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THE TRAGEDY OF OUR UNEXAMINED LIVES

Isn’t it remarkable—if not absurd—that we can spend twelve, sixteen, even twenty years in formal education and still walk away knowing nothing about ourselves, about life?

We emerge with degrees, diplomas, and an encyclopaedia’s worth of external data, yet remain hopelessly ignorant of the inner machinery that governs our thoughts, sabotages our relationships, and dictates our deepest convictions about God, life, and love. We’re taught the laws of physics but not the architecture of the soul. We know the anatomy of a frog but not the anatomy of faith—when was the last time you needed to know a frogs anatomy to get through life? We can parse algebraic formulas but remain illiterate in matters of the heart. Worst of all, we adopt untested worldviews and then pretend to be surprised when they do not actually match reality.

The world has mastered the art of distraction. It trains us to memorise and perform, but not to understand. And so we drift—bumbling about like children in a carnival funhouse—chasing quick fixes, surface-level hacks, and the illusion of progress. We want healing without honesty. We want purpose without process. We want spiritual authority (carry weight with the King) without inner work.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: ignorance is not innocence. It is voluntary destruction. The prophet Hosea did not stutter when he delivered God’s lament:

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you” (Hosea 4:6).

This isn’t a passive failure—it’s an active refusal. A willful ignorance. A chosen blindness.

We can say that those in authority should have taught us, but that only flies up to a certain point. At some point this becomes an issue we could have rectified.

Why? Because the enemy of your soul has no greater fear than your awakening. He is terrified that you will begin to think, to see, to understand—for knowledge, when it is rooted in truth, becomes freedom. And freedom makes you dangerous. If you were to truly grasp how God made you, why your mind works the way it does, how your inner beliefs shape external reality, and what it means to partner with God in truth—Satan’s lies would collapse like a house of cards. You would become, to him, a wildfire of clarity in a world of fog.

But instead, we are lulled. We settle for slogans over substance. We say things like “ignorance is bliss,” not realising that such bliss is a coma. And Hypnos (sleep) and Thanatos (death) are brothers dwelling in the underworld of our subconcious.

Yet there is another way.

You were never meant to grope blindly through life. Life is not random and unpredictable. You were designed to understand—to pursue wisdom, to renew your mind (Romans 12:2), to develop phronēma, the Spirit-led mindset (paradigm) that enables discernment, power, and alignment with God’s will. You were called not merely to believe, but to build a Weltanschauung (worldview) rooted in eternal truth and empowered by divine insight.

The work that follows is a more academic but accessible deep-dive into this reality: how the mind constructs maps of meaning, how subjective experience can distort objective truth, and why as Christians we must take seriously the command to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind [nous].”

You will encounter insights from Jungian psychology, Vedic philosophy, and cutting-edge neuroscience—not to synthesise them as equal truth, but to demonstrate that the longing for wholeness, clarity, and transformation echoes across every culture and tradition, pointing back to a divine Designer who wired you to understand Him, yourself, and the world.

Let us begin the journey—not with easy answers, but with better questions. With the courage to face ourselves, the humility to admit what we’ve ignored, and the determination to live lives no longer dictated by deception. There is no shortcut. But there is a path. And it begins with light.

THE MIND MAP: PERCEPTION, ILLUSION, AND TRANSFORMATION

Contrary to popular opinion and our subjective experience, humans never experience “pure reality” directly. Instead our brains constantly construct an inner map of the world, blending raw sensory data with prior beliefs, emotions, and cultural symbols. It’s like watching the world through a TV screen, the quality of the picture depends on the quality of the screen.

That is to say, we do not see the world through our eyes. Our eyes are merely cameras collecting data that is projected and interpreted on the screen of our minds.

Philosophers and scientists call this process of interpreting information and projecting it onto the screen of our minds many things—mental models, cognitive maps, predictive coding—but all agree that what we actually live by is our internal image of the world, not the world-in-itself.

In Kantian terms we never see “things-in-themselves” but only phenomena filtered through our categories of space, time and causality. We categories information and relate it to our internal “map” of the world. We then use this map (which is constantly under construction) to navigate life (the world) with.

Descartes showed that our senses can deceive us: qualities like color or taste exist only as ideas in our mind, not as intrinsic parts of external objects—since sense signals must first be interpreted according to our map. If what we are observing (sensing) has no internal definition or even a faulty one, we may categorise and relate the new information to our map, and thus our navigation will be off. This is how people get lost in life.

