Parable of the Sower: What determines our ability to receive the Word? Not so much "sin" as a lack of depth or inwardness--living on the surface of life. We must rein in our distraction, safeguard space for silence, and so be prepared to respond when God's Word encounters us.

In 2007, Belgian psychologist Paul Verhaeghe wrote an article on the death of psychotherapy, noting the change in the very structure of human beings today characterized by the absence of self, as it were--a destruction, by modern capitalism, of our interiority.