The Human Condition 3

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0:00 Thanks guys, that's a pretty song. I like that song too. It's like, I think David wrote that song after Nathan called him out for his abuse of power in relationship with Bathsheba. What I like to know is that the call for David, you recognize that he starts out in that song

0:37 where he recognizes that he's sinned and he says his most grievous sin is against God. Against you and you only have not sinned. That the abuse of power towards Bathsheba reveals the fact that David doesn't trust God to give him the things that he needs in life. To give him satisfaction, love, affirmation, power, whatever he's looking for. David doesn't trust God and so he tries to grasp it for himself and his sin reveals, of course he wronged Uriah and Bathsheba, but David is saying that against God is my

1:11 chief sin. He's saying, forgive me for the sin, don't look upon it. And what I really love about the song is the famous line in verse 10, created me a clean heart of God and renew a right spirit within me. Pass me on away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. David's hope is not an amendment to his character. David's hope is not a change in his behavior.

1:45 David's hope is in something altogether new being created inside of him. David doesn't say, hide your eye to my iniquity and while you're looking the other way, change my willpower. Give me more discipline. He doesn't say that. He says, hold these sins not against me and also created me a clean heart. He's doing something altogether new.

2:16 This comes into our spirit of scripture and it's part of what Thomas Keating in our little summer reading prescribes for us as a way to address the problem of the human condition. That's why we started there for our call to worship. It'll probably come back in as we look at the text today. There's a couple of texts I want to look at. But we're working our way through this book, the human condition. I'm curious. Don't look around so we don't shame anyone.

2:46 But I'm curious who's getting into this book. Is anybody getting into this book with me? Just hold a hand up if you're getting into it. Good. Good. Maybe if you're in a house where one person is getting into it and the other's not maybe over a coffee in the morning or drinks that night, you just talk through what one person is getting out of it. One of the joys of this book, somebody asked why we're going through a book and I jokingly said, what's nice to have some light summer reading for your trip to the beach?

3:22 The book is not long and it's actually not complex, but it's very deep. You can read it several times. I like to read things just through slowly. I'll read a paragraph three times as I'm reading through this book. What I'm finding is that a lot of times he states something and then he comes back after he states it was supporting.

3:53 What we're going to do this morning is look at a couple of pages. But before we do that, I want to remind you of where we are and what he's thinking. Remember that this is Thomas Keating. He's a Cisterston monk. He gave a talk mostly to the psychology department at the University of Harvard University on the state of the human condition. This is like a state that all people find themselves in, a problem that is universal

4:24 to all of humanity. What we find is there, lastly we talked about the difference between first article truth and then revealed truth through the person of Christ. First article refers to the first article of the creed where in the first article the apostles' creed we say God, we believe in God the Father, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, that our God be God, the God incarnated in the person of Christ, God the Father, made all the world and made the world operate a certain sort of way.

4:56 Things like the human condition which are universal to all humanity, whether you have personal revelation through the person of Jesus Christ or not, you can learn about the human condition just by studying the world because it's built into the fabric of the way the world works. We call this a first article truth. The example I used last week is photosynthesis. You don't need to believe in Jesus in order to see that photosynthesis works. It's just there in the world. It's a first article truth. What he's saying is the human condition is like that too.

5:29 So whether you're a mystic Muslim, a Sufi or you're a Buddhist contemplative, you can move towards the reality of the human condition in deep contemplation. So we say we can learn from these people as the way they study first article truth about who humanity is in the world. And then he pulls out of that this notion that the God in the person of Jesus is the ultimate answer solution, prescription for the human condition, for the problem of humanity.

6:06 He locates the human condition, this universal challenge of humanity in an innate need for three main things. He says power and control affects and esteem security and survival. But from the time you're a baby and born, but by the mere fact of being human, you have a need for power and control security and survival and affection and esteem. And you develop systems for meeting those three foundational needs.

6:40 He says as a matter of fact so much, they're so foundational that things are determined often for us as good or bad by whether or not they give us one of those things. Money is good to the degree that it gives us more control and more security. Relationships are good for us to the degree that they heighten our self esteem and don't infringe on our need for control. And the time where a baby food is good because it gives us a sense of security.

