My education has followed through to the earning of the highest degree offered in a modern university. I am grateful. I live the life of the mind, which is not necessarily better than say, the life of physical labor. But the life of the mind is full of differing turns, of contradictions, and mysteries. It is a mystery that one person, weighted with the same evidence as the next person may arrive at a different conclusion than a colleague. It is a common paradox. It is a given in intellectual exercises that an eminent scholar will offer a conclusion conflicting to that of another eminent scholar, perhaps both graduating from the same institution. This applies for both secular and sacred contexts of education. It is a given that is often troublesome to good people.
The field of psychology is intriguing. The world was guided for centuries explaining human foibles through the prism of right and wrong. Controls and solutions were often found in religious faith; in informal communal institutions, especially in the family structure; and, in obedience to law or power figures. Guides were found in duty, in prayer, and informal problem solving with acceptance. Institutions emerged and began to take over knowledge management. The alleged unmasking (illusory) process began. Darwin unmasked the origin of man. The astronomers unmasked the universe with the big bang theory. Freud unmasked the social concept of sin as related to mind and sex. What was long seen as righteousness and sin became wellness and illness. For example, drunkenness is no longer to be seen a sin, but an illness. Society lost something with the growth of the belief, born of Freud and others, that in individual human desire is the seed of freedom. Desire became the leading feature of the individual, and no one has the right to deny its expression. Even C. S. Lewis extolled the meaning of desire relating to a proof of God. A strong secular school of thought holds that in the search for wellness and happiness the person has no external assistance like God or angels. There is no legitimate restraint except as one imposes it on himself. Persons are guides on their own. They are responsible for their own happiness, so get out of the way. Respect my rights, in respect for all rights. So the pattern develops as the humanist chooses. The view is intriguing, but shorn of competency to desired end.
I may enter this or that therapy, and the therapeutic society has another convert. No one is in self-fault. Everything personal is thrown into the stew. Even triviality is made important because keys to the room of happiness are small. One becomes spiritualized by believing in some school of this or that, which may not be a religion. Happiness continues to be elusive, not really found in expressions of individuality. It is not found lasting in accumulations; in expressing self and libidinous passions; in trying to find out what my desires really are, and expressing them fully. The ordinary person becomes taken, not with the meaning of life, but what becomes an inordinate attention to self. Restraint provides minimal balance for him. He becomes almost asocial in some ways because he must give time to the discovery of himself. When he does find something, he may not know how to use it for lasting truth. Jesus informed his listeners that if they believed they were able to care for themselves, they were not in a frame of mind to believe what he had to say. They would continue on their own in a world playpen, but they would not find solutions. They were burdened and heavy laden. He offered, and offers, to lift them out of lonesome nature, dealing with mortality by offering immortality. Mortal freedom to experiment may not lead to immortal freedom. Human freedom may release us to take wrong directions. Directions are for us to validate – in humility. Christ referred to the ways – broad and narrow. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020