AS SOON AS YOU LOOK AT THE WORLD THROUGH AN IDEOLOGY YOU ARE FINISHED. No reality fits an ideology.  Life is beyond that.  That is why people are always searching for a meaning to life.  But life has no meaning; it cannot have meaning because meaning is a formula; meaning is something that makes sense to the mind. Every time you make sense out of reality, you bump into something that destroys the sense you made. Meaning is only found when you go beyond meaning.  Life only makes sense when you perceive it as mystery and it makes no sense to the conceptualizing mind.

Anthony de Mello (1931-1987)

Recently I was watching the debate on ABC’s Nightline on the subject “Does Satan Exist?” The four participants were philosopher Deepak Chopra, Bishop Carlton Pearson, Pastor Mark Driscoll of the Mars Hill Church (Seattle) and Annie Lobert, founder of the Christian ministry “Hookers for Jesus”.

As I watched I was struck with an amazing insight which nothing to do with the actual subject being debated. When either Chopra or Pearson spoke their thoughts, they seemed to thinking and reasoning from a basis of understanding about life, learning, and personal viewpoints.

When Annie Lobert spoke, she recounted her own personal experiences, interpreting those things in light of Christian doctrine she has learned.

However, it was Mark Driscoll’s answers and ideas that triggered something powerful in my own thinking. No matter how the conversation moved and whatever turn the debate took, Driscoll’s reference was either a Bible verse or Christian doctrine assumedly based on the Bible. Driscoll’s entire modus operandi was to define and prove every position by his belief system… his ideology. If something was said that was not “scriptural” it was wrong or untrue. And things he would declare were true because that is what the Bible says.

And suddenly it struck me with crystal clarity… he was proving everything by his belief system. This is what he knows. This is what he is identified with. I did the same thing for O’ so many years.

I am slowly coming to the place of understanding what Anthony de Mello was saying… the moment you see the world through a belief system, growth and spiritual life stops cold. Now the only thing you can do is get better and better at articulating the viewpoint of your ideology. Indeed, you are finished.