7:11 And certain food makes us have a sense of affection that someone loves us and cares for us. That we develop needs from the time we're a baby to meet these, we develop schemes from the time we're a baby to meet these three foundational needs. And that those never go away because no one can meet those needs perfectly. We always develop systems and they go underground. But if he calls it into our unconscious. And these become drivers in all of our actions. Last week we read the story where he said that these drivers,

7:48 the drivers for power and control, esteem and affection and security and survival are sneaky and hard to kind of root out. And he gave the example of someone who in a one stage of life would drink his friends under the table in order to have their esteem. He would out drink everybody, go out and have more fun and show people that he could have more fun than all the rest of them. And he said then imagine that that person then becomes a monk he says like he did and

8:19 goes into the monastery and begins fasting all of his friends under the table. Showing how much better he is at fasting than all the rest of them. He says the behavior has changed but the driver is the same. He's looking for a steam among his peers. He's trying to create a steam to be loved. Right? This is sneaky and hard to root out. And I wanted to look at one section. He takes that analogy about the motivation even for good behavior being challenged or driven

8:51 by these three needs on page 22 for us. Just going folk on a national holiday. Glad you're here. Cheers. He says on page 22 towards the top some people enter religious life looking for the family they never had. But religious life isn't that kind of family. Summer. Let's see what he means by that.

9:23 He then gives another example. Some people get married because they want the mother who did the laundry and provided a shoulder to cry on. Many people who enter marriage are too immature to handle its responsibilities. That's why they often break up and have to start over. But if they are not aware of the unconscious factors that cause the breakdown of the first marriage they will bring the same problems into the next marriage. You see how what he's saying is some people come into church looking to meet the needs

9:58 that the family didn't meet. And they have a scheme so they're using the church in order to get a certain sort of thing. Much like people might look in a marriage to have a spouse continue the theme that they developed with their parents. I know I'm loved because my mom does my laundry. My wife doesn't do my laundry. She doesn't love me. Megan's really great at laundry. That's not our actual situation.

10:39 So these schemes can power helpful behavior and unhelpful behavior. What this, where is it, hold on, the work of the Holy Spirit goes deeper instead of trying to face for me. Oh yeah. So what he's saying then, he uses the analogy that these, or this analogy of the relationship

11:10 is show that these three drivers can be driving you in good behavior and in bad. And even you can approach God looking to manipulate God to help you in these schemes. And I was thinking of three places where that happened. Maybe you remember the story where Jesus is out teaching. He's been moving through the town. We talked about a couple of weeks ago that Jesus in his ministry must have been on the move a lot because he sent out those 72 in teams of two.

11:42 So 36 pounds, the village ahead of him. So in his year to three years of ministry, he visited at least 36 pounds, moving through them on foot. So he was hustling, right? If he was in ministry for three years, he was in a place a month teaching. It's no surprise that when he's out in the field, he has 5,000 men plus their families following him out into a field where they're so far away they can't find food and he's got to feed him. At different points, he's got lots of people around him. And there's one, there's a story of a, it just describes him as a rich young ruler who

12:15 comes up to Jesus. And he says, what must I do in order to inherit internal life? Do you remember this story? And Jesus says, you know the law and the prophets love the Lord to God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, love your neighbor as yourself. He said, check, I've done it. And Jesus says, okay, one more thing that you lack then, go and give away all that you have because he knew his things were important to us. The guy had a scheme, a strategy on how what he wanted to have security in the world to

12:47 know that his life was secure. And when he comes to Jesus, Jesus frustrates his scheme, right? Another one that came to mind was Mary and Martha. You remember when Jesus goes to visit his friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, I love the dynamic of that friendship there. It seems like he knows them really well. He leaps in front of them.

13:19 Lazarus is his friend who he can't stand to watch him dead. He actually stands outside of Lazarus' tomb and calls him, hey, dead Lazarus, come out and dead Lazarus' life rinses his body. And he walks out with his grave closed still on and Jesus tells him, take office grave closed, then they go have a meal. I love it. He's like disrupted by death but not Jesus, right? And he has these two friends, or three friends, Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And Jesus has rolled into town again.

13:49 He goes to stay with them. He always stays with them when he comes into town. Martha is a good cook probably and a good host. She's made the food. She's cleaning up and Jesus has started teaching and Mary is sitting down and listening to Jesus' teaching. You remember this story? And Martha is very busy and frustrated that Sister Mary is not taking care of Jesus and all of the man with her, right? And he says, she's Mary. Martha says to Jesus, tell Mary to get up and help me.

