Usless Science Forum
The Psyche => Religion and Spirituality => Topic started by: Matt Koeske on March 03, 2007, 02:21:22 PM
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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
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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...
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.
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.
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.
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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
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...
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:
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:
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:
"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.
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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
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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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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:
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:
"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.
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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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.
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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
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Wonder Girl,
If you have not already found it, this site might interest you: http://www.innerexplorations.com/jctext/jungian-.htm (http://www.innerexplorations.com/jctext/jungian-.htm)
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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 (http://jesusneverexisted.com/) 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 (http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/). He is a member of the Jesus Seminar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Seminar) and the author of a number of books including The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591021219) and Deconstructing Jesus (http://www.amazon.com/Deconstructing-Jesus-Robert-M-Price/dp/1573927589). 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 (http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/robert_price/)) 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? (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Mysteries-Was-Original-Pagan/dp/0609807986/) 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
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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
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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
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.
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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
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New guy here. Great questions and they seem like a good place for me to say hello.
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.
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?
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
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Welcome to Useless Science, John!
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.
I would see Christ as the primary archetype of the individuant in Western civilization. And that archetype draws a lot of projections from a modern/individuating culture . . . to the degree that we each have our own "personal Christ". That goes for non-Christians too, even atheists.
I would argue that this is the key "natural resource" of institutionalized Christianity. The institutions of Christianity try to organize and employ this resource. It is the ways the resource is organized and employed that I meant to bring into question. How limited or how adaptive is this particular employment in the modern world?
I don't mean to question the Christ figure's construction, as I find this to be like any other personal and cultural elaboration of an archetype (which itself is a kind of organizational dynamic or system of order rather than a specific set of traits).
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?
I'm not sure I would characterize Jesus as irrational (or as rational). The rational/irrational dichotomy is common in Jungianism, but I don't find it very useful in speaking about psychic phenomena. Although it's very debatable what the "basics of Jesus" are, if we just attempt to construct Jesus from the Gospel stories alone we end up with a very different personality than the Jesus of the Church or the Jesus of folk Christianity. But the Gospels don't show us a full person . . . so there is much to interpret or project onto those bare Gospel bones.
I am mostly interested in how these interpretations of Jesus are made and how applicable these interpretations are to the world we live in. I am hesitant to simplify our world or environment or to imagine that all would be solved if we could just return to a kind of prehistoric tribal Christianity. I'm suspicious of that brand of culling, of eliminating otherness so that a righteous "Chosen Few" can be preserved and exalted.
The 20th century saw some terrifying experiments in that kind of "purification" around a chosen tribe. I don't consider that kind of neotribalism a viable solution to the problems of the modern environment (which is vast, complex, and diverse). Christianity (under the early Christian emperors of Rome) functioned in much the same way (socially speaking) as fascism, Nazism, or Stalinism. What could not be conformed was destroyed.
I think it is a matter of ethical consciousness to kept this in mind as we try to imagine and actualize a modern Christianity. So when I ask if Christianity can be truly modern, I mean to ask if it can imagine a salvation or "kingdom of heaven" or "message of truth and light" that is not dependent on wiping out others and non-believers.
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.
But it becomes part of the ethical burden of both Christians and those who would borrow from Christian ideas and symbols to seriously question how even with these kinds of guidelines, Christianity has been so often abused and used to injure others. Christianity, historically speaking, has functioned just as much as a weapon against declared enemies as it has as a pursuit of truth and love. How do we pursue the truth and love without picking up the weapon and wielding it against someone unjustly and perhaps even "sinfully"?
I don't think Christianity is a simple tool and ready resource. One has to bring a great deal of consciousness to it in order not to use it unjustly. The problem is that it doesn't always tell us how it should be employed. Especially not in the modern environment. In other words, I would find it dangerous and foolish to assume that Christianity can "save" us. Rather, if it is to persist, I think we must save it . . . by bringing a more modern consciousness and ethics to it.
I don't mean to suggest that I have any interest in taking up that task. I've found it more functional to stop drawing water from its well than to try to filter out its contaminants. But many people have a stronger affiliation and commitment to Christianity. They derive their identity from it in both visible and invisible ways. I am not sure those people can go on assuming that Christianity will provide for them . . . will provide morals, orientation, the experience of God, meaning, truth. I suspect the providence has to flow in the other direction. Humanist ethics have surpassed Christian ethics in their particular adaptability to the modern environment. To the degree that Christian ideologies would try to revoke the modern environment, I would consider them non-adaptive.
But there is definitely precedent in the sayings and acts of Jesus in the Gospels for something compatible with humanist ethics (by which I primarily mean ethics that valuate others and assign inherent rights to all individuals rather than to castes or tribal elites). I suspect that these Gospels, despite their archaisms, are more modern than the rest of Christianity. Therefore, some aspects of Christianity are still relevant. But these aspects still need to be translated into more complex modern terms.
Christianity can be fantasized in a kind of simplicity. But the actualization of Christian ideas and values is anything but simple. It's the actualization that's the problem, the real challenge of being Christian in the modern world.
Best,
Matt
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Lot's there to chew on. Forgive me I just pick out what appear to be the nuts with the softer shell and leave the rest in the bowl.
The rational/irrational dichotomy is common in Jungianism, but I don't find it very useful in speaking about psychic phenomena.
I find the awareness of rational and irrational helpful in staying grounded. I'm pretty sure that I would have just flown away a long time ago if I didn't keep an eye on the rational- as best I can see it.
Although it's very debatable what the "basics of Jesus" are, if we just attempt to construct Jesus from the Gospel stories alone we end up with a very different personality than the Jesus of the Church or the Jesus of folk Christianity. But the Gospels don't show us a full person . . . so there is much to interpret or project onto those bare Gospel bones.
True enough. But I imagine that a healthy dose of creative imagination chased down with a healthier dose of reality would be enough, eventually, to get a decent idea of the "basics of Jesus."
I am mostly interested in how these interpretations of Jesus are made and how applicable these interpretations are to the world we live in.
Can you give an example of a specific interpretation of Jesus that is interesting to you?
I mean to ask if it can imagine a salvation or "kingdom of heaven" or "message of truth and light" that is not dependent on wiping out others and non-believers.
Oh my, I can't imagine that the kingdom Jesus spoke about had anything to do with wiping out others. At least not in a way we usually think of when we hear those words.
I don't think Christianity is a simple tool and ready resource. One has to bring a great deal of consciousness to it in order not to use it unjustly.
I suppose that's true. I don't really understand why, I suspect it has something to do with the fact that justice isn't really the goal when it's being misused.
The problem is that it doesn't always tell us how it should be employed
I'm pretty sure that's not a problem but a feature.
Christianity can be fantasized in a kind of simplicity. But the actualization of Christian ideas and values is anything but simple. It's the actualization that's the problem, the real challenge of being Christian in the modern world.
I think it's pretty simple- just not very easy.
John
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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?
These are very pertinent questions Matt, and the answers and notes from John resonate with me.
The way I see it, because of the presence in our minds of the spark of divinity, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman. Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another's idea as yours is the same whereby you may " let the mind which was in Christ be also in you. ". While each person has their own thoughts and beliefs and feelings, their experiences cannot be completely separate from ourselves. The consciousness of one has a direct impact on that of the other. It is in that shared consciousness, where true empathy and insight can take place.
What is human experience (consciousness)? It is simply any interplay between an active and questioning self and any other active and external reality. The mass of experience is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the external qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus other-existences—other-thingness, other-mindness, and other-spiritness.
Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality—source, nature, and destiny—of other-mindness. But such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human personality.
The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Reality. Man's prespirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.
Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man's cosmos.
Religion did approve the occasional social reforms of past centuries, but in the 21st century it is of necessity called upon to face adjustment to extensive and continuing social reconstruction. Conditions of living alter so rapidly that institutional modifications must be greatly accelerated, and religion must accordingly quicken its adaptation to this new and ever-changing social order.
Institutional religion cannot afford inspiration and provide leadership in this impending world-wide social reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has unfortunately become more or less of an organic part of the social order and the economic system which is destined to undergo reconstruction. Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization.
As you state Matt, institutional religion is now caught in the stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself; and being so much an integral part of the established order, it cannot reconstruct itself until society has been radically reconstructed.
I believe religionists must function in society, in industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups, parties, or institutions. A religious group which presumes to function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social institution. Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to the furtherance of religious causes.
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I find the awareness of rational and irrational helpful in staying grounded. I'm pretty sure that I would have just flown away a long time ago if I didn't keep an eye on the rational- as best I can see it.
Hi John,
I don't mean to dismiss rationalism. In its generic (as opposed to "cultural mindset") form, rationalism is an invaluable tool. Jungians could probably use a lot more of it. Jung, on the other hand, was often very, even profoundly, rational in his assessment and interpretation of psychic phenomena.
What I am suspicious of in Jungianism is the tendency of some to romanticize irrationalism and describe the unconscious as "irrational" so as not to have to contend with the significant structure and order psychic phenomena from the "deep psyche" present. That is, if we insist on dichotomizing rational and irrational so as to mean something like conscious and unconscious, I think it is important that we do not conflate this construction with ordered/chaotic. Sometimes Jung and Jungians portray the unconscious as a cauldron of polymorphous energies and the ego as a heroic translator or commodifier of these energies into "useful forms" (I was just told as much by a Jungian author on another list).
When there is conflict between ego and unconscious, I don't think it is valid to say this is a conflict between order and chaos or rationality and irrationality. It is a conflict between two different systems of organization. The egoic system of organization tends to be more abstract, everything is languaged and labeled and divided up into more or less hierarchical categories like branching diagrams. The system of organization of the unconscious or Self is more complex and "3-dimensional" by contrast. Its iterations and interrelationality are massive, and the relationships among these parts and subsystems are significantly dynamic, always changing, always self-organizing and self-regulating around a goal of efficient functionality and "flow" or homeostasis. The egoic system of organization, on the other hand, is static, a collection of laws or scripts. Changes can certainly be made, but the process of revision is not truly complex nor is it dynamic (except where it involves the Self system).
Although it's very debatable what the "basics of Jesus" are, if we just attempt to construct Jesus from the Gospel stories alone we end up with a very different personality than the Jesus of the Church or the Jesus of folk Christianity. But the Gospels don't show us a full person . . . so there is much to interpret or project onto those bare Gospel bones.
True enough. But I imagine that a healthy dose of creative imagination chased down with a healthier dose of reality would be enough, eventually, to get a decent idea of the "basics of Jesus."
I guess it depends how strong this dose of reality is. I've read quite a bit about the historical vs. the mythic Jesus, and my impression is that the pursuit of this topic without a faith-based life-preserver tends to dissolve Jesus into ether (or perhaps dust). That debate aside, though, I think there is value in constructing the Jesus of the Gospels without the use of additional texts (even biblical ones). If we look at that figure, vaguessness aside, there is still so much that we do not emulate or live up to ethically. Still, in order to actually apply this "Christian morality" in our modern lives, a great deal of self-reflectivity and sophisticated interpretation would be necessary. This portrait of Jesus is clouded substantially by Church and other Christian interpolations that prove (by humanistic, modern standards) to be extremely amoral and invalid as ethical practices.
I am mostly interested in how these interpretations of Jesus are made and how applicable these interpretations are to the world we live in.
Can you give an example of a specific interpretation of Jesus that is interesting to you?
We could look at the Evangelical interpretations of Jesus, for instance. Jesus is called wholly good, and yet he is the great critic (and perhaps punisher) of the "wicked". Supposedly, he encourages the Evangelicals to long for "Rapture" where the wicked will be destroyed and the righteous will be saved and exalted. And so, it is easy to extrapolate that those deemed wicked by the self-declared "righteous" are less valuable than the righteous are. That's what I would call neotribalism, an archaic re-institution of the old Us vs. Them mentality. I don't find that Jesus very ethical or very appropriate to modern society.
So here my "interest" is sociological. I'm interested in why this (extremely old) interpretation of Jesus the "Redeemer" of the Chosen People persists and influences modern individuals. What is the attraction of neotribalism? How is the figure of Jesus employed to justify this dogmatically? This construction of Jesus actually predates Christianity and can be traced back to radical Jewish eschatological sects in the first century BCE or earlier. These sects seem to have influenced the construction of early Christianity. If we are to believe the Jewish historian Josephus (1st century CE), these kinds of sects may also have been largely responsible for driving the Jews into a succession of unwinnable wars with Rome that destroyed most of the Jewish population. The Dead Sea Scrolls capture some of this eschatological ideology centered around pre-Christian messiah cults.
As another example of an interpretation of Jesus I find interesting, we can look at the kinds of quasi-gnostic interpretations of Jesus that some Jungians prefer. Here Jesus is more psychological, a kind of ideal individuant, one who understands the mystical relationship with God in an especially profound way. It comes as no surprise that Jungians often characterize Jung in a very similar way. He is not one who "believes" in God , he "knows" (as Jung himself once portentously stated).
