Author Topic: How Can Christianity Progress?  (Read 46421 times)

Matt Koeske

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How Can Christianity Progress?
« on: March 03, 2007, 02:21:22 PM »
Quote from: Sealchan
Inappropriate literalizing is a common mistake made by mono-modal knowers.  They have to do this in order to pick up truth-real estate from other contexts.  The irony is that the faith that is often the very foundation of the belief system in question is dropped the moment literalization occurs.  That so many people don't see this, I believe, is because of the predominant, common sense of mono-modal truth.  Those Christians who put their faith in the literal historical accuracy of the Bible are as lost as if they denied the God who is, after all, beyond any book or words, no matter how holy or ordained anyone has claimed those words to be in the name of that God.  Many Christians worship the Bible, not God. 

Of course, in denying the ultimate authority of the Bible, I am stepping out of most Christian collective systems for determining spiritual truths.  I can do this with my Promethean nature relatively easily.  Am I not stepping into the role of Satan who, according to one story, has himself cast into Hell because he would not go against God's original order to bow to no one but Him?  Then God created humans and told the angels to serve them.  In Satan's refusal he was cast into Hell.  Similarly with Brunnehilde in Wagner's Ring trilogy.  She obeys her father Wotan's original deepest wish after her father changes his orders and is punished in a kind of Hell.  This proceeds the glorious coniunctio in Wagner's opera fortunately.

Now if I were to propose a God-Satan reconciliation, how many Christian friends would I make?  Heck if God and Satan could work things out, why not Bush and Bin Laden?  But these days, Christianity is suffering from lack of interest due to its general inability of the Christian community to develop its relationship to God over time.  One can still walk into a church and hear such non-sense as literal warnings against witchcraft. 

And what greater criticism is there against a way of knowing than a mass exodus of those who were raised in that tradition?

Still, I see myself as Christian...but I have to largely carve out my own understanding.

I have split this topic off from another conversation ("On Belief").

I'm hoping to spark some kind of intelligent discussion on the Christian mythos.

Sealchan (whose interesting comments are quoted above) sees himself as a Christian . . . whereas I do not.  And yet, I recognize that my symbol system is largely Christian . . . and I have had to wrestle mightily with Christian ideas and symbols and Christian history in my own religious life.

Many questions could be asked, but I'll start with just a few:
1) How can the pursuit of consciousness (or Jungian individuation) be compatible with the Christian belief system?
2) Does Christianity have to change/adapt in order to be functional in our age of technology and rationalism?  If so, how do we decide what stays and what goes?
3) Ultimately, what IS the value of Christianity and its mythos?  What is worth preserving and nurturing?

Please feel free to use these or your own preferred points of entry.

One warning, though.  This topic (although I hope for it to remain respectful) is not meant as an ideological powwow either for or against Christian dogma.  It is a discussion or debate about the religion's value and meaning.  Both proponents and opponents are asked to try to think outside the box.  To think progressively rather than prejudicially.

Yours,
Matt
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]

Sealchan

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #1 on: March 09, 2007, 06:24:55 PM »
Okay, I think I am ready to speak directly to all of this.  May the Holy Spirit guide me through these words.  If not, then let Jesus guide me toward a better understanding...

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1) How can the pursuit of consciousness (or Jungian individuation) be compatible with the Christian belief system?

So far, in my reading of Jung, the following are some basic principals of the psychology of spirituality that would apply to Christianity.  (I have not yet read Aion which, as I understand, is Jung's attempt to address this subject directly):

1.  The polarization of opposites and the resolution of problems by way of the third (perspective)
2.  The Self as psychological goal; individuation
3.  Symbolic images as the forms of God's manifestation but never directly, wholly of God Himself
4.  Active imagination as conscious efforts to evoke "manifestations of unconscious contents"

Edward Edinger, in Creation of Consciousness, describes, in his view, what Jung meant by individuation as basically the creation of new awareness and discrimination.  The accumulation of scientific knowledge is a clear example of this, but also all other forms of human knowledge too require our deepest efforts in order to bring to light where darkness has previously prevailed.  The very idea of creating consciousness is a metaphor attuned with the spreading of God's word and otherwise shedding light where darkness as evil had prevailed.

The central understanding of Christianity is that Jesus dies on the cross to save us from our sins.  It is not, however, just the fact that he died but who he was (the Son of God) and how he died (without having committed sin) that is equally important.  Jesus' life and teachings are an example of what God looks like when He takes the form of man.  We are created in His image so this is not such a counter-intuitive possibility.  Since we are not God there is no way we could be as Jesus was, but we must all try.  His existence and person and teachings are like a beacon we must face towards.  His personality can be experienced with us as a living presence.  This is where Jung's psychology provides vital understanding on the nature of how this is true.  I believe that the Self is the image of Jesus as it touches on the individual psyche.  Howsoever this universal archetypal image presents itself, we know that Jesus has met us halfway between ourselves and God.  Recognizing an inner person as the Self requires an understanding of Jungian psychology.  In this way, it should be possible to distinguish a relationship with God from an encounter which one mistakenly attributes to God.

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2) Does Christianity have to change/adapt in order to be functional in our age of technology and rationalism?  If so, how do we decide what stays and what goes?

The Bible is the great historical tale that introduces us to the forms of relationship with God.  However, the various churches must realize this, God is not dead, we still can have a relationship with Him.  And what He says to us is of more importance than anything written in the Bible. 

The greatest controversy here is how to establish the authority of one's supposed word from God, especially when it might seem to contradict something in the Bible.  I believe that the Bible gives us the clues we need to recognize, in the character of a person, their closeness to God.  We also each have to focus on our individual relationship with God even while we commune with other Christians to make sure we are not loosing our perspective.  There are no guarantees here, but there are many established practices and teachings in the Christian tradition that should help.  Jesus was not one to lay out a bunch of rules, he was one to direct our hearts to the rules at hand and then consider what is Holy. 

When Jesus dies on the cross he went willingly but not deservingly.  This complete self-denial, while conscious, indicates the ideal awareness at once at touch with Heaven and with the mystical depths.  Stretched out on the cross, he stood for a position between the opposites, never allowing Himself to succomb to a biased attitude.  His detractors could not catch Him in a logical inconsistency.  He fully knew what He was saying and what His inquisitors were saying.  Jesus represents pure consciousness, the idea of it in a particular historical, physical form.

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3) Ultimately, what IS the value of Christianity and its mythos?  What is worth preserving and nurturing?

Christ is the ideal form of our individual consciousness.  The mythic themes that surround Christianity emphasize the spiritual goal as a human goal.  We can achieve spiritual transformation through our open hearts and also effect an paradise on Earth.  My belief is that the true Kingdom of Heaven is to be established on Earth and that there will be trials to undergo before the completion of that just as Jesus had to suffer through the Passion on his way to the cross where he gloriously conquered that which we all most fear...death.

Archetypally, we reach deepest into our souls when we experience the crucifying pull of the opposites which wish us to fall to one-side or the other on any particular issue.  When you walk between the warring factions of the opposites, you suffer for the sins of others.  You are seen as the enemy by both sides.  But if you can take up your cross, you can shed light where it has not been shed before and "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

The really hard part here is that constrictive movement that communities of knowers create when they gather together as a church and proclaim their identity and goal.  With power comes corruption and the institutions of the churches are certainly corrupted.  But without this power, how would the stories have been preserved?  How could we say that we could move closer to creating the Kingdom of Heaven?  Certainly we have not escaped the ravages of sin.

I see science as having evolved out of the Catholic churches love of God and His Creation.  Science is an effort to understand the creation that God has made and has declared "good".  We are given dominion over this creation.  Science also hands us the tools to create great evils.  But this is our lot.  We ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and so we can make ourselves to suffer.  But if God did not intend this possibility would He have created such a tree?

And truly, Jung's psychology, as an extension of science, is a worship of God.  By coming to know the world that God created, we see the true background against which our choices are made.  Only against this deeper psychological background do we come to an understanding of what is God's way and what is not.  Never is this a simple cut and dry matter.  We must always struggle with staying on the path.  In this is both bliss and suffering.

Christianity also suffers from a lack of mysticism.  Mysticism is immensely valuable.  But a plain, common sense understanding is equally valuable.  Isolating yourself in meditation as Buddhists do is valuable but so is going out into the work and living as others do.  Christianity holds much of value that other religions do not address.  And Christianity, as a human practice and institution, has wrongly suppressed many ways of knowing God.  Jesus shows us that we must walk, open arms outstretched, with heart into these polarities and embrace the full truth.  From this living in the tension of opposites we create a third thing...consciousness.

I speak from no special authority.  If these words ring true with God, then I attribute their truth to God and my ability to speak them as a great blessing.

Amen.

