Jean Piaget was the great developmental psychologist from Switzerland. He proposed that consciousness grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between them. Based on observations of his daughter and her cousin, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults—they simply think differently. The idea was revolutionary at the time. Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery “so simple only a genius could have thought of it.”
A baby sees himself as one with his mother. There is no separation. But in the next few years, she begins to understand what is the same and what is different. She learns about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening. She realizes that she is a separate being from the people and objects around her. She learns to pick out one shape that doesn’t look like the others. She is naturally egocentric and is not able to see things from the perspective of others. But by about the age of seven, the child should begin to grasp and understand general rules. This is the stage of “pre-adolescence”. People in this stage can be very tribal and possessive in nature. These are “my” toys; you have no right to them. Revenge is “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Unfortunately, some people never leave this stage. As adults, the toys are now things that are more serious in nature. My country is the greatest – right or wrong. My political party is the greatest – right of wrong. My religion is the only religion – right or wrong. But other people move beyond this stage to a more unitive consciousness. The prophets of Israel, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. – and Jesus – are examples of such persons.
Our task as Christians is to put on the mind of Christ. How do we do that? Jesus gave us many clues when he spoke of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is not some place we go when we die. Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is within you, and the Kingdom of God is at hand.”, which means the kingdom is now and attainable. It happens now whenever we put on the mind of Christ. It happens when we try to understand someone who is different from us. It happens now when we forgive over and over and over again. It happens now when we love the one labeled as our enemy. When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, he was inviting his followers to a unitive consciousness in which labels and tribes no longer matter. When he told the story of Lazarus and the rich man, Jesus was inviting his followers to transcend the ego, the “pre-adolescence”, and to see the common humanity between the economic classes.
A story might better illustrate this concept.
A man was on death row for a murder. But a few months before his execution, he suffered heart failure and trouble breathing. He was sent to a hospital and a team of doctors spend several days trying to cure him. One of the young doctors kept asking, “Why are we going to such trouble? He is going to die in a few months anyway.” But as they kept working with him, they learned about his life. His mother left when he was young and his father was abusive. He took care of his younger brother, even changing his diapers when he was a baby. The man was very proud of his younger brother who became a good man.He said to the doctors: “No one remembers the good things that I have done. They only remember the worst thing.” In the process of being cared for by the medical team, the man felt loved for the first time in his life.And, in turn, the doctors learned of the depth of the human story, that everyone has some goodness in him. Everyone is made in God’s image. The man was executed three months later.But in a few days at the end of his life he felt the goodness of God’s love through a team of doctors. In the letter to Timothy, we are invited to “pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness…. Lay hold of eternal life, to which we were called.” (1 Tim. 6:11-12) We can lay hold of eternal life now, by putting on the mind of Christ. – – – Fr. Jim
