Searching for God # 40

Optimism in dire situations reveals an inability to understand what is going on or an unwillingness to accept it and in therefore an indication of foolishness or weakness. In contrast, hope during dire situations, hope notwithstanding the circumstances, is a sign of courage and strength….Hope helps us identify signs of hope as signs of hope rather than as just anomalies in an otherwise irreparable situation, as indicators of a new dawn rather than the last flickers of  a dying light. Hope also helps us to press on with determination and courage. When every course of action by which we could reach the desired future seems destined to failure, when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy, hope remains indomitable and indestructible. From the last post in this space…

Juxtaposed to this Moltmann ‘perception’ of hope, from a theological perspective, we find this, Hillman’s words on the archetypal psychological perspective on hope:

(The analyst) cannot hold out the usual hope for cure (of psychological issues) or even relief of symptoms. His analytical experience says that the hope which the patient presents is part of the constellation of his suffering. It is frequently governed by impossible demands to be free of suffering itself. The same condition that constellated the symptoms is just the condition which these symptoms are interrupting and killing---or curing. Therefore an analyst does not hope for a return to that condition out of which the symptoms and the hope for relief arose.

Because hope has this core of illusion it favors repression. By hoping for the status quo, we repress the present state of weakness and suffering and all it can bring. Postures of strength are responsible for many major complaints today—ulcers, vascular and coronary conditions, high blood pressure, stress syndrome, alcoholism, highway and sport accidents, mental breakdown. The will to fall ill, like the suicide impulse, leads patient and physician face to face with morbidity, which stubbornly remains in spite of all hope to the contrary. One might ask if medical hope itself is not partly responsible for recurrent illness; since it never fully allows for weakness and suffering the death experience is not able to produce its meaning. Experiences are cheated of their thorough effect by speedy recovery. Until the soul has got what it wants, it must fall ill again. And another iatrogenic vicious circle of recurrent illness begins. (James Hillman, Suicide and the Soul, reprinted in A Bue Fire, into and ed, by Thomas Moore, p. 78)

A clergy friend, now deceased, once commented in an off-hand manner, years before I had been introduced to the work and thought of Jurgen Moltmann, ‘We are in the hope business within the church community!” And, immediately, I smiled, reflecting on how deeply and intuitively I resonated with his observation, and smugly reminded myself, ‘that is another of the many reasons why I have entered this ‘business’ of active ministry. Without fully either comprehending or certainly not completely grasping whatever he might have meant by his comment, I experienced something like a comforting familiarity between ‘ordinary human existence and the need for and appreciation of hope, and this thing called theology, whatever that was supposed to be. Maybe the leap from journalism and high school teaching into ‘theology’ was not going to be that chasmic.

Decades later, as I sit in the chemo ward of an urban hospital (not as patient), watching the medical professions scurry to carry out their regimen of administering highly radioactive and immunotherapy drugs, I am very conscious of the Moltmann perspective on hope, in the face of morbidity ‘when we cannot reasonably draw a line that would connect the terror of the present with future joy,’ and also the paradox of Hillman’s ‘take’ on the psychological illusion of hope ‘for the status quo’ thereby unconsciously repressing present weakness and suffering and all it can bring.

Cognitively, each of us, dear reader, along with this scribe, can readily ‘conceptualize’ a hope that transcends all reasonable and legitimate probability as an integral and intimate aspect of our theology, as well as another hope that represses the very thing Moltmann’s hope transcends, morbidity. The former imagines a state of mind, heart and body that is only ‘imaginatively’ accessible….without being reduced to some kind of fantasy, fairy-tale or horror-show. The latter, Hillman’s perspective, on the other hand, turns the mind, heart and body away from the very fear and trembling inherent in morbidity.

Death, another ephemeral, ineffable, unknowable and mysterious experience, from which none of us can or will escape, lies at the heart of each perspective. Furthermore, both notions of hope wrestle with how to live with that prospect, whether or not we adopt, accept, tolerate or even countenance a conscious, imaginative, and prophetic perception and attitude to death.

Given the Christian premise that life is sacred and that death brings about a promise of some kind of ‘eternal life’ and Hillman’s archetypal psychological perspective that suicide is (or could be) a legitimate human decision, at first glance, it seems the two perspectives are contradictory, irreconcilable, and mutually exclusive.

And yet, are they really?

Is the Christian divide of death’s entry-door either a euphoric heavenly after-life or damnation compatible with a theological premise and incarnation  of unconditional, unqualified and irrevocable love? And is the question of ‘judgement’ based on a ‘morally’ and belief-centred faith in ‘salvation’ and ‘forgiveness’ premised on the sacrifice of Calvary also compatible with such an unconditional, unfathomable, ineffable ephemeral love? What if, from a different theological, psychological, philosophical, ethical, moral perspective, death is an integral, intimate, sine-qua-non of life, including ‘life more abundant’? And, as for an apocalyptic Judgement Day, what if that is rendered as a metaphor derived from a ‘super-ego’ institutional parental imitation of the God the Father aspect of the Trinity?

