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December 21, 2008
Hello everyone,
A friend and I recently watched the documentary The God Who Wasn’t There by former fundamentalist Brian Flemming. Flemming later entirely rejected Christianity, and the documentary is designed to present his case for atheism. Most of the documentary presents sound evidence (regardless if we draw the same conclusion), though there are a few claims that are suspect from a scholar’s point of view, particularly those dealing with the historicity of Paul, the epistles, and the gospels. Like many who have emerged from strongly conservative Protestant backgrounds but for one reason or another grown disillusioned, Flemming was faced with the either/or decision I mentioned in the last issue of keeping one’s faith without alteration or losing it altogether. And, like many who have faced this decision and rejected the faith, he is now on a mission to make converts. As has been well noted, the most ardent proselytizer is generally the transformed convert; while to a purely secular or atheist family, atheism seems a matter of course, to Flemming, it is the new salvation from the old insanity. I certainly do not condemn him. In fact, this newsletter isn’t really about him at all, except as a launching point that serves two purposes: it ties together with the previous issue in suggesting that he too was faced with a decision much like that of my students. It also provided the fodder for another series of conversations I had with students one on one.
In particular, Flemming talks about the paradoxical nature of Christianity. In the opening shots, Christians are talking about their faith and about Jesus. These believers are happy, they are excited, and Flemming points out that for many, their faith is a positive pleasure, hinting (if not outright suggesting) that it provides their lives with purpose and meaning. However, for all those happy smiles, there also is an awful lot of blood, and historically, Christianity has not always fared that well as a religion of love and peace. In fact, Flemming notes that at the heart of the Christian story there is blood, that Christianity is a blood-splattered religion. And, he claims, Christians like it that way. Tracking three major Christian movies—and adjusting for inflation so that the gross budgets were tallied on equal footing—he shows that without question, Mel Gibson’s 2004 The Passion of the Christ was by far the most successful, a regular showstopper, conservative Protestants devouring it with relish. To emphasize his point, Flemming featured perhaps ten minutes or so of footage from the movie, blood slung and splattered everywhere.
I remember watching it shortly after it came out. Many people I knew talked incessantly about how moving it was. I suspected I would enjoy it immensely, as there is just something about the centerpiece of Christianity, the birth, life, and most especially sacrificial death of Jesus, that has a way of choking me up in a manner difficult to explain, as though something deeper than the surface mind and emotions were touched. Apparently I am not alone: believers and unbelievers alike admit the power of the Gospel story. Richard Dawkins, for example, has talked about the ability of the atheist to enjoy Christianity as art, to be moved by the power of the story without believing the historicity of its contents in the same way one is with a movie or novel that one knows is only fictional.
In any case, I watched Gibson’s Passion, but it failed to move me. I puzzled over the reason why, then concluded that as a work of cinema, it saw virtually no character development. We’re thrown in medias res into the final hours of Jesus’ life and we never really look back; the characters involved hold for us only as much emotional attachment as we brought into the theater with us. Simply put, I did not become attached to Mary or the disciples or even Jesus, and perhaps it was the slick production on top of that that left me a bit cold. Strange, really, as I have watched very badly performed church pageants and found it hard to see from the tears in my eyes. All of that is very beside the point. You either saw the movie or you did not, and you either liked it, did not like it, were indifferent to it, or experienced some combination thereof. What Flemming wanted us to see, however, was just how exceptionally bloody the film is. Of course, I remembered that it had a lot of blood; I even remember reading accounts of it from traditionally conservative sites warning about the amount of blood and violence. However, I had not remembered just exactly how much blood the movie really did have until Flemming’s documentary pointed out the fact with scene-by-scene illustration.
So then, Christianity puts smiles on people’s faces and fills their hearts with warmth. It is also incredibly bloody, and Gibson’s movie is an appropriate metaphor. I will have to admit that the idea stuck with me, perhaps not as Flemming intended, but nevertheless: there is something absolutely barbarous about this idea of the cross. It is at the very heart of Christianity; what are we to make of it? That is another question altogether, and to that question the balance of this newsletter will be addressed.
Now I said in the previous issue that this past semester, I have spent a lot of time talking to students after class in various stages of spirituality or its lack. That was particularly true of the night class I taught, and it was not uncommon for me to return home in the early morning hours. That late in the evening, the classroom is empty, awaiting me to turn off the lights and lock the doors. My conversations with students, then, allowed me private use of the board to doodle and draw at will. Interesting, really, that the last several newsletters have been very “chicken-and-egg”: they have at once been inspired by these late-night conversations as well as providing much of their fodder. The conversation I have in mind now actually consists of two conversations that happened back to back, and they might here at times be accidentally collapsed into one, in part because I remember the particulars of the first conversation better and cannot exactly remember how many details were added during the second. Suffice it to say, two separate students spoke with me late into the morning hours exactly one week apart, and my half of the conversation with both was nearly identical.