14:20 And Jesus tells Martha, hey, there's a lot of good things but in this case Mary has chosen the better one. That's not what Martha wanted. Martha wanted the theme of Jesus for all of her good works in front of everyone and he didn't get it. Jesus frustrated the plans. The more came to mind. Actually, this one is a little bit counterintuitive. Do you remember that Jesus, when he's arrested by the religious leaders, he's arrested in

14:53 the Garden of Gethsemane. They attack him at night and they do their false trial. And then what they really want is to get him killed but they don't have the authority to kill him. If they were to kill him, execute their own capital punishment, they would upset the Romans who only the Romans, the overlords are the ones allowed to execute capital punishment. So the local team, the religious authority, finds Jesus guilty of a crime that's worthy

15:24 of death but now they've got to take him to the Roman overlords to actually execute the death penalty as part of the agreement on how they still get to have some semblance of governance. And so they take Jesus to Pilate and that interaction with Pilate is recorded in a couple of places that abbreviated a little bit in Matthew and Luke. John's account of it has the most about it and if you were to go back and look at it, Pilate interviews him and finds out he's wrong with him. So send him over to Herod, the puppet king.

15:56 Herod finds nothing wrong with him. So sends him back to Pilate. Interestingly, John says that's when Herod and Pilate became friends. They had been kind of enemies until then. But this thing about not seeing what was wrong with Jesus made them friends together. He comes back to Pilate. Pilate tries again to not crucify Jesus. The religious authorities are so frustrated. They say, please crucify him. And Pilate has this moment where he's asking Jesus these questions and Jesus is giving him these enigmatic answers. And Pilate says, don't you see that I have the authority to set you free or to kill you?

16:33 Pilate says, can't we disagree that I'm the one in control of this situation? Like, and I have the ability to put you to death or to keep you alive. Can't we just agree on my system of power and control here? Jesus says, actually, Pilate, you have no control in this situation. God is in control of all things. Jesus frustrates even Pilate's stuff.

17:09 I wonder how your schemes are going. The reality is, if you meet God in your life, God will frustrate little schemes, little plots, little plans you have made to quarter off power and control security, affection and esteem. If you're encountering the God of Abraham, I can say, the God of Christ in the church,

17:44 he will frustrate your little plans for power and control, security and survival, affection and esteem. You will be a front good. He will frustrate your plans. Keating says on page 20 here, God approaches us from many different perspectives. Colin, he's going to give some. These are fun. Illness, misfortune. Misfortune is a pretty general term for bad.

18:19 Illness, misfortune, bankruptcy, divorce proceedings, rejection in her trials. God has not promised to take away our trials, but to help us change our attitudes towards them. That's what holding us really is. In this life happiness or contentiveness or satisfaction is rooted in our basic attitude towards reality.

18:53 The reality, Pilate likes a world where he's in control of all things because it helps him deal with his own feelings of inadequacy, his own confusion about he likes living in a world where he's in control. The trouble for Pilate is he's living in a fantasy world. Jesus points it out. Oxu-Pilate, you're not in control. Martha likes living in a world where she just cleans the dishes and takes care of everything that she thinks she's supposed to do,

19:28 then everyone will love her. The problem is everyone will take all of her work and it won't have anything to do with how much they love her really. She's living in a fantasy world. Jesus confronts her fantasy world. The rich young ruler would love to live in a space where he feels like he's done everything, so God owes him salvation. The problem is when he lives that way, the rich young ruler is living in a fantasy world. When you encounter the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of creation in life, the God of Christ in the church, he will frustrate your little plans for power and control, security and survival, affection and esteem.

20:07 And we've all got them. In this life, content in this is rooted in our basic attitude towards reality. Look at this, wait for it, page 24. Content in life is rooted in our attitude towards reality.

20:43 The reality is God is the source of all power and security. God is the prompt of all affection and esteem. God is the originator and holder of all security and hope for survival. The reality is all things originate and conclude in God is the beginning and the end for me and you and for all of humanity. And that's a bummer because like the rich young ruler, like Martha, like Pilate, we'd like to have our own schemes that work.

21:24 And we can create a fantasy world in where it looks like they do. On page 24, he says, if psychologists and psychiatrists would be in dialogue with the insights of St. John of the Cross, and those who experience the dark nights there, there could be a marvelous symbiosis of treatment. We're not just sick because of some physiological pathology. And this is the sentence I like. It's not just a question of sin either. So you're the place where you find yourself. These schemes you develop, whether it's the rich young ruler trying to behave appropriately,

22:01 but maintain his money for his security, whether it's Martha trying to do all the right things even for Jesus, trying to do all the right things even for faith in order to earn love or it's like Pilate trying to build little kingdoms or areas, whether it's our household or our work or trying to build little kingdoms where we feel like we're in control. The problem in those isn't just sin. It's not just that you are doing something that is wrong.