Wonder Girl

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #2 on: March 31, 2007, 01:29:38 PM »
Matt,

As a Christian I find it regrettable that the church has moved away from an emphasis on progressing in inner experience and transformation in favor of either ritual divorced from its purpose or efforts to deny the shadow side of experience in favor of promoting a 2-dimensional family oriented humanoid prototype.  However, it is not Christianity as the teaching surrounding the experience of Christ within that is to blame, but Christendom as a social phenomenon dominated by a corrupt Catholic intellectual establishment or populist Protestant anti-intellectual leadership that has rejected psychological knowledge. 

The Christian message still speaks to the heart of human psychological experience and need.  It asserts that we have created a relationship with the shadow and created the shadow itself through our own actions, and that this shadow has the power to finally claim us and hold us in death, death not just of the body but also of the soul, and that our worst nightmares are an accurate apprehension of the psychic and spiritual consequences of our wrongdoing and our inabiity to extricate ourselves from the power of evil.

It is only through undefensive self-examination that we can take responsibility for our own wrongdoing, and through this process of consciousness and repentance for our actions in crucifying the inner Christ, we are forgiven. More than that, we are promised that we will be transformed through the archetypal power of the resurrection of the Good in Christ.  We do not possess this transformation in the present, though we are aware through our experience and God's promise that it has begun (sanctification) but we nonetheless claim its ultimate completion as our identity in the present (justification) and destiny in the future (glorification).

Jungian thought can assist us in an undefensive examination of the shadow while still being able to acknowledge the element of evil that resides there in the absence of its integration with the good, and in this sense evil can be seen as a consequence of separation from the Good, on the basis of fear, choice, or loss of access to repressed contents. But the danger in modern Jungian discourse in its sometimes anti-Christian emphasis (perhaps due to a reaction to the judgmentalism of much Christian teaching) seems to be the immaturity of reverting to a pagan thought process that would celebrate the shadow for its own sake without an awareness of the gravity of the danger it poses.

It is my vision to see these 2 approaches to spirituality integrated.

Wonder Girl


Kafiri

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #3 on: April 01, 2007, 01:12:56 PM »
Quote from: Matt Koeske

...
I'm hoping to spark some kind of intelligent discussion on the Christian mythos.

Sealchan (whose interesting comments are quoted above) sees himself as a Christian . . . whereas I do not.  And yet, I recognize that my symbol system is largely Christian . . . and I have had to wrestle mightily with Christian ideas and symbols and Christian history in my own religious life.

Many questions could be asked, but I'll start with just a few:
1) How can the pursuit of consciousness (or Jungian individuation) be compatible with the Christian belief system?
2) Does Christianity have to change/adapt in order to be functional in our age of technology and rationalism?  If so, how do we decide what stays and what goes?
3) Ultimately, what IS the value of Christianity and its mythos?  What is worth preserving and nurturing?

Please feel free to use these or your own preferred points of entry.

One warning, though.  This topic (although I hope for it to remain respectful) is not meant as an ideological powwow either for or against Christian dogma.  It is a discussion or debate about the religion's value and meaning.  Both proponents and opponents are asked to try to think outside the box.  To think progressively rather than prejudicially.

Yours,
Matt

In some ways Matt and I share a worldview regarding religion.  I dislike dogma of any kind it seems, and for that reason I reject atheism as well as organized religion. I am more comfortable with the label of "nontheist."  If you are unfamilar with that term take a look here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheist  There are folks from organized religions who are nontheists, see for example:  http://www.nontheistfriends.org/  The main point of nontheism is that the existence, or non-exsitence of a supernatural deity is neither provable, or disprovable and is therefore irrelevent to me and not worth me wasting my time on.  But like many who study Jung religious myths often contain useful, and in fact sometimes, stunning psychological insights.

Matt posits the issue of individuation in a christian belief system; Jung provides some guidance:
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The religions, however, teach another authority opposed to that of the "world."  The doctrine of the individuals dependence on God makes as high a claim upon him as the world does.  It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges him from the world in the same way he is estranged from himself when he succumbs to the collective mentality.  He can forfeit his judgment and power of decision in the former case(for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter.  This is the goal the religions openly aspire to unless they compromise with the State.  When they do, I prefer call them "creeds."  A creed gives expression to a definate collective belief, whereas he word religion expresses a subjective, relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors.  A creed is confesion of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning of and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God(Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation(Buddhism).  From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual's responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality.
C. G. Jung, from the essay Religion as the Counterbalance to Mass-Mindedness, found in The Undiscovered Self, pp. 30-31.

For me a working defintion of individuation is provided by Erich Neumann:
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The goal of life now is to make oneself independent of the world, to detach oneself from it and stand by oneself....
Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness, p. 36.

The detachment of oneself from the collective is a massive undertaking whether one is a Christian detaching from a creed, or for me, detaching from the collective mentality.  LOL here, I got my first hint of this issue in a movie, of all places; in the movie "Bull Durham," Annie asserts:
Quote
"Annie: The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."
quote found at:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094812/quotes

Annie's gripe defines the problem that all of us who struggle with consciousness deal with:  how does one live one's life in a world, culture, political system, economic system, and the like that are all founded on unconsciousness? IMO the Christinan myth hints at and in some cases provides answers.
"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves."
      -Eric Hoffer

Matt Koeske

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #4 on: April 03, 2007, 05:53:45 PM »
However, it is not Christianity as the teaching surrounding the experience of Christ within that is to blame, but Christendom as a social phenomenon dominated by a corrupt Catholic intellectual establishment or populist Protestant anti-intellectual leadership that has rejected psychological knowledge.

Hi Wonder Girl,

I had a kind of spiritual crisis regarding this issue a couple years ago.  The more one reads about Christian history, the more one has to face the fact that the Church (and many of the subsequent institutional and authoritative bodies of Christianity) has committed egregious and basically innumerable sins . . . sins that are perhaps cumulatively greater than any other single ideological body in human history.  The conundrum for me became: how can the institution of Christianity repent for all this?

A side concern was: how much of the institutional corruption has influenced the dogmas of Christianity and how much have these dogmas contributed to or facilitated the corruption?  The more thoroughly I examined the relationship between dogma and actual transgression or abuse, the more the two seemed to me inextricably intertwined.  This is especially evident in many of the dogmas derived from the early Church Fathers.  In fact, I came to believe that the dogmas chosen by the Church to uphold (or inflict) were almost always the ones that most enabled its quest for power (and the empowerment of its priestly class at the expense of others).

The primary example would be Augustine's "Faith Alone" notion (that faith alone and not good works will lead to salvation and heaven).  This sort of blind acceptance doctrine enabled the Church to draw attention away from the ravaged and destitute peasantry that was being usurped to put money into the Church's coffers (in return for the promise of eternity in heaven . . . which was for sale throughout the dark ages).

But we have to keep in mind that the Bible itself (and not only the theology) was being constructed (and selected from numerous texts) by the Church at the same time Augustine and the other Church fathers were writing their theological treatises.  The entire religion was still in a process of becoming what it would eventually appear as to us.  This selection process also involved the destruction of any texts that were deemed "non-canonical" by the Church.  Most of this was the Gnostic writings, some of which appear to be just as old as Mark . . . and perhaps even predate the letters of Paul deemed legitimate (by modern scholars) in their preliminary forms.  But the destruction of texts also included pagan criticisms of the Christian movement.  Only a couple of these survived because they were preserved by the Church Fathers in attempts to refute them . . . but it is reasonable to presume there were many.

The prevailing pagan notion of early Christianity appeared to be that it was a fabricated religion that offered nothing original and was promoted deceitfully and/or ignorantly by its proponents.  Even at the very beginning, the critics of Christianity were in no way convinced that an actual person named Jesus of Nazareth had "founded" the religion.  The Romans even thought of the Christians as "atheists".

Even before texts contradicting Christian dogma were destroyed (and their creators persecuted and murdered), some of the leaders in the Church power structure (like Eusebius of Caesarea, 275-339 CE) had started doctoring other texts and histories, some proto-Christian and some pagan, to reflect the very historicity of Jesus that was the chief pagan criticism of Christianity.  Many of these doctorings are acknowledged today while others are excepted as legitimate primarily by believers in spite of the numerous suspicious elements involved in their appearances (e.g., not appearing in history until many centuries after they were supposed to have been written).

Ultimately, there is not enough historical evidence to construct (or to decisively reject) the historicity of Jesus.  All we know for certain is that the pagan Romans found the claims of historicity unbelievable and that some of the earlier Church Fathers sought to remedy this issue by fabricating or doctoring texts that seemed to provide "evidence" of historicity.

After Christianity came to power in Rome officially (with Constantine) a massive purging of the pagan intellectuals and upper and middle classes was instituted.  It is unclear how many pagans were murdered over a period of a couple hundred years.  It could have been hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions.  But it is not, I think, unfair to call this purge the first wide-scale act of Christian power the world knew.

