were held back by our resilience, which is now waning.

What is your story of this stage? You may think of your past as your story, but old age is also a wonderful time to develop. What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

Stage 7

The final stage, of course, which we will definitely not be skipping is death. In this age when centenarians are being minted at an unprecedented rate, it makes sense to consider what it means to die, and what it means to be dying for quite some time.

Some may see their final days as “there is nothing to be done but grin and bear it.” Younger people who doubt any life beyond this one, often feel like old people just rub their noses in their mortality — the nursing homes are full of their parents. Helping the dying die well is a valuable service for which more and more people are needed. Preparing to die by living well and knowing how to die well is a worthy endeavor at any stage. Paul was wise enough to know “I die daily.” He said, “To die is gain.” It made him brave to face his end no matter when it happened.

If you are in this stage, thank God you are still reading and thinking along with us. We need your wisdom, prayer and love. We even need your frailty to call out our compassion. Accompanying you to death helps us honor our own death and encourages us to get serious about what comes next. How are you doing with the Lord’s promise of eternal, abundant life? It is never too late to move beyond what blocks our experience of life. Like Kelsey taught, “We can grow at any time. The human being is far more plastic than most of us ordinarily believe.” What needs to be loved, understood or finished?

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Today is John and Betty Stam Day! Get to know these interesting examples of missionary passion at The Transhistorical Body. 

Your “values” might be undercutting your God-given worth

A life in the Spirit, Doing Theology, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, ,

When I served as a pastor, I often had a tough time with my leaders in the Brethren in Christ Church — not because we did not love each other, but because I groaned under their direction. Granted, I was theological friends with Christians like bell hooks who were preaching an ethic of love and I pondered making friends with Buddhists. What’s more, I was rather vocal about the antichrist ethics of capitalism and attempts by the U.S. to dominate the world militarily and economically. So I made them groan a bit, too — I think they thought I was very liberal.

The beautiful BIC

I, on the other hand, regularly told them, when I got the chance, that I thought they were the ones who were very “liberal,” in that they readily adopted post-Enlightenment philosophies as the basis for their theology. Even though they were supposedly rooted in antiestablishment Anabaptism, they relentlessly “left the farm” (as they liked to say), to more effectively compete in the present “marketplace” of ideas. They succeeded, to an extent, in growing churches filled with enculturated Christians.

My disappointment with the BIC, by whom I am ordained and licensed, was activated again when one of my spiritual direction clients brought up their personal “values.” I was literally triggered by the term and maybe went just a little beyond the bounds of my usual restraint. Let it suffice to say my appreciation for my companion was too great to let them stay subject to a word that has infiltrated the church and undercut our faith for over 140 years, now.

BIC Values

The subject of values was a main point of dispute for me with my leaders. I did not organize any marches, but I am sure I spoke up much more than they preferred.

In the year 2000 a General Conference of the Brethren in Christ adopted a new identity statement enumerating our “values.” That word may be the least Anabaptist, Pietist or Wesleyan one they could have chosen to describe our basic beliefs. I would have preferred “distinctives” or “aspirations” or “convictions.” Instead we got the straight business-plan title “Core Values” without too much thought as to why. (They are still being used). I assume they thought my critique was “urban.”

Each statement is fine, even if they do have the tortured sound of being committee compromises. But by calling them “values” they undermined my attempts to introduce radical Christianity to people who had lost it or never had it. The prospective Jesus followers I met already had “values.” But they had lost “virtue” or any sense of transcendent “morality.”

The word “values” got a new definition

When I was in college, I often saw students carrying around a big fat paperback of Friedrich Nietzsche philosophy. He is the father of the modern, abstract use of the word “values,” in the sense of moral or social principles. His thinking was popularized in the early 20th century by sociologists and anthropologists, notably Max Weber.

Nietzsche in 1882

Nietzsche was a pioneer in undermining the traditional Christian thinking that dominated Europe. He was definitely thinking outside the box. Before he went officially “mad,” probably due to the same kind of brain disorder that affected his father and brother, he famously wrote of the “transvaluation of all values” (Umwertung aller Werte). That meant he was cheering along the process of revaluing what was valuable. He was the man who said “God is dead,” meaning that in the modern era, belief in God and the accompanying Christian morality had lost its power and influence in society, leading to a moral vacuum humanity would have to fill.

He challenged traditional classical and Judeo-Christian virtues and asserted these moral standards were human-created rather than transcendent truths. It was in the 1880s that Nietzsche began to speak of “values” in the way we now use the word to talk about the moral assumptions and attitudes of a given society. He used the word consciously and repeatedly, to demonstrate the momentous transition human history had made. He thought describing the “transvaluation of values” was revealing the revolution which was underway, a revolution against both the classical virtues and the Judaic-Christian ones – against the very idea of a transcendent morality.

Others developing value theory (“axiology” after the Greek word for “worthy” or “deserving”) immediately pushed back, arguing for the objective existence of values, independent of human desires. But by the time Theodore Roosevelt used the word in the early 1900’s, it is well on its way to describing relativized beliefs that are socially constructed. The beliefs of the world were moving toward what we have today where, as Nietzsche noted, the powerful often have and impose values which normal, weak people do not come up with on their own. The transcendent morality revealed in Jesus was replaced by the survival of the fittest ideas. Now Donald Trump is a value unto himself and, even among the poor, the enrichment of oligarchs is of utmost importance, as they say it should be, even as they attempt to recreate the world in their image.

What we “value” could be deadly

Who would have thought the Brethren in Christ would become the handmaidens of Nietzsche?

Values, as we now understand that word, do not have to be virtues; they can be personally-sourced beliefs, opinions, attitudes, feelings, habits, preferences –- whatever any individual, group, or society happens to value, at any time, for any reason. One cannot say of virtues, as one can of values, that anyone’s virtues are as good as anyone else’s, or that everyone has a right to their own virtues. Only values can claim such moral equality and neutrality. This impartial, “non-judgmental” (as we now say) sense of values –- values as “value-free”–- is now so firmly entrenched in our vocabulary and sensibility that one can hardly imagine a time without it.

My issue with the use of “core values” to describe our discipleship had quite a bit of Teddy Roosevelt pragmatism in it. I still think most Christians in the U.S. are heavy on principle and light on action. Their faith is proving unsustainable as we speak. That’s why I like bell hooks’ ethic of love so much — it is all about how you live, not just what you think or believe.

It is hard to see belief systems in the New Testament at all; the writings are all about creating something by the power of the Holy Spirit; they are more about following Jesus than worshipping him at a distance, if we choose to do so. It is ironic that the powerless of the world regularly claim their freedom by not “drinking the kool-aid” of anyone imposing some principle on them when that very act shows how they “drank the kool-aid” of reducing themselves down to a set of personal values. All the while they could have been following Jesus who actually is a law unto himself, and who faced his detractors, imprisoned in their sense of worth, with “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

What if I don’t value billionaires?

The people I have served were much more moved by the valuation of the “invisible hand” than the conviction of the Holy Spirit. What most people value these days is almost totally subsumed under making a good deal. My cousins asked me at most Thanksgiving dinners, “How is the church business going? Is your church getting bigger?” Advice columnists ask, “Are you better off with him or without him?” Put that last phrase into AI and it says, “Ultimately, the decision is personal and should prioritize your own happiness and well-being.” That is about all we’ve got these days: what I value, more or less.

