Recently I have encountered many writings regarding the inner self, or the power to effect change in your life is within you (note: meaning unto your own ability). Carl Jung was just one of many who wrote regarding this idea. In Jung’s book “The Undiscovered Self” he writes in regard to the philosophy of life and how the primordial images that maintain the flow of instinctive energy cannot just be replaced, they are reoriented and readapted; they cannot just be replaced. His words not mine.
Say what? He is talking about the fabled power within doctrine of phycology and self help gurus. Why do I say fabled? Because the evidence about mans ability to rise above his own self outside the bar of a sovereign God does not exist in totality. Jung puts forth this thought: “this is in keeping with the aims of Marxist education, which seeks, like God himself, to mold man, but in the image of the State.” Yet, God never mentions his aim to mold man, he affirms that he has created him in His image. God has already outlined the best way to live in this broken world, a world broken by sin.
4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens— 5 and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground— 7 the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:4-7
For Jung its primordial, for me it’s a creator, not that we came to be by chance. God is not molding me; he has already molded me in his image. Sin has blocked my view of the real self and my potential in Christ.
Jung in his book has to give way to the rationale of faith, even though he writes that it is mythological. He writes: “Nothing is more characteristic and symptomatic in this respect than the gulf that has opened out between faith and knowledge…. Theology rejects any tendency to take the statements of its earliest records as written myths and accordingly, to understand them symbolically.”
19 But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. 20 For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” Acts 4:19-20
Seen and heard, would Jung conclude that these men and thousands of others are mentally deluded, that they are not knowledgeable of and for their day? We tend to believe what we see and hear, including that which we have not really seen (aka ghost). I firmly have come to believe, having lived for sometime now in this world that we (man) alone is not the answer. Fallen (sinful) man cannot outside of God bring about peace on earth, and act solely and collectively for the good. Neither can poser Christians! Want to realize your full potential in this limited life? Seek who God made you to be and what he purposed you for, in that you will find fulfillment and true living.. likely more than you can handle at first.
17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. Eph. 4:17-19
God has never asked you to check your mind at the door of the worship assembly; some men may have, but never almighty God. He made your mind and purposed it. Find real power and real life by getting out of yourself not deeper within.
Peter Mueller is a graduate of Liberty University, with 10 years of ministry experience in small groups, family and church planting. He and his family currently reside in the Cincinnati Ohio Area.
No comments:
Post a Comment