Whether the details (were they all known) might prove these atrocities "less bad" or "worse" than my description above, I believe one is faced (in the presence of the facts) with the realization that the origin of the Christian religion was probably the most despicable religious birth in history (and I have only skimmed a sliver of all there is to say).

In any case, regardless of what this disgusting origin ultimately means, it informs us that there was no recorded time in Christian history during which the faith enjoyed a peaceful, spiritual, and non-ignominious existence.  That is, the Gospels themselves cannot be corroborated by any other historical evidence.  If anything, the existing historical evidence is unfriendly to Christian legitimacy.

Maybe the religion originated with a true and wise leader . . . but what we have received historically is not his word or message, but almost entirely (if not entirely) the construction and amalgamation of numerous politically-motivated writings determined to construct an institution of political power and influence.  The "real" Jesus (and the real history of the man and his so-called apostles) simply vanishes behind all the machinations of the Church and the early Christian writers.

I know most people who even remotely consider themselves Christian don't embrace my rendition of early Christian history (and in fact, few Christians every bother to read about Christian history, especially beyond the sanctioned texts), but as I have no ideological indebtedness to the Church or any other institution of this era, I sought out an understanding of this history that did not confine me to believers alone.  And I believe what I have very briefly glossed above is legitimate.

So, in the face of this, I had to ask myself: what is the worth of Christianity?  Can its mythos be separated from its dogma and revolting history?  What is the value of the Christian mythos?

Now here, I do see value.  But valuation of the Christian mythos requires many qualifiers that can, in themselves, be disconcerting to those who want to draw faith and meaning from Christianity.  Some have used these "qualifiers" as arguments against the historicity of Jesus . . . but these arguments don not contain enough evidence in and of themselves to support this claim (in my opinion).  Still, they offer more reasons to be suspicious.

What I am primarily referring to is the fact that the Christian mythos contains basically nothing that is original.  The Christian stories of the Bible can be seen as syncretized conglomerations of Judaic and Hellenistic myths.  For instance, the entire notion of the coming of the messiah, the mythos of this messiah, was well-established before the purported time of Christ.  Messiah cults were abundant . . . and only really disappeared with the destruction of the Temple and the defeat of the Jews in the Jewish Wars in the first and second centuries.  The notion of a militaristic Jewish Messiah was abolished.  But the pacifist messiah was style prefigured in Jewish literature, especially in the idea of the prophets and the suffering servant.

But there was another source of mythos that was (or so it seems) utilized to build the Christian mythos.  This was the contribution of the Mystery Religions, which practiced a death and rebirth rite.  Some of the Mystery cults used baptismal rituals to signify this (and the Gospels even acknowledge the preexistence of the baptismal cult of John).  The Mystery Religions' mythos was usually drawn from the pre-existing "dying gods" or godmen.  These (e.g., Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, and then Mithras) figures were associated with the solar and/or vegetation cycle.  They died as seeds are buried or as the sun sets and were reborn as plants sprouted out of the earth or the rose in the East.  The Mystery rites (that involved these gods . . . other rites involved some variation of the Persephone/Demeter myth) were designed to place the initiate into the shoes of the suffering god where he would be persecuted (a la the later Passion of Christ), die symbolically, and be transformed/resurrected.

The dying god was often the consort of the Goddess (such as Isis) . . . and there were also rites in which the women wept for the death of the god/consort.  We see some of this in the Gospels with the presence of the women at Jesus's tomb, and with the anointing of his body.  These were all symbols left over from the Goddess/Mystery rites.  Does this mean that these things didn't actually happen to a man named Jesus who was crucified by the Romans?  Who knows?  All we know is that this was a staple of the Goddess/Mystery religions of the East, and the parallel is worth noting.

Along with this notion of the dying god as consort of the Goddess, we get the symbol of this god as a god of love.  Sometimes this was a physical love or potency, but it was also often interpreted as an all-loving attitude.  He was an "innocent", a lamb . . . and his destruction was the result of great sins on the part of mankind.

And I won't even get into the parallels with the Hebrew scapegoat ritual.

The point I mean to make is that all of this fed into the Christ mythos.  The pagans who criticized Christianity recognized this and scoffed at Christianity as a "rip off" of the Eastern Mystery Religions.  Of course, this criticism is largely stricken from Christian history . . . and since the Christians (once politically empowered) burned the great pagan libraries to the ground, they reserved for themselves the right to retell history as they saw fit.

So we ask ourselves, then, what is there about the Christian mythos that makes it unique from these pagan Mystery Religions (other than the Jewish trappings)?  Well, that's difficult to say.  One thing I can think of was clearly illustrated in the battles between the Catholic Church and the Gnostics (who the Church eventually annihilated).  The Gnostics generally saw the Christ figure as a role model who was meant to be emulated.  The Gnostic initiate was supposed to strive for a personal, spiritual rebirth in which he (or she, in some cases . . . the Church didn't allow women to participate, by contrast) in effect became Christ.  The Church (which was basically an anti-Gnosticism) did not allow its members to formulate this kind of direct relationship with God.  It was made very clear that the priests and bishops were God as far as the congregation was concerned.  The Church had a much more authoritarian structure that insisted the "Christian experience" could only be mediated by its official priestly class.  By contrast, the Gnostics didn't seek to form official Churches, but preferred looser groups in which all members were able to participate on the highest levels . . . sometimes even writing their own Gospels.  Personal experience of Christ and God was considered the point of their spiritual pursuits.

But Gnosticism was destroyed as a heresy at the beginning of the Christian dark ages.  Many of their heretical ideas only remained in verbal and "occult" histories.  As Jung noted, when the medieval alchemists began creating (or at least preserving) their texts, it was clear that they were the heirs of Gnosticism.

In my personal opinion, the alchemists were the "keepers of the true Christian flame".  They constructed a philosophy that was, effectively, the "completion" of the mythos the Church presented.  In alchemy, the transformative death/rebirth philosophies that inspired the Mystery Religions and the Gnostics were reconstructed and elaborated on.  But of course these writings were heretical . . . and like heresies tend to be, they were couched in a nearly impenetrable, symbolic language.

My greatest concern regarding Christianity today is that, without some kind of alchemical "completion" of the mythos, the conventional mythic dogma will never inspire Christians to strive for consciousness . . .  which is where true morality lies.  In faith, acceptance, unquestioning belief in authority there is no facing of the shadow or of ones true sins.  Just because one can repress, deny, or remain ignorant of their sins, doesn't  mean that these sins don't exist.  And it is not by "faith alone", in my opinion, that one can have a relationship with God or be "reborn".  One cannot sin mindlessly and then be absolved by a priest.  If we do not accept responsibility for our own sins, then we give them a freedom to control us (as we give such power to control to the authorities and dogmas we submit ourselves to unconsciously).

But for the changes I feel are necessary to be instituted by a church is, I think, far more than can be reasonable asked from an institution that has never had any interest in these problems for a millennium and a half.  I don't see any salvation for institutional Christianity.  If there is any hope, it is in the hands of individuals . . . and specifically in the hands of heretics.  The soul of Christianity has always been kept alive by heretics . . . as it has always insisted on severing light from dark, believer from heretic.

And it isn't like we can just toss nearly 2000 years (far longer if you date the mythos to its pagan origins) of symbol system reinforcement out the window.  We can't just say, "Hey, the Church is evil.  I'm ditching the whole shebang!"  First of all, the myth of the godman has sparked our imaginations for millennia for a reason (not a fluke).  Secondly, we have nothing to replace it with.  Modern science and technology, as compelling as they may be to us, do not really contain a symbol system.  They don't tell us about or inner worlds, or unconscious.

And, in spite of all the atrocity connected with Christian power and practice, Christianity represents two thousand years plus of contributions, additions, and philosophical revisions to its mythos (most of which are not sanctioned by the Church, of course).  We can't just make up a new myth and expect to achieve the level of intuitive or spiritual thinking around this myth that has arisen over the years around (secular or folk) Christianity.  We have learned to "think spiritually" within the Christian paradigm . . . and I personally doubt (as Jung sometimes did as well) that New Age and Eastern Philosophies will ever provide substitutes en mass.

I know I am personally drawn to the "underground" of Christian mythos . . . the same prima materia the alchemists derived their lapis from.  I think it is still fertile . . . but it is a much more challenging process, working with this dark stuff, than, for instance, New Age fancies (which are uplifting and ego-aggrandizing much of the time).  I enjoy the fire and brimstone edge of Christianity . . . but it can't be interacted with unconsciously (or else we only see, or become, devils).

In my opinion, any progress among Christian individuals will be made by examining the ugliness attached to Christianity . . . specifically its history.  The "new Christian" will not be the fundamentalist zealot who denies the evidence of history, but the ethical journeyer who sees this ugliness and wants to remedy it, correct it.  I have no faith in Christians who cannot or do not want to see the ugliness of the faith's history.  There has been too much denial in the Christian mindset already.