Our government is littered with big hands grasping at a diminishing public trough. What if I don’t believe they are really job creators? What if I don’t value the way they assign my value? What if Jesus, the great I AM, makes me who I am?

Ellen Meiksins Wood observed, that a capitalist society is a society in which social relations are “embedded in the economy” rather than the “economy being embedded in social relations.” What she meant is we cannot account for the complexity of the capitalist mode of production as if it were an expression of human motives, desires and values. Capitalism is not simply an expression of the human tendency to “truck, barter and exchange.” Now it is a power that compels us to govern our whole lives in a transactional and commodifying way. It is not merely a matter of free people making choices, it is a compulsion, so much so, that a popular slur by our rulers is calling someone a “socialist.”

Under capitalism, many other aspects of human nature — such as the need for love, solidarity, and individuality — are secondary to the values associated with profit-seeking, or, if being kind, with “personal satisfaction” or “self-realization.” The word “values” is loaded with monetary value, quid pro quo, even with an evaluation of empathy as too weak to be sustainable.

I think the word “values” is loaded with the worst kind of autonomy: Godless, loveless, aloneness. The thoughts that: “I am responsible for what is important,” “I assign worth,” “My everyday choices to consume one thing over another is what gives me an identity” are overwhelming and subjugating. Thus the BIC reduced themselves with their “core values” to another set of choices, a product. It did not set itself apart from the world, it willingly adapted itself to the principles of the world.

But let’s remember after all this: Jesus is greater than our core values. There were undoubtedly many people in the crowd he confronted in John 8 who did not hear him and just “write him off“ with, “You have a right to your own opinion.” They followed him. The BIC is full of those kind of people, too.

Forgive yourself: You’ll not only feel better, you’ll be better

Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , , , , , ,

We usually think of forgiveness as a relational matter. They hurt me; they need to apologize. I did some wrong; I have to admit it and ask forgiveness. You may theoretically believe that is true, right? But living it out in the real world can be difficult. It is much easier to blame or avoid than reconcile.

We need to figure out forgiveness to save the world from its perpetual lack of reconciliation. As we do that, we actualize our own true self and get reconciled inside. Because forgiveness is not just between two people, is also an internal, psychological, and spiritual necessity. You also have a relationship with yourself, too. If we don’t sort out all the different voices that make up our inner dialogue, there is perpetual conflict going on inside of us, too!

For instance, last week I put out my weekly blog post a day earlier than I intended —  no big deal really. But I made the mistake because I thought Sunday was Monday! I was ready to call some computer someone somewhere to find out why my machines were all off! I finally figured out I was off and felt ashamed of myself for jumping to a wrong conclusion that cost me an hour of turmoil — so embarrassing! I accepted my “sin,” but the feelings of guilt and shame stuck with me. I did a dumb thing. Then I felt ashamed because I couldn’t let go of those feelings! What a flawed psychotherapist! I was not forgiving myself. I needed some inner reconciliation. Otherwise, I might have carried around my secret shame right through the terrific meeting at Salt and Light!

We know Jesus will forgive our sins when we confess our sins. But will we cooperate by forgiving ourselves? Some would say “Forgiving yourself is not that important if Jesus already did it.” Maybe. But I know a lot of people who are forgiven in principle but have never experienced a minute of that forgiveness in their hearts. Their presentation of themselves in the world is forgiven, which is good as far as that goes. But their inner being is unforgiving, critical, harsh and living under the law of some childhood jungle in which they grew up. Maybe you aren’t fully forgiven by Jesus if you won’t forgive yourself.

by Jaroslav Samoilenko

Hard on yourself?

How many times have I heard, “I think it will all get better if I just try harder. I’m having trouble doing what I want to do, but when I do, it will all be fine.” Such a person never even gets to square one of life with Jesus because they are still negotiating whether his lovingkindness is something they can live in and express, especially toward themselves. As a matter of fact, they may be quite loving to others but hard as nails with themselves. They might have a loud inner voice that even says, “Look how bad you are at forgiving yourself!” Or even harder, “If you don’t love others rightly, you’ll be damned!” Or very logical, “If you ‘forgive yourself,’ pretty soon you’ll never confess a sin and not even be a Christian!” Rather than letting guilt and shame pass through like regular emotions, every criticism and failure sticks to them like they are flypaper, until it is hard to hear the voice of love for all the buzzing. Does any of this sound familiar?

Do you struggle with forgiving yourself? Probably. I think most of us have been quite confused about  the subject. Most of us seem to be balancing whether we are too easy on ourselves, or rationalizing our bad behavior — at times wondering whether we are too hard on ourselves, and at times condemning ourselves. Such questions are what any wise person would want to ponder, of course. But the Bible tends to go beyond them. Paul assumes we are all unjustifiable (Romans 3:23), and we’re all likely to think too highly of ourselves (Romans 12:3). His remedy is not to admit we are self-condemning and self-congratulating at the same time; he wants us to accept where we are at and accept that Jesus is with us there. Likewise, Jeremiah asserts that we deceive ourselves about our condition; we’re a mystery to ourselves, but God can truly interpret our hearts (Jeremiah 17:9-10).

Don’t you think it qualifies as a “sin” to hold ourselves in contempt even when God prizes us and has forgiven our sin (2 Corinthians 2:6-8)? Let’s consider how to forgive ourselves and be reconciled inside as well as out. Then we might be able to feel God’s compassion in our anguished souls. If you already feel some resistance to the very thought of that, this post might be for you, especially.

Why forgive ourselves?

Only God can forgive sin, so we are not talking about that, OK? I’m talking about cooperating with the Spirit of forgiveness beating on the door of our guilt and shame. We’ve been gods to ourselves and it is strangely different to come at our sense of responsibility for being good from the place of being forgiven. We are born again by forgiveness and, like so many things in Christ, we need to grow up into it.

Remember: All who are in Christ are freed from condemnation (Romans 8:1) and freed to love (Galatians 5:13). We are meant to display the mercies of God as sinners forgiven of their sins (1 Timothy 1:15-16).

Extending grace and kindness to oneself and others is the transformation God effects in those who have received His grace and kindness. God’s kindness leads to repentance, that is, the Presence of kindness leads us to agree with God’s loving way of seeing us. Such gentleness is only possible for us because Jesus has set us free from the power of sin, the tyranny of self-rule, and the oppression of evil. Jesus said “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8). The starting point of forgiving ourselves is experiencing God’s forgiveness.

Keys to forgiving yourself

Clarify responsibility

Blame is tricky. Sometimes we blame ourselves for the injuries other people cause. For instance, many neglected or abused children think they must be to blame for not being cared for because they are unlovable. On the other hand, we sometimes blame others for things that are really all about us —  it is called projection. What we find shameful or unbearable, we cast on others and despise it, or assume someone else made us feel and act as we do.

When we are blaming ourselves or others, we need to sit back and do some mentalizing. Before we start reacting inside with self-loathing or outside with abusive behavior, we need clarity: What is mine and what belongs to someone else? What might be coming at me from the society, in general?

