Searching for God # 136

 Lest any readers start to wonder if the scribe who inhabits this space has been indulging in some kind of hallucinational pharmaceutical, focusing on some paradisal notion of a world-wide consensus of both conviction and determined, sustained, funded, monitored address to reach out to the millions of victims, voiceless, hopeless, desperate and possessed of at least a depth and range of emotional and intellectual capabilities as the rest of us, without having also to address a foundational archetype of our inheritance. 

And this inheritance is rooted, at least in part, if not in whole, in the original ‘separation’ or Fall that is epitomized in Genesis, not only from androgyny into separate male and female, and the ensuing divide of subject/object, humanity from God, man from nature, man from man, and the inherent ‘discovery’ of ‘evil’ (knowledge) and the concomitant villain (one who commits the sin) and blame (prosecutor) followed instantly by the blame-game (scapegoat). This mythical/archetypal framing of much of the history of humanity, (does it go all the way back to the cave?) has both offered one imaginative image of ‘how things are supposed to work’ for (as Blake sees it) those whose primary mind-set is rational, a very different one preferred by those whose primary mind-set is more visionary, emotional and poetic.  

The normalizing of predatory-prey behaviour seemingly at an animalistic level (is it more inherent in males than females?)  and the prevalence of a pattern of judging-prosecuting behaviour in the society has prompted some intuitive questioning about the origin of some of the roots (archetypal, mythical, religious, theological, psychological, historic) of why humans are both capable of and seemingly hard-wired to inflict harm, betrayal, injury, defamation, gossip....and the list goes all the way up to deportation, excommunication, incarceration, torture... 

Is there a theological/religious root in the story of the Fall, with the initial crossing of a ‘God-given’ line? Is there a perpetuation, reinforcement in Paul’s words in Romans 3:23 ‘We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God,’ interpreted and inculcated as a universal sentence, in the vernacular translated as “You’re no good!” linked to the seemingly inescapable desire to ‘find fault’ in others, perhaps as a way of levelling the playing field, all being equally culpable and evil. Anthropologically, and psychologically, is this pattern also linked to a pack mentality that, when an especially public figure is ‘exposed’ as ‘flawed’ the pack instantly falls in line behind the prosecution believing/pereiving that such behaviour keeps them/us safe from a similar exposure? 

  Is William Blake’s focus on the separation out of androgyny into male and female, subject and object the result of a cultural preference and deployment of rationalism, as Blake would have us believe? And is our inherent ‘incompleteness’ separated, alienated, isolated from each other, from nature, from God also an inherent psychic/emotional/cognitive engine that reinforces our penchant for conflict....internal: personal, psychic, emotional; and external: systemic, racial, ethnic, religious, corporate, ideological, economic, political, military, sexual...and are we, individually and collectively caught in a web of our own perhaps at least partly unconscious design? And have we then rationalized our presumed fallen, sinful, evil, malicious state/tendencies/preferences(?) by wrapping momentary success in awards, rewards, victories, accomplishments, stipends, promotions, sacralizing various behaviours like our ‘love of war’ and ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ (of the fallen in war)? And is this highly compelling, seductive, shared, conventional and socially sustained complex, based as it is on the pressures we all place on the individual ego, without having taken cognizance of the deeper, cancerous, withering erosion of our potential because, obsessed as we are with proving ourselves ‘worthy’ and ‘capable’ and ‘honourable’ and ‘good’ as compared with and opposed to ‘evil’....somehow to escape some mythical judgement of our ‘selves,’ of others, and finally of God? 

The Jungian image of the persona (Mask) the public face we put on to meet and greet the public, in our daily working lives, can and often does actually take over the authentic ego in what Jung calls enantiodromia, when we have lost ‘who’ we are and become ‘who we think we are supposed to be.’ The psychological dynamic of the tension between ‘the external locus of control’ versus the ‘internal locus of control’ in which we are all unconsciously engaged is another of our ways of imaging our dilemma. Competition, of course, not only endorses, sustains and reinforces our need to prove ourselves, a dynamic that elides from demonstrating those behaviours our parents reward, smile at, provide enticements for, into school performance, job performance, athletic prowess, and both job and marriage/relationship ‘success. And in that enveloping melange of reinforcements, sitting boldly, self-righteously, and it says here contemptuously, the church.  

Presiding over what has come to be a set of moral/ethical/social/spiritual standards and expectations, complete with rewards and sanctions, based on a centuries of curia determined to erect, sustain and grow an ecclesial institution so protected from both internal and external attack and erosion, all of it considered apostasy, the Christian church has in effect become the most effective influencer, reinforcer, sustainer and ‘external locus’ of control in millions of lives. Of course, that ‘power’ has been ‘inherited’ or ‘ordained’ by God, rendering the institution beyond reproach, at least in its own eyes. 

