shortessays

"It is not up to us to believe in God, but only to not grant our love to false gods."

Prof. Donald L. Carveth
York University, Glendon College
Department of Sociology
2275 Bayview Avenue
Toronto, Canada
M4N3M6

Telephone: (416) 736-2100 ext. 88378 Fax: (416) 487-6850

"Jesus, unlike most responsible American citizens, appears to do no work, and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdainful of kinsfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pariahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Though he was no revolutionary in the modern sense of the term, he has something of the lifestyle of one. He sounds like a cross between a hippie and a guerilla fighter. He respects the Sabbath not because it means going to church but because it represents a temporary escape from the burden of labor. The Sabbath is about resting, not religion. One of the best reasons for being a Christian, as for being a socialist, is that you don't like having to work, and reject the fearful idolatry of it so rife in countries like the United States. Truly civilized societies do not hold predawn power breakfasts" (pp. 10-11).

"The only authentic image of this violently loving God is a tortured and executed political criminal, who dies in an act of solidarity with what the Bible calls the anawim, meaning the destitute and dispossessed. ... The anawim, in Pauline phrase, are the shit of the earth--the scum and refuse of society who constitute the cornerstone of the new form of human life known as the kingdom of God. Jesus himself is consistently presented as their representative. His death and descent into hell is a voyage into madness, terror, absurdity, and self-dispossession, since only a revolution that cuts that deep can answer to our dismal condition. What is at stake here is not a prudently reformist project of pouring new wine into old bottles, but an avant-gardist epiphany of the absolutely new--of a regime so revolutionary as to surpass all image and utterance, a reign of justice and fellowship which for the Gospel writers is even now striking into this bankrupt, dépassé, washed-up world. No middle ground is permitted here: the choice between justice and the powers of this world is stark and absolute, a matter of fundamental conflict and antithesis. What is at issue is a slashing sword, not peace, consensus, and negotiation. Jesus does not seem to be any sort of liberal, which is no doubt one grudge Ditchkins holds against him. He would not make a good committee man. Neither would he go down well on Wall Street, just as he did not go down well among the money changers of the Jerusalem temple" (pp. 23-24).

Atheism/Agnosticism

In The Future of An Illusion, Freud defines religion as illusion, a belief not known to be either true or false but accepted as true because one wishes it so. Here he contrasts illusion with delusion, a scientifically false belief that is held despite this fact. At this point Freud is agnostic. But only three years later, in Civilization, he drops the distinction and calls religion delusion. In so claiming religion as delusion, Freud embraces atheism, affirming as true a belief (that God does not exist) that cannot be empirically validated or invalidated, accepting this because he wishes it to be so (i.e., by his own definition an illusion). Yet we must distinguish between theoretical and practical atheism. From a theoretical point of view the only rational position on the God question is agnosticism, since we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. Nevertheless. many theoretical agnostics are practical atheists, for although they cannot prove that God does not exist they work on the assumption that he does not until such time as they encounter reasons and evidence to suggest otherwise.

"Hegel's treatment of Christianity in his last years has often been misunderstood. Among religions, he considers it supreme insofar as it seems to him to come closest to the truth comprehended ultimately in his philosophy. ... In its relation to philosophy, however, religion is as a child compared to a man: it is an anticipation in less developed form of what finds mature expression in philosophy. ... When Hegel avails himself of Christian categories, he never implies acceptance of the Christian faith in the supernatural, in miracles, or in the incarnation and resurrection; he merely finds the Christian myths more suggestive and appropriate anticipations of his philosophy than the myths of other religions. ... That he ... became a precedent for theologians like Tillich and Bultmann is undeniable. But if one should consider the procedure of all three reprehensible, there are still important differences in Hegel's favor. What he did very occasionally, en passent, ... they have made their full-time occupation. ... Above all, far from treating the latest philosophy as a remarkable anticipation of Christianity, provided only that the latter were radically reinterpreted on the basis of this philosophy, Hegel presented the very opposite picture: in his system Christianity was treated as an anticipation in mythological form--on the level of vague notions and feelings--of truths articulated in philosophy." Kaufmann, W. (1965). Hegel: A Reinterpretation. New York: Doubleday, section 65, pp. 271-275.

