Week 20 Sunday
Week 20 Sunday
Sublimation of the Instincts
Romans 6:13; 1 Corinthians 15:9-10; 2 Corinthians 5:16-17
Last week we ended with the idea of being “in Christ,” and we saw that meant identification with his purposes so that his victories become our victories. We must now see some of the results of being “in Christ.” Paul says, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17 KJV). This translation says, “old things are passed away,” and yet they have not passed away, they “are become new.”
There was a sense in which old things had completely passed away, and yet there was a sense in which they had come back again completely transformed and new. This “new creature” is entirely different from the old creature, and yet fundamentally the same, only new.
The peach was once used in ancient Persia to get poison to tip arrows. The peach was once poisonous! The modern peach is a new creature, old things have passed away; behold, they have become new. It is new; the poison has been eliminated, but the fundamental life of the tree remains; only now, instead of being used to bring forth poison, it brings forth luscious, health-giving fruit. That is sublimation.
Paul saw that the poison of the old instincts had been eliminated, but the instincts themselves had now come back sublimated. Whereas they had been used in purposes that ended in death, they were being used in purposes that ended in life. He found he was the same man, with his fundamental Jewish human nature intact, and yet he was so fundamentally changed that he had to change his name from Saul to Paul to express a new fact. There was discontinuity with the past and yet a continuity. Conversion meant both cutting and conservation. The driving forces of his spirit were under new control, directed toward a new end. Sublimation had taken place.
O Christ, I thank you that you take this raw material of human life and cleanse and refashion it, and make it serve other ends—your ends. I put it all at your disposal. Make out of me what you can. Amen.
Week 20 Monday
Sublimation of the Instincts (continued)
2 Corinthians 3:10; 5:14-15
The instincts are the driving life-forces. The stream of life energy flowing through us breaks into three instinctive channels: self, sex, and the herd. Minor instincts can be tabulated, but they usually turn out to be phases of the dominant instincts. Concerning these instincts there are these possibilities: biological expression, perversion, repression, suppression or self-control, and sublimation.
The Christian way of life would eliminate perversion and repression and would use biological expression, suppression or self-control, and sublimation. The distinction between repression and suppression seems to be that in repression the instinct is pushed down into the subconscious and the lid closed. There it works havoc. As J. A. Hadfield* is alleged to have said, “Repressed instincts are like bad boys who, when put out of the class, begin to throw stones at the windows.” But in suppression the instincts are kept within the conscious mind and are suppressed at certain places in order to be sublimated at others. In other words, the bad boys are kept in the class, under observation and direction, and taught to direct their energies to constructive ends. But suppression without sublimation may end in repression and is therefore dangerous to handle.
Christianity believes in biological expression. It believes in the individual, in the family, and in society. It is not at war with human nature. Some religions are: “I never mention my family. I am a religious sadhu,” said a Hindu to me one day. Buddha was at war with the self-instinct, to wipe out the human personality. The Christian way uses the biological expression, but always under the control of its ideals. That means expression at certain places and suppression at others. But the suppressed can always be sublimated, turning the instinctive forces to higher expressions. That opens the door upward.
O Christ, we thank you, that you have made it possible that we should be wholly dedicated to your purposes and that human nature is not to be eliminated, but redeemed. Redeem me. Amen.
* J. A. Hadfield is the author of The Psychology of Power, 1933.
Week 20 Tuesday
Some Old Things New
Acts 14:19-23; 26:29; 2 Corinthians 11:28-29
Paul says that “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17 KJV). We are now discovering how old these “old things” are. The instincts are very old. They stretch back to untold ages. They have become grooved and set in certain directions. And yet they can be abruptly changed and redeemed.
Take a phase of self-instinct, the pugnacious instinct in Paul. Before his conversion he was very pugnacious; he breathed out slaughter against the Christians. Then the change. After his conversion, he was still pugnacious. But now this pugnacious energy was directed against the kingdom of evil. Sometimes it was on the verge of becoming directed against his associates. But on the whole and in the main, this pugnacious instinct was bridled and harnessed to the chariot of God’s purposes, and Paul drove it toward kingdom ends. The pugnacious instinct was sublimated and made constructive.
