Occasionally I meet folks who say something like, "I refuse to think the way the Church wants me to think. I would rather think for myself." Then invariably they come up with a lot of thoughts that merely unconsciously reflect and express what Empire has indoctrinated them to think.
I recently saw our local Encore Players' spectacular production of Inherit the Wind. The fact that, in the play, both Brady and Drummond affirm or debunk the literal reading of the Bible means they both reflexively think according to the categories installed in them by the reigning Empire of the time: Modernity. On these terms Drummond inevitably wins and Brady inevitably looks like a moron. At one point in the play, I believe it is Drummond who says something to the effect of not wanting to have only one dominant book in our schools, be it the Bible or Darwin. And yet, there is only one kind of teaching allowed in schools today, and it is that of the reigning ideology of Modernity.
Under Modernity, we all learned to imagine "thinking for yourself" as the height of intellectual maturity. In reality that almost never happens. No one thinks for themselves. Our thoughts do not come to us except as conditioned by and filtered through our personal and social context. And that context assumes the shape given it by Empire. When we think we think for ourselves we most likely unwittingly think in the way Empire wants us to think by default. Under Modernity, this meant thinking in terms of the mythology and beliefs of Modernity: for example, individualism, reducing truth to facts, radical secularism, materialism, and so on.
As Dylan sang, "You gotta serve somebody," we could as easily realize that you gotta think like somebody. When we imagine we think for ourselves, really we only think according to the default of our society. We think with our egos that enslave us; we think according to the categories of Empire we have learned since infancy.
But, in the New Testament, metanoia/repentance means thinking differently, according to the mind of Christ, our Essence. The whole mission of the Church supposedly shepherds people from reflexively thinking what Empire demanded they think, to thinking in a very different way, according to the love of the Creator and the goodness of the Creation. Unfortunately, and obviously, the Church has regularly capitulated to the dominant Empire and failed in this one essential job. Indeed, we let the categories, criteria, methods, and models of Empire even creep in and determine our own theologies and spiritual work.
But we never relinquished the one thing necessary: Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture. And, even though Empire attempts to control, co-opt, coerce, and adulterate this one thing, we have always retained it. He is always there, waiting for us to pay attention again. And occasionally, in every generation, some people get called to do just this. Christ summons them to discipleship.
The turning point that has to happen is this realization of our own conditioning, our own utter lack of objectivity, that the way we have always thought was not better, more advanced or enlightened, but always according to a specific ideology... and not a particularly good one: an ideology responsible for more death and destruction, degradation and depravity, than that which guided any previous Empire. We howl in indignation at the very idea of having the Bible taught in school; but we habitually think of the ideology of Modernity as objective, neutral, enlightened, and good, when it is actually the most toxic system of ideas and practices ever inflicted upon the Earth.
We call this turning metanoia/repentance, and Jesus offers it as the Way out of our suicidal, homicidal impasse. Indeed, if we do not start thinking differently, and then acting very differently, our world and perhaps humanity has no future. We're going to have to start thinking and acting according to the self-emptying life and includisve, nondual teachings of Jesus Christ: characterized by compassion, humility, joy, inclusion, wonder, gentleness, nonviolence, generosity, gratitude, and a sense of communal connectedness with and in all things and God.
Instead of thinking for ourselves, which is really thinking Empire, maybe, in Jesus and by the Spirit, we can start thinking with and for... all.
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