22:36 That's too simplistic of you, Thomas Keene says. It's not even a question of sin. It's a question of the human condition for which none of us is initially responsible, but on becoming adults, we are now called to be responsible. The problem we talked about a couple of weeks ago, the difference between sin and iniquity. Sin or transgressions being choices, individual choices we make to decide that we know better than God in any situation.

23:11 But the propensity to choose sin, finding yourself separated from God, the state in which we are born, this iniquity, which gives birth to all of these schemes and patterns, is not our fault necessarily. But here we are. In the frustrating part of the separation from God that leads us to build schemes, whether it's in our marriage, in our work, with our money, in our addictions, whatever ways we build schemes, it can be frustrating to be in flesh and blood which feels so weak and so prone to addiction.

23:53 But what Keene is saying is don't just stick your head in the sand and live it in the false world, in a fantasy world. Deal with you now are responsible for your own iniquity. So, what do we do?

24:24 Back, we go back to page 22, that's what we do. And look at page 22, the second full paragraph. The false self is that fantasy world, the one part of us that wants to build these schemes, the false self is looking for fame, power, wealth, and prestige. The unconscious is very powerful until the divine line of the Holy Spirit penetrates to its depths and reveals its dynamics.

24:56 Here is where the great teaching of the Dark Knights of St. John of the Cross correspond to the depth of psychology, only the work of the Holy Spirit goes far deeper. Instead of trying to free us from what interferes with our ordinary human life, the Spirit calls us to transformation of our inmost being, and indeed of all our faculties into a divine way of being and acting. When you recognize that the nature of reality has you separated from God, and apart from God, you need schemes for power and control, affection, and esteem, security, and survival.

25:39 The answer is not to amend your scheme's change behavior, work harder. The answer is to encounter the Spirit, which, like David said all the way back in the Psalms, makes new things inside of you, with the capacity to live well. He says, the Greek Father's called this theification, God has called us through the gospel into an adventure in faith, hope, and love that involves being introduced to the inner life of the ultimate reality, whom we call God.

26:16 We begin to manifest in daily life not only of false selves and practices, but infinite tenderness of God, the concern of God for every living thing, especially for the needy and the quarter. Keating says like the reality is iniquity, but we are not relegated to stay there forever. He begins to lay out like, then, how you encounter the Spirit on a regular basis.

26:53 Let's look back at Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, God, according to your steadfast love, and according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly for my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. And then he says, I know the transgressions, they're before me. And then he says, perch me again.

27:24 And verse eight, let me hear your joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice, hide your face from my sins. Verse 10, create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. Thomas Keating in the book here gets really practical about how he engages the Spirit of God.

27:58 Just one sentence there, he says, one just listens to God. He says this is what prayer is, one just listens to God, open and receptive to the divine presence in one's inmost being as its source. One listens not with a view to hearing something, but with a view to becoming aware of the obstacles to one's friendship with God. Keating says that the answer for you and I as you start to look reality in the face is to begin to engage with God as though God were real.

28:31 Two weeks ago we said that you have Christ in you, and this is your greatness, hope for glory, for becoming your fullest sense of self. And Keating says that that Christ in you has the capacity to start something new apart from all of your scenes and strategies that allows you to live in reality, where God is your source of power and control of affection and esteem of security and survival.

29:01 And when we live that way we begin to image, when we live without schemes, with God as the source of those three needs, we begin to image God to the world. It shows up in actual kind of humility, tenderness, love, service. This is a journey that I can't talk you through, it's one that you experience so you don't. And Keating outlines it a little bit here in this book, you can research, enter and prayer.

29:33 It's been a valuable experience for me in different seasons of life. Part of the reason to bring in this book for now is I feel like I'm moving into another season where this will be part of my experience with God, part of my relationship. Where you create space and time to simply be available to God. And through a system of practice dismiss distraction and focus on the presence of God.

30:06 Keating says that as you do that in a repeated behavior over and over, be available and sit in the presence of the God, things like what David is asking for. Creating a clean heart, pure heart can happen. And you and I can be people apart from schemes and strategies who let God meet our most basic needs, find contentedness here and move towards eternity within. My prayer is that you and I would find a journey that matches where we are in this season to move towards God and let loose of our schemes and strategies.

30:43 Let me pray. Hey Lord, thank you for your recurring invitation to join you in life. Give us all the courage this week to face reality. To step out of the little fantasy worlds we make to meet these basic needs. Expose Lord the ways in which iniquity has launched strategies and schemes to meet our own needs.

31:16 Unmouthe them that we might put them aside and have our needs met by you. Begin that work in us now Lord Jesus as you are kind and gracious to do this morning. In Jesus name we pray.