Another variation of the Jungian Christ is as a quintessential archetypal model of the Self. Jung sees Christ as a Self figure . . . although he also feels that Christ is too lopsidedly light to represent the whole Self. And so Jung proposes that the Self is more of a Christ-Antichrist amalgam. Notably, Jung doesn't emphasize Christ's archetypal heroism as much as his Self-likeness. I find that questionable, because Christ is a perhaps the most apt model of the hero archetype in Western culture. Jung carries a lot of the confusion about the nature and being of Christ over into his thought from early Roman Catholic debates. Is Christ God, the son of God, some sort of emanation of God, God stuck in human form?
These kinds of conflations also plague Jungian concepts of the Self where individuation is concerned (where the individuating ego is like Christ and the Self is like God). Does the ego become the Self through individuation? Does the ego channel the Self? Are the ego and the Self wholly separate and incapable of union into a third thing?
Ultimately, my interest in Christ is analytical and rational rather than religious or mystical. Christ is not a historical figure to me, nor one to which my identity has any significant affiliation (as would be the case for any stripe of Christian). My interest is in the nature and psychology of belief and in the way this archetype is translated by various people to bolster their beliefs and senses of identity.
I mean to ask if it can imagine a salvation or "kingdom of heaven" or "message of truth and light" that is not dependent on wiping out others and non-believers.
Oh my, I can't imagine that the kingdom Jesus spoke about had anything to do with wiping out others. At least not in a way we usually think of when we hear those words.
Here you are at odds with facts from various periods of history. There are the pre-Christian messiah cults I previously mentioned, for instance. This anticipated messiah was supposed to be a Jewish general who would come and wipe out the Romans (and all those Jews who were "unrighteous) with God's backing. In every era since then, some have felt that Christ would return and "separate the wheat from the chafe", the righteous from the wicked. And the wicked would be expunged while the righteous were rewarded with eternity in heaven.
In the Dark Ages of the Roman Empire after Christianity was made the official religion of the state, innumerable citizens were intimidated, abused, and/or killed if they did not "accept Christ" and refute the old gods. Libraries of knowledge and pagan temples were burned and destroyed in the name of Christian asceticism and righteousness. Then there are the Crusades, the witch burnings, Christian colonialist massacres and genocides. The name of Christ was used in all these ventures. The "coming of the Kingdom of Heaven" has more often been a juggernaut than a lamb.
Is this what Jesus meant by the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospels? Doubtful. But then we get into the thick fog of trying to decide what exactly Jesus meant. And there is the even thicker fog rolling in whenever we try to establish whether the words of the Gospels put into the mouth of Jesus actually came from a historical personage.
What I mean to say is that the issue is incredibly complex. Historical reality demonstrates a great deal of Christian atrocity. When we go to construct our personal Jesus today, we have to take this history into account and have a complex and serious response to it.
The problem is that it doesn't always tell us how it should be employed
I'm pretty sure that's not a problem but a feature.
I would prefer to see it as a problem, because it presents us with ethical and philosophical decisions to make regarding the interpretation of Christian morality and spirituality. If it is not a "problem" for us, then we have no truly intimate relationship to it. We are accepting on blind faith some other interpretation . . . and those other, historical interpretations are so often drenched in blood . . . or at best ignorance and intolerance. Christianity in the modern era thrusts the burden of consciousness and personal interpretation upon us. And part of that personal interpretation involves some kind of relationship and reaction to the various historical interpretations of Christ and the impact these interpretations have had on cultures and individuals.
Christianity can be fantasized in a kind of simplicity. But the actualization of Christian ideas and values is anything but simple. It's the actualization that's the problem, the real challenge of being Christian in the modern world.
I think it's pretty simple- just not very easy.
It could certainly be argued that I have a tendency to make issues more complicated than they really are . . . but I don't think ethics in the modern world (not to mention modern spirituality) are even remotely simple. I've never found them so, and I've always tried to be an ethical person. The complexity of living and relating is always something like a spider's web I feel caught up in. I (like so many) desire simple choices and clear cut scenarios. But I haven't found them (and don't expect to). As for Christianity specifically, it is a conundrum to me. I have found that I had to part myself from it to remain an ethical individual. I was never a true Christian of any kind, but like most Westerners, I drew from its idea and mythology in order to construct a spirituality and sense of ethics. But in light of the historical research I did a few years back, I felt that I could no longer incorporate these constructions or neatly separate a "good Christianity" from a "bad Christianity". My conclusion was that there never really was a period of "good" or pure Christianity, historically speaking. Therefore the interpretation of Christianity and its ideas always becomes more personal than collective, always more a projection than an acquisition.
Therefore, I had to ask: "What do I want Christianity to be? What do I want it to provide me with?" And I decided that I wanted no providence from Christianity and could not in good conscience make a claim to either spirituality or ethics through Christian means without turning a blind eye on the historical atrocities committed in its name or engaging in or advocating immoral apologetics. And what is more important: that I am personally spiritually fulfilled and provided for, or that consciousness is raised about the origin and history of Christianity? I felt that I couldn't be so selfish as to feed myself with the "spoils" of the abuses of others.
If I had any Christian tribal affiliation, I would try to take up some way of serving reform for the Christian institution and philosophy. But as I don't have such affiliations, I had merely to part ways.
Best,
Matt
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It has long been important in Christianity that there be a simple and straightforward way of understanding what that means...to be Christian one must believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us (from our sins). The question that follows from this is, "What does it mean that Jesus died on the cross to save us?" This can also have a simple answer (to the extent that the image of Jesus on the cross is simple) and many do not have a means to express it in more modern psychological language and so they invariably fall back on stock phrases or give more of the story or dogma rather than something more satisfying to the modern, educated mind. Jung, of course, helps us out here with his psychic terminology. The following is my current formulation of an answer to what does it mean to be a Christian:
Jesus, as God (or an avatar of God), took human form so that we may know that He is with us (a subtle distinction from "He is us" which may not have that much practical value but is, nonetheless, very taboo). Jesus is an answer to all of our suffering in life (note that this is the Buddha's First, Third and Fourth Noble Truths). The cause of our suffering is sin and sin is an ignorance of God's way for us (the Buddha's Second Noble Truth).
Jesus' death on the cross is the central, most important act of Christianity. As image and symbol Jesus on the crucifix means the following: our sins and our ignorance puts us in the way of suffering through the following means: we are crucified by our sins and the pain of that suffering causes us to choose evil rather than good. We are crucified in that our sins are our inner conflicts which polarize our psyches (ego/Shadow, ego/anima(us), etc.) and prevent us from prospering or otherwise living in the joy and bounty of the Earth that God made for us (using the cosmology of the Bible). This polarization is our suffering and it comes from within us as much as from without. In Jung's language, developing the ego-Self relationship is equivalent to developing one's relationship with God/Jesus.
Jesus on the cross shows his hands outstretched to the left and the right. This is a simple image of embodying psychic conflict. On either side of Jesus were two others, one who chose to repent (to recognize his sin and ignorance) and one who did not. Our personal crucifixions also leave us with a choice, a choice we must not make until the answer is clear. Until the answer comes the choices still leave us polarized and subject to sin. To embrace the crucifixion within ourselves willingly is to follow in Christ's footsteps. This is the same as turning one's mind toward one's inner life, identifying the light and the darkness within and taking full responsibility for it. The thieves on the cross are always both aspects of ourselves. We cannot just identify with the thief who chose to repent for we also always will choose not to repent. Without self-hatred or blind self-interest one must hold on to this sometimes soul-seering tension until one sees the way forward. Only God can provide such a blessing. This is basically equivalent to Jung's thesis/antithesis/synthesis when felt as a deep personal problem that is not solved merely by the effort of the will or the ego but requires that will or ego to take account of psychic forces greater than itself.
The tension in this polarization of our souls is that we are both bound to the Earth and elevated above it. We are bound to the earth as Christ's body was pierced with nails and thereby was bound to the cross (which is like a tree just as the Buddha received his enlightenment while sitting under a tree). Simultaneously Jesus was elevated above the Earth by the cross and by his embracing of the tensions generated by sin/ignorance. He was raised up onto the cross by his people (I don't see this as a necessarily Jewish fact) and the Romans (similarly not a Roman issue per se) who both embraced and rejected him thereby embodying the tensions of a social psyche perhaps.
Anyway that is how I understand what being a Christian is in what I would consider fairly simple straightforward language. This isn't how most Christians understand it however but I think it should be, at least for those who are ready to hear it.
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The way I see it, because of the presence in our minds of the spark of divinity, it is no more of a mystery for you to know the mind of God than for you to be sure of the consciousness of knowing any other mind, human or superhuman.
Hi Elrick,
This would depend greatly on one's assumptions and perspective. For instance, my bias is naturalistic and more secular than that of most Jungians. So I wouldn't be working from a foundation of the "divine spark" argument. Not naturalistically . . . metaphorically, I'm OK with it.
Also (naturalistically and psychologically speaking), our ability to "know the mind" of another (human, superhuman, or non-human), our so-called theory of mind, would be seen as a form of projective intuition. That is, "mind" is not a property we genuinely detect in the other/object, but something we instill or transfer into it. That transference enables us to relate to that other. We relate to the other/object to the degree that we can imagine it is familiar and similar to our own mind. We extrapolate based on our own self-experience.
With other humans, it's a pretty safe assumption that we are all operating with the uniquely human (i.e., hyperactive) theory of mind. But with animals, inanimate objects, and gods and spirits of all stripes, we have no other way to "compare minds".
My own position on knowing the mind of God would hold that we cannot ever honestly and accurately claim to do so. The problem is that we cannot undue our own theory of mind. All we can really know is that we are predisposed to project mind and agency onto others and objects that have "hooks". Where God or soul/spirit is concerned, there is little we can verify about the true agency of the other. Often enough, we can never prove the perception of the divine is anything but the imagining of our own mind.
But there are some instances where the perception of the divine has some more or less verifiable projection hooks for us to hang a mental construction of agency upon. None of these hooks corroborates supernaturalism in my opinion, but they can help us understand what our criteria for constructing the mind of God are.
Chief among these hooks in my opinion is complexity. The conscious human mind doesn't have the capacity to calculate the great complexity that so often appears in nature, in matter, and in any non-intentioned, complex system. Therefore, wherever there is complexity there is something genuinely other to us, something beyond our mind. But complexity has many features that we habitually assume to be characteristic of intelligence or personality. Complex systems are deeply organized (although in a manner entirely unlike the largely static and hierarchical way consciousness organizes information). Complex systems are also commonly dynamic and seem to self-organize around certain principles. This dynamic organization is a hook on which we habitually hang the projection of agency or will (attributes of personality, in our generic assumption). And we assume that agency and will are features of living beings equipped with mind. The more complex that dynamic sense of organization is, the more we tend to see human-like intelligence in the other . . . or, when it is beyond our normal comprehension (as anything truly complex always will be), we will see superhuman intelligence.
My persepctive is very "psychist", and I hold (at least on this point) with thinkers like Hillman and Giegerich (and Jung) who believe we cannot really say anything about the supposedly divine object in itself based on our direct perception. I deviate from these archetypalists in my belief that we can still say valid things about the other/object by employing more-indirect methods of construction. That is, if we understand the inherent biases, tendencies, and limitations of human consciousness, we can construct a kind of perceptual algorithm, a margin of error for conscious perception.
That margin of error is then used to filter out the most likely errors of human perception and mentalism. To restate the example used above, one of our chief and unavoidable errors of perception is the interpretation of anything that exhibits some of the fundamental elemental qualities of agency through our theory of mind or projective consciousness. Just because we can't help ourselves from seeing mind in something with characteristics of agency doesn't mean it doesn't possess mind . . . but without other corroborating evidence, it makes the possession of mind in the other/object extremely unlikely.
We can pursue our margin of error farther in these scenarios by locating those fundamental qualities of the other that strike us as agentic. Usually, where perception of divine mind is concerned, we will notice (applying this margin of error) that the chief fundamental quality we detect is dynamic complexity. And we can compare this to all other forms of dynamic complexity that are more observable and analyzable. In those other instances, we find we cannot attribute true intelligence to any complex system except (arguably) organic, material complex systems like the brain. And even the brain is likely the product of self-organization (via evolution) rather than design. For that matter, even mind/psyche/memory might be the product of unintentioned and essentially "unintelligent" self-organization of a complex system.
Or, to paraphrase Jung: we don not think our thoughts, they think us. And my own icing on that cake would have it that the thoughts that think us are not actually "intelligent" in the sense that we understand intelligence (i.e., as our experience of consciousness). Fundamentally (to the degree we can reconstruct them), these thoughts are other and alien, exhibiting complex dyanmism and adaptive self-organization around a principle that favors efficiency, interconnectedness of parts, fluidity, and reactive/compensatory adaptivity.