But in this shadow of Christianity there is a very real chance for rebirth.  To look it square in the eye is to die to the faith . . . and only then (in my opinion) can the Christian truly be reborn in consciousness (or in Christ, if you prefer).  But the prevailing dynamic of ignorance and repression will not benefit the Christin mythos.

Regrettably, I have yet to meet any Christians who have been willing to look at the history with a neutral eye, accept the possibility that it is all a crock of hooey (or that, even if it had legitimate roots, it was quickly and irrevocably perverted by power), and still find a way to draw meaning (or create meaning) from it.

But to think that Christ (and the pursuit of Christ) is an uplifting salvation, a "feeling good about God", is to my mind, an atrocity of misunderstanding.  Christians want to have the rebirth without suffering the death first.  And I don't mean a period of "loss of soul" and depression followed by the realization that, with Jesus, life is just swell (drugs will have the same effect).  I mean the recognition that what you are founding your spirituality on is possibly a load of propagandistic crap original designed to part the Mark from his dime . . . and that this propaganda was used to justify the torture and murder millions of people.  When you face that true death of faith, you are forced to become responsible for the creation of faith and the relationship with God.  The blind dependency must be thrown off.

It is in this, and only in this, that the Christian can be reborn . . . as far as I can see.  Christianity cannot be a happy little faith.  To say today, "I am a Christian" is to stake your claim as the heir of the Christian legacy.  It cannot be shirked off.  It is the True Cross.  If one cannot bear this with conscious intention and acceptance, then they should consider themselves to be part of the problem rather than the solution (or acknowledge that they use Christianity to make themselves feel better, not to find a way to give back to God).

Of course, no one is lining up to sign themselves over to this kind of Christianity.  Which is probably why I consider Christianity a practice most suited to the weak of faith (I mean conventional Christianity). Sorry, I know this sounds harsh, but it is the only rational conclusion considering the understanding of Christian history and faith I have touched on above.

But then, I am especially cranky when it comes to this specific issue . . . and perhaps my attitude should be taken with a grain of salt.  Not everyone is required to take their dose of religion with brutal honesty and crushing darkness . . . as is my personal, possibly masochistic inclination.  In fact, this is not what people use religion for in general . . . so it is entirely unfair of me to ask this of others.

-Matt
« Last Edit: April 04, 2007, 11:29:28 AM by Matt Koeske »
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Matt Koeske

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2007, 12:24:49 PM »
I have been feeling conflicted about my hostility toward Christianity.  I have a very emotional reaction to it.  I'm looking into this, but I suspect it will never be entirely clear or resolved.

For some reason, the problems of Christianity hit very close to home for me.  I feel personally violated by the woolliness surrounding Christian spirituality.  I don't think my opinions of it are in any way "wrong", but they are more tinged with outrage than my opinions on most topics.

I guess one might say that when I see people embracing Christianity to find meaning, I feel it is kind of like Germans who tried to find meaning in National Socialism without looking at its shadow.  I don't think all of the Germans who remained complacent while Nazism came to power were "evil people".  But one asks why and how they were able to turn a blind eye.  One wants to just shout at them (if it were still possible) and shake them by the shoulders and say, "Look!  Look closer at what you are embracing!"

I milder version of this is happening in the U.S. with its NeoCon capitalist colonialism and "globalization" and all of those other euphemistic propaganda terms.  But our government is "only" murdering and oppressing and abusing people outside of the country . . . so we don't see it in our own streets and neighborhoods (and the mainstream, corporate media helps us remain ignorant).

People will likely find it excessive of me to compare Christianity to National Socialism, especially in this time in which the Church has been disempowered and the main Church-sanctioned abuse that still lingers on overtly is the sexual abuse of children by priests (which we like to imagine is rare).  But this reaction is immensely naive.  The historical crimes of the Church have been every bit as vile as National Socialism's.  In fact, in many ways, Christianity (especially in the dark ages) was the key precedent for National Socialism.

I don't mean to direct my outrage at any individuals who are Christians.  Almost everyone I know and love is a Christian.  But the bottom line for me is that I see Christianity (in the sense of its institutional ethos) as entirely immoral . . . and even its mythos seems to me to be fraught with dangers and traps.

To see it the way I do demands an emotional reaction.  Maybe I don't see it clearly.  If not, I would like to be corrected.  But I worry that people are too eager to forgive Christianity for its crimes against humanity and God . . . simply because they wish to draw personal meaning and emotional support from it.  Because it makes them feel better about themselves if they can manage to stay blind about its history.  In my opinion, this is an immoral and selfish attitude.

And even Jesus, that paragon of goodness and tolerance, fell into a rage and overturned the tables of the money lenders when he saw the Temple polluted.  We are so eager to ally ourselves with the "nice Christian" who sits by while desecration happens all around.  But maybe the good Christian needs to be a table turner.

Of course this is tricky, because one of the major sins of Christianity has been its aggressive righteousness against others.  But it is not others who are the problem here.  It is our own blindness and dependency and selfishness.  I worry that we ourselves pollute the Christian mythos or a Christian moral philosophy with our selfishness and complacency.  Is the use of the mythos for our own personal benefit condoning, in some way, the atrocities committed in the name of Christ from the past?  Aren't Christians responsible for rectifying what has been done in their name and the name of their God?

I felt I had to give up even my highly-personalized and neo-gnostic interpretations of the Christian myth, when I saw that doing this without also lifting up the Christian shadow was effectively condoning the historical atrocities.  What right did I have to draw positive meaning from this thing that has been the cause of so much grief to others?  If I draw this meaning, I must also bear the responsibility for the grief and damage.  This was how I came to see it.  It was my "duty" to investigate and speak about the Christian atrocities.

Frankly, I don't see how Christianity can progress or even survive until it has "come clean" and coughed up its sins in some grand catharsis.  Like Nazism, the mistakes and sins of Christianity need to be held up to remind us of what NOT to do in our quests for spirituality, to serve our spiritual desires.  I think we need to see it for what it is and has been . . . and never forget these things, just because we can personally interpret the same ideologies in a "kindler gentler" way.

Maybe there is enlightenment and ecstasy in some of the Christian myths and ideas . . . but there is also a catalog of every kind of spiritual misstep and failing know to Man . . . and also an immensity of actual events that these missteps and failings inevitably lead to.

The "real Christianity" can't be only what we want it to be . . . it also has to be what it actually is and has been.  And I think our Christian quests have to bring us to a reckoning with these things . . . or else they are worthless, narcissistic delusions.

-Matt
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Matt Koeske

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #6 on: April 04, 2007, 02:41:08 PM »
In some ways Matt and I share a worldview regarding religion.  I dislike dogma of any kind it seems, and for that reason I reject atheism as well as organized religion. I am more comfortable with the label of "nontheist."  If you are unfamilar with that term take a look here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontheist  There are folks from organized religions who are nontheists, see for example:  http://www.nontheistfriends.org/  The main point of nontheism is that the existence, or non-exsitence of a supernatural deity is neither provable, or disprovable and is therefore irrelevent to me and not worth me wasting my time on.  But like many who study Jung religious myths often contain useful, and in fact sometimes, stunning psychological insights.

Hi Kafiri,

I agree with Jung's valuation of religious myths . . . but I don't find this perspective incompatible with atheism (of course, my personal brand of atheism is not the prototypical variety).  One of the reasons I think I will stick with the "atheist" tag is that (as you say in the case of nontheists) I do find the existence of God and the definition of the relationship between humanity and God to be a topic that is relevant and worth wasting time on.  Perhaps not all of one's time . . . but certainly some time  (-)monkbggrn(-)

First of all, I think it is worth grappling with the notion of God (rationally and critically) to get a good idea of how difficult it is to prove or disprove God's existence.  I have found it very useful to "fail nobly" in this metaphysical effort.  Also, it isn't like all's equal in heaven and on earth.  There are many very good reason to reject the notion of God.  The best ones (in my opinion) can be drawn from an investigation of human ego-psychology and the human instinct and desire for religion.  As we humans are such fictionists, such storytellers in our perception of our environments, we are, in a sense, entirely unqualified to definitely assert the existence of God.

That is, we cannot absolutely disprove the existence of something like a God, but we can know quite definitively that the "hallucination" or projection of such a God (based on our own sense of cognition and self) is fundamental to our species.  We are "god-creators" by our very nature.  Does this mean we definitely "create" God?  No, but it casts a great deal of suspicion on our claims to "know" that God exists.  In essence, if we were asked to testify to the existence of god in a court of law, any half-way decent lawyer would have our testimony dismissed from the jury's consideration.

But if we were to simply steer away from metaphysical speculations, we might never really face the "problem" of our god-creativity.