I saw a sadhu who had a tame lion with him, and when I asked him why he kept it, he said: “To teach the people how human nature can be changed. If this lion can become so meek, men can also tame their passions.” But I felt the lion had been delionized and had become a lazy dog, led about by a chain. (A psychologist said that he had cured a man of thinking he was a dog, but unfortunately he now thought himself a water rat.) I felt the magnificent energy of the lion should be tamed and harnessed to constructive tasks if it were to be a real symbol of conversion.
Have you a pugnacious spirit? Don’t try to get rid of it. Let Christ cleanse from it the selfish pugnacity that stands up for its own ends and ways, and then let Christ harness it to the task of fighting disease, wrong conditions, inequalities, hate, and evil of every kind. Then you can say, “My old pugnacity has passed away; behold, it has become new.”
O Christ, take this pugnacity of mine. I lay it upon your altar. I ask you to use it. But it needs harnessing. Harness it, sublimate it, and use it. Amen.
Week 20 Wednesday
Sublimating the Self Instinct
John 15:16; 18:20-23; 1 Corinthians 11:1; Philippians 4:9
The ego instinct is probably the most imperious of all. It is at the basis of most of our actions. We must face that fact. To talk about a person being “selfless” makes me inwardly squirm. Christ was not selfless, nor was Paul, nor should any Christian be. I once asked a sadhu where he was going. “Rama, Rama,” he replied, naming his god. No matter what I asked him, he answered with the same words. He was selfless; Rama had taken the place of the self. But had he? Not at all. The self was still there, asserting itself into prominence by saying it wasn’t there!
It simply makes for hypocrisy to say the self isn’t there. It is bound to be there and should be there. But the question is, what kind of a self is it?
The self was sublimated in Jesus, the meekest of men and the most self-assertive. He renounced power, refusing to be made a king, and yet the self was satisfied by gaining the most amazing power ever exercised. Paul became the servant of the churches—their troubles his troubles, their weaknesses his weaknesses. As you look at him you say, “The man has lost his own ego.” Not at all. That ego instinct was sublimated, and therefore satisfied by having authority over people by the very fact of his renunciation. He did not renounce for that purpose, however. Had he done so, it would have spoiled it all; but the power over others was a by-product of losing himself. The self was not lost; it was loosed. Mahatma Gandhi lost the smaller, lawyer self and found a larger servant-of-India self, and with it an astonishing authority. He is not selfless, he is imperious.
Your old ego must die, be crucified. Then it will come back and you can say, “The old ego has passed away; behold, it has become new.’’
O Christ, take this ego of mine and cleanse it from all egoism, and harness it to your purposes, so that I may be able to live with it—and perhaps rejoice in it. Amen.
Week 20 Thursday
Sublimating Sex
Matthew 2:11-12; 23:37-39; Galatians 4:18-19
Life is heavily loaded at the place of sex, too heavily loaded, some would say, for the purposes of the propagation of the species. But whether it is overemphasized or rightly emphasized in our makeup, it is an integral part of us, and as such must be dealt with frankly and sanely.
To confess sex-desire to oneself is no more shameful than to confess desire for food. Both are integral parts of us. Where it is functioning biologically for the purposes of procreation, the problem is normally solved. Even there it must be under the restraint of the rest of the ideals of the life. For if one part of the nature demands satisfaction at the expense and sacrifices of the rest, then the result is not satisfaction but inner division and hence unhappiness. But the problem becomes more acute at the place where the sex instinct is denied biological expression. In that case it may be repressed, which is dangerous, setting up a complex, or it may be sublimated.
The sex instinct was sublimated in Jesus. He was creative at the place of the mind and spirit. He was bringing into being a new race, a higher type of humanity. He was mothering and fathering the family of God. “O Jerusalem. . . . How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Matt. 23:37). That is sublimation.