That principle, abstract though it may be, can be and has often been represented in psychic imagery, sometimes as agentic or possessing personality and intelligence. And this representation of an inherent psychic ordering principle is what I would call the Self archetype. And Jung tells us (rightfully so, I think) that this Self archetype is basis for the God image. It is all we can "know" of the divine with certainty.
And that's the nutshell argument for my own psychist naturalism.
Religion and social consciousness have this in common: They are predicated on the consciousness of other-mindness. The technique whereby you can accept another's idea as yours is the same whereby you may " let the mind which was in Christ be also in you. ". While each person has their own thoughts and beliefs and feelings, their experiences cannot be completely separate from ourselves. The consciousness of one has a direct impact on that of the other. It is in that shared consciousness, where true empathy and insight can take place.
I don't follow you completely here, but I would suggest that you have psychologized empathy a bit too much. We can't in good conscience do this anymore with the discovery and developing study of mirror neurons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neurons). That is, there is a strong naturalistic argument for the mindfulness we share both with other humans and with seemingly agentic non-humans. Physically, what we perceive happening in others is being constructed in our own brains automatically. This should not serve as a reductive explanation for all dimensions of empathy, but it does suggest that we have a material foundation for our connectedness to others and things.
What is human experience (consciousness)? It is simply any interplay between an active and questioning self and any other active and external reality. The mass of experience is determined by depth of concept plus totality of recognition of the reality of the external. The motion of experience equals the force of expectant imagination plus the keenness of the sensory discovery of the external qualities of contacted reality. The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus other-existences—other-thingness, other-mindness, and other-spiritness.
I can't follow you here. Which is why I chose to lay out my own argument and language above. That's the best I can do at this point.
Man very early becomes conscious that he is not alone in the world or the universe. There develops a natural spontaneous self-consciousness of other-mindness in the environment of selfhood. Faith translates this natural experience into religion, the recognition of God as the reality—source, nature, and destiny—of other-mindness. But such a knowledge of God is ever and always a reality of personal experience. If God were not a personality, he could not become a living part of the real religious experience of a human personality.
Your last sentences here especially make sense to me. But (referring to my theory of mind argument above), I'm not willing to take this into the metaphysical realm. Psychologically speaking, we have to be careful to differentiate (as Jung generally did) between the perception, image, or symbol of a psychic phenomenon and the object-in-itself. Jung felt that nothing scientific could be said about the archetype-in-itself. We can only know archetype through its representations. My slight edit on this archetypalist perspective is as above.
The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Reality. Man's prespirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.
Lost me again, I'm afraid. The terms you prefer are too abstract and intangible for me to know how to interpret them. But it seems (I could be wrong, though) that you are making a number of metaphysical assumptions. One of my (few remaining?) Jungianisms is my inclination to avoid metaphysics and stick to psychological phenomenology. I'm probably even stricter than Jung (who arguable defied his own precept on numerous occasions) on this point.
The problem I have (and Jung had) with metaphysical arguments is that they cannot be compared and debated logically. The assumptions they are based on can be evaluated (on non-metaphysical terms), but metaphysical arguments tend to take these assumptions for granted and do not seek to prove them logically. I can't tell if you are asserting something like this or not . . . and I apologize for my inability to understand.
As you state Matt, institutional religion is now caught in the stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself; and being so much an integral part of the established order, it cannot reconstruct itself until society has been radically reconstructed.
Hmm, I guess that's a Catch-22, then. I don't think religion has to be the force or institution reconstructing society. Historically, religion has been a reflection of cultural organization rather than some kind of anchor or engine of culture. I've been reading The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. Wright makes a strong argument in the first half of his book for the structuring of a culture's religion primarily by its geopolitical concerns and conditions. God becomes what the society needs god to be in order to "mirror itself". What Wright is less inclined to see is the current of mysticism (or originally, shamanic heroism) that runs through many religions. He's primarily a rationalist and assumes all mysticism is arbitrary and illusory.
I believe religionists must function in society, in industry, and in politics as individuals, not as groups, parties, or institutions. A religious group which presumes to function as such, apart from religious activities, immediately becomes a political party, an economic organization, or a social institution. Religious collectivism must confine its efforts to the furtherance of religious causes.
I'm not sure that community can effectively or should be excised from religion. One potentially good thing about organized religion in my opinion is that it brings people (within the tribe, at least) together, usually to their mutual benefit. Also, it helps signify and value some major life events like birth, marriage, and death (also, the transition out of early/infantile adolescence, but I feel that it terribly bungles this). With these kinds of rites, it is important for us not to be alone. These are communal experiences and need to be recognized communally or tribally. Much of the "meaning" of such rites is social.
Sometimes religious community also enables a group of organized people to effect some kind of ethical or altruistic task that could never have been actualized by the resources of a mere individual. In general, I have no opposition to any "good works" done in the name of religion, so long as these altruistic acts come with no strings attached (e.g., evangelism, cultural or personal disrespect of those aided, etc.).
But I am also generally suspicious of monasticism. I prefer to see religion harnessed to some kind of ethical treatment of others or the world. I am not ready to grant that monasticism is a good in itself (or that "giving oneself to God" instead of community or tribe is an ethically valid act). And I say that as one with strong monastic and introverted inclinations. Temporary periods of reflective monasticism, though, might be good for far more people than partake of such "retreats". Regrettably, many religious "retreats" are really indoctrination events rather than sanctified periods for processing complex existential events and feelings. Therefore, they would serve primarily to promote insular/othering neotribalism, which I find to be at odds with modern humanistic ethics.
There has been a fairly contemporary trend (a few decades or so) of evangelical and fundamentalist politicization in the U.S. This trend is strongly contrary to the teachings of Jesus in the Gospels (which was basically, give up everything in the world, even your kin, and follow Jesus to create heaven within yourself). It is therefore more neotribalist than it is "Christian" (and Christ's teachings were very radically anti-neotribalist). There is certainly potential danger in this, because many of the fundamentalist, neotribalist, quasi-Christian ideas promoted are radically unethical and dangerous to modern humanistic political equality among all peoples. But I think it is important for this kind of neotribalist fundamentalism seeking political influence and power to be challenged as anti-Christian. And that challenge has to come from within the faith.
It is very worrying that so little of this has happened. Relatively modern, humanistically-inclined Christians tend to be under-critical of their fundamentalist cousins. But this seems like a very bad sign to me, because it means that Christian values and ideals are giving way to neotribalism. Neotribalism is the stronger force in the Christianities than morality is. My own inclination is to take this is an indication that Christianity as an ethical institution is either dead or past the point of rebound from the path to extinction. Christianity could become another Nazi Germany in a sense, with the moderates abdicating power to the radical fundamentalists unconsciously only to wake up after it is too late. Let's hope, therefore, that they do not achieve too much political power . . . or we could find ourselves in the next Dark Age.
My biggest gripe with Christianity in general is that it does not meet my personal (nor modern humanistic) standards for ethics. Yes, some good things are still believed and done, but not at the expense of much outdated amorality and the turning of blind eyes to that amorality so long as one's "brethren" are doing it. If Christianity could find a way to live up to the standards Jesus advocates in the Gospels, I would find much less fault with it. In this heart of the faith (the Gospels, that is), ethics are genuinely modern. For the most part. But the institution of Christianity has always been more a tool of neotribalism than of modern humanistic ethics.
Without a functional modern ethics, mysticism (whether Christian, Buddhist, or Jungian), in my opinion, becomes self-indulgent and self-deluding. In other words, I see the mystical process (such as individuation) as a fundamentally and ultimately ethical one.
Best,
Matt
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It has long been important in Christianity that there be a simple and straightforward way of understanding what that means...to be Christian one must believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us (from our sins).
Hi Chris,
It's good to hear your virtual voice!
As compulsive devil's advocate, I have some wrenches to throw at you. I think there are Christians who do not believe that "Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins". There is no verifiable extra-biblical evidence to support that this event occurred . . . even though other Jewish political and religious leaders in the first two centuries of the common era suffered crucifixions that were documented in Roman records. One might find this lack of evidence compelling and still not be willing to relinquish one's Christianity. Which is to say, there are formulations of Christianity that do not depend on the crucifixion as a historical fact. Other Christians might take it as historical fact, but feel that this did not occur by the intention of Jesus or that it did not signify a universal absolution of other people. It may be seen as signifying the willingness to die for the sake of God or the relationship with God when that relationship is prohibited by the worldly powers that be.
That is, the crucifixion of Jesus could easily be seen as a model of spiritual self-sacrifice rather than some kind of divine gift of grace to humanity. Gnostic Christianity is the major precedent here. For most of the Gnostics, Christ was not a worldly/historical figure, but a spiritual emanation or archetype on whom the Gnostic initiate ("pneumatic") was supposed to model his or her attitude toward God. Therefore, the act of Jesus had no direct influence on the Gnostic, but specifically had to be emulated (at least metaphorically). Thus, initiation (sometimes including a ritual baptism) was a symbolic death experience in which one identified with the suffering and sacrifice of the Christ figure.
Adding another dimension to this is the Gnostic inheritance from the Mystery religions and the precedent of dying and resurrecting gods like Dionysus. The initiate into the Mysteries was to go through a symbolic night-sea journey or death while identified with the god. It is impossible that these initiatory Mystery religion practices did not influence early and especially Gnostic Christianity. And in the Mystery religions there is no talk of the god suffering and dying in order to redeem the sinfulness of any human group.
Ultimately, the "Jesus died for your sins" interpolation comes well after any potential event in the life of Jesus. I would suggest that the prerequisite of believing this is not "Christian" per se, but denominational.
Jesus' death on the cross is the central, most important act of Christianity. As image and symbol Jesus on the crucifix means the following: our sins and our ignorance puts us in the way of suffering through the following means: we are crucified by our sins and the pain of that suffering causes us to choose evil rather than good. We are crucified in that our sins are our inner conflicts which polarize our psyches (ego/Shadow, ego/anima(us), etc.) and prevent us from prospering or otherwise living in the joy and bounty of the Earth that God made for us (using the cosmology of the Bible). This polarization is our suffering and it comes from within us as much as from without. In Jung's language, developing the ego-Self relationship is equivalent to developing one's relationship with God/Jesus.
I know you only mean to express your own perspective here, but I wonder why the death of Jesus by crucifixion is the most important act of Christianity for you. That is, why the crucifixion and not the demonstrations of tolerance and forgiveness? I guess in my own valuation of Christian narratives and ideas, it is the more modern acts of tolerance and empathy that I would personally call the "most important". And like the Gnostics, I find the (living) Christ-as-model image more compelling than the (crucified) Christ-as-symbol image.
Maybe what I find so off-putting about the crucified Christ symbol (as it is commonly interpreted) is that is something exalted and heroic that Jesus undertakes so that other people don't have to. I am absolutely opposed to this as a prescribed form of spirituality. I think we all must be crucified with Jesus in order to develop a mature faith and relationship with God. And not only crucified, but we all must lose hope and call out "My God, why have you forsaken me?", and we all must get no reply and finally submit without any knowledge of the possibility of "resurrection".
Another comment: the crucifixion of Jesus in the Gospel stories does not come because he was sinful or conflicted. It is the product of his refusal to abide by the normalcy of his society. More specifically, Jesus is crucified for the blasphemy or heresy of daring to revise the godhead and essentially to supersede the authority of the official religious institution of his tribe. He relocates the Kingdom of God within the individual and dares to speak on behalf of the will and nature of God . . . which had previously been determined by officials.
My point is that that which crucifies us is not always within but can be a product of our relationship with others or with the tribe. As a scapegoat, Jesus is "processed" by an ancient tribal ritual. He must be purged from the tribe in order for tribal cohesion to continue. Symbolically, the "resurrection" of Jesus (not really a part of the earliest Gospel, Mark) could be seen in terms of tribal dynamics as a tribal splintering. That is, one faction (usually with an ideological leader) splinters off from the original tribe to go out and found a new tribe. This is precisely what happens with Christianity. Although, a close historical reading (without a faith-based lens) suggests that Christianity's relationship with Judaism is much more dubious than the Bible and Church have made it. That is, it's unclear than there were ever many Jews among early Christian converts. Certainly not of the Pharisaic sect that went on to define much of modern Judaism.
Instead, it seems most early Christians were gentiles following the Pauline strain of Christianity. What Jews did participate in early proto-Christianity may not have even considered themselves Christians as we would now define that term. There were many different Jewish sects around the beginning of the common era, a number of which held to various Christianity-like beliefs more so than to strict Jewish law as it was defined after the advent of Christianity.
There is even evidence for significant antisemitism in early Christian (New Testament) writing. Paul basically tells his followers that they don't have to be Jewish. And it is very likely that many of the early converts to Christianity came from the Roman military, who would have had many reasons to hate Jews who they found themselves frequently engaged in battle with. From the Roman military perspective, the Jews were essentially terrorists and were probably viewed in much the same way that American soldiers stationed in countries in the Middle East view radical, militant Islamic groups.