“Clarifying” who is responsible for the injury might sound like we could get caught in an endless inventory of our troubles, as if more clarity is all we need. But I think we need to go deeper than that. I am really talking about simple self-care. We feel better when our feet are on the solid ground of reality, even if that reality initially causes us some pain.

One of the reasons we shy away from clarity is because we feel things about it. We might be angry. We might have unfinished business with a perpetrator we have displaced  on people who bumped into our trigger. We might feel confused, even paralyzed. But we need to risk seeing it all clearly, since if we do not clarify who to forgive: ourselves, others, or whoever, lack of forgiveness will probably make us sick. It’s terrifying to face our pain, and so it seems easier to take the blame for it or cast the blame for it. But it is better to have a clear look at what is really going on so we can be appropriately responsible and appropriately gracious. It is deeper to have compassion for ourselves. Clarifying who needs forgiving is a good first step.

Renounce the dark comfort of your badness

You have probably heard someone say this, too, ” God can’t forgive me; I’m beyond grace.” I heard someone say on TV the other night, “I’ll see my mother again in hell.” Sometimes an unwillingness to seek forgiveness and live in God’s grace is a matter of pride – I did it my way. But more likely, doing life our own way is a matter of despair — it is all we think we can do, we’re alone. You may hear a voice that tells you. “You need to earn God’s favor and that of others.” But then you likely have another voice chime in to say, “You are too flawed to do that. You keep trying and you never make it.”

Self-justification is the universal spiritual disease that leads to spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Self-condemnation also leads to spiritual death: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). We need to give up both of them. We need to be forgiven by God and then work with her to forgive ourselves — feel the love of God healing us and the power of God transforming us.

 Seek repair/make amends/foment reconciliation

 One of the best feelings in life is to sincerely say, “I am sorry I did that to you. Please forgive me.” I think someone read that line and immediately thought sarcastically, “Right.”  Some of us choke on the words “Please forgive me” because they are among the most vulnerable words one can say. They admit we’re guilty. We did something bad. We did not earn it. We are not perfect. We need something from the other person: forgiveness.

As hard as each may be, every act of forgiveness changes the world a little more, or at least stops it from going down the drain so fast. Jesus is quite radical when he tells us to go to our brother and sister and win them to a reconciled relationship (Matt. 18). That’s what God was doing in Jesus. His whole life is an invitation to connect in love, forever. His suffering is not just to fulfill some cosmic law, it is the natural process of being self-giving. When we acknowledge our responsibility for pain or the responsibility of others and seek to make things right, our experience of God’s love and forgiveness opens up, maybe even because someone forgives us or receives our forgiveness! When I experience the forgiveness of God and others I can extend it more readily to myself. (Ephesians 4)

The same experience Jesus describes going on between people, needs to go on inside us. We need to seek repair and foment wholeness in our hearts, as broken as they may be. We are prone to duking it out inside. The things we say to ourselves! I won’t write any examples because they are often unprintable. The shame that locks us into a secret view of ourselves that haunts our days! Forgiveness is an inside and out revolution.

Love with abandon

Jesus identified loving God with your whole heart and loving your neighbor as you love yourself as the two greatest commandments. He told his disciples to “Love one another as I have love you” – he assumed, of course, his disciples were letting  him love them. We are all invited to walk in love with Jesus. All of Christ’s teachings assume some new spiritual thing will happen in us, including that we will love ourselves like we experience God loving us. I am not sure we can keep loving others authentically if we do not experience the lovingkindness of God in our souls — and 95% of us want to do that.

Jesus is given over to love. He loves with abandon. Love requires courage and boldness because love is always costly and opens us to possible suffering. No one who has friends, lovers, children or a mate has never suffered for love. It calls for sacrifice. It is sometimes unrequited. It is easily misunderstood. Sometimes we refuse to forgive because we are protecting ourselves from the demands of love. Maybe right now you resent being told you need to do something you don’t feel like doing or don’t think you can do. Maybe you think it is unjust to forgive or you fear you will be diminished if you give into a bad person. But love and intimacy are only possible when we are vulnerable to being hurt again.

Love is kind — not only to others but to ourselves. Love keeps no record of wrongs — not only of others but of ourselves. Those are lovely seed-thoughts from 1 Corinthians 13. Our spiritual instincts tell us that even though our failure to forgive ourselves hinders our love for others, our meager attempts at doing it, met by the meager love others show for us is not for nothing. The process of bravely loving others facilitates self-forgiveness, too.

As soon as you read those lines, you may have noticed how you are not kind to yourself and how your record of your wrongs is quite complete. But don’t give up on yourself! God won’t. John lovingly writes to his disciples (1 John 3), “Little children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us, for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.”

Get help

If you are hard on yourself and struggle with forgiving yourself, a therapist might help. Most people think forgiving others and being forgiven is the right way to go. Even so, more and more people these days are shying away from love because conflict and break ups could happen. They feel unprepared and unskilled in a fundamental feature of intimacy: forgiveness. A therapist might help you get started on better relationships with others and with yourself in many ways, including learning how to forgive yourself.

Moving into the third level of awareness in everyday life

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I went to a large memorial service recently. It was full of stories and very moving because the woman being remembered was influential and beloved. I went because she prayed for me.

When we first landed in Philadelphia to plant a church, I knew we were likely to fail if we did not call on gifted people to pray for us. I collected scores of people to intercede who got a regular letter listing our triumphs and trials. Grace Holland was among the first to join in. Whenever I saw her she told me how she was praying and often had a question about something in our letter that intrigued her. She might not have known how much that meant to me; and she might not have really cared, since praying was a reward in itself for her.

Grace’s family is so full of faith and the wildness missionary kids often carry it would have been hard not to have an interesting and spiritually-stimulating morning at the memorial they held. I had a wonderful time. In fact, I have kept mentalizing about it, which led me to write this post.

As a person who has led many meetings for stories, teaching, ceremony and worship, I know members of an audience are not having a singular experience. At any given moment, someone is receiving what is offered with their ordinary awareness, perhaps exclusively. Others will be experiencing it with their spiritual awareness. Still others are blessed in their deepest hearts with an awareness of the presence of God.

Thomas  Keating, the main instigator in the Centering Prayer movement which got rolling in the 1970s, drew a simple target graphic to explain his common-sense description of what is happening when we turn toward God. I have been re-reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s classic expansion on his chart in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening.

Ordinary awareness

Some people who attended the funeral probably experienced it entirely with their ordinary awareness. They might have been children. They could have been a distant relation or acquaintance unfamiliar with the family or their brand of Christianity and were caught up with the curiosity of it all. Or they may have been spiritually undeveloped due to lack of opportunity or resistance. People with childhood trauma or children of parents who did not nurture a secure attachment often find it difficult to connect with other people or God and spend much of their time feeling so responsible for their well-being they can’t do anything else.

Ordinary awareness is the reflexive consciousness that only humans have, as far as we know. I have several pictures of a son staring at his fist as a baby coming to the realization he is a separate being from his mother. We all have the capacity to stand outside ourselves and look upon ourselves in the third person. We come to know ourselves as distinct from others with attributes and gifts that need to be expressed to “be ourselves.”