Jung likewise noted that innate psychological patterns—archetypes and complexes—act like a “virtual image” of the world already inborn in us. The brain is a pattern-recognision self-learning biological machine, that scans the world through our physical senses in an effort to remain safe. This is good and bad. Besides that the fact that it may be interpreting signals based on erroneous data points, this inclination towards safety is risk averse. And all growth happens outside of the known in the scary realm of the unknown. Thus the brain is actively keeping you stuck in old routines that are considered safe. This is why many peoples lives feel as if they are going nowhere.

UNless we reprogram our minds with new accurate data points, the brain will keep us going in circles. Now consider this verse we have looked at many times already.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind [mental map], that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1)

Modern neuroscience paints a similar picture: the brain is a “prediction machine” (based on available information whether good or bad) that imposes expectations on our senses. It continually generates top-down hypotheses about incoming signals and then tweaks them by the data.

In this view, perception is never neutral—we see not only with our eyes but also with our mind’s eye. When predictions err, we get illusions or strange beliefs, or even anxiety and depression. In short, every human worldview is necessarily subjective and limited, a mixture of reality and our personal glass.

Think about this, everybody you know has created a different many “identity” of who you are. Not one is alike.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS

“The eyes are useless when the mind is blind.”

Descartes’ Doubts: René Descartes taught that we must doubt our senses because they can
mislead. He insisted that many sensory “secondary qualities” (color, sound, taste, heat) belong
only to our consciousness, not to external bodies. For example, a red apple’s redness is in
our perception, not a property of the apple’s extension itself. Thus the mind adds content to
sensory input; without the mind’s ideas the raw world would be a different place.

Kant’s Categories: Immanuel Kant argued that the mind actively structures experience. All our
perceptions are shaped by a priori “forms” (space, time) and “categories” (causality, substance,
etc.). Kant wrote that our representations are always built from sensibility (space/time) and
understanding (concepts), so we never know “things-in-themselves,” only appearances .

In effect we wear “spectacles” that color reality: we interpret raw input according to our native lens
of intuition. What we call objective truth is thus inseparable from the mind’s architecture.

Jung’s Archetypes: Carl Jung proposed that our collective unconscious contains archetypes—inherited patterns or predispositions—which implant a proto-worldview. As Jung put it,

“the form of the world into which [a person] is born is already inborn in him, as a virtual image” .

These unconscious templates (the Hero, the Mother, the Trickster, etc.) provide the framework through
which we interpret life. They “actively influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors” by offering ready-made (unconscious) symbols and narratives. Thus, to truly understand our behavior we must actively make the unconscious conscious.

In practical terms, Jung means we all carry inside us a blueprint of reality drawn from human heritage; our personal story unfolds against that backdrop, whether we realise it or not.

TAKE AWAY: Each of these thinkers highlights one key truth: inner models shape outer experience.

We perceive the world not with a blank slate, but with ideas already in place. Every sense-datum is “interpreted” by mind, culture, emotion and belief. This creates both meaning and the risk of distortion.

MODERN COGNITIVE SCIENCE: THE PREDICTIVE BRAIN

Recent psychology and neuroscience echo these ancient insights. The brain is now widely also seen as a predictive organ: it constantly anticipates sensory input based on prior learning in order to improve “performance.” As one review notes,

“The brain must infer what signals from the outside world represent by applying expectations,
assumptions, or beliefs about the way the world is.”

A classic example of this is reading. We do not read the individual letters, since that would be uneconomical. Instead we recognise word patterns—based on prior learning—and thus project meaning onto the text instead of letting the text speak for itself. I counseling I have personally ask someone to read a specific verse in Scripture, only to find they needed at least three tries before they read was on the page and not in their minds.

You can test this yourself. Quote 2 Corinthians 1:20 to yourself and then go and read what it actually says. THis verse begins with, “All the promises of God are yes and….“

It turns out that before we learning is much unlearning bad information as it is learning new information.

In other words, perception is a blend of data and guesswork. Light enters the eye, but the brain instinctively “fills in” blind spots and ambiguous edges using memory and context. This means our experience often amounts to our brain’s best guess of reality, not a photo-finish reproduction.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Because of prediction, what we see is “continually being shaped by our background beliefs and
expectations” (even if we aren’t aware). This demonstrates why we must become aware of our inner “programming” that is constantly analysing and tweaking new sensory input. We literally see what we expect to see, then adjust only when something doesn’t fit. The advantage is speed and efficiency, but it also means misperceptions are baked-in.