The message of Paul to either these soldiers or to people enslaved by the Romans may have been especially appealing. And we know that even to this day, it is accepted by many Christians that "the Jews killed Jesus", because "they" begged Pilate to crucify him. Pilate washes his hands of the murder, and the blood falls upon "the Jews".
My point is that Jesus was less a reformer of Judaism than a splintered off heretic, a scapegoat by the standards of Pharisaic Judaism, but a shaman by the standards of his new (largely gentile) splinter tribe.
Jesus on the cross shows his hands outstretched to the left and the right. This is a simple image of embodying psychic conflict. On either side of Jesus were two others, one who chose to repent (to recognize his sin and ignorance) and one who did not. Our personal crucifixions also leave us with a choice, a choice we must not make until the answer is clear. Until the answer comes the choices still leave us polarized and subject to sin. To embrace the crucifixion within ourselves willingly is to follow in Christ's footsteps. This is the same as turning one's mind toward one's inner life, identifying the light and the darkness within and taking full responsibility for it. The thieves on the cross are always both aspects of ourselves. We cannot just identify with the thief who chose to repent for we also always will choose not to repent. Without self-hatred or blind self-interest one must hold on to this sometimes soul-seering tension until one sees the way forward. Only God can provide such a blessing. This is basically equivalent to Jung's thesis/antithesis/synthesis when felt as a deep personal problem that is not solved merely by the effort of the will or the ego but requires that will or ego to take account of psychic forces greater than itself.
I don't object to your vision, but I will point out that it biases the introverted perspective and has nothing to do with the treatment of others or the world. That may be implied, but it is not specified. I'm OK with undergoing a period of initial introversion to get one's bearings. But I don't see any evidence that one can just retreat into oneself, Buddha-like, and resolve all of one's inner tensions and conflicts. My hunch is that many of these conflicts need to be resolved (if only very imperfectly) through relationship with others and with the world. The introvert, I would argue, is not really tested (or not adequately tested) by these inner struggles. S/he manages to resolve them only by concocting complicated psycho-theological ideas that can "explain away" the tension. But throw said introvert into a relational conflict and s/he find she is not so certain or so holy as s/he believed while cloistered.
The Jesus of the Gospels stands out from the more introverted Buddhist examples because he engages with others, even with enemies, and with forces more powerful than he is (he engages with his own destruction). We (as readers) see the process Jesus goes through from the outside only, whereas in Buddhism, the inner process of the Buddha is revealed. My suggestion is that this is due to the taboo in Christianity against identifying with Jesus. In Buddhism, Buddha is clearly a model to emulate. But in Catholic and Protestant forms of Christianity, Jesus is divine, not really someone we can be like. He gives, and we receive. His mind is as mysterious as the mind of God. Even the idea of his inner struggle with events and beliefs in his life is gradually erased after the Gospel of Mark. Each later rendition makes Jesus more godlike and less accessible to human identification.
This is of course not the case in Gnostic gospels. And perhaps this is one of the major disagreements that led to the Catholic Church wiping out all the Gnostics and all of the Gnostic literature that could be discovered (the Nag Hammadi find being a rather fantastic fluke and oversight of the persecutions).
None of this is meant to invalidate your beliefs and constructions. But it adds more complexity to the assumptions you seem to base those constructions on. That complexity may be inconvenient, but it is potentially valuable. It all amounts to envisioning the problem of modernizing Christianity as immensely difficult. The task is huge, and there are many angles from which to approach it. Although I don't have a significant stake in Christianity, one of the reasons I am disinclined to take one up is that the project includes so many massive obstacles. You can start blowing up mountains to get them out of the way of "progress" . . . but can you do this while still preserving a form of Christianity that people will recognize as Christian? Can you do this without alienating most Christians in the world today? Can you do this without creating a splinter tribe that is as heretical and unlike conventional Christianity as Christianity is from Judaism?
We know that Judaism and Christianity still maintain major conflicts, and Jews are not lining up to advocate for Christ. If I had to guess, I would expect that any form of "progressive modern Christianity" would be perceived by the majority of today's Christians as a heresy and abomination. They would dress it in purple robes, a crown of thorns, and mockingly write "King of the Christians" on the very cross they used to crucify this new Christianity. That is essentially what the Catholics did to the Gnostics . . . but the Gnostics didn't really "resurrect". Gnosticism never regained enough power and influence to become a major religion. It remained an archaic esotericism.
Best,
Matt
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It's good to hear your virtual voice!
You as well!
As compulsive devil's advocate, I have some wrenches to throw at you. I think there are Christians who do not believe that "Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins". There is no verifiable extra-biblical evidence to support that this event occurred . . . even though other Jewish political and religious leaders in the first two centuries of the common era suffered crucifixions that were documented in Roman records. One might find this lack of evidence compelling and still not be willing to relinquish one's Christianity. Which is to say, there are formulations of Christianity that do not depend on the crucifixion as a historical fact. Other Christians might take it as historical fact, but feel that this did not occur by the intention of Jesus or that it did not signify a universal absolution of other people. It may be seen as signifying the willingness to die for the sake of God or the relationship with God when that relationship is prohibited by the worldly powers that be.
Unless I am very much mistaken it would be a vast minority who would call themselves a Christian and not subscribe to my simple statement above. Yet, at the same time, I also do not believe that Jesus' crucifixion is a demonstrable historical fact. If you go back in this thread to my quote from the movie The Last Temptation of Christ you see that I am willing to be satisfied with Paul's answer to Jesus...
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.
All I care about is the story of Christ's resurrection. In this sense my epistemology is "Campbellian" and I take my myth as a psychological truth no less important than a scientific truth yet separate in kind. If the story works psychologically then it has truth. Perhaps, ironically, the story of the Buddha and its many similarities to the story of Christ demonstrates the objective value of my belief in the story of Christ. I choose to accept the Bible as the Word of God in this context only, the psychological one and that I can claim nothing more than that I choose to believe it is true (but without choosing to believe that everything in the Bible is true morally or historically). So I am a Christian in the common understanding and yet I do not have a common understanding, perhaps, of what I mean by believing as a Christian does.
A cynic might say that I have merely found a way to cleverly fit into a mold that is too small ("standard" Christian beliefs) to contain my true understanding. But I say that I have found spiritual healing through God and through Christ and I am endevouring to express that through the language of the Christ-myth. My hope is to dialogue with Christians in order to improve my spiritual understanding and theirs. I feel that I have had the freedom to choose or not choose to believe as a Christian and that I have chosen to believe. I do not in any way abandon any other considerations. Given that I was an atheist that makes my own inner dialogue on things very interesting! But then again it was my Catholic theology professor who was the one who directed me toward Nikos Kazantzakis in the first place!
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That is, the crucifixion of Jesus could easily be seen as a model of spiritual self-sacrifice rather than some kind of divine gift of grace to humanity. Gnostic Christianity is the major precedent here. For most of the Gnostics, Christ was not a worldly/historical figure, but a spiritual emanation or archetype on whom the Gnostic initiate ("pneumatic") was supposed to model his or her attitude toward God. Therefore, the act of Jesus had no direct influence on the Gnostic, but specifically had to be emulated (at least metaphorically). Thus, initiation (sometimes including a ritual baptism) was a symbolic death experience in which one identified with the suffering and sacrifice of the Christ figure.
I think that the idea of Jesus as a model of spiritual self-sacrifice is valid and included in the view I propose. And it is a unnecessary additional view to say that Jesus' act was also a divine gift of grace to humanity. The Gnostic view is much more in line with the Buddhist view that enlightenment is something which one can achieve independently through "Right Effort". But I think that it is important to recognize that Jesus as ego and God as Self are two different personalities in the psyche (even as I would say that they are "two sides of the same coin"). I think that the relationship of ego to Self is the relationship of a Christian to God and this relationship is a necessary and "inescapable" "projection" within the sphere of the Christian myth. (When I say inescapable I mean it (somehow) in a way not to invalidate other spiritual perspectives)
But to call belief in God a projection is to assume that there is more validity to disbelief than belief. I believe the two are complimentary opposites of equal truth-value. When I pray my inner atheist is right beside me...I can not ask more of God without asking more of myself. Perhaps this truly scandalous, yet Christian truism that "God helps those who help themselves" seems to threaten Christians with the notion that through their own power and effort they can achieve spiritual advancement since it de-emphasizes the need for God. But really I think the phrase shows that it is a matter of both ego-effort and Self-grace.
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Adding another dimension to this is the Gnostic inheritance from the Mystery religions and the precedent of dying and resurrecting gods like Dionysus. The initiate into the Mysteries was to go through a symbolic night-sea journey or death while identified with the god. It is impossible that these initiatory Mystery religion practices did not influence early and especially Gnostic Christianity. And in the Mystery religions there is no talk of the god suffering and dying in order to redeem the sinfulness of any human group.
Ultimately, the "Jesus died for your sins" interpolation comes well after any potential event in the life of Jesus. I would suggest that the prerequisite of believing this is not "Christian" per se, but denominational.
I have some familiarity with the Mystery religions of the time from a college professor who taught a class centered on the subject. I agree that early churches may have partially patterned themselves not only on the ritual but also the design of the place where Mystery religious rites were held. It is common in the reactionary Christian fundamentalist attitude to fear such outside influences but as with all fear it is based on ignorance outside the scope of the topic it impinges on.
Again I wouldn't argue that other valid spiritual perspectives which do not include a personal relationship with a personal God are not valid. But I don't think that it would be proper to call it Christian. Perhaps we could divide the world's religions and spiritual practices into the following categories:
1. Engagement with powerful self
2. Engagement with powerful impersonal other
3. Engagement with powerful personal Other
I think Christianity rests mainly in category 3. The Gnostics seem to be more of a 2. The more modern, scientific view would be a 1. at least as far as the modern view recognizes the ego and the unconscious. In its most extreme forms the modern, scientific view bypasses any sense of self.
So I think to move Christianity forward with its current adherents not feeling like the rug got pulled out from under them, you have to commit to a belief in a personal God (a God with a personality that a human can at least partially relate to) because that sense of relationship is vital to understanding Jesus Christ. Otherwise, why would his death and resurrection by a personal act for us? And it is vital that the crucifixion was personal. Jesus says in John 14:6 (New International Version):
I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
I think the conversation between humanity and God has to be improved. I think many of the simple minded taboos such as always being submissive to God and not criticizing Him have to be reconsidered. No one has a deep, healthy personal relationship without feeling free to express the full range of emotions...that's just not right. There was a TV series that I started watching via DVD that just wrapped up after 3-1/2 seasons called Saving Grace which seems to me to take some solid steps in the right direction when it comes to how to relate to God.
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Of course, my perspective on Christianity will always be that of an outsider . . . and a skeptical/non-believing outsider at that. So I'm definitely not in a position to say what should change and what shouldn't (in any kind of "progressive", modern Christianity). But as an outsider, I am entitled to an opinion about the way Christianity views and treats outsiders. Therefore, my perspective is always more ethical than theological where Christianity is concerned. I mean to hold the tribe and the belief system ethically accountable for what has been done in the name of Christ. And I accept no apologetics as valid or satisfactory justification.
But unlike some well-know contemporary atheists (e.g., Richard Dawkins), I am less concerned with the nature of belief and ritual. Whatever a progressive Christianity could do to promote the ethical treatment of others effectively would be cause for me to be more approving. Still, on another level, the outsider/insider division doesn't hold up perfectly because most Christians today are not really mono-tribal. Most are moderns (most of all) with various other tribal affiliations in addition to Christianity. As a modern (rather than a neotribalist), I think I am also entitled to a critical perspective.
Christianity (like Jungianism) is inherently a neotribalist religion. As you quote: "No one comes to the Father except through me." And of course there is the aspect of "chosenness", being the special people of the One God. I don't know how well that can be integrated with modernity's great diversity. It is impossible for Christians to believe that their Christianness "saves" them where people of other faiths will be consigned to hell, and to still see and treat others as absolute equals. Contrast this ideology with the more universalist (and psychological) Buddhism, where no "chosen people" or neotribalism is specified.
In any case, in starting a topic like this one, my hope is to hold one's head closer to the fire. To say, "How would a modern Christian/Christianity react to this argument or that historical fact or possibility?" In my experience, faith is improved and enriched through such challenges. Not that it reactively becomes more "blind", but that it becomes more complex, more uncertain. And I feel that in that uncertainty, the relationship with God and/or Self is deepened. The modern Christian can't go on having archaic answers to modern questions.
I certainly don't want to see anyone converted (I wouldn't know what to convert them to). So my devil's advocacy has no hidden agenda. I don't see an essential conflict between a religious worldview and a scientific one. But I do see conflicts between tribalisms (which exist both in religionists and scientists).
