0.14 Religious perspectives on personality  (Page 6/14)

from Mark, Chapter 12; Holy Bible

What is surprising about this answer is that Jesus simplified the Ten Commandments even further, emphasizing just two, but those two commandments encompass both the spiritual and the social worlds - love God, and love all people (the famous Good Samaritan parable teaches that all people are one another’s neighbors). Thus, it seems appropriate for us to address the social and psychological aspects of loving and/or caring for other people, as well as for ourselves, as something separate from religious/spiritual pursuits. And yet at the same time, we cannot, and need not, separate our psychological studies from a religious/spiritual context (at least when trying to understand those people for whom religion and spirituality are important daily factors).

Discussion Question: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Is it really that simple?

Christian Mysticism

Christian Mysticism is as old as Christianity itself, for Jesus led a mystic life (Walker, 2003). Since that time there have been many Christian mystics, but two particular groups stand out: the desert fathers and the women mystics (Chervin, 1992; Clement, 1993; Waddell, 1998). As the Christian faith became legal, following the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great late in the third century, Christianity became caught up in the politics of the empire. Soon enough, a group of spiritual men sought to escape worldly politics and secular distractions by becoming hermits. They traveled out into the Egyptian desert and began monastic lives. In order to be with God, they did not merely seek solitude, but they also sought to eliminate their sense of ego. This was attempted through what we might call contemplative prayer, or simply meditation. However, the sense of ego does not go away easily:

The ego doesn’t want us looking for God because when we find God, the illusion of being an ego will be destroyed. It will mean the end of our self-centered existence and all of its negative emotions…One cannot see God and continue to live as a separate person. (pg. 49; Walker, 2003).

Thus, a battle arises between the sense of ego and one’s efforts to immerse oneself in the Deity. This spiritual combat, essentially the battle between good and evil, exists because of our freedom to choose our path in life (Clement, 1993). It was in recognition of this challenge that the desert fathers sought the solitude of the desert. There they were able to pursue the ecstasy of unknowing, that which is beyond the boundaries of any human ability to comprehend or rationalize the experience:

At one time Zachary went to his abbot Silvanus, and found him in an ecstasy, and his hands were stretched out to heaven. And when he saw him thus, he closed the door and went away: and coming back about the sixth hour, and the ninth, he found him even so: but toward the tenth hour he knocked, and coming in found him lying quiet…the young man held his fee saying, “I shall not let thee go, until thou tell me what thou hast seen.” The old man answered him: “I was caught up into heaven, and I saw the glory of God. And I stood there until now, and now am I sent away.” (pg. 130; Sayings of the Fathers, in Waddell, 1998)