Dr. Keppe has said many times over the more than 2 decades I've been here in Brazil studying and working with him that no one is good alone. That means we act from influencers in our lives -- and I don't mean to social media kind. Friends and family, lovers and mentors, teachers and priests and padres -- all have had their positive effect on us.

And then, since we're dealing with theology in this series, we have to consider the influence of spiritual forces, too. Those transcendental bodies, like guardian angels and souls that have passed on but reach back through the ether to inspire and direct us.

Beethoven used to say that God was shouting in his head, and the only thing that gave him any relief was to write it down.

And just look at the legacy that left us!

The other side of that statement about not being good alone, of course, is that we're not bad alone either. Negative influences are listened to in our society, from envious critique offered freely at the water cooler at work, to oft observed corruption in social institutions, to individuals demonstrating "flexible" morals.

And then there is demonic suggestion. Much discarded in our modern world, of course, but well accepted in some theological circles.

Following those negative impulses from within and without leads us to some crazy behavior -- the kind that causes us to cringe when we look back at it. And it also causes guilt. Which is good because it shows us we still have a moral compass.

But it doesn't feel all that great, which is why we try to rationalize it away or excuse ourselves or, more seriously, drown it in whiskey.

The voice we hear in those moments when we are tempted to fall is important to understand. Not admitting our guilt and responsibility can lead to some sleepless nights. Or even panic attacks and phobias. But maybe, accusations that are not entirely our own.

Silencing the Accuser in this episode of Therapeutic Theology.

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Growing up in a modern developed, secular society means limited access to theological understanding. There is some spirituality mixed into the stew of science and legislation and jurisprudence, but it's of a modern kind -- meaning a blend of concepts and ideas pulled from Eastern philosophy, New Age imaginings and Quantum physics. And as such, there's lots of talk about influences from numbers and planets and collective consciousness, and even some room for mind over matter miracles.

But there's precious little consideration of old-fashioned sin. And obviously no acknowledgement of the influence of evil in our lives.

Admittedly, sin is a loaded word in this modern environment, so a science that accepts theology -- like Norberto Keppe's Analytical Trilogy (or Integral Psychoanalysis) -- renames sin as psychopathology. However, to really understand human activity in the world, we need to expand to a consideration of spiritual influence in our personal and social lives.

Especially to negative spiritual influence. Because we are not problematic alone. And our unwillingness to see our problems as evidence of really bad intentions rather than just unwilling mistakes or occasional infractions is seriously undermining our human society.

This illustrates a kind of hubris in the human stance towards reality. A sort of refusal to see what's really causing our problems on Earth that the ancient theologians recognized as pride.

And there's something deeper to be understood here in our modern society. Pride and Demons, the next episode in our Therapeutic Theology Series.

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Our modern world, often driven more by reason and logic than by faith and revelation, has few answers for the mysteries that more spiritual leanings point to as evidence of God. Where the scientific materialists advocate for blind, pitiless indifference to explain the development process of life and the universe, other scientists are seeing unmistakeable evidence of design.

Design means a Designer, right? And things like digital codes in the DNA that provide instructions for building the large protein molecules that are crucial to keeping living cells alive suggests a much more intentional "hand-at-play" than just the undirected chemical process used as an explanation by the scientific materialists.

The biological realm certainly offers elegant examples of harmony of processes that point to a Designer -- a God that created everything -- but the problems of man that we are facing in our modern world certainly raise the question of how a good Designer could ever have created something so filled with evil. And in this, we enter into another perspective that our modern mind has rejected: that our world is dominated by demonic forces.

Ignoring that reality is a really big problem.

We'll address how the human being is choosing evil in this episode of Therapeutic Theology.

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