Also, as an atheist, my gripe or opposition is to the anthropomorphic formulation of God (which does seem to put me more in the nontheist camp).  I find divine anthropomorphism to be radically arrogant.  But I have less antagonism to a notion of God as something like the Tao.  I would even say that I am "religious" in the sense that I see the universe itself as an interconnected unity that operates on specific, consistent principles, a kind of Logos . . . while also possessing a quality of interrelatedness and drive toward exchanges of energy . . . which at the human level is perhaps what we call Eros.  Also, in recognizing these universal, material principles, we are struck with a kind of numinous emotion.  This emotional reaction would seem to indicate that we instinctively value this sense of the universe as order and interrelation . . . as if such an emotional reaction was part of our evolutionary adaptation.

I merely believe it is a mistake to draw specific meaning from this numinous emotion beyond the meaning that such a recognition is important to us, our sense of ourselves.

I also think metaphysical speculation can be beneficial in the way it can acquaint us with our own responsibility for god-making or anthropomorphizing the universe.  If we don't delve deeply into such speculations, we will never see an aspect of our consciousness that is one of the essential definers of humanness.

Matt posits the issue of individuation in a christian belief system; Jung provides some guidance:
Quote

The religions, however, teach another authority opposed to that of the "world."  The doctrine of the individuals dependence on God makes as high a claim upon him as the world does.  It may even happen that the absoluteness of this claim estranges him from the world in the same way he is estranged from himself when he succumbs to the collective mentality.  He can forfeit his judgment and power of decision in the former case(for the sake of religious doctrine) quite as much as in the latter.  This is the goal the religions openly aspire to unless they compromise with the State.  When they do, I prefer call them "creeds."  A creed gives expression to a definate collective belief, whereas he word religion expresses a subjective, relationship to certain metaphysical, extramundane factors.  A creed is confesion of faith intended chiefly for the world at large and is thus an intramundane affair, while the meaning of and purpose of religion lie in the relationship of the individual to God(Christianity, Judaism, Islam) or to the path of salvation and liberation(Buddhism).  From this basic fact all ethics is derived, which without the individual's responsibility before God can be called nothing more than conventional morality.
C. G. Jung, from the essay Religion as the Counterbalance to Mass-Mindedness, found in The Undiscovered Self, pp. 30-31.

I also make a distinction similar to Jung's, but I get the feeling I draw the dividing line somewhat differently.  I have been thinking about religion as having a mystical and a cultural arm.  The foundations of religion (especially their mythos) usually have a mystical source . . . or a specific mystic around whom an archetype has been constructed.

By mystical, I mean the complex and logical/natural relationship between the ego and the Self.  This relationship seems to have an archetypal and logical progression to it . . . and mysticisms are stories that try to give language to this process.  In this sense, Jungian psychology is (or contains) a mysticism (i.e., individuation).  I have written about this elsewhere on this forum, but let it suffice to say that I think the main current of mysticism involves a differentiation between the ego and the Self and then a conscious devotion to a cooperation between these two sources of consciousness/being.  All mysticism will follow this archetypal process more or less . . . and some variation of this archetype lies at the core of all mystical arms of all religions.

But whereas Jung draws his differentiation line at "creeds", I like to draw mine much closer to the mystical source.  My guess is that only a very limited aspect of institutionalized religions has to do with mysticism . . . and that many people involved in these religions rarely if ever experience a personal relationship with the mystical aspects of their religion (other than once or twice feeling their numinousness).  I get the impression that Jung's "creeds" are the much more overt aspects of communal ritual and dogma associated with institutional religions.  But I would say that everything done within a religion that is not part of the mystical experience belongs to the cultural experience (which involves the identification of oneself with the religion, i.e., the ego draws a sense of identity from the belief).

The problem (as I see it) is that mysticisms are frequently very dangerous to the stability of the cultural and ego-identity aspects of a religion that accrue around them.  The process of institutionalizing a religion can even create a religion that is fundamentally opposed to its own core mysticism.

We see this very clearly in the case of Christianity . . . and especially in its early conflict between Catholic and Gnostic approaches to the Christ archetype.  The Gnostics took a mystical approach to Christ.  He was a symbol with which one tried to unite (ecstatically).  The Gnostic tried to attain a "Christ-consciousness" by going through the mystical rite of a Mystery transformation (death and rebirth).  This is a typical mysticism as it involves the ego/Self relationship and a transformative progression in that relationship.

But the Catholic Church, the anti-Gnosticism, designed itself to specifically oppose these Gnostic philosophies.  Instead of seeking to identify with the reborn Christ, the Catholic was supposed to identify with the suffering Christ (in the sense that she or he was supposed to "bear" or accept hardship and suffering).  But even this was dangerously close to mysticism (because suffering is so often transformative), so the Church took this farther, to the point of prescribing a non-identification with Jesus altogether.  One mustn't identify oneself with Christ's suffering.  Christ's suffering was too great . . . and by comparison, we are small and insignificant.  Only a god can suffer like that!

Well, this results in a refusal of the core Christian mysticism.  If we can't suffer like Christ, we can't be reborn like Christ.  All we can do is bleat like sheep and follow orders.  Only the priests could commune with God.  An elitism was established that dissuaded the regular Christian from a direct, transformative, or mystical relationship with the Christian God.  Instead, the Christian was only to relate to the Church.  This was actually clearly stated Church policy (I'm not being poetic here).

And then we look at the primary icon of the Church, the crucifix.  Yes, we can draw various mystic meanings from it, but we cannot entirely escape the realization that the crucifix is a scarecrow that says to the average Christian, "So you think you want to follow the mystical path?  Well, look what happened to this bloke!"  The result is that is raises up transformative suffering to an unreachable level . . . a level of abstract perfection.

This is entirely opposed to the current of mysticism, which portrays the relationship with God (the Self) as tangible, direct, immediate, and all-important.

And if we follow the history of Church policies, we can see how they were unfailingly anti-mystical, constantly positioning the Church hierarchy in between the Christian and God.  This forced Christian mysticism to become a "folk" practice for the most part . . . or else a practice meant only for the Christian "elite" (generally the monasticists).  It is no surprise that the Christian mystics always seemed to be insane and tortured by their relationship to God (no peaceful Buddhists here) . . . in order to pursue the personal journey of the Christian mystic, one had to subvert or circumvent Church dogma.  So, of course it was painful.  It was shattering (and still is) for Christian mystics.  There was a taboo on the self-deification that the mystic normally has to venture into (in order to properly differentiate), so the anxiety of coming at mysticism "through the shadow", as it were, was simply obliterating to the ego.

So, in my opinion, Jung tended to confuse some of the Church dogmas with archetypal "truths" or pure mysticisms.  It was at times like this that his phenomenological approach faltered.  We can't accept everything as an un-valued (or equally valued) psychic phenomenon.  Some things are very much "man-made" or egoic or are cultural phenomena.  Jung psychologizes too much for my taste . . . I think he should have been making social distinctions in certain cases.  Christianity was one of them.  Nazism is probably the most notable, though.

As for all ethics being derived from the individual's relationship with God . . . I agree.  This is "mystical knowledge".  But it is dangerous to word it this way (a psychologization), because we get the common interpretation (so often repeated by religious people) that all morality comes from God, and without a belief in God, Man cannot be moral.  This is idiotic.  Morality is human, instinctual . . . and ultimately relative.  For instance, our sense of morality is highly "speciesist".  Only what we identify most with ourselves is what we feel obligated to treat ethically.

But the differentiation between ego-self and Other that is the prime work of mysticism does lead to a valuation of the Other (and of external others).  To understand that one both is and is not the other, this is the goal of mysticism (in my opinion).  But even before this mystical work, we have an instinct for morality (valuation of the other) . . . but we also have an instinct for selfishness, deception, usurpation, self-protection, self-advancement.  I think the mystical process is meant to sort these instincts out so we can employ them appropriately and consciously and without doing harm to others.

The detachment of oneself from the collective is a massive undertaking whether one is a Christian detaching from a creed, or for me, detaching from the collective mentality.  LOL here, I got my first hint of this issue in a movie, of all places; in the movie "Bull Durham," Annie asserts:
Quote
"Annie: The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness."
quote found at:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094812/quotes

Hurray for the Church of Baseball!  The Nine-Fold Path.  We should add that movie to the Jungian Films thread.  I like the way Crash and Nuke, even on drastically different parts of their journey, help transform one another.  Great movie.  Very "Iron John"-like.

Quote from: Kafiri
Annie's gripe defines the problem that all of us who struggle with consciousness deal with:  how does one live one's life in a world, culture, political system, economic system, and the like that are all founded on unconsciousness? IMO the Christinan myth hints at and in some cases provides answers.

Maybe, but Christianity is so ubiquitous that it could be seen as more a part of the unconscious establishment than a way to oppose unconsciousness.  But it's core mysticism (like all mysticisms) is consciousness-directed.  Regrettably, the Christian mythos is riddled with inflation issues and the fallout from the self-deification taboo.