So I experienced the funeral with my ordinary awareness. For instance, I thought I had left with plenty of time to spare after the long drive from Philly to Harrisburg. But I actually just made it to the memorial in time, since the turnpike was jammed due to a car having caught fire. We saw it melted on the shoulder with its poor owners watching the firemen mop up. The feelings stuck with me. Then I entered a large meeting room with quite a few people I had not seen for years and a few I did not want to see. My “monkey mind” was hopping.

At any given moment our awareness is full of stimulating things coming at us which often  stimulate things we have stored up: random thoughts, memories, associations and sensations. We get “triggered,” we like to say, and habitual reactions may lead to a chain reaction that can set off our anxiety. If we did not have that sense of “self” that can step back and see what is going on, we might not be able to endure the chaos. That self-reflexive “I” is probing and measuring the universe all day, and even when we dream it asks things like, “How am I doing?” “Is it safe here?”  “What did she mean by that?” “Am I OK?”

Bourgeault says, “Another name for ‘ordinary awareness’ is ‘egoic thinking.’ It is the normal functioning zone of the human mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Ph.D., a bishop, a nuclear physicist; how brilliantly intellectual or intensely devout you may be. Without spiritual training, your sense of the world and your sense of yourself will be formed at this level of awareness. Even the so-called self-awareness tools of our times, from psychotherapy to Meyers-Briggs  personality typing to the enneagram, spend most of their effort merely resorting and clarifying the characteristics: ‘I am an INFP,’ ‘a gut-centered type,’ ‘a five,’ etc. This may add insights into the workings of the personality, but it’s till ordinary awareness.

Spiritual awareness

The funeral lasted about two hours. So there was a lot of opportunity for ordinary awareness. Plus I had to catch up with some old friends which occupied my mind and heart with pleasantries and tragedies.

Thinking together about our experience afterward, my wife and I realized that shortly after we arrived we had already soaked up the emotion swirling around the room, as a psychologist and psychotherapist might be prone to do. We were primed to be moved beyond our ordinary awareness and into our spiritual awareness. Grace was a well-known worshiper, so a time for that was  included. Almost with the first note, both of us began to cry. And we were drawn beyond ourselves.

As the worship continued, it would have been hard to miss the experience of spiritual awareness all humans are equipped to have whether someone was a Jesus follower of not. The meeting was like a first glimpse of Yosemite Valley, which seems to make everyone pause with awe. I first experienced such wonder under the stars in the Anza-Borrego desert. You may have felt it during a beautiful fall sunset last week. At times I have been drawn in when my friends were dancing or we were meeting an emergency together. And, of course, babies have been born.

Bourgeault says “spiritual awareness is actually a way of perceiving, just as ordinary awareness is a way of perceiving. As with ordinary awareness, there is a sense of identity or selfhood generated through this mode of perception. The big difference between them is that whereas ordinary awareness perceives through self-reflective consciousness, which splits the world into subject and object;  spiritual awareness perceives through an intuitive grasp of the whole and an innate sense of belonging. It’s something like sounding the note G on the piano and instantly hearing the D and the B that surround it and make it a chord. And since spiritual awareness is perception based on harmony, the sense of selfhood arising out of it is not plagued by that sense of isolation and anxiety that dominates life at the ordinary level of awareness.“

Holy Spirit awareness.

I was delighted with the smorgasbord of spiritual food we shared with Grace Holland’s family. I think she would have loved it – even the parts she thought we not fully baked yet. She would have loved how the meeting regularly veered into a thin place where we could reach into the bull’s-eye of the target, the goal Father Keating called our “divine awareness.”

The moment in the meeting I remember most, and these moments are usually relatively fleeting for all of us, was when we sang one of Grace’s favorite songs. Her son, Mike, recounted it was a tune that might pop into her ordinary awareness and lead her beyond it at any moment. I have also been moved by it since Maranatha Music released it on Praise 4 in 1980: “I Love you Lord.”

The song arose in the late 1970’s when it tumbled out during Laurie Klein’s quiet time before her toddler woke up. It found its way to Jack Hayford’s Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California, which I visited. It was recorded by several musicians in the budding Christian music scene, including 2nd Chapter of Acts, who I followed. It gained general  recognition when Maranatha! Music published it and now Korean choirs sing it, too.

As we sang it, I felt the presence of God course through my body. I was one with God, with those gathered and with everyone who has sang that song throughout my life and throughout the world. I enjoy remembering that experience.

We all have a place at the center of us where our own being and God’s being are mysteriously interwoven, even if we are not aware of it. Bourgeault says, “The divine indwelling is the cornerstone of contemplative prayer. Thomas Keating refers to it as ‘our personal big bang,’ for it reveals the Source of our own being – the explosion of divine love into form which first gave rise to our personal life. It also reveals the direction our heart must travel for a constantly renewed intimacy with this Source. As we enter contemplative prayer, we draw near the wellspring from which our being flows.“

The whole world is full of glory

The big, noisy funeral I attended did not have much silence at all. Maybe I will leave that as a request for own funeral. But I carried a silent place with me as I attended which has been formed by years of attention to God-with-us. We meet God deep within us and all around us. It is beautiful when a song flows out of your personal, private quiet time. But the whole earth is full of the glory of God. We meet God-with-us wherever we go. We can’t make an appointment, per se, but we can expect that glory to erupt into our awareness.

Bourgeault points out that ordinary awareness and spiritual awareness are both necessary for functioning in this world. “But the idea in spiritual transformation is to integrate and reprioritize these levels so that our ordinary awareness is in alignment with and in service to our spiritual awareness (which in turn, as we have seen, is in service to the divine awareness). In that alignment our being flows rightly, from innermost out. When something needs to be done in the outer world, we have sufficient ego strength to do it. But unlike ordinary awareness, which is always doing things to assert itself or fulfill itself, action grounded in our spiritual awareness merely flows out of the divine abundance without regard to outcome or any need to draw attention to itself.”

To hear her family and pastors talk about her, the heart of God and Grace’s own heart were in a deep embrace at the center of her and much of her action flowed from that abundant life. I took that away as a lesson. But more so, I experienced its legacy at her funeral and joined with her in the eternal life of it.

Understanding and responding to a “sociopath”

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At the CAPS East Conference last week, I presented my research on sociopaths. I have been collecting it all year. If you follow this blog (thank you!), you have probably run into some of what I have learned. If  you want to get into the finished product with me (and I wish you would), I have put links to my previous posts at the end of this one, along with a link to the powerpoint I used in my presentation, which includes the reference list.

It all started with Trump’s portrait.

Like I keep saying, when I first saw Donald Trump’s “official portrait” I marveled at the audacious grandiosity of it. There is no hint of humility or welcome in it. It is designed to intimidate. It matches his endless talk about “winning.”  I admit I ignored it. I laughed it off.

But after his re-election, I decided I needed to turn back and face what we are all facing in that face. Now we know how disorienting and frightening it is to be dominated by a sociopathic president. When I started researching it, I mostly knew the stereotypes associated with sociopathy — which I just learned how to pronounce properly after church a couple of weeks ago during the coffee hour. I think I began by googling, “what is the go-to book about sociopaths?”