Absolutes, from their inception, design and implications have to be considered as outside any and all ‘norms’ as human beings are generally capable and willing to ‘conceptualize’ the universe. And the question of moral perfection/imperfection being resolvable in and through the salvation that accompanies ‘surrender into faith in Jesus Christ Resurrected,’ begs so many relevant, significant and layered questions that tend to generate and reinforce a kind of theological and spiritual ‘child’ in both awe and fear of God that, to this scribe, is incompatible with my ‘questioning’of myself and of God. What does ‘surrender’ mean? What must be confessed in order to be eligible for penitential forgiveness? Who decides? What does ‘belief’ mean? And how does belief impact my daily decision-making? Is that single born-again decision compatible with a life-long relationship with a God who 1) has created humans in his own image (imago dei) and 2) who loves unconditionally and unreservedly?

Traditionally and historically, the Christian church has condemned, radically judged and attempted to convert the ‘savage’ as they considered indigenous peoples, in what, today, is considered an evil of the proportion of the Crusades. Indeed, given the church’s blindness, ignorance and denial of anything close to ecclesial ‘evil’ or even darkness, for and from which, it must be accountable, the concept of ‘institutional ethical and moral ‘purity’ and perfection has been laid bare for all, both those within and those without the institution, that the church’s basic premises beg both reflection and critique. Similarly, those who have committed ‘crimes’ or broken the church’s rules, expectations and laws, are deemed to require penitence, forgiveness and absolution. Redemption, especially from an agreed ‘indiscretion, malfeasance, disobedience, and ‘sin’ is considered accessible from the church’s institutional ‘marriage’ to God, acting as a surrogate for God.

A universe defined and parametered by such constructs, irrespective of how honourable and noble and ethical and more they may have been at their inception, have served to fossilize both the institution and its adherents, not to mention those hierarchically invested. Such frozen fossilizing, by definition, is counter-intuitive to a dynamic, intimately related, highly creative, imaginative and extremely loving force at the centre of the universe.

Wilhelm Reich, Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, writes this about God:

I know that what you call ‘God’ really exists, but not in the form you think: God is primal cosmic energy, the love of your body, your integrity, and your perception of the nature in you and outside of you.

How does this echo the thoughts of Leo Tolstoy.

And now after eighteen centuries the prophecy has been fulfilled. Not having followed Christ’s teaching generally and its application to social life in non-resistance to evil men have been brought in spite of themselves to the inevitable destruction foretold by Christ for those who do not fulfil his teaching.

People often think of the question of non-resistance to evil by force is a theoretical one, which can be neglected. Yet this question is presented by life itself to all men, and calls for some answer from every thinking man. Ever since Christianity has been outwardly professed, this question is for men in their social life like the question which presents itself to a traveler when the road on which he has been journeying divides into two branches. He must go on and he cannot say: I will not think about it but will go on just as I did before. There was one road, now there are two, and he must  make his choice. (Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You, p. 186,187)

Before Christ’s teaching it seemed to men that the one only means of settling a dispute was my resistance to evil by force. And they acted accordingly, each of the combatants trying to convince himself and others that what each respectively regards as evil, is actually, absolutely evil.

And to do this from the earliest time men have devised definitions of evil and tried to make them binding on everyone. And such definitions of evil sometimes took the form of laws, supposed to have been received by supernatural means, sometimes of the commands of rulers or assemblies to whom infallibility was attributed. Men resorted to violence against others, and convinced themselves and others that they were directing their violence against evil recognized as such by all….

Even at that time this was felt and understood by many. And it was then that Christ preached his doctrine, which consisted not only of the prohibition of resistance to evil by force, but gave a new conception of life and a means of putting an end to conflict between all men, not by making it the duty of one section only of mankind to submit without conflict to what is prescribed to them by certain authorities, but by making it the duty of all—and consequently of those in authority-not to resort to force against anyone in any circumstances…..

Things went on like this for eighteen centuries, and at last reached the present position in which it is absolutely obvious that there is, and can be, no external definition of evil binding upon all. Men have come to the point of ceasing to believe in the possibility or even desirability of finding and establishing such a general definition. It has come to men in power ceasing to attempt to prove that what they regard as evil is evil, and simply declaring that they regard as evil what they don’t like, while their subjects no longer obey them because they accept the definition of evil laid down by them, but simply obey because they cannot help themselves.(Tolstoy, op cit.  pps. 187-188-189-190)

Tolstoy’s is a hope that approximates and anticipates Moltmann’s without having to apologize for any psychological perception of Hillman. Moltmann links each moment both to the Alpha (the beginning) and Omego (The end), and thereby to beyond reason, beyond legitimacy and beyond optimism. Hillman cautions us on the perversity and obstruction of hope to repress all consideration of morbidity, when conceived, perceived and practiced in a scientific and medical context. Tolstoy’s perception of the evolution of humankind out of what we might call the law of ‘the jungle’ of the oppressive deployment of violence by some over others, to his exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount as the universal injunction to exercise non-resistance to evil by force, as a common, God-given inheritance to all humankind.

Can and/or will we be open to consider hope from both theological and psychological perspectives, as well as embrace Tolstoy’s exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount, for which he sees each of us responsible and accountable for the commitment to exercise non-violent resistance to evil by force, if and when we encounter what we all consider to be evil.

And the premise that we all inherently, indisputably and irrevocably have inherited in our psychic, and spiritual and theological DNA, a common, universal injunction, while it may challenge some, needs further consideration.

To be continued……..