Paul, denied a family life, was not unhappy, because he was sublimating his sex life, being procreative in the higher reaches of life, the mind and spirit. Wherever he went, he saw the new birth take place. He was a spiritual father.
For twenty-eight years, I have been able to say that I have never known of a single moral lapse among the thousands of single-lady missionaries in India. Why? Largely because they have been sublimating the sex instinct by mothering the unfortunate and the orphans.
If anyone be in Christ, there is a new creature. The old sex instinct has passed away; behold, it has become new.
O Christ, I thank you for release from inner bondages. Loose my soul in creative activity. Amen.
Week 20 Friday
Sublimating the Instincts of Curiosity and Pride
Philippians 1:9-11; 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20
The instinct of curiosity is early shown in the child as it asks concerning everything, “What’s that?” In grown-up people it may manifest in ugly ways of prying into other people’s affairs and meddling with their private business. However, the instinct of curiosity may be a decided help in furthering the spiritual life. The Christian should sublimate it from lower ways to higher.
Christians belong to a kingdom to which there are no frontiers. They, therefore, are under the sway of an Ideal that is always ahead of them, always receding, a flying goal. They accordingly have the possibility of an infinite curiosity. Their minds and spirits should grow as they stretch forth to know. The instinct of curiosity is sublimated from useless, pointless prying to the purposes of infinite growth.
The instinct of pride can also be converted, can be sublimated. We hear people say, “My pride has been killed.” I hope not. If so, we are killed. Of course there is the sense in which the silly pride, which thinks in terms of bedecking itself to attract attention, needs to die. But pride can be harnessed to the kingdom.
Paul could say, “For what is our hope or joy, or the crown of which we boast? Is it not you yourselves? . . . Yes, you are our glory and our joy” (1 Thess. 2:19 Weymouth). Here was the old Pharisaical pride turned redemptive. Paul was not glorying in his ancestry and his learning, but glorying in this new creation taking place before him—proud of this new humanity. The instinct of pride was loosed from pettiness and gloried in the worthwhile work of his own hands.
A sublimated pride would save us from slovenly sermons, from skimped work, from spiritual half-heartedness, from not being at our best for God. So we should be able to say, “The old curiosity and pride have passed away; behold, they have become new.”
O Christ, kill within me foolish pride and then raise up within me a nobler pride that will tolerate nothing less than the highest. Amen.
Week 20 Saturday
Sublimating the Acquisitive and the Herd Instincts
Isaiah 32:20; Matthew 13:1-9; Romans 8:29 (Weymouth)
The acquisitive instinct is the driving force in many lives. It is at the basis of many of our world difficulties—individual and collective. It drives people to bow at the shrine of “grubby thing-worship.” It needs converting. Can it be done?
Jesus pointed the way when he said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, . . . but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19-20). You are still to “lay up,” the acquisitive instinct is still operative, but now toward higher values. In other words, we invest in people instead of in things. We are now as eager for this new treasure of changed people and changed society as we were for the treasure through exchange. The old instinct of acquisitiveness has passed away; behold, it has become new.
The herd or the social instinct can be used for narrow, partisan, nationalistic ends. It can eventuate in a bombastic nationalism, asserting itself against its neighbors and pushing the world into war. Or it can be converted, sublimated. In Christianity it is. The herd instinct is fastened upon the ultimate conception in human relationships, namely, the kingdom of God on earth. Then one can say, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? . . . Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matt. 12:48, 50). The herd instinct is not done away with, it is enlarged, enlightened, enlivened. It has now its real home. The lesser loyalties of home, country, and church take their meaning from the highest loyalty, the loyalty to the beloved community, the kingdom of God.
Every power of our lives is to be purged and presented as instruments of the new life: “no longer lend your faculties as unrighteous weapons for Sin to use. On the contrary surrender your very selves to God, to be used as weapons to maintain the right” (Rom. 6:13 Weymouth). Paul taught sublimation before modern psychology named it.
O Christ, I thank you that my faculties are all at your service. Take hold of me, not at the surface but at the depths. Amen.