I've seen a few contemporary books on Christianity that find certain aspects of Gnosticism viable as a modern alternative. Even some Christ mythers (like Robert Price) seem to advocate for a neo-Gnosticism. Essentially, this would be a psychologized and symbolic Christianity. What would be relinquished would be the desperate claim to the historicity of early Christian personalities and acts . . . but the meaning and value of these personalities and acts would be preserved. But it's tricky, because Christian movements (other than Gnosticism) have been putting all their chips on historicity since the 2nd century. Faith is dependent upon historicity . . . and therefore critical and rational reviews of Christian history are generally not welcome.
Another problem is that Catholicism essentially wiped out Gnostic Christianity by brute force. How would modern Christians reckon with these crimes when contemplating a neo-Gnosticism? Still, I've seen some people managing to do this.
My own particular caution regarding a neo-Gnosticism is that I don't like the typical anti-physicality of Gnosticism. The body and the material are considered inferior to the mind-spirit. Buddhism, in its own way, is similar . . . and both Buddhism and Gnosticism have strong monastic (and anti-worldly) tendencies. A neo-Gnosticism wouldn't be functional in the modern world if it saw the interactions of community and culture as "illusory".
As much as I have opposed it, I think Jungian psychologism offers a more modern and functional religiosity (mostly because of its openness to religious and cultural diversity . . . all is equivalent in the underlying archetype). But its religiosity runs into conflict with its parallel claim to science and the capacity of a science to say something valid about what is, about the objective world. From what I've seen, Jungianism continues to struggle mightily trying to decide if it is a religion or a science. Mostly, it operates as a religion . . . but it won't relinquish its claim to science, and therefore it often operates in bad faith, unable to functionally reconcile the two.
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Let's simplify this process a bit. How does one determine if one is making spiritual/psychological progress? I would suggest that it is an increase in energy and wisdom. Thus any belief system that produces these effects is working. The problem with any religion is the believers. You could say that the problem with Christianity is the Christians: only in that when the collective unconscious is influencing social behavior, there is gravitational pull to function at the lowest common denominator. Thus as a group, we almost always operate from a more primitive psychological stance. Perhaps the real question concerning Christianity, and religion in general, is: what is the energetic aspect of the practice? 1. Faith: the intuitive search for deeper wisdom, connection and meaning. 2. Service: interpersonal interaction is energetic. 3 Method: silencing the mind. Christ spoke of faith and service constantly, but his teachings on Method are limited...thus leaving a massive gap in spiritual discipline (unless you want to count service twice, and declare that service IS method.....for which one can make a case). In our disappointment with collective religion let's not ignore the brilliance of the First Teacher.
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I wanted to post a comment to Sealchan and Matt re: How Can Christianity Progress? Since I’m not able to post yet as a newby, I’ll put it here and Matt can move it if he wants to.
As with Matt and Sealchan, I grew up inside an American Christian mythology. It was unavoidable in small town America of the 1960s and 70s. So even after leaving the church for many years, those symbols and mythos were still large in my psyche. After trying to replace one system of symbols and mythos for another, I realized (as Joseph Campbell surely did) that I could not shed my Christian myth because it was more than skin deep. Although I was able to integrate certain symbols and myths from other religious cultures, those were always seen through my Christian lenses. I had also spent much of my time trying to find the key to religious systems so as to find the perennial “truth.” After much frustration, I stopped looking deep into the myth for the answer and started looking through and beyond my own. (Almost like reversing perspective from the narrow to the wider.) It was now I was able not to be restricted by the symbols of my Christian upbringing, but to use them to see a larger picture that included many other traditions while giving validity to my own fated way of seeing. My point being I guess that the “what” I was trying to see was not the medium (Christianity, or Buddhism, or Taoism) I was using to envision it, but rather the “what” itself, and this is true of all other systems of looking for the “truth” or meaning I think. And I think this may corroborate what Archetype stated in the last post under this topic. I think any religion progresses or transforms by openness to new ways of seeing, not just that which is new and revolutionary and “other” than what has been known, but one that often includes old symbols seen in new ways. I think this is happening now in Western Christianity in an openness to new ways of inclusion, and new ways of experiencing its religious spirituality in connection not only to itself but to other religious traditions. Although there is always a tension of opposites between those who cling to the “old ways,” an overall progress happens when there is a shift which occurs when the stretch marks have settled.
My 2 cents for what it’s worth.
D.
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I greatly appreciate you sharing your reflections here, David. It sounds like you have been living a rich and ultimately rewarding spiritual journey. Philosophy, theology, and chaplaincy! My mother (who died in 2009) walked some of the same roads. She was a very sophisticated Catholic, a psychology professor who specialized in trauma (in her later years), a feminist in the 70s and 80s, a Jungian after that (who came to Catholicism through Jungianism, actually). She studied in the theological seminary and wrote (although unpublished) a great deal about scripture and faith.
Even though my own path (and I would say, my own spiritual journey) led me into atheism, my mother and I had very similar feelings about "God" and the spiritual life. We could discuss these things deeply and without conflict. Needless to say, I was much more critical of the Church and less willing to forgive it for its "sins" . . . so for me, reform of Christianity is something I approach through a great deal of skepticism and a certain refusal to "transcend the past" rather than steep/atone in it.
I very much respect your interests in progressive Christianity. I hope you are right that it is evolving and opening up. I'm not close enough to it to really know or experience that. Most of the Christianity one sees in the U.S. these days is the "loud", evangelical, often fundamentalist kind. One of the great challenges for progressive Christians (especially in the U.S.) is to address Christianity as a social institution and find ways to work constructively with the many who use Christianity as a monotribal fundamentalist defense against the modern and its abundant diversity and rapid change.
But it is so hard to live the individual spiritual life, let alone get a grip on or contribute to social and intellectual progress in the institutions and tribes of a religion. One thing I am not sure what one could do with is the spiritual hunger that remains a common element of Christian religious experience. That is, the Christian desire to be comforted, cared for, healed, accepted, elated, emboldened, "saved", and whatnot by the relationship with God remains a key aspect of Christian religious experience. There is a great deal of concern about what God can do for the individual, but what the Christian individual can do for God remains (from my angle) murky. That is especially the case where the "faith alone" orientation prevails.
In my experience, the facilitation of God (or, in the psychological language I would prefer to use: the Self) requires more than faith or belief in unsubstantiated things. Faith is so often self-serving (i.e., ego-soothing). Not that all ego-soothing is "bad" . . . but there is some grandiosity in calling such soothing "faith" or claiming it serves God. In general, I am much more philosophically sympathetic to the "Good Works" tradition of Christianity.
One of the tricky things with practice of Good Works, though, is figuring out how to focus those works in the modern world. Do we only help and tolerate our "kin" or tribe members, those who believe the same things we do? And where reform is sought, is it the other who must be reformed, or can oneself be reformed? To my somewhat jaded mind, the Good Works in Christianity need to be practiced on Christians and on Christian institutions and beliefs . . . and not on "sinners", unbelievers, and various others.
I see far too little of that in Christianity (but again, this could just be a factor of my social detachment from it). Another progressive Christian problem I see is the conception of God and the relationship to God. This remains, at least in popular Christianities, archaic and probably not very functional in the modern world. As a result, Christian experience often leans toward fundamentalism . . . as was always the case, even from its origins. That is, the presence of the Christian God must coincide with some kind of repeal of modernism . . . but the Christian God has a hard time adapting to or manifesting in the modern world. I.e., outside of the monotribe, the Christian god is an "absent god" (or deus absconditus).
For some time now, I have felt that the child/parent model of worshipfulness still conventional in Christianity is obsolete. It abdicates too much responsibility both for the care and conceptualization of God and for one's actions and ethical responsibilities. Where we are only children at the bosom of the Lord, we see very little and can affect very little. We are merely being fed and served, always receiving, never giving.
Also, we now live in the age of complexity, and more so than ever before the idea of design and the designer seems inadequate and inaccurate. Instead we are becoming aware of processes of self-organization not guided by "intelligence" or intention, per se. Another way of looking at this is that Nature is being freed of mind . . . that is, the kind of mind that human's have, the conscious, intentioning mind. The sense of ego that had permeated both Nature and God throughout the Christian millennia, the idea of God as rational, plan-ful, strategic, personally involved and guiding is impossible to correlate with a contemporary understanding of complexity and emergence in nature.
Another part of the obsolescence is the paternalism of the Christian God, "His" male-mindedness. And I mean to note this obsolescence not only in ideas of nature and cosmos, but in relation to the sense of patriarchal laws and dogmas, those dictated truths and codes, absolute, "sacred", and free of any context or relativism. Appeals to religious (priestly or even divine) authority in that vein no longer have a healthy place in modern society. Such authority simply doesn't fit the environment of the modern. It is meant for monotribal societies, whereas ours is polytribal, complex and diverse.
The growing language of complexity enables what was once chalked up to the divine to be more present in our lives than it has been in many years . . . and yet, where we can approach, touch, and better study such "presence", we find it doesn't fit well with our older (outmoded) concepts of the divine. What I mean is that we now have a fantastic opportunity to learn more about God . . . but my hunch is that one of those things we are bound to learn (or resist learning) is that this is not the God we previously imagined it to be. It is more Other, less egoic, more complex, less "powerful" or power-oreinted. that is, it is no so much "doing" as becoming . . . and we, as part of it, are also becoming, evolving, dynamically reorganizing in the quest for homeostasis or homeorhesis.
The new, complex, natural (and many Jungians I've encountered would like to say "feminine") presence we are now rediscovering (since we "lost the Garden" or stopped living in monotribal societies) is attractive and inviting. So that is not the problem. The problem is the flip-side of this coin. Namely, that the increase in awareness of this natural, complex presence necessitates a depotentiation of the egoic, rational, intentional God. My feeling is that in order to really embrace the new sense of divine presence in complexity, we have to divest the old godhead of its egoism. That is, we have to stop worshipping the human ego in projection as a God . . . and equally to come to terms with the many years of what amounts to self-worship.
But can Christianity (or any of the Western patriarchal monotheisms) survive the de-egofication of the godhead? Can a sacrifice that large really be made? I'm not sure we are very close to achieving that. Yet, until we find a way to make this sacrifice, our spiritual interests in natural complexity as "Gaia" or "Anima Mundi" are little more than New Age luxuries, little vacations to exotic spiritual lands from which we quickly return, all with the same, cheap souvenirs and trinkets.
A symptom of this New Agey spiritual tourism is the tendency (which I see a lot in contemporary Jungian literature) to imagine the modern world as a "small world". That is, the inclination to mistake modern globalism for monotribalism. And that allows us to misunderstand the real complexity, diversity, and vastness of our interconnected ecosystems. Our faith does not make the sun move across the sky each day. Yet our greed and carelessness can pose serious threats to our environment and each other.
The monotribal religious impulse (which I believe is biologically predisposed to some degree) is to imagine that the maintenance of one's own and one's tribe's identity is all that's needed to make life sacred. It is a "good in itself" . . . and that means that we needn't be concerned with others or with the wider world, only with our identity. And this belief/predisposition is probably functional where monotribalism can exist. The tribe and the world are one in a monotribal mindset.
But in the modern environment, the world we are part of and connected to extends far beyond the monotribe and cannot be treated monotribally. We are not The Whole, but merely a connected part. So we do not merely have to maintain our sense of selfhood, we have to construct or adapt a kind of selfhood that will compliment a larger whole rather than determine it and be able to relate to the selfhoods of others functionally. What that means is that we have to become more aware of our selfhood and how it affects what is other. This requires a degree of seeing through or seeing as arbitrary the phenomenon of selfhood or identity, which we do not seem to be predisposed to do. Our inclination is to treat our acquired selfhood as if it was sacred and divinely bestowed.
All these kinds of abstract, philosophical problems are inherent in the quest for a progressive Christianity. Jung, in his own way, tried to address some of these things and propose solutions. Long before he invented his particular language for doing this, alchemy addressed the same project. That project is the treatment of the wound in the Christian soul or identity/attitude. The wound (to simplify greatly) seems to be a matter of usurping Nature and projecting rational, patriarchal consciousness onto it, colonizing it in the name of the (typically masculine) human mind. So what we worshiped in nature was what we imagined to be mind-full. What we could not depict easily as mind-full, we devalued. The alchemical project was one of valuation or re-valuation of the Nature that Christianity had misunderstood, neglected, usurped, or destroyed.
And that Christian behavior injured the "soul", which could be seen as a bridge between mind and nature in the human being (as in the classic Spirit-Soul-Body triad).
I think Jung's personal obsession and sense of mission had to do with treating this Christianized and wounded soul. As a result, he was in continual, urgent dialog with Christianity. Most Jungians today are inclined to see Jung's interest in Christianity as a kind of general advocacy for Christian faith and ideas, but I'm not sure that is really accurate. I think Jung's approach to Christianity was, structurally speaking, "shamanic". He sought to treat it as if it was a disease or a disease-inflicted patient. He was embroiled in argument with it, and he sought to change it, not merely find a way to accept or believe in it. Christianity was his tribe, and in that tribe he was an individuant. As a Christian individuant (the Red Book is the primary chronicle of the individuation event that severed his identity from the Christian tribe), he was largely concerned with the ethical struggle of how to relate to and "treat" the tribe or tribal soul he had broken off from.