Hurry up and slow down so that we can speed up our learning :)

Our minds can jump to conclusions on partial clues, creating illusions or lasting false beliefs. In the brain’s own words, these “bugs and quirks” can include anxiety, depression, chronic pain, placebo effects, and more—all stemming from “faulty top-down influence” based on the brains’ expectation. This science confirms that our mental maps can lag behind reality and twist it—especailly when new information is considered threatening.

Now we can begin to understand how when someones mental map (a constructed theoretical map) gets confused with their true identity (an unconstructed reality i.e. the one making the map) we end up with a problem. Once the identity of self becomes entangled with the the constructed reality of mapped identity, any threat to the map is perceived and treated as a very real existential threat. Thus any attempt to dispel an illusory map, becomes unacceptable. This is why people persist in beliefs that are harmful. The basic problem is they do not not know who they are without their map. This also means they do not question their own map, or allow anyone else to do so. Does this shed light on the identity crisis being experienced in the West?

In spiritual language, we might say the mind is like an eye-glass that occasionally gives us distorted vision.
Cognitive biases illustrate this at work. For instance, all-or-nothing thinking (splitting) forces the world
into black-or-white categories. Christians sometimes fall into the trap of seeing every nuance as either
totally holy or completely evil, with no grace in between .

We may magnify our sins and minimize our gifts—a classic distortion identified even in church culture . Such patterns show how easily the mind’s lens warps reality. Recognising these biases is part of “renewing the mind”: becoming aware that our gut reactions and inherited assumptions might not be accurate.

THE VEIL OF MAYA: EASTERN INSIGHTS ON ILLUSIONS

Hindu and Vedanta traditions speak of a similar phenomenon under the term māyā. Māyā literally
means “illusion” or “magic,” and Vedanta describes the world we perceive as a veil over the ultimate
truth. Vedanta is one of the six orthodox traditions of Hindu philosophy and textual exegesis. The word Vedanta means ‘conclusion of the Vedas,’ and encompasses the ideas that emerged from, or aligned and reinterpreted, the speculations and enumerations contained in the Upanishads, focusing, with varying emphasis, on devotion, knowledge, and liberation. According to Vedanta, our real unconstructed Self (ātman) is one with Brahman (the divine ground, the universal soul, the Absolute, “God”), but māyā clouds that reality. A Vedantic teacher writes:

“Maya is the veil that covers our real nature and the real nature of the world around us… [like] clouds which cover the sun.”

Just as the sun is obscured by clouds, the true nature of existence is hidden by our misconceptions and attachments. The remedy, they say, is knowledge and purification: as the clouds of ignorance disperse, the eternal light of truth shines through.

In light of this, read the following text slowly, carefully and consciously:

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for In him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said. For we are indeed His offspring. Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:24-30)

Many across the millennia have made astute observations, however a good observation does not necessarily lead to a good conclusion, as those same millennia have also shown. You can study all you want and still not know God.

“And this is eternal life, that they know you [ginosko] the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

“Ginosko” isn’t mental information or know-lege, it is experiential knowing, which is why this word is also used for relational intimacy and coitus.

Reality is different once the veil of ignorance (know-ledge) is removed.

Swami Shankara’s famous rope-snake example illustrates this vividly. A man walking at dusk sees what
appears to be a snake and panics. On closer look, it is only a coiled rope. His whole perception of
fear and danger was a projection; reality was different once ignorance (what he thought he knew) was removed. Vedanta uses this story to show that the entire phenomenal world is like the snake—a projection of Brahman under the spell of māyā.

THere are some very intriguing connections with Genesis 3 and the spell casting nakhash that deserves investigation. Not everything that shines is gold.

From a Christian perspective we might not share every Vedantic detail, but the analogy is powerful: our senses can deceive (as Descartes noted) and our minds can project illusions. The devotional takeaway is that true wisdom requires humility: we know the world “in part” only.

“Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture!” (1 Corinthians 13:9)

this requires us to reevaluate our cognitive maps (biasis) with the help of divine light to see things as they are, and not as we think they are.

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

BIBLICAL VISION: RENEWING THE MIND

Scripture speaks directly to this issue of perception. Paul’s great command in Romans 12:2—“Do not be
conformed to this world [survival mode, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”—captures the heart of the matter.