I guess I would consider Christian mystic individuation work to be some of the most difficult . . . but also some of the most satisfying (I personally gave up an Eastern path when I was pretty young to return to a more Christian path . . . as I found the Eastern path to be less challenging, less "complete").  The mythos (indirectly, and no thanks to the Church) really lays out a lot of the stumbling blocks of the individuant/mystic in a way that is less satisfactorily done in some of the Eastern mysticisms.  One (a Westerner at least) can complete an "Eastern-style individuation" but still have never faced the issues that the Christian self-deification taboo and scapegoat rite bring into the picture.  I prefer the Christian notion that we are transformed by suffering rather than the Eastern one that we should transcend it.  There is also a sense in which the mystical process of Christianity makes clear that this spiritual work obliges us to give back to others and to the world.  Some of the Eastern monastic traditions seem to obscure this too much for my taste.

-Matt
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Kafiri

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2007, 10:00:40 AM »
Quote from: Matt Koeske

We see this very clearly in the case of Christianity . . . and especially in its early conflict between Catholic and Gnostic approaches to the Christ archetype.  The Gnostics took a mystical approach to Christ.  He was a symbol with which one tried to unite (ecstatically).  The Gnostic tried to attain a "Christ-consciousness" by going through the mystical rite of a Mystery transformation (death and rebirth).  This is a typical mysticism as it involves the ego/Self relationship and a transformative progression in that relationship.

But the Catholic Church, the anti-Gnosticism, designed itself to specifically oppose these Gnostic philosophies.  Instead of seeking to identify with the reborn Christ, the Catholic was supposed to identify with the suffering Christ (in the sense that she or he was supposed to "bear" or accept hardship and suffering).  But even this was dangerously close to mysticism (because suffering is so often transformative), so the Church took this farther, to the point of prescribing a non-identification with Jesus altogether.  One mustn't identify oneself with Christ's suffering.  Christ's suffering was too great . . . and by comparison, we are small and insignificant.  Only a god can suffer like that!



Matt,
Using your introduction of "The Gnostics...", above in the quoted section, I would like to start a a different thread dealing with Jung's interaction with Gnosticism, and the relationship between Jung's psychology and Gnosticism.
"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves."
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Wonder Girl

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #8 on: April 08, 2007, 08:08:16 AM »
Wow, there is so much here. You all are such scholars and prolific writers. I will respond mainly to my recollection of Matt's statements right now and return to this topic later.

First of all, thank you for writing with such clarity.  The hostility of many Jungians to Christianity is a difficult tension for me to manage and you have helped me to understand it. I typically do not respond in kind to anti-Christian expressions in Jungian circles since I do not have clear sense of their basis in perception or experience. Nonetheless, as a newcomer to these circles, I am not sure how to respond over time.  One's faith is inextricably linked with one's self and an attack upon it that is made without disqualilfiers is experienced as a cheap shot and ultimately as an attack on the self even if one can intellectually interpret it otherwise. And it sets severe limits on one's ability to identify with a group when this occcurs. 

All that said, on other levels I agree with those who criticize "Christian" history and culture. The Christian church has not yet come to terms with the divide between the pursuit of power and the pursuit of goodness exemplified in Christ's life. And so a shadow of dishonesty, aggression, ego, and insensitivity to and attempted murdur of the souls of both adherents and nonadherents trails it. And I think this shadow is well known to its most spiritual adherents, and yet we do not feel that our calling is to fight this shadow as our own, since it may not reflect our personal shadow and we too feel alienated from the goup. Rather my own instincts are to identify with my own shadow that feels attacked by the institutional church, and thus identify also with those outside the Christian faith who have also suffered from it, yet while remaining Christian and seeking transformation for myself and others--and to try to set out in a new direction. 

This direction feels a bit lonely and I wish there were an institutional support for it.  I am able to attend church for religious holidays when the ritual evokes an awareness of the beauty and richness of the story and guidance on my own spiritual path and group participation in the story line overcomes the expressions of self-aggrandizement and projection that one must suffer in order to attend on a typcial Sunday.  But by and large, if I attempt to discuss my outlook or spiritual life in such groups, I am met with blank looks, a sense that concern for the shadow is a manifestation of depresson that spoils Sunday positivism, or suspicion of heresy. And so I keep my distance.

But in my heart I am all Christian. The story is woven into every part of myself.  But my own awakening to my shadow about 15 years ago was a conversion of sort that changed my interpretation of the spiritual path quite a bit. Still, it was a conversion that made me more acutely aware of my need for salvation.  I do believe in faith alone as the vehicle through which Christ is introjected in a way that saves and transforms--not that I do not need to struggle with my shadow out of conscience and desire to progress, but that I cannot through this struggle redeem myself within this lifespan.  The older I get, the heavier this shadow becomes, since even with progress its cumulative weight increases and with increased awareness comes increased sensitivity, and I look back with wry humor and sadness at many things and yet see them as inevitable parts of my path to the present (which will also undoubtedly appear primitive when viewed from the future). 

And in this sense the story of Christ remains true.  It does indeed parallel other myths but this is our myth, and whether other myths prefigured the arrival of a historical Savior in Christ or whether they are all striving to express the same spiritual truth, this story is a force for good in the individual spiritual life and should not be attacked.  It has survived Christendom itself because it is psychologically true.  It is the story of the narcissists and sociopaths who have risen to power within the culture, many of course in historical times in which psychological insight was truly absent, that can be interpretted as evil.  But on the individual level, I suspect more good has been done by those who are trying to follow Christ than we can know. 

Well I will wrap up my Easter reflection with the hope that he is indeed risen and that this path will lead us to a light and joy that we have not known.

Best regards,
Wonder Girl




Kafiri

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #9 on: April 09, 2007, 10:07:49 AM »
Wonder Girl,
If you have not already found it, this site might interest you: http://www.innerexplorations.com/jctext/jungian-.htm
"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves."
      -Eric Hoffer

Matt Koeske

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #10 on: April 09, 2007, 10:41:02 AM »
Hi Wonder Girl,

I am glad that you responded.  I always feel conflicted about my opinions on Christianity . . . and it isn't my intention to offend.  We live in a very Christianized world (especially in the States), and there is (what I feel is) a false sense of minority-ism or persecution that many Christians erect when they feel their faith is under fire.  Seen rationally (in the face of the enormous majority of Christians and "sympathetic Christians" in the U.S.), these proclamations of persecution are absurd.  Christians are easily the least persecuted and most entitled believers in the world.  The criticism normally aimed at Christianity is the typical criticism addressed from a minority to a majority that is seen as empowered (and even at times oppressive).

By contrast, the number of atheists in America is infinitesimal . . . and yet, one of the conventional claims is that these roving bands of atheist goon squads go around bullying poor defenseless Christians everywhere.

This has nothing to do with what you wrote, of course . . . I mean merely to say that, if all were just, I would not feel anxious about expressing either a disbelief in or a dislike of Christianity . . . especially insomuch as I feel capable of providing a logical ethical and social criticism of Christianity (supported by historical details).  But all is not just in this area . . . not by a long shot.  I realize, therefore, that no matter how logical or rational I might be able to make my argument (and I certainly have personal limits in the rationalism department), it will come across as offensive and excessive, putting any Christian sympathizer on the defensive.  This resultant polarization tends to destroy any ability to communicate . . . but the alternative is to lie, mislead, conceal myself, and grant the offended a bye that is not actually deserved (other than, perhaps, out of greater fragility of belief).

So I remain anxious always when talking about this issue . . . and perhaps I counter that anxiousness by steeling myself and tearing forward even more ferociously than I would normally.

In any case, such explanations are probably unnecessary, are merely another product of this anxiety.  What I actually wanted to say to you consists of two things.  First, I haven't had an experience of Jungians being hostile to Christianity.  Quite the opposite.  Many of the Jungians I've met have been hostile toward atheism and toward social/ethical criticism of Christianity from a "rationalist" or "secular" position.  Jung himself drew an enormous amount of meaning from Christianity, although he was very critical of "creeds" (as he calls them), institutionalized religions.  He was general unwilling to make metaphysical judgments that literalized psychic or "spiritual" phenomena . . . but he felt the symbolism of religion (which didn't require belief, per se) was valuable and meaningful.

Many of the Jungians I've met like to reference Jung's quote about not believing in God, but knowing.  This is held up as some kind of special proof both of Jung's great wisdom and of the referencer's own somehow validated belief in the spiritual or divine.  The quote is regrettable, as it has led to so much foolishness among Jungian believers.  One cannot well guess what in the hell Jung was talking about.  I doubt he meant that he knew the Christian God on a personal level and was personally vouching for his existence.  I would guess that he meant the statement in a Gnostic sense of "knowing".  I.e., knowing as experiencing.  This is not a metaphysical statement.  It would be consistent with Jung's other writings to assume he meant that belief itself was not a factor in his religiosity.  Belief tries to assert a material reality without material evidence.  It is a wish fulfillment.  But one experiences God . . . or the Self, or Other.  These experiences are profound.  We do not know what they mean or what, scientifically they are, but we know they have substance because of their impact on us. 

