Wednesday: The Cleansing of the Subconscious
WEEK 13
WEDNESDAY
THE CLEANSING OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
James 3:9-12
We are meditating on the “cleansing” that came to the disciples through the coming of the Holy Spirit. They had been cleansed of a great deal before this fuller and deeper cleansing. Jesus had said to them, “You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you” (John 15:3 RSV). The word he had spoken had cleansed them of wrong directions—they were converted and turned around; cleansed them from wrong relations with God—they were forgiven of sins committed; from wrong relationships with others—they had entered a fellowship; from wrong attitudes toward life—they were allied to life, not alien to it; from the kingdom of self to the kingdom of God—they had been “transferred” to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son. They were in the family of God. They had been cleansed from much, but not from all. While they were in the family, the family spirit was not often in them. There were the outcroppings of the old through the soil of the new.
The cellar of their lives, the subconscious, needed to be cleansed. The ground floor—the conscious—had been cleansed and life’s furniture set in order; but the cellar still had a lot of junk in it, left over from the old. Psychologists tell us that down in the subconscious—or the unconscious, as they prefer to call it—the primitive driving urges, or instincts, reside. These driving urges have been classified into more than a dozen by William McDougall (1871–1938), but have been reduced by many into three main urges or drives: self, sex, and the herd. These urges have come down through a long racial history, and through that contact with an erring race, have bent toward perverseness, toward evil. Stated thus, this uncovering of the subconscious squints toward what the theologians call original sin: sin born in us. Paul calls it the “flesh”: “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh” (Rom 7:18 RSV). By the flesh he is speaking, not of his physical body (soma), but of the body of inner evil (sarx). By whatever name, everyone who knows himself or herself knows that it is there; and it is the center of our spiritual problems.
O Lord, I am now close, very close, to the sore spot. Help me not to wince or evade but to walk up to this problem and find the answer. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am persuaded God can save to the uttermost, and the uttermost includes the subconscious.