In context, Paul was warning believers not to adopt the pattern of secular culture of constant low-level panic, but to allow God to change their inner outlook (model). Transformation of the worldview (phronema) begins in the mind (nous): by changing our thought-patterns, priorities, and definitions of success, we align ourselves with God’s will. A commentary explains that Paul

“Urges us to be transformed from the inside out. Specifically, he writes that we must be changed in how we think, to have our minds renewed so that we can begin to understand [perceive, grasp] God’s will.”

This is why James writes,

“Therefore put away all filthiness [dimming, covering, filth] and rampant wickedness [the twisted, corrupted] and receive with meekness the implanted word [logos, priori], which is able to save [restore] your souls [psyche].” (James 1:21)

3 John 1:2 arrives to the same conclusion,

“Beloved, I desire that in every way you may prosper and enjoy good health, even as your soul also prospers“

This theme recurs: Ephesians 4:22–24 similarly exhorts believers “to put off the old self [defective model/map]… and be renewed in the spirit of your minds” , so that we can “put on the new self, created to be like God.”

Putting on the new self means seeing the world not as the crowd does, but as Jesus does, and His wordview is aligned with heaven. 1 Corinthians 13:12 reminds us that,

“now we see through a glass, darkly… now I know in part; then I shall know even as I am known.”

In other words, our present understanding is incomplete and distorted, awaiting the ultimate clarity of the next life. Humble acknowledgment of our limited vision is the first step toward divine insight. Scripture also warns that sin blinds perception. Paul says that,

“The god of this age [Satan] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel.”

This becomes even more poignant in light of Hebrews 11:3,

“Through faith we understand…”

In Romans 1:28 he goes further:

“Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind.”

This portrays a terrible cycle: rejecting truth leads God to let people default to a corrupted mindset, which in
turn leads them to self-destructive thoughts and deeds.

In plain language, worldview distortion isn’t abstract–it leads to chaos.

The “depraved mind” (Romans 1:28) means thinking and valuing things in a fundamentally flawed way. Thus spiritual decline is as much an epistemological sickness as a moral one.

Yet Paul also holds out hope: believers can have a new mind. He writes that through Christ we have a
renewed inner being.

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:5)

This means we can adopt Christ’s own (undistorted) perspective. “We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16), which implies the ability to think God’s thoughts. Practically, this means saturating our minds with Scripture
(Col 3:16), prayer, and truth, so that what was once convoluted becomes clear.

The theme of renewing the mind underscores that spiritual maturity is an intellectual as well as moral process.

GREEK PHRONEMA: MINDSET AND WORLDVIEW

The New Testament even uses a Greek word for “mindset” that highlights this reality. φρόνημα (phronēma) denotes one’s prevailing disposition or worldview . In Romans 8 Paul contrasts phronēma of the flesh with that of the Spirit:

“The mind (phronēma) of the flesh is death, and the mind of the Spirit is life and peace…the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God.”

Literally, the Greek emphasises that our orientation (ἐπὶ τῇ σαρκὶ φρόνημα) drives our existence. The fleshly phronema is a warped inner model that leads to death, while a spiritual phronema opens us to God’s life.

Likewise, Romans 1:28’s “depraved mind” could be phrased “phronēma porōmenon”—a “stony” mind incapable (impenetrable) of truth.

The point is clear: what we set our minds on becomes our reality. If we dwell on selfish ambitions, fear, or worldly definitions, those thoughts will govern us. If we fix our minds on Christ then our experience of life changes. This echoes Proverbs 23:7:

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.”

We thus become what we habitually think on. The Greek phronēma reminds us that the “bent” of our mind (Galatians 6:8) determines our path. Hence Paul’s admonitions to “keep your mind on things above” (Col 3:2) and to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5)—because false mental patterns must be unmasked and replaced.

WORLDVIEW DISTORTION AND CHRISTIAN LIFE

When our worldview is distorted, Christian discipleship falters. A flawed map leads people into traps:
pride, despair, hypocrisy, destruction.