I found the book and started with it: The Sociopath Next Door. Martha Stout’s classic from 2005 reads like a prophecy these days. It is academic enough. But its strongest point is its collection of case studies which prove her point: you might run into a sociopath next door and there are responses you should have ready when you do.

Barry Goldwater, Mary Trump’s Book, Anton Ashcroft

Can you diagnose someone you’ve never met?

I just suggested Trump is a sociopath. People asked me if I were afraid I had offended someone when I did the same at the conference. The president already has us scared to exercise our consciences in the face of the uncertainty of what my happen to us! I was not afraid to present my arrangement of evidence-based psychological study integrated with my Christian practice.

The most arguable thing I did was suggest Trump fit the definition. Because I agree that a professional cannot effectively diagnose someone they have never met. At the same time I also agree with people who say that diagnoses, in general, are rather suggestive and subjective even when one does know a person. I also agree with thoughtful people who say the ethics about diagnosing public figures may be outdated.

The APA formally added the Goldwater Rule to the ethics code in 1973, some time after Barry Goldwater won his libel case against Fact Magazine. Fact  published a survey of psychiatrists regarding his mental fitness to be president. He was not found to be fit. He lost by a landslide in 1964.

Like many ethics rules, the Goldwater Rule is roundly debated, especially when it is seen in light of a psychotherapist’s general duty to give warning when they know or even suspect sexual predators and murderous people are likely to act.  With A.I. and years of constant exposure,  writings, and history we can access about people like Donald Trump, things may be different than in 1973. Unlike most people on the Anti-social Personality Disorder spectrum, Trump does all his sinning brazenly, like tearing down the East Wing of the White House last week.

We have a lot of evidence for Trump’s sociopathy. For instance, Trump’s niece, Mary, a clinical psychologist, wrote the book (pictured above). She and Michael D’Antonio, a biographer, provide quite a bit of evidence for Trump being a sociopath. For instance, his mother was sick for a year when he was 2. His father Fred trained his sons to be “killers,” no empathy or vulnerability allowed. In the Art of the Deal Trump recalls giving his music teacher a black eye as an elementary kid. He was banished to military school at 13 where he was a loud-mouthed bully. George Conway put all the evidence together in an ad sponsored by his Anti-Psychopath Pac. (Access via Bing. I think he is banned on Google).

Anton Ashcroft (seen above), working in forensic psychology in 2016,  wrote Donald Trump: Narcissist, Psychopath or representative of the people? He claims, though he has never met Trump, it is his duty to warn people before they normalize his behavior. Your conscience will have to be your guide when his evidence calls for your conclusion.

2016 seems like a long time ago, now that Trump is fomenting a war with Venezuela and Mike Johnson refuses to let the House of Representatives convene. Ashcroft’s resistance is to a bygone ethics which presume an orderly set of institutions and common assumptions about propriety. Those presumptions are gone, it seems. So his diagnosis may be more relevant than ever, now that the traits of 4% of the population, many of whom are in prison (unless Trump has pardoned them), are being worked into the government, into world society, and into our individual lives.

No one has ever known what to do when the people on the sociopath spectrum — the People of the Lie as M. Scott Peck named them, get into power (which they normally don’t). People either try to avoid them or kill them. But killing them is not an immediate option for me. So I have been trying to understand them, at least, and discerning the most helpful responses God can suggest.

The research leads to the right questions

Martha Stout’s book is a plea to people of conscience to recognize and resist the ruthless among them. Her book formed the heart of my presentation. She helped me learn how NPD, ASPD, sociopathy and psychopathy form a spectrum of disorders coming into prominence in this “age of monsters.”

Counselors and educators can provide a truth-telling service to the unsuspecting society who cannot fathom the lack of conscience and single-minded will to power this 4% of the population suffers under.

We need to clarify what we are dealing with.

  • The definition of these people has become a bit muddy.
  • Is there really no cure for Anti-social Personality Disorder?
  • The idea of conscience needs to be clearer.
  • Are the assumptions about conscience fading with the diminishing influence of Judeo-Christian morality?
  • The factors, other than immorality, which cause sociopathy, need to be better researched and known.
  • Treatment options and interventions need to be more available to therapists, parents and law enforcement.

How do we respond to a person who has no guilt or shame, even biologically? I offered eight ways to respond and zeroed in on protecting our individual and societal consciences. I also highlighted the increasingly prevalent strategy of domination people on the ASPD spectrum use called DARVO — V.P. Vance has become as expert.

The definition of “sociopath”

I use the term “sociopath,” even though “psychopath” might work just as well. Neither term has a well-differentiated definition and neither appears in APA’s DSM – the repository of approved definitions for psychotherapists and researchers. But both terms are titles for ongoing study on the disorder. The American Psychological Association (APA) developed the term Anti-social Personality Disorder (ASPD)  because the terms sociopath and psychopath stigmatized people who got labeled that way.

Here are the criteria for ASPD:  1) failure to conform to social norms, 2) deceitfulness, manipulativeness, 3) impulsivity, failure to plan ahead, 4) irritability, aggressiveness, 5) reckless disregard for the safety of self or others, 6) consistent irresponsibility, 7) lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person.

Martha Stout adds color to the list to make it clearer: 1) sociopathic charisma, 2) a grandiose sense of self worth, 3) the need for stimulation, risk taking, 4) pathological lying, defrauding, 5) callousness, no empathy, the inability to bond.

What do we do with a sociopath?

I say we have one planted in the White House and he must be removed before the weed comes to its inevitably rotten fruit. He is shamelessly pasting his picture over our lives. He would like to carve himself in Mt. Rushmore, put a Trump Arch in Washington DC and receive a Nobel Peace prize for settling conflicts he did not settle, even as he creates conflict that makes the whole world unsettled. His lies have a Wikipedia page. 

When we encounter people on the ASPD spectrum in our daily lives, even if we are not certain, we must do our best to discern the motivation behind their behavior and respond to them as they are, not according to their deceptions or our idealizations. We must attend to our personal health and the health of society. We might not have all the solutions or have the power to effect the necessary changes — but our voices matter; our responses matter. Having a clear conscience before God and others matters.

We can have some empathy for the conscienceless and imagine the horror they would experience, if they had the capacity to do so. Martha Stout says:

Imagine — if you can — not having a conscience, none at all,
no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do,
no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.
Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken…
You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life?
What will you do with your huge and secret advantage?

We can love sociopaths with everlasting love. We might be able to help them. But don’t offer sociopaths pity and don’t waste your time shaming them (which is essentially negative pity). Never assume they are like you, with your guilt, shame and doubts; they are not. Keep asking, “What are they doing with their huge, secret advantage?” And tell the truth about your answers — to yourself and to everyone who will listen.

My previous blog posts on this subject. 