Therefore, we experience God . . . and know God.  But without belief.  In this gnosis we cannot even say what God is.  Is God the Self, the universe?  We can only guess.  To assert certainty here would be a belief.

I bring this up, because I wanted to share some resources with you on Gnosticism (if you already know about them, then hopefully others who haven't found them might find them interesting).  I don't advocate Gnosticism.  I am less fond of it than Jung was.  But I do see Gnosticism as a viable alternative to pure atheism (for a Christian disenfranchised by the conventional faith and its history).  As I said in my posts above, my main problem is that I feel I cannot embrace the mythos of Christianity (the Symbol that Jung recommends), because I cannot forgive Christianity for its historical crimes (and its refusal to acknowledge and repent for these crimes adequately).  I see the abuses of Christian power as undifferentiable from its theological dogmas.  I even suspect the whole religion is a concoction, a fiction that had designs on power and prejudice (antisemitism) very early on (you can browse this immensely snarky, but extremely well-researched and thorough site if you ever want to see the darkest of the dark side).

I have no doubt that many Christians throughout history have been good people and done good things.  I merely think these things were typically done in spite of Christianity, not because of it (as I believe morality is highly instinctual . . . I have an article to post on this as soon as I get around to it).  There are other people like me . . . but more knowledgeable (actual scholars), who have been able to stare all of the horror of Christian history straight in the eye, even consider that Jesus himself probably never existed in the flesh, and still find a way to participate in organized Christianity.

One person that comes to mind is a Bible scholar named Robert Price.  He is a member of the Jesus Seminar and the author of a number of books including The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man and Deconstructing Jesus.  Price had an interesting spiritual "evolution" from fundamentalist Christian to secular rationalist to a kind of personalized Gnosticism.  This guys knows as much as anyone about early Christianity and I think he is a pretty reliable source.  He isn't a "religion basher".

I read one of the articles posted on his site (can't find it now, but here are some other articles) in which he talked about being able to return to church and participate in a meaningful way, even after all he had learned about the (rather disconcerting) origins of Christianity.  He said that the Gnostics believed that the mythos of Christianity was good in itself.  They thought (like Jung, who learned from them) that the story of Christ was meant to be understood symbolically or spiritually, not literally.  But they believed that it was OK for Christians to come to the religion without a more "intellectual", symbolic interpretation . . . i.e., to come to Christ like the Gnostic initiates did (seeking to become "Pneumatics").  They saw the basic Christian believer as a beginner on the path, and showed these beginners a great deal of tolerance (they did end up getting into conflicts with the orthodox priestly class of the Church, though, who held that God could only be approached through them, not personally).

The Catholic Church used this tolerance as leverage to destroy the Gnostics.  They portrayed the Gnostics as elitist, arrogant, heretics (because they wouldn't submit to the Church authority structure).  Since Gnostic writings and ideas were esoteric and symbolically encoded, this was probably not all that hard to do.  To follow the Church, the Christian merely had to submit to its authority, show up regularly, and give as much money as they could (and then a little more).  To become a Gnostic, one had to actually pursue a spiritual discipline, struggle, suffer, engage, work . . . and do this while being persecuted by the increasingly powerful and politically devious Church.  A number of the Gnostic Christians became martyrs (sometimes thanks to their "brethren" in the Church) . . . and these martyrdoms were taken as "Church martyrdoms" by the Church fathers who rewrote (and Christianized) history.  The fact that these Gnostics sometimes went to their deaths as heretics and enemies of the Church is, for some reason, not mentioned in the Catholic histories.

When Catholicism found the tryst with political power it had always sought, Gnosticism was on the chopping block.  All the Gnostic texts the Catholics could find were consigned to the fire.  If it weren't for the Nag Hammadi find in the 40s (I think), Gnosticism would be little more than a legend.  What we knew (and still know) of Gnosticism for hundreds of years was only preserved in the writings of the Church fathers who were opposing the Gnostics . . . and history written by your arch enemy is hardly reliable.

There is another book that embraces the de-historicity of Jesus while finding meaning in Christianity.  It's The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.  These fellows aren't biblical scholars.  I think they are supposed to be New Age guru types or something.  But the book is actually pretty solid.  Their research is a little dated and incomplete at times, but the gist of their idea (that Jesus was a fictional, spiritual character invented by the Gnostics for meditative purposes and then misunderstood and literalized by later orthodox Christians) is pretty logical and certainly possible.  It makes sense psychologically . . . but can't be definitively proven historically.

Robert Price, for instance, doesn't believe the Gnostics predated the more orthodox Christians.  In any case, Freke and Gandy use their foray into early Christian history to propose a rebirth of Christianity as a neo-Gnosticism.  They merely (like Jung often did) suggest that Christ be taken as a symbol and not literalized . . . and that Christian symbolism can then be pursued in a initiatory, Mystery-type rite (which they gleaned from their studies of Gnosticism).  They explore this neo-Gnosticism in another book (thankfully).  The Jesus Mysteriess is a pretty decent read.  I have no personal interest in their evangelism.  But their basic proposal (a return to Gnosticism) seem tenable to me (for those who want to remain Christians while actually facing Christian history).

I don't personally seek these Gnostic solutions, because I don't find Gnosticism (in actual practice) all that compelling.  I do really like a lot of general Gnostic ideas and certainly find them preferable to conventional Christian ideologies, but Gnostic texts are radically dense and convoluted.  I believe that trying to make ideas as clear and sensible as possible is a good thing . . . and Gnostic writing is impenetrable.  Alchemical writing is similarly impenetrable . . . but they have lots and lots of pictures, which I can understand  (-).?!.(-).

For me, the Gnostics are like the poststructuralists in academic literary theory, they obscure and mystify their subjects so severely that "ego-psychology creeps in".  That is, power complexes, inflation, delusion, self-absorption, and the various other impediments to empathy and morality.

So I've preferred to slog onward in my spiritual life in a purely individualistic way (although toting a number of general Gnostic tenets with me).

Yours,
Matt
« Last Edit: April 09, 2007, 10:46:37 AM by Matt Koeske »
You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.

   [Bob Dylan,"Mississippi]

Wonder Girl

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #11 on: April 10, 2007, 08:37:04 PM »
Dear Matt,

Criticism and persecution:

I don't consider your statements offensive at all--they are direct and honest.  I am trying to be honest also and hope that what I write is taken in that way.

Christian culture is privileged and I do not object to its criticism on a cultural level. Still when criticism is directed at the Christian faith as such, it is experienced as an assault on the best within one, the Self, the embodiment, protected entity, (and perhaps the object!) of that faith and all the political advantage in the world does not alter that dynamic, and the suffering and forebearance entailed in maintaining a relationship in which that type of criticism occurs. It amazes me that although I who am at times criticised as an exemplar of an oppressive Christian culture yet would never even feel negatively toward. to say nothing of verbally denigrating, Judaism, Hinduism or any other sincerely held belief, many of my Jewish and atheistic friends casually trash my religion to my face in what feels like a personal way though I assume they do not mean it as such, without acknowledging that I might experience pain in response, and I have to verbally remind them that I do have such feelings. And yet in half a century of intensive Christian exposure I have literally never heard an anti-Semitic word within the church or from Christians.  In my experience, those who engage in such may at times have a cultural connection to a Christian heritage but do not sense a personal spiritual connection to Christ.  If anything, spiritually oriented members of the modern church identify so strongly with the Old Testament stories that they also identify with Judaism and have become pro-Jewish and -Israeli to such a degree that they cannot accept any criticism with respect to Palestinian issues (contributing to the tendency to blindly vote Republican) and don't imagine that their feelings are largely not reciprocated.

I think that learning to dialog around expressions of inner experience rather than political or group alignment is the only way that all people can transcend their cultural differences and develop true empathy for each other. The emergence of a psychological language offers that opportunity for the first time in our history, but engaging in such involves burying the hatchet of history and I can appreciate that others have experienced pain from Christianity that has not resolved and so that may be expecting too much in some circumstances.  And so I expect that statements of resentment will continue and a more realistic goal may be tolerance with an effort to understand the basis for these feelings while still providing some challenge for those expressions, even while my sensitivity toward them increases with increased self-awareness.

Synchretism:

It seems that expressions of all faiths have developed through co-opting the culltural concepts available at the time. I enjoyed reading an Early History of God to see how Canaanite myths and attributes of their deities were incorporated into Jahwehism with monaltry then leading to monotheism. I don't think that the developmental process of a religion necessarily invalidates it though anachronistic dogma can weigh it down and the soul by extension.  The underlying value system and experiences will always be communicated in the language at hand and our spiritual awareness grows over time just like our intellectual and emotional awareness.