Consider some common distortions:

• All-or-Nothing Thinking: Seeing issues in black-and-white ignores God’s nuanced grace. Churches can unwittingly teach that everything is either totally holy or utterly evil . This “splitting” mindset justifies judging others harshly and ourselves unmercifully. In reality, the Bible calls us to wisdom and discernment, not binary judgments.
• Magnifying Negatives: Focusing only on sin or failure (“worm theology”) while ignoring God’s goodness skews our understanding of grace . It creates religious depression and legalism instead of joyful rest in Christ. Paul’s gospel invites us to see ourselves as new creations (2 Cor 5:17) , not defined by old failures.
• “Should” Statements: When believers lock into how life should be (by their own arbitrary standards), they close off God’s will. Demanding that reality conform to our expectations breeds anger and disillusionment. The Spirit, however, teaches us to say, “Thy will be done,” (as described in Scripture) even (especially) when apparent reality seems to Gods’ described will.
• Paralysis by Fear or Presumption: Overfocusing on worst-case scenarios (catastrophising) or assuming we can navigate life on sheer will (presumption) both arise from a wrong phronēma. Scripture counsels trust in God’s providence rather than anxious, fictional and useless predictions.

Each of these errors springs from an unchecked mindset.

The good news is that Scripture provides correctives. 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to,

“Destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to Christ.”

In other words, we inspect our thoughts under the light of truth. James 4:7 says to submit our thoughts to God and resist the devil—implying that corrupt thinking is spiritual battle. As we obey, the Holy Spirit will replace poison with peace, confusion with clarity.

RENEWING THE MIND: SPIRITUAL MATURITY

For the believer, renewing the mind is central to growth. It is not optional or peripheral; Paul paints it
as the very pathway to “test and approve what God’s will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Practical steps include:

• Immerse in Truth: Regular Bible reading and prayer immerse your mind in God’s reality. This is how we replace lies with truth. (E.g. memorise Romans 12:2 or Philippians 4:8.) Setting our minds on things above (thrival not survival, Col 3:1–2) re-orients our thinking from temporal scarcity to eternal provision.
• Examine Your Beliefs: Like moles probing the earth, we should unearth hidden assumptions: Do I really believe God’s goodness? Am I distorting Scripture in some area? Repentance always involves admitting: “I’ve been thinking wrongly.” Repentance in one sense is simply choosing to see things in a different light.
• Mend Broken Mindsets: If you notice a “should” or “all-or-nothing” pattern, challenge it with grace. The renewing process can feel poetic: imagine God gently rewriting your inner story. As one mystic image suggests, when the clouds of maya disperse, the sun has been shining all along.

In our case the “sun” is Christ–who is the light of the world.

COMMUNITY CORRECTION

This is a challenging one since so much error and opinion has been adopted as truth, but wise (Scriptural) mentors and brothers/sisters can point out blind spots in our worldview. Paul expected the church to sharpen each other’s thinking (Proverbs 27:17). Accountable fellowship prevents us from chasing fruitless self-justification. Renewing the mind is a lifelong dance of grace. It means clinging to Christ at every turn, so that His worldview gradually transforms ours.

Our own distortions are often difficult to see. It’s like reading a label from the insight of a jar.

The payoff is nothing less than freedom and joy: as John 8:32 reminds us, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” A corrected mind liberates us from fear and disillusionment. In summary, our experience of life flows through the filter of our mind. Christian faith calls us to examine that filter, tear away distortions, and let the divine light paint a truer picture. The task is deep and ongoing, but essential: to think God’s thoughts after Him and live with eyes opened.

SUMMARY

Insights on perception and mind are drawn from Kantian and Cartesian philosophy, Jungian psychology, modern cognitive science, Vedanta teaching on maya, and Scripture (e.g. Romans 12:2, Romans 8, 2 Corinthians, Ephesians) . These together affirm that our worldview is personal and limited, but by God’s grace it can be renewed to reflect His truth and so transform our experience.

SOURCES

• Kant: Philosophy of Mind | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Principles of Philosophy Part I: 66–75: The Senses Summary & Analysis | SparkNotes
• Carl Jung’s Theory of Personality
• The Predictive Brain and the ‘Hard Problem’ of Consciousness | Psychology Today
• Top 10 Cognitive Distortions I Learned In Church | Keith Giles
• The Concept of Maya | Vedanta Society of Southern California
• Strong’s Greek: 5427. φρόνημα (phronéma)—Mindset, thought, purpose, inclination
• Phronema—Wikipedia

MEMORY VERSE

“Do not be conformed to this world [survival mode, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”

A PRAYER FOR INNER REVELATION AND RENEWAL