Say “No” now: It won’t get better. (April 7, 2025)

Is a sociopath training you for evil?: 8 ways to spot one and survive them. (May 12, 2025)

Recognizing DARVO is the first step to freedom: 5 practical responses. (August 25, 2025)

Your conscience is in danger: The Bible can help.  (October 20, 2025)

The slides for my presentation, which include the references are here: Google Slides

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Today is Kolano Sabia Day! As a person among the royal families leading the “Spice Islands” he represents a fascinating story of colonial evangelism — its sordid beginnings and its lasting impact.  Get the story at The Transhistorical Body. 

Your conscience is in danger: The Bible can help

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I was energized as I walked along Market St. on a beautiful day last Saturday. We periodically shouted “No Kings!” and “This is what democracy looks like,” and it felt good to hear my voice right out loud — there in public, and all. At one point we caught up with a couple of people in blow-up unicorn outfits. It looked like they might be young parents on a date — instead of the baby, their stroller carried a boombox. It was nice.

As we exercised our bodies we were exercising our consciences. Both have a tendency to get flabby. The latter desperately needs the restoration of a daily exercise routine before it gets burned out completely by the conflagration of kooks and crooks dominating our lives right now.

The dark side of conscience

I have spent quite a bit of time studying sociopath spectrum of humanity in the last few months. These are the people, probably not more than 5% of us, who either have a broken or missing conscience.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) collects these folks under the description “Anti-social Personality Disorder” (ASPD). The ASPD person has a severely wounded, inactive, broken or absent conscience. Conscienceless behavior is their distinctive across the spectrum. They are shameless.

The TV loves these people. You’d think they are around every corner, mostly carrying knives — they are not. But they make for good stories because they are strange and frightening. And we all know we might meet one and suspect we share some of their traits. Think Joe Goldberg in You, Dexter Morgan in Dexter, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish in Game of Thrones and Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, to name a few. Eric Cartman fits the description, too. They are more generally men, it seems, but women demonstrate the behavior, too. They are conscience-challenged, to say the least.

A conscience is the inner sense or faculty that allows a person to distinguish between right and wrong and guides their moral decisions. It acts as a moral compass, influencing behavior and causing feelings of guilt or pleasure based on whether actions align with one’s values and, importantly, fit in with one’s relationships. Hindus see this capacity as a seventh sense, beyond our five physical senses and beyond our ordinary awareness; it is “higher consciousness.” Contemplative Christians see it as spiritual awareness, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the place of intimacy with God and personal transformation.

Sociopath training

Conscience is considered a universal human ability, though its judgment can be shaped by experience and upbringing. It is what is happening in the deepest part of us, but not just that. Conscience needs a bond to form and to stay strong. That’s why many observers right now are wondering if we can fight off totalitarianism, since the opposition cannot unite. Postmodern, technology-isolated people have bonding issues.

Our bonding issues may have made us ripe for sociopathic manipulation. I think the  sociopaths are shaping our behaviors right now. The president is their leader. The innumerable lawsuits being filed are all about combatting behavior on the ASPD spectrum.

A sociopath cannot bond, most of the time. According to Martha Stout (The Sociopath Next Door),  leaders with no seventh sense, no inner awareness, no gut instinct for good, no spiritual connection can hypnotize the group conscience which leads to catastrophe.

ASPD leaders and ASPD-influenced systems make enemies “its,” not people, and see them as mere impediments to what is good, threats to safety and prosperity — and they find people to hate these “its” with them. Stephen Miller regularly strokes this proclivity in humanity. At Charlie Kirk’s funeral he said:

The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil, We will defeat the forces of darkness and evil. And we will stand every day for what is true, what is beautiful, what is good….

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

Why don’t we follow our individual consciences and follow sociopaths instead? Stout says we are programmed to obey authority even against our own consciences. Our basic instinct to bond and be acceptable in community can be turned bad. This has been demonstrated repeatedly, beginning with Stanley Milgram’s experiment to see if he could get college students to shock other undergrads who were getting wrong answers. They gave up their power to the authorities and shocked! A sociopath knows this tendency and plays it. Bullying works.

Protecting your conscience

If you are a Christian, you probably agree with the New Testament writers who teach that our consciences can be injured, and blunted — and if you develop a “hardened heart,” it can wreck your all-important bond with God. There is a lot of healthy discussion in the Bible about maintaining a conscience that resembles Jesus’ and stays open to the Spirit of God. But let me give you the teaching in just one little book: 1 Timothy.

But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. (1:5-7)

The antidote to sociopath leaders may be as simple as dancing down the street in a unicorn costume — exercising stubborn joy (which, Jesus says, no one can take away from us), in the face of domination.

Paul reminds Timothy of heart, mind and soul — his spiritual awareness: pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith, as he stokes his courage to keep teaching the gospel. Timothy needs a strong inner life. Because it seems like he was up against some shameless, ASPD-type people who won’t stop talking nonsense and people are believing them.

This charge I commit to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies made earlier about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, having faith and a good conscience. By rejecting conscience, certain persons have suffered shipwreck in the faith; among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have turned over to Satan, so that they may be taught not to blaspheme. (1:18-20)

One’s conscience is in danger if it is not in good shape. The speaker at our beginning rally before the march chided us for being spiritually flabby, essentially. I took exception since I was, after all, in attendance. But she knew that one protest does not make a transformation. Sociopaths never rest. For instance, last week the White House hired Kurt Olsen, the Stop the Steal lawyer, to investigate the 2020 election (!). The resistance cannot rest, either.

It is possible that Hymenaeus and Alexander did not completely reject conscience out of some evil agency. They may have been born without the capacity to have a conscience because of amygdala defects, or their environment was so traumatizing it made them shameless in order to survive — and ASPD appears to be heritable, too.

When Paul “turned them over to Satan” he did not condemn them to hell. He just recognized their intractability. They needed something more than regular church community to teach them.

The word blaspheme, here and many places in the New Testament,  is a direct transliteration from Greek. It means slander, defamation, or reviling, especially against God, and includes speech that defames others. Hymenaeus and Alexander were not just impious, they were bond breakers, dividers, loveless.

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will renounce the faith by paying attention to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron. (4:1-2)

When the Spirit “expressly says” something we primarily hear it with the seventh sense, which is the main reason we should keep it in shape. The message is mainly tested in community, which is why we need to stay connected to discerning believers. That sense can be dulled. A conscience can even be cauterized so it becomes impermeable to grace, joy and love.

Lies are the poison of conscience. Donald Trump’s lies have their own Wikipedia page. They are the main tool of sociopaths who only care about “winning.” Jesus calls liars children of the devil. The capacity of A.I. and our media in general to spread lies is breathtaking. Hopefully you have some children whose consciences are not seared who can build a new society in the wild years ahead.

If you feel like you must be living in the “later times,” you might be right. Pundits, protesters, prophets and preachers are working overtime to stand against the present “hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.” I thank God for that. We need all the help we can get. Because, as Paul teaches Timothy, having a living relationship with God, which keeps our consciences soft and clear, is the daily, fundamental step, not just in our self-care but in the formation of a society worth living in.

What if I don’t feel God anymore?: Update for this godless time

A life in the Spirit, Film/TV, Psychological growth, Spiritual direction, , ,

I first explored this in 2012 and keep going back to Ewan McGregor’s parable about moving into new life. In the middle of Trump destruction, change is forced on us, so it does not feel like growth. But a client reminded me the other day, “Why waste a good crisis?”