Gnosticism:

I do like the gnostic emphasis on identificiation with Christ as the suffering and transforming god-Self within and have been surprised that most Christian ministers do not experience or express Christ in this way and instead orient people to searching for connection with him through outward means and a model of Otherness. It was my experience of Christ's presence within that set me on my current path. This did not occur until middle age when in a time of suffering a wise person told me to pray for Christ's presence within the pain rather than running away from it.  My early experiences took my breath away and since then I have been on a path aimed at trying to achieve continuity of this experience. 

But the detailed content of gnosticism and alchemy does indeed seem impenetrable (though I receive clues through black, yellow, red and white dreams). And the simple message of Whosoever Will in whatever way people understand that, still needs to be heard on the night air, calling religious and nonreligious alike to give up partisanship, pretense and aggression and find a place of rest where they "shall not perish". 

Amen:)
Wonder Girl


 

Sealchan

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #12 on: April 26, 2007, 11:47:28 AM »
Well put Wonder Girl.  I appreciate your comments here.

In the end, one is free to identify as a Christian or not and I think the best Christians are comfortable with this choice for, in the Christian perspective as I understand it, God has always left us free to choose.

I want the throw out the following list of thoughts and views here for considering how Christianity fits into the modern, scientific mindset.


1.  I have come to believe, in my first great encounter with God, that anything that can't be disproven can be confidently believed in.  This I have later reformulated as the idea that we make up half of what we know which applies to each statement of truth whether that be a law of gravity or a profession of faith.  This is the consequence of acknowledging the reality of the psyche as a complementary opposite of whatsoever is non-psyche.  It is my feeling that atheists balk at this kind of understanding.  This is fundamentally a dualistic mode of knowing truth, that that which is provable is equally as true as that which is not disprovable.


2.  The movie The Last Temptation of Christ is for me an inspirational one for the following reasons:

a.  To read the book for this movie came as a suggestion from a Catholic priest who the lead pastor at an undergraduate university

b.  The book embellishes the humanity of Jesus by showing more of the inner struggle and temptation that such a man must have encountered.  This embellishment is hard for the fundamentalist Christian to accept

c.  The story does a beautiful job of treating the idea that Judas was following God's plan despite great personal suffering

d.  The story features the apostle Paul in conversation with a "fallen" Jesus who claimed the whole cross dying resurrected story was a sham...here is a cut from the dialogue from the screenplay I found online.  In this scene, Jesus, who is, unknowingly, having an extended vision while hanging on the cross and believes that he has been taken down from the cross sees Paul preaching the gospel and feels moved to interrupt...

http://sfy.ru/sfy.html?script=last_temptation_of_christ_1988

Quote
      JESUS
   Did you ever see this resurrected
   Jesus of Nazareth? I mean, with your
   own eyes?

      PAUL
   No. But I saw a blinding flash of
   light and I heard his voice.

      JESUS
   You're a liar!

      PAUL
   His disciples saw him. They were
   hiding in an attic with the doors
   locked when suddenly he appeared.
   Only one, Thomas, wasn't convinced
   but he put his fingers in his wounds
   and gave Jesus some fish, which he
   ate.

      JESUS
   Liar!
      (to people around him)
   He's a liar!

Disgusted, Jesus turns and walks away. His angel follows.

In the background, Paul comes after him.

Jesus feels Paul's footsteps drawing closer. He's about to
explode. Suddenly, he turns on his heel, grabs Paul by the
shoulders and shakes him violently.

      JESUS
      (continuing)
   You're a liar! I'm Jesus of Nazareth.
   I was never crucified. I never came
   back from the dead. I'm a man like
   everyone else. Why are you spreading
   these lies?

      ANGEL
   Quiet.

      PAUL
   What are you talking about?

      JESUS
   I'm the son of Mary and Joseph, who
   preached in Galilee. James and John,
   the sons of Zebedee, were my
   disciples. We marched on Jerusalem,
   they brought me before Pilate, but
   God saved me.

Jesus' Angel doesn't like this conversation; he tugs violently
at his sleeve. Jesus shoves him aside. Paul takes Jesus around
a corner where they won't be seen.

      PAUL
   No he didn't!

      JESUS
   Now I live like a man. I have a
   family. I eat, work, have children.
   Do you understand what I'm saying?
   Don't go around the world spreading
   these lies about me.
      (shouts)
   Because, I'll tell everyone the truth.

Now it's Paul's turn to explode.

      PAUL
   Look around you! Look at these people.
   Do you see the suffering and
   unhappiness in this world? Their
   only hope is the Resurrected Jesus.
   I don't care whether you're Jesus or
   not. The Resurrected Jesus will save
   the world -- that's what matters.

      JESUS
   The world can't be saved by lies.

      PAUL
   I created the truth. I make it out
   of longing and faith. I don't struggle
   to find truth -- I build it. If it's
   necessary to crucify you to save the
   world, then I'll crucify you. And
   I'll resurrect you too, whether you
   like it or not.

      JESUS
   I won't let you. I'll tell everyone
   the truth.

      PAUL
   Shout all you want. Who'll believe
   you? You started all this, now it
   can't be stopped. The faithful will
   grab you and call you a blasphemer
   and throw you in a fire.

      JESUS
   No, that wouldn't happen.

      PAUL
   How do you know? You don't know how
   much people need God. You don't know
   what a joy it is to hold the cross,
   to put hope in the hearts of men, to
   suffer, to be killed -- all for the
   sake of Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus
   of Nazareth, Son of God. Messiah.

Jesus is listening intently now.

      PAUL
      (continuing)
   Not you. Not for your sake.
      (pause)
   I'm glad I met you. Now I can forget
   you. My Jesus is much more powerful.



3.  Jesus Christ is to Western culture as the Buddha is to Eastern culture.  These individuals historically real or no, mark the point at which ego-consciousness became heroically powerful in the collective psychical landscape and this level of conscious development became the collective standard for individual conscious development.


4.  The Christian tradition contains the seeds of its own renewal (Parsifal) even as Christians create the need for its renewal.   


My own first encounter with God in the waking world involved a deep criticism of His creation and of Him by implication.  But prior to that I had not dialogued with God at all, and so I consider that a conversion.  Most Christians suffer from an overarching fear that to express one's deeper negative feelings towards God is to send one's self to Hell.  It is perhaps this psychological fact that most prevents Christians from understanding their own religion.

Wonder Girl

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #13 on: April 27, 2007, 01:53:55 PM »
Sealchan, that is a great dialog.  To tie in Matt's other section on this topic, I think that the movement from Jesus to Christ is a result of personal revelation of goodness as divine, empowered by faith, and motivated by desire.  It does not matter to the believer if others agree any more than it matters if others love your lover.  The point and context of one's personal realization of Christ is and remains a sacred space and its defining and transforming qualities will not be altered by skepticism or criticism.  It takes a stronger philosophical and psychological aptitude than is possessed by the average person to express Christian faith in gnostic terminology, and I don't think efforts should be made to discredit those who are less sophisticated in their expression of inner experience, even if at times they are critical of others.   We should be seeking to listen, to find the good in each other, and to validate that good and encourage its development and expression. Interfaith discussion seems to be falling on hard times in recent years, and I can appreciate that people may wish to distinguish their personal beliefs from Christian teachings they have acquired through the culture rather than personal affirmation.  But ultimately, there can be no truly useful interfaith conversation that begins with blaming Christianity for the world's pain. We have all shared in the world's pain and will need to begin with gentleness and respect for each others' integrity if we are to move forward in partnership.    Best, Wonder Girl

John

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Re: How Can Christianity Progress?
« Reply #14 on: June 14, 2010, 12:45:39 PM »

New guy here. Great questions and they seem like a good place for me to say hello.

Quote
1) How can the pursuit of consciousness (or Jungian individuation) be compatible with the Christian belief system?

As I read the Jesus story, it was about a man who spent his life in the pursuit of consciousness, he attained a remarkable degree of it, and then tried to help others in their pursuit of it. So to me, Christ is a role model for individuation- Jungian or otherwise. Unfortunately, a role model has limited effectiveness, especially if the goal is individuation.

Quote
2) Does Christianity have to change/adapt in order to be functional in our age of technology and rationalism?  If so, how do we decide what stays and what goes?

Well leaving "Khristianity" out of it (as Van Gogh would spell it) because that's so many things it's hard to talk about, I would say that the basics of Jesus as they are found in the Bible don't need to change. Jesus seems like a pretty rational guy to me. It's a curious question really. What do you find irrational about Jesus, or the Jesus story for that matter?

Quote
3) Ultimately, what IS the value of Christianity and its mythos?  What is worth preserving and nurturing?

IS? Does it have to have only one? I can only speak for myself. To me its primary value boils down to a simple reality, the persuit of truth and love is worthwhile, regardless of the consequences. There are some good guidelines on how to go about persuing truth and love that have merit too.

Nice web site! Really very impressive.

John