Who Are You Listening to?

by Stephanie Peirolo, CSJP-A

My granddaughter just turned six, and we’ve been talking about what a conscience is. I defaulted to the cartoon image I grew up with – a small angel on one shoulder and a diminutive devil on the other. They argue with you, and you have to decide who you are going to listen to when you make your choices. I do not pretend, even to a child, that the devil is not an excellent persuader.

As an adult, I find that the entities on my proverbial shoulders are more varied and skilled. Some members of my Inner Community are very persuasive. Justification shows up in a three-piece suit and heady arguments, Greed in work clothes with a wheelbarrow full of fear, a languid Sloth on a lounge chair wondering why we must trouble ourselves with anything beyond comfort. In my Inner Community there are a few who are very good at disconnecting me from my moral and ethical compass.

I find this verse from Romans to be useful. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 (NIV)

How do I conform to the pattern of this world? I order things I don’t really need from Amazon, a company I know treats their employees badly. Some of the things I buy will end up in a landfill. I don’t look at the ways in which my participation in late-stage capitalism as a worker and consumer has warped my sense of what I need. Fear of future financial insecurity makes me work too hard and not rest enough. I benefit from white privilege but don’t always want to accept responsibility for that privilege or what it has cost others. The pattern of this world is grasp, gripe, condemn and judge, and I round those bases regularly.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. How? Be curious. Engage with new ideas, new people, different cultures. You are reading this in an effort to renew your mind. Being in community renews our minds. It is a beautiful warm day today and I open the window and the whole atmosphere in my office changes. A breeze carries in fresh scents of cut grass and the sounds of birds. Renewing our minds is opening up the window of our souls. It means being willing to let go of ideas and narratives that no longer serve us, which can be hard. Sometimes we need to mourn the loss of old ideas.

How can we then “test and approve” God’s will? Another translation here is “discern.” St. Ignatius of Loyola developed the Spiritual Exercises as an instruction manual for discernment. One of the exercises is called “The Two Standards” with standards meaning flags or banners used in battle. Ignatius was a mercenary before he was a priest, after all. He tells us to pick a side. Are you fighting on the side of Jesus or the Devil? Who are you riding with?

At first, most of us will think, of course, Team Jesus, that’s me. But is it? You can’t conform to the world’s patterns and be on Team Jesus. You can’t be a Christian and have unquestioning support of an administration that defunds and ends programs to feed, protect and heal children and the elderly.

It is never as easy as choosing between two starkly different options – red flag bad, green flag good. C.S. Lewis often reminds us that we are eternal beings, and that small choices now can have long-term consequences when you extend the trajectory throughout eternity.

Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature. [1]

In his book The Great Divorce, Lewis imagines that we choose whether we want to go to Heaven or Hell. Hell is easier, and many choose that destination. And the choices are ongoing, throughout our lives.

Each decision we make sharpens or dulls our ability to discern. The more we test and approve, the better we get at it.

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. [2]

I am in no way suggesting that we judge ourselves harshly. We should consider our own moral and spiritual progress with compassion and kindness. But if you, like me, find yourself thinking “I’m not as bad as that guy,” then recognize that the pattern of this world is shifting. The Overton window is a reference to what, as a society, we consider to be acceptable. What was once radical or unsupportable can become accepted wisdom, unremarkable, and the reverse is true. The Overton window is shifting dramatically in the United States. Political and policy decisions are being made that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. If we, as individuals, community and culture, do not keep up with our own discernment process, if we don’t continue to be open to new ideas and information that challenges us, if we don’t identify and sort out who in our Internal Community we want to listen to and who no longer gets to be in charge, we risk finding ourselves, after a series of small, seemingly innocuous decisions, on the wrong side.

Stephanie is a CSJP associate and writer. Her new book, The Saint and the Drunk: A Guide to Making the Big Decisions in Your Life, examines Ignatian Discernment through the lens of the 12-Step Higher Power. More at speirolo.com.

Endnotes

1. “Mere Christianity” by C. S. Lewis, Book III, Chapter 4, “Morality and Psychoanalysis”, 1952.

2. Ibid.

This article appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Living Peace.