Our World

I have chosen you out of the world. Jn 15:19

Be not conformed to this world. Rm 12:2

Our world, the world we see, is a reflection of our self-image. We picture the world in the image we hold of ourselves. We see what we judge we are. We judge only our mirror. Our world is a world of judging; since judgment involves guilt, our world is a world of guilt.

We carry within us a massive amount of guilt, not only a behavioral guilt, but a more basic existential guilt — guilt not for our actions, but for our being. It is this primordial sense of guilt, not for what we have done, but for who we are, that colors all our relationships, shades everything we see.

Theologically, this fundamental guilt, this guilt we feel from the mere fact that we are human beings, is associated with original sin. This sense of guilt is based on the illusion of separation and alienation. And this illusion, namely that we are split off from God, is the basis for our dualistic thinking. It is the "bad dream" all humans dream. We mistakenly feel we are split off from God, others and even ourselves, and we are therefore not what we "should be"; we feel we are bad, wrong, inferior, guilty. To be more exact, this guilt could be called shame. It's our original shame.

Psychologically this phenomenon has been described in various ways. Alfred Adler saw all human beings as laboring under a burden of inferiority. Sigmund Freud saw human beings as burdened by the misunderstood or frightening sexual drives and experiences of childhood. But what is common to these explanations, be they theological or psychological, is an underlying sense of guilt and its accompanying fear of punishment.

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We feel ashamed that we are not what we "should be," for we are just human beings. Our very humanness becomes a source of our guilt. We have opted to be like we "should be," that is, "like the gods," our idols ("eat the fruit and be like the gods").

Since our humanness falls short of our impossible goal (idols are never real), guilt and fear are our constant companions. It is through the lenses of this guilt and fear that we create the world we see. The outer world becomes merely a projection of our inner world. The world we see becomes nothing more than the reflection of the judgment we are placing on ourselves — "Guilty! Punishment due!"

We project onto others our interior split by which one part of us is judging the other part. People and situations become for us merely windows through which we see our inner division and alienation. Then we deceive ourselves into believing that our problems are outside of us.

But the conflicts we see as arising in other people and situations are a reflection of our self-condemnation, externalized onto other people and situations. The picture we take of others is the view we have of ourselves. When we see others are not what they "should be," it merely reflects what we feel — that we are not what we "should be."

So we see the world in terms of our dualistic, judgmental mind. Indeed, it is impossible for us to see the world in any way other than the way we see ourselves. The external world is our internal world. Since we are internally divided and separated we naturally see a divided and separated world. Since we place ourselves under judgment, we naturally place the world under judgment. If we see guilt and punishment as our due, we will automatically see the world as guilty and deserving of punishment. The world we see is definitely our world, for in it we behold ourselves.

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Our world is the one we view from the perspective of our personal dividedness. We have invented an external world of conflict from our inner world of conflict. What we "should be" conflicts with what we are. Our internal dualism forms our model for judgment. Upon these scales we continually weigh what is right and good against what is wrong and bad. We carry around within us a paradigm of justice which we superimpose on everyone and everything. We have a definite game plan that encases all of reality, a certain set of rules that we lay on life.

Accordingly, we are continually judging others and situations: good/bad, right/wrong, innocent/guilty, should be/should not be, rewardable/punishable. This is the world we have created, a world of division and separation. We understand this world and feel at home in it. It makes sense to us.

Depending on our sphere of influence and our degree of power, we can manage and control our world to some degree. It may be stressful, even difficult at times, but it is at least understandable; it may be demanding, but it is workable. Workable, understandable, controllable, manageable — that's our world. That's the world that makes us feel secure. That's why we created it. That's the world we have made, the one we think "should be." It's a dualistic world of judgment and "should's," filled with guilt, fear and punishment, but it is the world we have chosen for the security it offers us.

Security and Fear

We created our world from what others told us, either through their words or actions; others who at one time provided our security. We are tied to our judgmental world with its guilt and punishment because we are tied to the people who formed us.

The basis for our judgments is founded on what we learned from these key people in our lives. These people make up "our gods." Parental gods, church gods, state gods, teacher gods, peer gods, friend gods. Eat the fruit and be "like gods" (Gn 3:5).

From these idols we developed our model of good and bad, of what "should be" and what "should not be." From them we developed our game plan, our set of rules which is the basis for all our judgments. These gods are now internalized; we carry them around in our head and look to them for support. Self-judging, with its guilt, fear and punishment, holds us and our world together. It ties us to our idols and keeps our relationship with the gods intact.

By judging ourselves we are obeying the gods. We are doing what they told us to do. We are knowing (judging) "the good and the bad." Judging is the very "stuff" of our security; it is the glue that bonds us to our...