To illustrate my preceding post, here are some Bible verses chosen pretty much at random. They are from daily Bible readings for yesterday for the Orthodox Church in America:
When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, “Hear Me, everyone, and understand:
15
There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man.
So much in our lives is defined by the idea laid out by Jesus here that it’s kind of insane. We don’t notice it anymore because this kind of thinking has been so normalized to us but consider for a moment hearing this 2,000 years ago. Consider hearing this before the world this idea created came into existence.
Today, we see it as completely normal that we are the source of the shitty things in our lives. And the source of the good things. If I have psychological problems, I seek therapy for myself. I want to be a better parent, I work on myself. I’m doing my productivity practices because my hate work comes from the inside.
The greatness of this idea is almost scary. If I’m being a shit, it’s not because of anything others did to me. Not being a shit is within my area of responsibility. Nobody has the power to soil me. Yes, people can do terrible things to other people. But the beauty and the strength of human beings is that we are always more than that. Our inner world is always bigger than the externality. The answer lies within. I’ve witnessed what happens when non-Western people hear this for the first time. It’s intense.
The layered, complicated inner architecture of Westerners is the result of these words spoken 2,000 years ago.
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