Under various ‘brand banners’ we now fight for religious ‘theocracies’ as if to practice our faith really translates into imposing our faith on the body politic, in order to ‘protect, preserve, purify and market/evangelize/ our special relationship with our God, or worse, ‘to create what we believe to be the kingdom of God on earth.’ When did theology of any brand morph into a political, ideological, national, racial, ethnic, superiority and worse, supremacy? How can anyone reconcile having, believing in, practicing and endorsing a faith in a deity which seeks to manipulate, dominate, control, manage and effectively render all of its adherents into compliant, obedient, suffocated children....not the children of wonder and awe and amazement at the beauty of the shared universe, of which we are already an integral component? 

Paradoxically, we have the imagination and the intuition, the insight and the clarity to ‘see’ that how we are going about ‘attempting to justify our way of life’ is, to put it mildly, exhausting, exasperating, demeaning, erosive, leaving millions, not only of voiceless, but also of men and women charged with ‘managing’ or ‘leading’ their respective organizations, nations, churches, schools, and public service agencies. Our collective bill for medications, especially physical and psychic pain ameliorments, both medical and non-medical is astounding, rising and without limit. Our law-enforcement veterans are facing mounting pressures from both the number and the severity of the calls they are expected to respond to. In one week alone, within the last month, in Canada at three different levels of policing, municipal, provincial and national, one officer in each level committed suicide. And while the media reports suggested limply, that we might have to begin to look at suicide differently, it says here, we might consider these three men symbols of the proverbial ‘canaries in the coal mine’.... 

And in order to make such an image relevant, authentic, credible and adoptable, we will have to seriously consider the culture in which we are all living. Considering a developed, prosperous, well-educated, generally employed, generally healthy, and generally supportive of the consumer-based economy, analogous to a coal-mine is for many a stretch too far. And yet, is it really? 

Is the stretch too far, like the banks ‘too big to fail’ when we all know that breaking them up would have been an appropriate, ethical, and even economically sound decision, back in 2008? Is it just possible that the requirements, expectations and demands of the corporate interests, allied to and funding the political actors, cannot even begin to contemplate a ‘coal--mine’ image for the contemporary culture in which they are so powerful? The premises, economic, political, ideological, military, and personal in which they have been schooled, and in the deployment of which they have proven to be highly successful, are the very premises that, like mascara, are a collective, sustained and unsustainable mask over the desperation of millions at various levels, and in many locations, represented by those three police officers in Canada. 

Let’s not permit a moralizing sermon about ‘living beyond our means’ as if the only appropriate, legitimate and authentic lens through which to view our current dilemma is economic/political/ideological. While it may well be true that national budgetary deficits and debt are exploding beyond the shared capacity to keep up with interest on that debt and deficit, it is not merely a slight reform to capitalism that is being sought here. 

We are in need of a reformation, of our theology as Christians, (and perhaps of other faith communities as well). We also need to rethink how we have become enured to the pain of others, a state not only of apathy and indifference, but also of passivity giving way to total insouciance. 

If we were to be asked ‘why’ has this situation become so serious? We might respond, ‘The problem is not mine, but belongs to others to fix.’ Or, ‘whatever happens on the other side of the world is outside of my mind’s eye and responsibility.’ Or, the proverbial, ‘Well, the politicians are all crooks anyway, so why would I think we could do anything about it?’ Or, ‘All the leaders are thugs, in it for themselves, so I just do my job and live my life, without worrying about those things.’ Or even, ‘Well, so far, I am doing allright, I actually like it this way.’ 

The convergence of mythic, psychic, religious, cognitive, ideological, historic forces that have merged into a vortex of considerable, if not excessive control, under the hands of mostly men who seek to serve themselves and their oligarchy, is no longer amenable to political, academic, or even economic arguments about the distribution of incomes, or the lowering of taxes on the poor and raising of taxes on the rich, or even working vigorously to reduce the number and size of nuclear weapons. 

We are caught in the psychic, emotional, intellectual and even religious trap of self-sabotaging expectations....and in order to release its grip on our persons, our families, our towns and cities, and our nations, we have to look in the mirror, take stock of what kind of oppressive forces are willingly impaling un on the horns of our own dilemma, while ‘selling’ us the line that they are ‘protecting us from even worse, if they were not in power... 

Bah-humbug! As Ebenezer Scrooge utters, at Christmas, in Dicken’s Christman Carol....The “Christmas” of the propaganda which the establishment is selling is indeed ‘humbug’ and not to be celebrated....it is not Christmas, a new birth, but a mere proforma peak in retail sales, an excuse to party and perhaps even another of the medications we are choosing to medicate our collective psychic pain. 

The symbiotic (in this case parasitic, sycophantic and co-dependent) relationship between the establishment churches and the governing hierarchy can no longer be tolerated. The theology and supporting mythology and supporting psychological/sociological framework on which it hangs is collapsing around us and taking millions with the collapse. 

Are we ready to notice? (In our continuing ‘search for God’)