"It is ... humiliating to discover how large a number of people living today, who cannot but see that this religion is untenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions. One would like to mix among the ranks of the believers in order to meet these philosophers, who think they can rescue the God of religion by replacing him by an impersonal, shadowy and abstract principle, and to address them with the warning words: 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain!'" --Freud, S. (1930). Civilization and Its Discontents.

"No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realized how much right he has to all this talk about 'criminals,' as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skills; till he's squeezed out the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat."

Freud tells the story of the godless insurance salesman visited on his deathbed by a rabbi sent by the man’s pious relatives in the hope of a last-minute conversion. After a lengthy dialogue, the salesman dies unredeemed, but the rabbi leaves well-insured.

For me, the moral of this story is that when opposing belief systems are brought into dialogue, the possibility of conversion is enhanced, but it is hard to predict in which direction it may occur.

Cultural anthropologists have long been alert to the possibility that instead of interpreting a target culture within the conceptual framework of social science, researchers may occasionally “go native” and abandon science for the world-view of the culture they set out to study.

If secular concepts, such as existentialist or psychoanalytic theories, are used to interpret the New Testament, the resulting understanding may well result in secularized versions of Christianity, reducing the latter to existential and/or psychoanalytic categories. On the other hand, it may result in the conversion of the existentialist or the psychoanalyst to Christianity. Opening up a border makes both emigration and immigration possible. Just as making an electrical contact permits power to flow in either direction, so opening a connection between conceptual polarities or antitheses allows new meanings to emerge, but it is not always easy to predict what shape the resulting synthesis may take.

Since Freud and Klein we recognize that the mind works on at least two distinct levels (unconscious/conscious, paranoid-schizoid position/depressive position) and thinking occurs in two distinct modes (primary and secondary process). Hence, on the level of the conscious, secondary process, rational thinking that characterizes the depressive position, I may “demythologize” the Gospel, viewing it as “a tissue of metaphors from beginning to end” (Frye in Cayley, 1999) and interpreting such metaphors in existential and psychoanalytic terms. But at the same time, or at other times, I may “regress” psychologically and emotionally (as viewed from the standpoint of D) and, to all intents and purposes, surrender such rationalism in favor of a paranoid-schizoid (PS), magical, primary process understanding.

Whereas the early Kleinians viewed psychological development as a linear movement (PS ---> D), transcending the splitting and part-object functioning of PS in favour of the ambivalence and whole-object functioning of D, more recently we recognize that this formula itself reflects splitting: PS all-bad, D all-good. Hence, today, development and health are conceived dialectically (PS <---> D), for just as there is good in PS (passion, intensity, resolute commitment), so there is bad in D (the paralysis that may come from seeing all sides of every question and attempting to “hold a candle for both St. George and the dragon”). Paralleling the mad passions is a mad, dispassionate rationality: both can result in dehumanization.

Hence, today, we conceive mental health as the capacity to oscillate between PS and D in a way that precludes both types of madness and that maximizes creative living. Such creativity will sometimes enhance adaptation. At other times and in other circumstances it may refuse it for, as Bertrand Russell reminded us, there are some societies in which the only place a decent person can be is in jail. Despite his pacifist sensibility, Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined the plot to assassinate Hitler.

So when existentialist and psychoanalytic categories are employed to work out a secular understanding of the Gospel, the resulting psychology, philosophy and therapy makes marvelous sense on the level of the depressive position. Here God is clearly the internal good object of Kleinian theory and the loving and beloved superego of Freud’s structural theory, and the Devil is the internal bad object and the sadistic, punitive and persecutory superego. The sense of God as an all-seeing, all-knowing presence is understood in these terms: no one gets away with anything in the long run. The superego knows and will exact its pound of flesh unless the ego faces and bears its guilt, repents and makes reparation and, in this way, escapes the provenance of the persecutory superego. Only in this way can it come to accept and enjoy, like a prodigal son, the gracious, forgiving love of the father (the loving and beloved superego, originally the good breast, later extended to the good father imago). Hell is the persecutory state, while Heaven is the blessed condition of reconciliation with one’s conscience and the “peace that passeth understanding” that this can, at least momentarily, produce.

