The monster in us

WE have to be aware that each one of us has some kind of a monster, ever ready to get hold of us and to lead us to his wild and sinful ways. We need to tame him, or better still, to convert him into some kind of a lamb.

In biblical terms, this monster is referred to as the “old man” as opposed to the “new man” who is already redeemed and renewed in Christ, or the carnal man as opposed to the spiritual man, the man led by the Spirit rather than by mere impulses of the flesh and the play of worldly forces.

It is this monster that expresses what is wrong with us—our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, our attraction to evil and malice, our concupiscence and sinfulness, etc. It is what spoils our original dignity as persons and children of God.

It also is responsible for us living some kind of a double life, which we should also correct by trying to attain the ideal of unity of life, because while we are attracted to the good, we also get somehow attracted to evil.

Remember St. Paul saying, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (Rom 7,15ff.)

Let’s never forget that with the way we are, we are very much capable of leading a double life, what with the ways of deception and hypocrisy very accessible and easily assumed, and with hardly anyone else noticing.

Thus you can have a person who can look like a saint but is actually a demon, worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Nowadays we are not anymore surprised to discover that there are false prophets and false teachers not only in civil society but also in the ecclesiastical world. Due to this, horrible scandals explode from time to time.

This is the reality of our human condition here in our earthly life, which we should acknowledge without going through unnecessary drama and lamentation and which we should try to correct with God’s grace and our generous efforts inspired by faith, hope and charity.

Let’s remember that no matter how ugly things can become, there is always hope. Christ has conquered evil. We always have a way to recover from our sin and its consequences. We should avoid getting depressed and feeling desperate even in our worst situations.

This means that we should always be in a state of what may be called as spiritual red alert, ever on the look-out and ready to make war against our own selves, the devil and the world, if necessary. We need to update our knowledge and skill in the art of spiritual warfare.

We have to be wary of our tendency to be complacent, to take things for granted, and to be afraid to go against the current in a world that seems to be driving recklessly toward perdition.

The world nowadays is getting more openly hostile to God’s laws and is now imposing its own, based perhaps by some consensus and vigorously pushed by some powerful and moneyed groups with their own rationalized ideologies.

What is evil and sinful is now considered a human right, an expression of freedom, or a path to human maturity and liberation from what they consider as stupid kinds of bondage. To fight against evil as defined by God’s law is now branded as discrimination or plain injustice.

These groups talk loudly about losing the fear of God and the law that God has written in our hearts and has revealed to us also. And they will do everything to undermine the authority of the Church. It’s not that Church leaders are exempt from sin and mistakes, but their failings are exaggerated to take away their authority.

This position of the ideological groups goes precisely against what the Bible says about fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, that is, divine wisdom and not just wisdom of the world.

Thus, aside our own personal weaknesses that create and keep the monster that everyone of us has, we also have to contend with increasingly powerful worldly and demonic forces that seek to nurture our personal monster, and to snuff the life the “new man” and the “spiritual man.”