Modern Psychology vs Healing Salvation.

The Ego

How to Kill the Ego

 

Modern psychology has told us we must feel good about ourselves and instructed us to reject the idea of guilt and sin. Sin is seen as religion's instrument for keeping people in line, making them dependent on an institution that should be relegated to the Dark Ages. In an age where man is elevated to being his own god, religion is seen as a sort of enslavement. Up with self! Down with guilt!

 

Self as the new god is worshiped at the expense of community and enthroned in a position of the utmost importance. Worship of self has contributed to the downfall of families and societal stability, with careers, social and financial gain and self fulfillment reigning supreme.

 

Divine love does not tolerate this elevated status of self, for the ego is the enemy of our communion with God. In an age of financial collapse, mortgage foreclosures and high unemployment, worship of self dooms us to a life of total loss.

 

We were created for communion with God and the worship of the ego has led us into a state of spiritual bankruptcy. The total meltdown of the economy and the destruction of the environment is the direct result of the turning away from spiritual values. The foundation of economic and environmental collapse is to be found in our spiritual bankruptcy. We need to return to the worship of God, and reject the worship of self.

 

The denial of guilt and sin is the ultimate example of our having accepted the lie perpetrated by the devil, the great deceiver. True happiness and true wealth come only through the fulfillment of our destiny and that for which we were created, communion with God.

 

The destruction of the ego begins with repentance and the acquisition of a humble and a contrite heart.

Situation Ethics

 

Situation Ethics Versus Biblical Morality

 

Situation ethics has become the norm for our times, having replaced the biblical ethics of past generations. In situation ethics as long as no one is hurt one can do as one pleases. Taking drugs, watching pornography and aborting the unborn child, all can come under the flag of situation ethics.

 

Taking drugs is seen as morally neutral by increasing numbers of Americans. We believe no one is hurt by our drug use, while refusing to see the obvious connection between our drug purchases and the mass killings in Mexico by drug cartels that are in business because of the demand for drugs by American users.

 

Nothing wrong with watching pornography, we tell ourselves, forgetting that the demand for pornography enslaves many poor young women (and men) in a form of prostitution, all for our sexual gratification. Pornography has become one of the major addictions of our times, keeping large numbers of people in bondage, and preventing sound healthy relationships.

 

Situation ethics has convinced women that since they have the right to make decisions concerning their own bodies, aborting the fetus is allowable if their own lifestyle will be negatively affected. Nothing about the rights of the unborn, who have no voice whatsoever.

 

The Fathers knew that even the secret sins committed by people had an effect on the whole of the cosmos. The people who promote situation ethics would have us believe that nothing that is done in private hurts anyone. Biblical ethics tells us quite the opposite.

 

 

Love in Christ,

Abbot Tryphon