On the level of D and of theory I am a theoretical agnostic (I don't know whether a supernatural God exists) and a practical atheist (while I do not know that such a God does not exist, until I encounter reasons and evidence to the contrary I work on the assumption, on the level of D, that he does not). As a practical atheist. I no longer feel the need to employ the term "God" for what I take to be ultimate truth, goodness and love. I am an admirer of Jesus who was a radical critic of the religion of his time and ours. What mattered to Jesus was love. It doesn't matter whether one is a theist, or an atheist, or a non-theist, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Buddhist, or a believer in the spiritual powers of crystals. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Mt. 7:20). What matters is how one lives one's life: lovingly, or not. On the level of D I am a secular humanist who affirms a universal moral law grounded in conscience and I feel no need to back this up with "God-talk."

Admittedly, PS is another matter altogether. As no one is so mature that they live by D alone, frequent regression to the magical thinking of PS is only to be expected. At least on the level of D, I am a secular humanist who seeks to follow his conscience while admiring Jesus as one of its supreme symbolic embodiments. On this level I suspect that the more one can integrate conscience and superego and live in a way that earns self-respect, the less need one will experience for "religion" and the more aware one may become of its dark side without, hopefully, forgetting its positive elements.

Recently I was on a TV panel as a part of a series of programs on religion in the week preceding Holy Week, 2007. An Imam, a Jesuit priest, an Orthodox rabbi, a psychologist, a spiritual director and I were asked the question "Why does God need us, and why do we need God?" None of the others seemed to have much difficulty coping with questions formulated in such literalistic terms. When I pointed out that I recently entered a synagogue and heard a Reform rabbi pronounce that he did not believe in an omnipotent God, the Orthodox rabbi on the panel quipped that he didn't think God thought that guy was a rabbi. Well, like that Reform rabbi, I do not believe in an omnipotent God. The Imam argued that God is omnipotent but at the same time must work within the laws of the universe he created--which means God is not omnipotent. Either he is or he isn't. If he is, where was he when Paul Bernardo was murdering Leslie Mahafee and Christine French? Where was he during Auschwitz? We are asked to believe that God has some larger plan we cannot conceive. We are told it is arrogant, even sinful, for us to press such questions. According to Kierkegaard, if we even attempt to defend Christianity in the face of such critical questions we are Judas number two, for such questions merely pose as reason when they are really just insubordination. Consider me insubordinate. We are told that you can't have the ups without the downs, but I'm not interested in the idea that the smoke rising over Auschwitz is in any way justified by God's larger plan; I'm not interested in any "ups" requiring such "downs." Any God whose larger plan entails such suffering is a God who is a lousy planner. His inability to plan more compassionately is evidence of his utter indifference, or his incompetence, or (as I prefer to think) his lack of omnipotence. Unless God was and is helpless--i.e., not omnipotent--and suffers and dies along with us, he can only be a cosmic narcissist and sadist. Certain neo-Iiberal theologians think the surrender of God's omnipotence is what Christianity has implicitly been demanding for over 2000 years in the doctrine of the Incarnation: God became the man Jesus who suffered and died helplessly on a Cross. No, he could not come down. As God surrendered His omnipotence, so we are called upon to surrender ours. That's an appealing interpretation, but doesn't it pretty much collapse theology into psychology? Do we really need this as therapy for our narcissism when Freud, the atheist, offers us the distinction between narcissism and object love, and Melanie Klein that between the omnipotence and magical thinking of the paranoid-schizoid position and the reality of separateness and dependence that we face in the depressive position?

"It is not for nothing that in saying grace before meals, Christians use the words,