The film, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, is parable about gaining faith. It helps us answer a question people sometimes ask surreptitiously: “What if I don’t feel God anymore?”

  • What if I feel like a mundane Christian destined for mediocrity?
  • What if what excited me doesn’t anymore?
  • What if I am trying to feel God and it is not working?
Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor and you’ll see a young Kristen Scott Thomas, too.

Ewan McGregor’s development parable

Ewan McGregor has similar questions in his lovely movie.

In the film, McGregor plays a surly bureaucrat from the fish and game department who is unsatisfied with his life and his wife, and is emotionally cut off from his colleagues. But things begin to transform when his life is invaded by a charismatic, visionary sheik and the sheik’s wealth-managing, sexy assistant. For one thing, Ewan’s love of salmon fishing ends up being a metaphor for his own change.

The movie is a strange story about believing the impossible. The sheik wants salmon to thrive and reproduce in the Yemeni desert. At one crucial point, they have created a lake and a fish ladder and they have stocked the lake with farm-bred salmon (because the wild fish were too precious for enthusiasts to part with). The farm-bred fish are like Ewan McGregor: staid and stuck in a holding tank. Ewan has sat in his cubicle for a long time not really doing anything. Likewise, he has sat in his depressing marriage not having children and not really making love. The question about these farm-bred salmon is: Will they swim upstream, as salmon instinctively must do to reproduce?

As with all good parables, you are already asking the question: “Will I?” What about my development?

Everyone tensely watches from the dam, afraid their huge, wild experiment will be  a bust. But right when they are ready to give up, one salmon leaps out of the water. Soon all of them are turning around and getting up the ladder and up the stream. Excitement ensues.

But then something horrible happens. Just like Ewan experienced in the middle of his new project when his wife decided to leave him, some person who thinks the sheik is a liberal threat to Yemeni culture blows up the dam! Most of the fish are left high and dry. Just a little creek is left of the water project. They are sure all is lost. Ewan does not know what to do. But as he despondently looks over the project, one lone, surviving fish leaps in the air. They are not all dead!

Many of their expectations died, but something new hung on. Their previous idea for the water project was still in pieces, but a new and better result sprang up from the ruins of their work.

Here’s the meaning of the parable for people who don’t feel very good about where their life is going. Ewan felt like a dried up scientist destined for the mundane. He tried something new and it didn’t work just right and he did not know what to do. Something unexpected took place as a result of him taking some initiative. He endured the loss of what was and entered into what is next.

If you don’t feel God and you would like to, that is probably what is happening to you.

First of all, no one can really answer the questions, “What if I don’t feel God anymore?” because you are precious you. One size does not fit all when it comes to faith.

Second of all, I have some ideas about what might be going on. Don’t give up!

1)  Your childhood faith might be wearing out. It usually needs to move from head to heart.

I use the running the bases chart to talk about how we know God. It implies that we are always developing. Developing is a good thing, even though it includes feeling the uncertainty of moving further and the loss of standing safely on a base. The “game” is ongoing.

A lot of Christians only get to first base when it comes to understanding God. They have kind of a teenager faith. Many people come to faith when they are teenagers and they never get much farther than their original understanding. If you don’t experience the presence of God, maybe God  kept moving and you stayed on first base!

Old feelings pass away, but deeper feelings are in store. Spiritual “feelings” that are deeper than the reactions we learned in childhood are being developed in our much larger and deeper new eternal family.

2) You are going through a change of season and you need some new disciplines.

Think about just sticking with the basics of a “first base” faith in Jesus: knowing the Bible. Getting the gist of the Bible is no small thing, really. It is quite a feat to achieve a basic understanding of what Jesus is talking about, much more to feel secure about the way you are going to do the word.  It takes a lot of concentration to just get started. It might be tempting to stay on the first base of faith, or the second, or wherever you are, even though that season of development is over.

In the case of reading the Bible, spiritual development can’t stay at the level of merely understanding concepts. For one thing, the Bible leads us to the basic disciplines of meditation and prayer — those are not concepts, they are experiences. From reading the Bible we gain a collection of basic approaches to laying a personal, spiritual foundation that must accompany our reading. Meditating on the Bible saturates us with the truth and love that is revealed. We’re not just reading the words, we are responding to God and forming our relationship.

If that relationship does not keep changing and growing, something is stuck. In a new season we are called to run the bases at a deeper level. Our original idea of what they meant, as good as it might have been, turns out to have something deeper behind it.

3) You are experiencing psychological development

In our relationships with God we are always working on basic trust. We develop in the Spirit a lot like children develop in their families. Rather than milk we need solid food. Eventually, we need to develop agency. Then we have to endure losses and become adults. “What doesn’t kill us helps us grow,” it is said, and that is mostly true.

If you are wondering why you don’t feel God, it could be depression or anxiety talking. These symptoms are often “friends” that alert us to deeper things happening in our souls. They may not feel like friends, but they are often the signposts leading toward change. The uncomfortable feelings we often prefer to avoid are actually important to our spiritual development. The destruction of dams we thought should never be blown up often results in something better than we ever could have predicted.

Close relationships and young marriages often go through a lot of anger and hurt as the partners push one another to develop. When children are added to a family they push people further down the road. Losing one’s job or losing a loved one calls us to become deeper, to trust God. We need to listen to our anger, listen to the sadness and other feelings behind it and find out what it developing. Let’s not merely fight, flee, freeze or fawn in a self-defeating way, or our typical way, or the old way. Jesus is a new way.

Thinking over a parable, reading this blog post, relating to what is said, trying to stay open to God (even if you think your relationship is in a holding tank that feels less than fresh), are all ways to start moving in a new direction. You have spiritual instincts that are always ready to kick in. Let them leap.

Aidan’s example

A life in the Spirit, Poetry, Spiritual direction

My “psalm” on Aidan Day last Sunday. 

Maybe it was on this day in the 600’s
that Aidan gave King Oswin’s gift-horse
to the peasant he passed.

Maybe the peasant had seen the holy man
coming at a distance, filled with the mystery
of the Holy Island.

Then the mystery dismounted his horse.
I see him silently give over the reins
with a gentle nod and smile.

Later the king fumed and blustered,
and wondered why his horse was wasted
on some poor nobody.

Aidan stood unbowed and undeterred,
“Is God’s beloved of less value than your horse?”
The king bowed, deterred.

We walked on the trail and reminisced
about the simplicity that captured us early on,
and saved us from many kings.

We also got off a few horses to accompany
poor souls who did not amount to much
or warrant stories.

Even Aidan, who made it into Bede’s book,
and is named on Lindisfarne to this day
is an untold tale,

lost in the smorgasbord of media,
digested in a glut of engorged data,
a footnote perhaps.

Yet I am heartened he is no hero,
not a billboard or line of merchandise,
just someone to meet,

just someone on the road who gets down
and is just a person who knows you,
who cares to see,

who cares little for kings and horses
and knows very little about what is right
except to be in Christ.