It was a grand project . . . and not at all a project for one modern man alone to take on.
But in another sense, I think it is the essential project of any progressive, modern Christian or Christianized individual. The Christian religion and the Christian God now need to be treated . . . and that treatment is the new, adaptive form of faith. There is no place for old-time, monotribal righteousness in this new faith.
Christianity needs individuants to reorganize it. I mean Christians who individuate from their tribe and live with a conscious but problematized relationship to that tribe (rather than in some state of "participation mystique"). But of course, Christianity doesn't suffer "heretics" or employ shamans, making any reform a matter of fissure and conflict.
The Christ myth continues to be psychologically relevant. My gripes with Christianity have mostly do to with how that myth has been institutionally interpreted and employed throughout the history of the Church.
Best,
Matt
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Matt, much of what you point out was part of my experience as well. The part of me I see as christian (mythologically and psychologically speaking) is a part and not the whole..a lens and not the soul. I read a little book once called "your God is too small" and that gave me a new perspective. The God of debate between two very similarly entrenched attitudes (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al, and the typical God bother-ers) is an argument about the merits of the stone wheel in a modern age as far as I'm concerned. (Though I hold Hitch in high regard).
Jung also helped me move beyond this mono-cultural idea. Was it Empedocles who first said, "God is an intelligible sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere?" And even though I like that, the name God causes our minds to shrink at once. And then we have the problem of Christology and 2000 years of church dogma )(plus it's philospohy annd myths that reach back a thousand years of more earlier than that...via Osiris, Mithras, Dionysus.) And it's a big problem. I have only recently come to grips with the Christ myth; my understanding of which would place me far outside the group "Christian" in these United States.
Thankfully for me, I'm a bit of a mystic and my search for the "divine" within which keeps me on an even keel and fairly happy. (And I prefer the word Divine to God because it has fewer boundaries.) And as you say, the inequality of the reciprocal relationship between the individual and the divine seems way out of whack in mainstream Christianity today. I have no answers but my own and it suffices for me. Perhaps if all religious people found their own answers without being fed what to believe, we would see a different face on all religions. I don't know. But I am sure that if I'd been born Sikh, I would have the same problems and the same journey to find myself and the divine, and that struggle for me has made all the difference.
David
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I still don't know how to do "quotes" from other posts. Sorry, Matt -- I didn't quite "get it" when you explained. So I am using quotation marks. Sorry.
I'm enjoying and learning from reading what people have written in this topic.
Matt wrote in his first post on this topic: "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."
The value of church to me is, I find my closest and loving friends in a spiritual "body of believers" in some way or other. When I went to a 12-step group some 30 years back (Al-Anon for friends and families of alcholics) I found my best friends there. When I attended a progressive Christian church (a United Church of Christ -- UCC --, not all of which are "progressive," and not the same as so-called [name of city] Church of Christ, which is dangerously dogmatic and hostile toward anything not the same sort of "Christianity" as their narrow focus) I found my best friend there.
I stopped going to my local UCC because I did not like the minister, having to do with her personality, not her sermons which were excellent. A lot of other members left for the same reasons. Anyway, she resigned and a new minister starts in 2 weeks, at which time I will go with the same friend as above to meet the new minister. I will try to be open minded about the Bible verses that are repeated over and over ad nauseam seasonally every year. I'm told there is some Christian umbrella organization that selects these verses, which is why almost all Protestant religions use the same ones. Does anyone know more about that? Anyway, I am hoping to get back to active membership, since the atmosphere there is beautiful.
I also have experienced the power of prayer to change circumstances and attitudes, my own and others'. I never pray for God to intervene in world affairs. I don't try to tell God how to be God, but I ask for guidance and enlightenment in situations. I recognize that the power of prayer could in fact be many other things, such as: the placebo effect in medical matters or faith healing; telepathy; or some other unknown.
Finally, I must add that prayers for healing and thanks for healing, protection, or rescue from adversity are a form of cruel hubris. For if one person is saved from, say, a plane crash where scores die, are we to be grateful that this life was "miraculously" saved? Does this, then, mean that the scores, hundreds, thousands and millions who die horrible deaths are somehow un-Christian? And even more tepid is the belief that people with plenty of money are "blessed" by God. Does this mean that the poor in money are somehow un-Christian?
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I still don't know how to do "quotes" from other posts. Sorry, Matt -- I didn't quite "get it" when you explained. So I am using quotation marks. Sorry.
Not a problem. You just need to locate the Quote icon in the two rows of icons above the posting window (and directly above that line of smiley faces/emoticons).
It looks like this: (http://uselessscience.com/forum/Themes/maclike_20g/images/bbc/quote.gif)
If you click on this icon you will get the following code in your post:
[quote][/quote]
You just paste the quote in between the two quote brackets, i.e., in between the inner ] and [.
Alternatively, you can select a block of text in your post and then click the quote icon. This will bracket the selection and make it appear as a quote once posted.
-Matt
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You just paste the quote in between the two quote brackets, i.e., in between the inner ] and [.
Great! Thanks, Matt!
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The God of debate between two very similarly entrenched attitudes (Hitchens, Dawkins, et al, and the typical God bother-ers) is an argument about the merits of the stone wheel in a modern age as far as I'm concerned.
I agree, David. It frustrates me that the "New Atheists" can be seen as the epitome of progressive atheism today. Their approach polarizes with that of creationists and fundamentalists without a constructive dialog or possibility of progress.
I've found it difficult to be a self-described atheist in Jungian communities (which are predominantly faith-based). I don't think I am anything like a New Atheist or Bright, but I have somewhat problematically clung to the label "atheist". I suppose I mean to be an "atheist of conscience". Like many Jungians, I am a "deeply spiritual individual", but I have seen spiritualism used (and been guilty of using it) in ways that I find unethical. It made me start to feel like spiritualistic language and attitudes eventually become obstacles to the more genuine objective of spirituality, which I feel is a devoted relationship to the Other and to others. I've been using the rather overloaded term "valuation" to condense what the spiritual life is about for me.
I am an atheist, but I am an atheist because in my own journey to facilitate, understand, and valuate God or the Divine or the Self, I felt it necessary to sacrifice belief and many of the common spiritual attitudes. But I didn't choose to sacrifice these things because they were "irrational" or because I was rationally enlightened (a la the "Brights"). I choose this because I felt it was what the facilitation of the Self and the care of my relationship with it required to remain genuine.
Also unlike the Brights, I do not see my choice on this as something to prescribe to others. It is not a universal "Truth". For me, spiritual attitudes and beliefs were obstacles. They were also precious things that came into conflict with ethical consciousness. It is really in the spiritual or mystical tradition that I decided to relinquish these things. They were, for me, the earthly indulgences and desires that could delude or distract me.
But this is really not a viable choice for anyone who would remain even the slightest bit "Christian", and I certainly have no solution to propose for the question this topic poses. I can only reflect on what holds Christianity back. But I don't know what it would need to or could possibly be able to sacrifice in the name of progress. My guess is that the sacrifice would be too extensive for one who endeavored to make it to still call her/himself "Christian".
On the other hand, I still call myself an atheist . . . and a Jungian . . . and these tribal identifications are extremely problematic in both instances (mostly due to my significant differences from my tribe members in both cases). When I was still a practicing poet and became involved with a radical, anti-establishment poetry group, I choose to identify (problematically) as a poet in order to make a kind of statement or demonstration and to exhibit solidarity with other disenfranchised poets, even as I had many radically different ideas and attitudes.
So, perhaps if I had any real affiliation with Christianity, I would strive to call myself a Christian, but a Christian of conscience who meant to keep my otherness within the Church as a kind of oddball activism. Jung, I think, was such a Christian.
Perhaps if all religious people found their own answers without being fed what to believe, we would see a different face on all religions. I don't know.
I think this flexible spiritual independence is part of Jungian religiousness, but as superficially progressive as this approach can seem, I can't help but feel that Jungians are babes in the woods of the modern religious problem (and as an aside, the last time this kind of New Age religious diversification and eclecticism developed, i.e., in the Roman Empire at the turn of the common era, we ended up with a totalitarian backlash that obliterated that diversity and saddled us with almost two millennia of Christian monotribalism).
There are many institutions of thought and belief that Jungians are failing to see through in their various quests for religion and spirituality. Perhaps most prevalent of them all is the institution of modern egoism. Jungianism pays a lot of lip service to the critique of modern egoism, but I don't think it manages to either understand or come close to transcending it (although one of the problems I would note is the inability to genuinely transcend it, and the inflation that results from believing such transcendence possible).
The cultural construct and prevailing belief about modern egoism or individualism is that each of us is, or is capable of becoming, "whole" unto her or himself. The modern (and Jungian) quest for such "wholeness" is an introverted and personal quest. I feel this is wrongheaded. There is no such thing as a personal wholeness, a perfect kind of inner balance and contentment. Humans are inherently social animals, and the imprint of the human Divine is not a singular personality or small-s self, but the tribe. The closest thing to wholeness we can imagine to be tangible is the "mystical participation" of a monotribe in a shared construction of identity.
Religiosity and spirituality move naturally toward monotribalism and monotribalistic identity constructions, which are often confabulated (today) as individual "wholeness". But what is "whole" about them is the participation in a monotribal structure. "Whole" is not something we can achieve or become, but something we feel (or can begin to imagine) through connectedness. I think religiosity is going to inevitably struggle with a kind of sociality instinct that self-organizes into a monotribal pattern. It's a struggle, because the modern world is not monotribal, but polytribal. True (premodern) monotribes, we might say, cannot compete well in this environment. But psychologically or internally, monotribalism is the most significant gravitational force.
Perhaps this works much like gravitation among massive bodies in outer space. That is, gravitation may be comprehendible where you have two bodies exerting force on one another directly related to their mass, but when you have billions (or unimaginably many) gravitational forces acting upon one another in incredibly complex ways, there is no way we can reduce this to an equation. We are left with the approximations and probabilities of theoretical physics instead of absolute laws. But the self-organizations of these gravitational patterns, however complex collectively, do not mean that, for each body, gravitational attraction is not a relatively "linear" dynamic. [This is a poor analogy, since gravity is still a relative unknown in physics, but I'm sure you get my gist].
What even "polytheistic" and New Agey Jungianism has failed to grasp is that there is no religiosity without the gravity of monotribalism. Even as individuals might maintain "polytheistic" and highly flexible notions of "the spiritual", they are still drawn together in their belief systems and into a monotribalistic pattern (that governs the construction and imagination of the Divine). There is a subtle or unconscious monotribalism in Jungianism today, which resists the environmental pressures of the modern. It resists, but does not understand or seek to functionally adapt to the modern.
This Jungian unconsciousness of the instinctual predisposition for monotribalism works as a detriment to Jungian spirituality/spiritualities. These spiritualities persist in the dogma that "wholeness" can be attained through "individuation" and on a personal level, that "wholeness" or "enlightenment" is a personal mental state unrelated to others and aloof from sociality (of course, this transcendence never actually occurs, because it's impossible . . . but that kind of thing has never actually curbed religious belief . . . which is not really concerned with some kind of actual transcendence so much as with the valuing of transcendence as a shared ideal).
I'm not saying there is nothing to be found in inner work, only that this work, in the conventional Jungian paradigms, is a totem signifying an underlying movement toward or longing for monotribalism. In other words, the Jungian "worship" of the unconscious does not tell Jungians very much about the organization of that unconscious or about the Self. What is really sought is an engine for identity construction and maintenance, a mystical participation with other similarly-believing and -valuing Jungians.
As a result, little to no progress is made in Jungian thought in the psychological investigation of the autonomous psyche ("unconscious"). The "object" itself is not studied or pursued. What's more, because it is guarded by a tribal identity-constructing totem, movements toward any objective investigation of the autonomous psyche are often compulsively defended against (as these threaten to violate the totemic sanctity of Jungian identity). Therefore, the objectification of the psyche is resisted in favor of a growing subjectification. It is as if Jungianism would have to look itself clearly in the mirror to then be able to see beyond that reflection into the objective psyche.
This is a deviation from Jung's initial project. Although Jung was concerned about the possibility of obtaining an "Archimedean point" from which to view and study the psyche, he was also deeply interested in the psyche as object. His conceptions of archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the psychoid all amount to an effort to study the psyche as objectively as possible. His continuous assertions that he was an empiricist scientifically concerned with phenomena of the "real psyche" and his resistance to interpretive theory also support this. Jung strove (albeit imperfectly) to be a kind of psychic naturalist.
All of Jung's attempts to do this point to the biological and some kind of objective level of mind/body unity, and the biological underpinning of the psyche is anathema for almost all Jungians today.
