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This
all sounds like that silly medieval idea of hating the world. What’s
wrong with God’s creation?
 any of those today who call themselves
Christian want to live complacent, comfortable
lives, and they aren’t much interested in doing the hard work of learning
about and studying the true
faith and then living it from the depths of their
hearts. They make faith into an intellectual process of
“knowing,” rather than a matter of
dying to the self.
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Christ constantly
rebuked the Pharisees for their intellectual bickering about the details
of the Law while their hearts lacked any sincere concern for others. Well,
the “Pharisees” of the Church today are those who, in rejecting
Tradition with a thump of the Bible or in arguing about the defects of Vatican
II, neglect the humility and
self-sacrifice that are
fundamental to Christianity. |
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If you really want to live a
holy life, therefore, you have to open your eyes to the fact that the
culture around us—including much of so-called
Christian culture—is not holy by any standards. The early Christians
knew this well enough, but they lived in a hostile, pagan culture. When the
world is trying to kill you, it’s not that hard to see the world for
what it is. But many “Christians” in today’s world are totally
blind to the psychologically subversive
effects of our contemporary culture.
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Do not be deceived.
There is nothing in popular culture today that encourages us to holiness,
and there is everything in popular culture today that incites us to
turn from God to idolize the “self”
and its fleeting satisfactions. |
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The
World
In psychological terms,
the “world” is nothing but our personal attempt to protect ourselves,
in one way or another, from weakness and vulnerability, through
illusions of human glory and power.
In theological terms,
the “world” is nothing but our cultural attempt to protect ourselves,
in one way or another, from weakness and vulnerability, through
illusions of human glory and power, in order
to hide ourselves—in our naked emptiness—from
God.
In either sense, then, the
“world” scorns God and makes an idol of
itself.
Contempt of the
World
Contemptus
mundi, or “contempt of the world,” is certainly not
an outdated medieval concept, but it is often misunderstood.
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Contemptus mundi
does not mean to have disdain for sunrises and sunsets and swallows rollicking
in the evening sky. |
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Contemptus mundi
does not mean contempt for natural beauty. |
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Nor does contemptus
mundi mean to nurture disgust and hatred for anything. |
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So why does Christian
“contempt“ for the world have nothing to do with hatred? Well,
Christianity is based in love, and to understand love we must be clear about
the following:
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Love has nothing
to do with hatred for evil. |
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Love has nothing
to do with fighting Satan and his agents with
human power. |
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Love has nothing
to do with trying to avoid hell. |
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Love, however, has everything
to do with the desire for the good.
Contemptus mundi, therefore,
is the Christian rejection of the world—the human social world, in all
its vanity—and its futile attempt to hide from
God and from His true love. Contemptus mundi is loving refusal to
condone or participate in the world’s sins.
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Likewise, the
concept of contempt for the self (especially
as used by Thomas à Kempis and Saint John of the Cross) does not mean
self-loathing. It really means to set aside our self-interests for
the sake of the salvation of others, and, at the same time, to develop our
own talents as fully as possible in the service
of Christ. |
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Now, if you don’t grasp
the concept of contemptus mundi right at the beginning of your
spiritual quest, how will you ever fulfill the command
of Christ to pray constantly (Luke 18:1)? How
can you pray constantly when your head is filled with the world and all its
sports scores, movie reviews, television schedules, shopping sales, drugs,
sex,[1]
alcohol, cell phones and video games?
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He said to them
again, “I am going away and you will look for Me, but you will die in
your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.”
So the Jews said,
“He is not going to kill Himself, is He, because He said, ‘Where
I am going you cannot come’?”
He said to them,
“You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is
why I told you that you will die in your sins.” |
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—John 8:21–24 |
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One easy way to understand this
is to contemplate the story of the Exodus:
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Egypt can be
seen as an image of humanity’s slavery to sin. |
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The journey
through the desert can be seen as an image of the need to detach ourselves
from the things of the world—to fast and eat only the heavenly food
and water that come from total trust in God—so as to attain chaste spiritual
purity. |
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The land of
Canaan can be seen as an image of the social corruption that surrounds us
and that must be avoided at all costs in order to remain in a state of
grace. |
Detachment from
the World
Detachment
from the world, therefore, shouldn’t be considered as a spiritual
work in the negative sense—that is, as whatever you do to
avoid something. Instead, it should be considered in the
positive sense as whatever you must do to achieve something
good.
Let me explain.
Christ
emptied [2]
Himself to come into the world—right into the midst of our
wretchedness and pain—to save us from our
sins. Therefore, those who call themselves Christian
should be willing to empty themselves of their
pride of self and to enter into the pain of others,
so that, through sacrifice and prayer, others
might be healed from their sins.
What a waste to cling to your
“self” and its attachments to the world! What a waste to refuse
to empty your “self” in Christ! What a waste to renounce the cross
by filling yourself with the world’s fri
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