*****
Today is Peter Claver Day! Honor his devotion at The Transhistorical Body. 

The present U.S. insurgency: Trained for in El Salvador

Spiritual direction, , , , , ,

Way back in 1990 Steve Penner invited one of the BIC’s newest pastors to join an MCC learning tour to El Salvador and Honduras. It deepened my love for those countries, for the MCC, and for Steve that remains to this day.

The immersion experience also proved to be full of enduring cautionary tales. Unfortunately, the prophecies I received have been fulfilled. Central America was a training ground for the militarists who are invading our streets in unmarked cars and masks right now. They are making war on their own people just like the U.S. trained and funded nationals to do in El Salvador and Honduras.

Olga Fedorova / AP, 2025

Our little delegation did not succeed in unmasking what the the U.S. government was doing in Central America and now we are having trouble unmasking ICE on our own streets [CNN].

ERP combatants in Perquín, El Salvador, by Linda Hess Miller, 1990
ERP combatants in Perquín, El Salvador, by Linda Hess Miller, 1990

18-year-olds with machine guns

In El Salvador it was not marginally trained ICE agents rushing into the streets, fueled by the billions provided by the Big Beautiful Bill.  Instead, we were met by 18-year-olds with guns stopping our bus. We were going toward Chalatenango, the mountainous province which was a major stronghold  of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) “insurgents.” The area was the site of multiple massacres committed against civilians by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran military during the civil war (1979–1992).

Our destination was the Mesa Grande refugee camp just over the border in Honduras, where we met a man who escaped El Salvador with barely any clothes on as a child and was still in the camp years later. As the young men prepared to inspect us and our documents, our handlers told us to keep quiet and keep our heads down. There was no telling what the kids might do.

Now we have similar people on our own streets breaking car windows, breaking into homes, and sending untried people to Uganda. I was on edge the whole time I was in El Salvador, now I’m wary of what will happen if we go to Home Depot.

The secrets of Soto Cano

Brunswick, GA (where I visited my relatives and alligators when I was 13) is where the U.S. has a huge center for training ICE agents. Further south in the Everglades, Governor DeSantis spent $250 million on Alligator Alcatraz, which was recently ordered closed by  U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams [NPR]. ICE now has 400 field offices in the US and a growing number of detention centers. The money always flows in the U.S. for violent solutions for relational problems.

When we were in Honduras we somehow got an audience with an officer at the Soto Cano Air Base. I’m sure if I hunted for my journal long enough, I could give you his rank. As was my custom (to the dismay of my handlers), I asked him a question I have not forgotten. The officer had just told us the new capabilities the soldiers were learning about combating insurgencies and conducting “low-intensity warfare,” meaning the enemy does not have giant air bases and cannot be distinguished from the population. (Thus Israel destroys Gaza and kills over 60,000 people to fight Hamas). I asked him, “With all this knowledge and new mobile weaponry, what are the plans for subduing future insurgencies in the U.S.?” He said, “We would never apply these tactics in the U.S.” You can see how that worked out.

Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras was a crucial staging ground for US military operations during the Salvadoran Civil War, serving as a base for intelligence, counterinsurgency, and logistical support. While not located in El Salvador, its role was central to US efforts to support its Cold War political and military interests in Central America. Because the U.S. government did not have public Congressional approval for combat missions from Honduras, it downplayed the constant involvement of the U.S. military in the area’s conflicts. This meant that service members involved often received no awards or official recognition for the dangers they faced. Their service was a secret. And most of us assume the “deep state” has plenty more secrets where those came from (as in the Jeffrey Epstein files).

The subversive cross

We also had the privilege of visiting members of Resurrection Lutheran Church in San Salvador where people told us of their subversive cross. Some of the people we met had been imprisoned, themselves, for their subversive activities — like housing battered women.  Others reported loved ones who were still lost to them in the prison system, not in Louisiana or El Salvador, but lost just the same. The squad that whisked them away was also following orders and “keeping the peace” as if they were the police.

CBN, not a bastion of wokeness, reported on what is happening to Latino Christians across the Evangelical community in the U.S. this year:

The story of the Lutheran Church is like a parable predicting today. At the end of 1989, an offensive by the FMLN resulted in a crackdown on dissenters by the government. On November 16 a death squad murdered six Jesuit priests. That same day another squad came looking for Lutheran Bishop  Gomez with orders to assassinate him. He was safely away. His church was full of victims of the offensive and the soldiers sorted them out.  They captured 12 foreigners and 3 Salvadorans, and they sunk so low as to capture and carry off a cross.

The cross is still a special symbol in the church — after all, now they have to deal with  President Bukele. One day, as a special offering to the Lord, the congregation wrote the sins committed against the people of El Salvador upon a plain, white cross.  As they identified the sins of their country and their people, they committed themselves to work toward forgiveness, and to be strengthened for liberation.  The cross also carried messages of hope and love, as a testimony to the transforming power of God.

The Bishop had found safe haven with friends in Milwaukee. Two months later, he returned accompanied by North American pastors. The U.S. Ambassador interceded and communicated with the President of El Salvador and the “pilgrim cross” made a journey from the prison to the Presidential House. There the cross completed its mission of pointing out sins.

Some time later, Bishop Gómez was again accompanied, this time by pastors from Germany.  They spoke with the President and finally “The Subversive Cross” was handed over, and returned to Resurrection Lutheran Church. The cross now rests in their building, still pointing out sins, injustices and the hard labor its members must do in social action and Christian accompaniment.

After eight months of Trump madness, subversion is growing toward Salvadoran levels all over the country and the whole world. A march to Washington is planned for September, originating in Philadelphia. Governors and attorney generals are figuring out how to creatively secede. Judges are handling cases that have finally made it through  the courts — like undoing Trump’s tariffs.

Debriefing turns to degriefing

A lot of us have been checking out for the past few months because of the Project 2025 onslaught (anti-trans people, etc.), and the tech bros onslaught (DOGE, data harvesting, etc.), the economic onslaught (tariffs now impacting everything), the grift onslaught (bitcoin, Trump family graft), and the compassion onslaught (Medicaid cuts, sneak attack on Medicare, USAID dismantling, etc.). It is all just plain overwhelming. Waiting for Trump to die is not enough hope to live on.

Likewise, in El Salvador I realized that even though I was about as woke as I could get in the 1990’s (I had lived in a commune, after all), I was still unprepared for how huge, ruthless, incompetent and unthought-through our military and political machines were. Sound familiar?

As we debriefed at the close of our trip to El Salvador and Honduras, we had just met Jon Sobrino, the priest who was not killed with his brothers in the raid on the Jesuit mission [my post]. He had just gotten back from the U.S. {Sojourners interview] [1990 commencement speech]. He told us he would never go back. He just did not have the strength to stand up to the soul-killing power of our culture. And, of course, he told us about that power snaking into his own small church and devouring its leaders.

As we sat in Tegucigalpa debriefing I was undone. I had to confess I thought I would have solutions and bring some home. But I had none and I brought home few. I admit, as I took my turn to share my feelings, I broke into tears. The past eight months have pushed me to that edge repeatedly. After all, people from El Salvador are still being brutalized in my own country while legally seeking asylum! Fortunately, I have not forgotten the subversive cross and its inevitable power to undermine the evil of the world and finally defeat it.