Classical Jungians are generally "anti-science" and not interested in biology and the brain. Archetypal Jungians reject objectivism in psychology fundamentally in favor of subjectification and "storying". And developmental Jungians, although they are interested in aspects of science and biology, see and would like to prove that psyche is an almost entirely developmental and environmental phenomenon, which would have no more scientific objectivity or inherent "naturalness" than a text (after all, it would be a story that develops in cultural contexts after birth, one that is told by "events" rather than by, and essentially excluding, genes). Texts are understood in historical contexts rather than evolutionary ones.
This is all quite a simplification, but it generalizes and outlines the basic predicament. Jungian spirituality suffers for this, as well, because it is without (or without direct access to an) object/Other. Without an Other, there is no genuine mysticism. Instead of communion with the Divine/object/Other/Self, Jungianism is now concerned with its tribal totems and dogmas. It cannot make "mystical" progress, because mysticism (like the alchemical opus or individuation) requires the dissolution of identity constructions in order to access a "source" or autonomous principle of psychic organization, the Self. So long as Jungianism resists the dissolution and reorganization of its identity constructions, it cannot pursue a genuine mysticism or "individuate".
Jungian "individuation" itself remains a tribal totem, something to collectively believe in and raise up as a value-infused ideal . . . the raising up of which helps identify one not as an "individuant", but as an indoctrinated Jungian.
Well, as usual, I've drifted pretty far afield, so I'll stop here.
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It's difficult to be described as anything "other" in relation to any closed system. Those systems tend to be unimaginative outside of their own agreed upon tenets and beliefs (even those that are based in fact.) Thus, my own Christianity (wonky and tenuous as it might seem) does not fit into neat closed systems, thus I an summarily dismissed. (I avoid this by trying not to be too forthcoming so I can at least have the conversation.) As too the atheist/Jungian in the closed system of Jungian belief systems, finds himself dismissed. What convinces me I'm not outside Christianity, or Jungian-ism for that matter, is that my experience tells me I am in fact both.
As to Hitch/Dawkins/et al, their vehement disagreement with the traditional Western God (and by this I mean the Judeo/Islamic/Christian God) is based in the idea that these religions do evil. And if we focus on the crux of it, this evil is in the form of fundamentalism/extremism of the kind seen in Jihad today and Crusade of the early 1st millennium. In my mind, this is like throwing out the loaf because there is a speck of mold on the corner of one piece of bread. IN other words, it's simplistic and lacking in seeing the big picture. Maybe it's a consequence of my logic classes in college, but I tend to try hard to judge based on circumstances and not from the particular to the universal. These religions are bigger than the parts who malign them.
As for the progress of religion in general and specifically of Christianity, I have to say it has progressed and continues to progress. (As well as regress, for the concept that progress is an ever continuing process in the positive vein, is also a simplistic concept based on the assumption that progress is always good.) I don't mean to assert that we are on the cusp of a great revival and progressions (for the better) for that view is the same kind that sees these days as the "final days." It's simplistic, naive, hubristic and sees this very day as the culmination of all time. Taking a broader and more long sited view of history, we see progress, regress, dark and light, good and bad, and these seem to weave in and out somewhat like a historical neurosis.
The simple question is "can Christianity (and religion in general) progress?" The answer is yes, and this can be shown by a scientific reading of history. The second question is, "Is Christianity in the process of progressing right now. The unsatisfactory answer is, we'll know in 50 or 500 years. The most important question I think is, "are you progressing as a Christian/Buddhist/Atheist, (i.e. as a "human being"). This makes me think of individuation which could be seen as a progression. (And this assumes that progress is indeed a valid concept for such things.)
As with Matt, I feel I've begun to convolute, so I'll end my thoughts here for now.
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For the modern atheist/christian debate, here is an interesting, if somewhat onesided (and uniformed) discussion of the debate with Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet and Harris.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890 (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-869630813464694890)
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These religions are bigger than the parts who malign them.
capellanus, this is very useful.
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I like to describe myself as a Christian who likes to stay in relationship with his inner atheist. I was originally an atheist but once I started doing some dreamwork and had some visions and some eductional and other psychological experiences involving various religions and comparative mythology (aka Joseph Campbell) I found that there is a great value in faith and in the Christian tradition.
I've also discovered that not feeling like I belong to a tribe or community of belief is par for the course. As my brand of Christianity indicates it is precisely this dichotomy of belief systems which I nurture in order to feel I am engaged. In fact, my own understanding of Jesus is largely based on this, that a Christian must, in some way, embrace the opposites in his or her world and with good character suffer the conflict until they can find a way to transcendence. Jesus is the model of this being caught between many attitudes and communities of belief even to the point that the Romans and Jews are juxtaposed in the Gospel narratives.
One way that Christianity is progressing is probably through the web where information and ideas can be shared without the same direct pressure of meeting in person together in a building in your neighborhood. I assume this because I see that the internet is transforming every other social sphere...why not Christianity?
Also, there is a growing literature of Biblical translation by the likes of Willis Barnstone and Robert Alter which takes on the Bible as literature first and faith, if at all, second. This allows us to finally relate to the Bible in a more modern context. For me Christianity doesn't make sense unless you believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins...but that doesn't mean that you get away with literally just saying "I believe that...". I think that the modern Christian must explain what that means in modern psychological language. I can do that for my own part, but I don't think that 99% of self-proclaimed Christians can.
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sealchan, you wrote:
One way that Christianity is progressing is probably through the web where information and ideas can be shared without the same direct pressure of meeting in person together in a building in your neighborhood. I assume this because I see that the internet is transforming every other social sphere...why not Christianity?
In our city, there is a restaurant that is geared and for the most part patronized by houseless people. It's based on socially conscious, loving Christian (Catholic) family values. There are also at least two other churches which have essentially transformed themselves into community centers. These are also very loving, and I can feel the Christianity and values there. I spend a lot of time in the coffeehouse/restaurant at one of these.
You also wrote
I think that the modern Christian must explain what that means in modern psychological language. I can do that for my own part, but I don't think that 99% of self-proclaimed Christians can.
I hope you don't mind explaining this in modern psychological language, as the notion of "I take Jesus for my personal saviour" has always seemed fatuous and empty to me.
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David,
First, allow me to loosely define what I mean when I use the word "progressive". I mean to root this usage in the "progressivism" of modern politics. We might look to the magazine "The Progressive" or to a radio show like Democracy Now! or to a progressive political thinker like Noam Chomsky. What is "progressive" in these philosophies and movements is the treatment of the modern polytribal world as populated by equal individuals whose humanness is seen to have many common bonds while the particular cultural and tribal identity distinctions each has are seen as much less significant. This philosophy is rooted in secular, Enlightenment humanism. It does not seek to conform others to one's own standards, but seeks to understand and respect others and relate to them rather than convert them to something more familiar.
I also see progressivism as change that is adaptive, survivable, and sustainable . . . that seeks to develop a kind of equilibrium or "homeorhesis" with one's environment (and ecosystem) and to overcome the problems of maladaptation that challenge that sustainability. It treats adaptation as complex and subtle and positions it as a personal project rather than seeking only to control or reconstruct one's environment so as to make one's lack of dynamic adaptiveness less of an issue. Many attempts to control and convert one's environment end up having destructive effects on the environments and organisms we are integrated with ecologically or culturally.
Progressive adaptations don't look to make changes that are only good for the individual or for his or her tribe, but that will work for all individuals, tribes, and species involved in the ecosystem (even if that ecosystem is the whole planet). So, consciousness of natural dynamic complexity is essential.
As to Hitch/Dawkins/et al, their vehement disagreement with the traditional Western God (and by this I mean the Judeo/Islamic/Christian God) is based in the idea that these religions do evil. And if we focus on the crux of it, this evil is in the form of fundamentalism/extremism of the kind seen in Jihad today and Crusade of the early 1st millennium. In my mind, this is like throwing out the loaf because there is a speck of mold on the corner of one piece of bread. IN other words, it's simplistic and lacking in seeing the big picture.
. . . These religions are bigger than the parts who malign them.
I agree with you in general, but I also think that the concern that these religions promote or perpetuate "evil" through their ideologies and practices is the strongest part of the New Atheist argument. It is easy and unbalanced for them to focus on religious terrorists or extremist evangelicals who try to kill doctors performing abortions, etc.
Still, in my opinion, the question needs to be seriously asked (rather than "tribalistically" asked or asked in an attempt to rally one's constituents as the New Atheists tend to do): Are the specific doctrines, dogmas, and teachings of any religion not only incongruous but potentially dangerous to modern "others" in today's societies? And there are quite a few doctrines and values expressed in the sacred literature of the Western monotheisms that easily lend themselves to the rejection, dehumanization, and potential abuse of those declared "others".
But the texts are always considered equally "sacred" today, so the hope that these passages will be edited out is pretty slim. In fact, one has to ask of this unwillingness to revise sacred texts, if it might actually be an indication of a "dead" religion that can only be expressed through anti-modern fundamentalisms and can no longer grow or adapt.
I am pretty critical of early Christianity and its often violent tribal squabbles and politicking, but one thing that may actually be a positive to this formative period was that Christian texts were being written, re-written, revised, and rejected again and again as various Christian tribes jockeyed for the monopoly on the Christian God and His Word.
Afterward this revising took place in the realm of theology, but numerous movements (most notably, the Protestant Reformation) fought to change and diversify the nature of Christianity. When I contemplate the possible progress of Christianity, I can't imagine it occurring without some kind of massive rupture like this. The idea that Christian institutions operate like science, where there is always a steady progress in the acquisition and refinement of knowledge due to the principles of the scientific method, seems extremely optimistic and un-edivdenced to me.
Science has a built in ethic of revision, adaptation, and progress, but religions don't. They are more rooted in tribalism, the preservation of tradition, and the perpetuation of dogma. Where Christianity "progresses" today, it is usually a matter of finding more effective and more modern ways to evangelize and recruit new Christians. It's doctrines and philosophy have not changed . . . or, where they have seemed to, all that has happened is that the doctrines have had to compromise with the common values and habits of modern individuals (some of which might actually include more contemporary and sophisticated ethics).
Also, when we look at the philosophical origins of Christianity (by a literary rather than a historical reading), we see a foundational revision of Judaism that supposedly caused a splintering of Christianity from the Hebrew tribes. That splintering was so radical that it led to the execution and scapegoating of the Christian founder.
My guess, simply based on a general knowledge of how human psychology and sociality work, is that any significant philosophical or spiritual progress for Christianity today will have to come through rupture. That is just the nature of wide scale change (and of individuation).
The simple question is "can Christianity (and religion in general) progress?" The answer is yes, and this can be shown by a scientific reading of history.
It is not obvious to me how a scientific reading of history is capable of determining the progress of Christianity. Jung obviously felt that Christianity was in decline (especial the Swiss Reform Protestantism he grew up with), that its sense of faith had grown (as in his father) hollow, and that the immediacy of its symbolic language had dried up. From his childhood vision of God shitting on the church all through his life, Jung felt (and tried to study and treat) the gulf of separation between God and the conventional Christian understanding of God. Jung felt God was dissatisfied with the churches and theologians.
Historically, Christianity began in a very ugly way, with a great deal of infighting, politicking, and demonizing. I am not including the Christ story, as there is no adequate corroborating evidence for it. I just mean the machinations of the early Christian churches, the eventual yoking of Christianity to Constantine's martial quest for ultimate power, and the subsequent Christian emperors' rule that sought to oppress and violently dispose of all "paganism" and many of the great social, intellectual and technological achievements of the ancient, pre-Christian world.
It took many centuries for Christian institutions to move toward progressive reform, but that reform can't be seen as especially significant until the Enlightenment (coming some time after a reintroduction of ancient Greek and Roman thought via Islamic cultures) produced secular critiques and contextualizations for Christianity and managed to "out-adapt" older versions of Christianity and depotentiate them. History is, of course, much more complex than this vast simplification, but what I mean to say is that Christianity did not reform itself for ethical or progressive reasons. It was out-competed and forced to adapt somewhat. It has never adapted more than it has been forced to in order to preserve the bulk of its constituency. It has never made big leaps out of its own ethical self-reflection. It only changes when it is backed into a corner, and then only enough to slip out a bit.
I think this legacy of grudging slipperiness is what is behind much American Christian Evangelicalism. This Evangelicalism is a regressive or monotribalistic movement that recoils from the modern environment. Some of it resembles some of the pre-Christian Jewish movements that longed for militant messianic destruction of the Roman Empire and civilization and a return to "pure", premodern monotribalism. Like those 1st century CE and earlier sects, these modern Evangelicalisms are anchored by their outrageous and vengeful eschatologies. This is not an inward looking ideology like Buddhism, etc. This kind of Christianity looks at the "rest of the world" and thinks, "If only these things were gone, my life would be sacred and content."
Of course, many good things have been done in the name of Christianity and have been faithfully attributed to Christian ethics, ideals, and the "love of Christ". Historically and scientifically (i.e., biologically) speaking, this faith-based notion has no support. Yes, there are some central ethics described in the Gospels (and some shakier and more dated ethical instructions in other Christian scriptures like Acts and the various epistles), but there were variations of these ethics (often in much more sophisticated, philosophical renderings) long before Christianity emerged.
It is a common habit of religiosity to ascribe ethical consciousness and behavior to religions teachings and a belief in the tribal gods, totems, and laws. It is also a part of the great modern myth (as Freud also famously expounded) that human civilization is what transforms animals into "Man". But this is largely falsified by modern sciences like evolutionary biology that have increasingly demonstrated a capacity both for sociality/cooperation and empathy, self-sacrifice, generosity, and (mostly reciprocal) altruism in genetic predispositions (as well as in game theory reconstructions of strategic and survivable social behavior).
I'm not saying all ethics are instinctual or that society and social education do not have significant corrective and conditioning effects on ethical behavior. I'm saying that the vast majority of religious and societal ethics, their more superficial particulars, are very arbitrary. They don't really tell us how to be empathetic or sympathetic or cooperative or altruistic. They mediate when we should exhibit these behaviors and when we shouldn't . . . they determine who such inter-tribal niceties are for and who they do not apply to.
One of the most ethical "communities" today is the secular humanists or "progressives" whose philosophical roots lie in Enlightenment ideals, who value science and rationalism and are generally not religious. Their philosophical roots help orient them to modern polytribalism and reject the predisposition for monotribalism, or rather, reinterpret the monotribalist instinct so that it abstractly applies to and includes all other tribes. This is typically accomplished more effectively than the more romantic, less-introspective Christian "universal love", because it includes a conscious ethic of trying to understand and sympathize with others. Christian love, on the other hand, has traditionally been less interested in tolerance and respect for the others its seeks to help or influence, operating more along the lines of a conversion ideology. After all, if one is not Christianized, s/he cannot go to heaven.
More sophisticated modern Christians often reject these notions of evangelism and conversion, but I would argue that any concept of tolerance and respect for other cultures these Christians have does not come from their Christian-ness, but from their exposure to modern, secular humanist philosophies. A (potentially painful) thorough investigation of the history of Christianity and the history of ethics demonstrates that there was nothing whatsoever original or innovative about Christian ethics. They only defined a particular "in group" or tribe, differentiated from other tribes. This lack of ethical innovation is by no means unique to Christianity. I merely feel that the progress of Christianity today depends on the dissolution of a lot of the Christian, in-group, or "Chosen" hubris that continues to protect and defend Christian identity constructions and totems.
The reason I felt I needed to eventually throw off my remaining reliances on Christian ideas and images was that the only thing left to Christianity after thorough analysis was its tribal identity differentiation, its sense of "Christian-ness", not some sense of deeper truth. It has always been an identity-making institution, not a "truth-seeking" one. That many truth-seekers have been Christians and sought truths within Christian contexts and languages is not a testament to Christianity but to these individuals (and of course, most of the Christian centuries did not allow extra-Christian quests for truth).
Equally, for any progressive Christians today, what they might have to contribute is not a matter of what Christianity can give to them, but what they can give to Christianity. That is, reform of Christianity will flow only from the individual's relationship with God. The Christian dogmas have run their course. Christianity is no longer (if it ever really was) an engine of salvation. It is a drifting wreck in need of the care and dedicated craftsmanship of skilled shipwrights. Even God (in the Christian imagination) is a wounded being in need of the devoted nursing of brave and innovative caretakers. Christianity today is not some Ark of the Covenant that Christians can carry around to demonstrate their specialness and feel protected by. It is a burden and a quest to find something that has been lost or fix something that has been broken and neglected.
Any self-righteousness in this quest is, in my opinion, an indication of ethical failure. I take the exact same approach to Jungianism. I don't felt "chosen" or saved by my Jungianness. It is an obligation and responsibility I feel to try to constructively contribute to it and "treat" it to the best of my meager ability. And this is best done, it has seemed to me, through constructive criticism and reformist suggestions rather than cheerleading for Jungian pride (as is most common in the contemporary promotion of Jungianism many Jungians are engaged in). That pride is self-serving. It does not help the tribe or treat its wounds.
The critical efforts of fringe Jungians like me are not likely to have much impact on the tribe and its centralized membership. When I am not ignored, the only effect I can usually have is to annoy other Jungians. It is a frustrating and unrewarding enterprise, but it is what I feel is ethically sound. It is a quest of faith. It is done in the name of what I feel is right, not what is likely to work or win me friends and allies and the acclaim of my tribe. It is something like this that I would like to see and would respect in the Christian tribe, what I would consider progressive. But that can only begin where Christian individuals throw off the attitude that Christianity is a force that saves and protects and buoys them rather than an obligation to the Christian tribal God. That throwing off would constitute an extremely radical shift in the Christian mindset. It would be a heresy. It would be dangerous and burdensome. It would threaten a kind of inflation, because its self-sacrifice would have "Christ-like" tones, and working through that threat would be often "excruciating" and very time-consuming. Yet that is what a progressive "faith" demands, I think.
-Matt
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I hope you don't mind explaining this in modern psychological language, as the notion of "I take Jesus for my personal saviour" has always seemed fatuous and empty to me.
I would be happy to explain...in my personal view that Jesus died for our sins is true as follows...God became man (Jesus) in order to indicate His expectations and the nature of the Universe He created. Jesus being "perfect" then simply follows from that fact because God is typically understood as beyond corruption, all-knowing, etc. Now, just so you know, I don't necessarily prescribe to this as being an historical fact, but my sense of faith doesn't require that. I only claim that the Gospel tell a story that contains truth (mythological/psychological) and I do not concern myself in that context with the historical facts.
Jesus died on the cross willingly, meaning consciously. He suffered. He chose not to exercise powers to manipulate or punish or even help all of those whom he came into contact with. If He had then Jesus would just be another avatar who did not really participate in the human experience of creation. As significant as His actions are those actions he refrained from performing. His suffering was caused by a refusal to sin, to act in ignorance, to act out of a simplistic judgement or the first story that came to mind or to react to the emotional distress of anyother and to become infected by the ignorance/sin inherent in that emotional distress. Only if people came to Him with faith in God did He help them.
Although we can never be as good (sin-less) as Jesus which is to say that we are not one with God (which might be okay to say in Eastern religions), we are to know that if you follow in Jesus' footsteps as follows, we are doing what we are meant to do...namely, just as Jesus was caught in many different instances between two opposing perspectives with seemingly conflicting truths, He did not give in to the temptation to side with either side. He held His own middle ground expressing the truth that you should not quickly judge on the whole against any one side or person. But in not committing to one side versus the other, he suffered the anger, resentment, confusion of those who engaged with him. People who do this are a bridge between opposites even when they themselves do not know a solution. It is hard not to take sides when everyone around you, family, friends, etc...are complaining to you to make more sense, to take a clearer path, to take their side. But if you act within your own limits and do not judge (make assumptions without understanding that or whom you may fear or not understand) then you are avoiding sin and effectively performing God's will. That will may or may not bring new understanding to yourself or others, but it is the best and only true hope of doing so in any case.
If you acheive a reconcillation through your suffering patience then you become a healer of sorts. You exemply Jesus' teachings. You are a peacemaker. You calm the fears and concerns of some if not all those who engaged with you. You bring the world one step closer to "heaven". You also teach yourself patience, forgiveness, compassion, mercy and you show people a path beyond quick judgement and shall I say "tribalism".
Your faith in the process in the abstract (where Jesus is the ideal model of the principle) is your Christian faith at work in the world. God became Jesus so that He could clearly show us this is the way to salvation through how you act in the world. Have faith in this view and you will see the world's drama dissolve in the light of God's "will" (or you could say, God's world and how He made it to work).
So to understand Jesus you should find a set of opposing views that is close and personal and relevant to your life, whether it is within or without your circle of friends or family or communities with which you engage. You embody the truths in both views and do not let go because you are being crucified by the conflict that each side will come to blame you for. That blame will come to you precisely because as you listen to both sides and evidence understanding and empathy to each of them, your failure to full go in with one side or the other will make you a natural target for anger and resentment. For as you show up the greatest darkness in another, they will take the greatest pains to turn that against you. It shows up the quick-to-judge attitude in the accuser who does not want to see that blindness within themselves. It breaks their projection and they have to fight to sustain it. You get to be the punching bag, so to speak.
But chances are this is as much an inner conflict as it is an outer conflict in any case. While you are indirectly allowing God to use you to work understanding into others you can focus on working on yourself and making yourself clear to truth and hesitant to act impulsively and out of fear and ignorance.
Now this explanation isn't strictly couched in psychological theory, but I think it makes claims that a modern ear can digest and opens the way for specific application and validation. But two theories I am familiar with come to mind with the above:
1. Jung's idea of psychological conflict arising from conflicting beliefs that through one means or another can be resolved in a third perspective (like Hegel's thesis, antithesis, sythesis)
2. "Crucial Conversations" a popular business psychology book and training program uses the idea of the Sucker's Choice, the engaging choice created by two conflicting beliefs that makes it seem (because, perhaps, there is a great emotional/libidic charge to a good conflict) that one must choose a or b rather than engage in a process that holds out for a better choice c.
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i always re-read what I write and have something to add...
Faith is important and Jesus' extended tale of suffering as well is so important because psychologically we should expect to be in this state ourselves a great deal in our lives. That this is true is akin to truly believing in what Socrates said that wisdom consists of knowing that you know nothing. It is really hard to persist in a state of not knowing, of being open to truth, of not wanting to make a judgement when the stories we tell ourselves and each other seem to cry out for belief and complete acceptance. But another voice that believes that the implications of that story go a bit too far...that voice needs focus. And that is what Christianity should be all about.
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Thank you very much for your kind and thoughtful response to my and this topic's post.
You wrote:
His suffering was caused by a refusal to sin, to act in ignorance, to act out of a simplistic judgement or the first story that came to mind or to react to the emotional distress of any other and to become infected by the ignorance/sin inherent in that emotional distress. Only if people came to Him with faith in God did He help them.
Actually, have you read that the reason Jesus was arrested was because he healed on the Sabbath? Here is Mark 3:1-6 on that:
3 Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. 2 Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. 3 Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.”
4 Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent.
5 He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. 6 Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.
Your idea of finding "Plan C" is very helpful to me, with regard to the political situation in the USA, also with local politics.
Thank you very much for these good ideas. They will, hopefully, help me when I go back to church, if I decide to stay after hearing and meeting the new minister next Sunday.
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One insidious thing in our Western culture, for many of us, is that it is so Christian. For good or ill, Christianity saturates our thinking and knowing. When we speak thoughtlessly or otherwise in the idiom of Christianity we grasp a lever-arm that does work on the minds of our fellow acculturated Western Christians.
Matt, I would never try to want you to change anything about your critical attitudes towards Christianity. Christians should own up to the great evils of their (my) religion. These are, in fact, the very truths that should be focused on when progressing Christianity.
For me a small evil was done to me when I was young by Christians. I was intimidated into professing my faith in Jesus Christ without understanding what it was I was doing. I looked up and wordlessly smiled at all the adults who had formed a ring around me. That managed to get me off the hook.
Even now I feel the injustice of that moment. However, my atheism cannot asuage my suffering. Rather I would prove myself more sincere in my faith than any man or woman who stood in that room might even know. I would have them feel ten-fold the fear and humiliation I felt at what I now know, or believe, to be "true" through faith and reason. But that is for God to deliver, not me. However, I feel upheld in the knowledge of my righteous suffering and that I might one day return to dismantle such simplistic and evil practices that require adults to pass on their faith through intimidation rather than demonstration or testimony or inspired revelation.
I've just finished reading Richard Dawkin's "The God Delusion". I found that book to be irritating to my faith and also profoundly focusing. All Christians must acknowledge the great evil that has been done in the name of their faith. They must realize that the Bible is not the unerring word of God because man wrote it and in committee compiled it.
Part of the personal burden I am doing out of my own inspiration is to compile a list of books for what I call the Expanded Bible. These are other works that I feel are instructive of Christian faith that could be considered as part of an expanded reading list for Christians. One book, the historian Jonathan Spense's "God's Chinese Son", seems to be a solid candidate for such a list. Just as a large number of the books of the Bible, this book is history and faith. Albeit, this book would amuse the heck out of any vociferous atheist. It also happens to have been a significant event (both comic and tragic) in Chinese history. And it revolves around one man's belief that he is the younger brother of Jesus.
Aside from such deconstructive books I would also include stories from modern motion pictures such as "Dances With Wolves" and the Matrix Trilogy. These stories show how the tension of opposites is resolved through personal sacrifice (in Dances With Wolves this is embodied in the first scenes and in the Matrix trilogy by the final sacrifice of Neo). They indicate the basic Jungian process of a limited ego consciousness maintaining its own integrity but holding out for a third possibility acting only once it presents itself. For me the mythos of Star Wars is also instructive and also presents the conflict between good and evil and the power of willing sacrifice to resolve that conflict. The recent Noah movie is excellent as well.