I began, roughly, with a conversation about the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and how that contrasts with the teachings of Jesus. In essence, I talked about the same material covered in Spiritual Transformation: Turned Inside Out in very much the same way: Jesus was thoroughly Jewish, but he introduces at least two radically different perspectives into his teachings. The first is that of authentic spiritual transformation, of a way of life that is proactive (“Do unto others”) rather than retroactive (“An eye for an eye”). Both understandings are predicated on the same law of reciprocity, and both acknowledge the place of fairness and justice in the spiritual life, the latter explicitly and the former implicitly. Thus, Jesus speaks about coming to fulfill the law, not abolish it, and the fulfillment of the law can only be effected proactively, from the “inside out.” That is, Jesus talked about the need for authentic spiritual transformation, a total re-orientation of one’s perspective and a re-alignment with new values.
The second radical idea that Jesus introduces is the prospect of having an intimate and reciprocal relationship with God. This was not the god of blood sacrifice, but “our Father,” the Heavenly Father to whom Jesus prayed when he retreated alone by himself to the mountainside to pray. Jesus introduces the idea of the I/Thou relationship, the ability of humanity to open itself to God and find communion. An intimate God with whom one could share communion may have existed in the hearts and minds of Jewish seekers before Jesus, but it was he who took the teaching and made it a centerpiece of his message. By contrast, the portrait at times painted of Yahweh in the Jewish scriptures often catches flak, some arguing that it presents an angry and capricious god. I am much more inclined to say that the portrait we see there is more nuanced, certainly in some cases angry, jealous, and apparently petty, but at others also capable of showing great compassion and tender mercy. Nevertheless, “our Father” is unquestionably a refinement and clarification of God that prior to Jesus did not enjoy formal and explicit existence. “Our Father” himself of course existed all along, and there may well have been those who knew him as such, but the understanding of his true nature as all-loving Father was now made explicit; likewise, we now have a directly related picture of the all-loving Friend (the Son) who fulfills much the same role.
This conception of Jesus and his contribution is generally a new one, even if it contains familiar elements. The difference is one of emphasis; the difference is trying to see Jesus as he would have been seen and how he would have seen himself, for the people with whom he interacted surely did not know how the next two-thousand of more years of Christian history would play out. There was no new religion in his day. There was only Judaism, the Roman occupation, and this itinerant Jewish rabbi named Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), son of Joseph the carpenter. It is very difficult for the average modern Christian to lay aside the cross or crucifix long enough to remember that though this torture device was real enough in Jesus’ day, its meaning would have been associated mainly with the notorious Roman punishment for criminals, not with a suffering son of God hanging in mortal agony. Perhaps there is no way totally around this read-back, as even the Gospel writers knew the end and thus no doubt better arranged the beginning and middle parts to more fully emphasize it.
In any case, I have a Christian friend who proposes an alternate theory of Jesus’ atonement, and one that happens to enjoy at least potential compatibility with the Greek Orthodox Church. My friend suggests that Jesus sacrificed his life as he did, not because of any requirement of blood sacrifice on behalf of God, but as an act of love. My friend, being a Christian, believes that Jesus is indeed the Savior of the world, and that he perfectly fulfilled the ideal of the Apostle Paul in “becoming all things to all men.” Willing to become all things to all men and perhaps most especially the Jews, he knew that the conception of Yahweh in the Jewish scriptures was a complicated one, interwoven with ideas of scapegoats and blood sacrifices. That does not mean, according to my friend, that scapegoats and blood sacrifices ever had anything to do with Yahweh at all: that is, that does not mean that Yahweh ever commanded such practices or took pleasure in them. Nevertheless, his Jewish heritage was interlaced with ideas of blood sacrifice and the scapegoat. No Savior would be credible in the eyes of the devout traditionalist without succumbing to what, on my friend’s reading, was effectively pagan barbarism, the influence of the other tribal religions on the evolving Jewish faith. Thus, Jesus was not paying any debt “our Father” demanded, because our Father takes no delight in such things. Jesus was paying a debt, on my friend’s account, of love, being willing to enter into all traditions and fulfill them from the inside out, even when they involved insanity and beliefs more in keeping with the Christian devil (or the Ammonite god Moloch) than our Heavenly Father. I said that my friend’s understanding would not be incompatible with the Greek Orthodox Church. One of its most vocal popularizers, Frederica Mathewes-Green, has written a piece in 2006 entitled Christ’s Death: A Rescue Mission, Not A Payment For Sins. She writes, in part:
This is not a “ransom” paid to the Father; the Father wasn’t holding us captive. It is an offering, but not a payment. Look at it this way. Christ suffered to save us from our sins in the same way a fireman suffers burns and wounds to save a child from a burning home. He may dedicate this courageous act as an offering to the fire chief he loves and admires. He may do it to redeem the child from the malice of the arsonist who started the fire. But his suffering isn’t paid to anyone, in the sense of making a bargain. [...]
There are some things that developed in Western Christianity that don’t appear in this account at all. As you can see, there’s no concept that our sins put us in God’s debt legally: No idea that somebody has to pay something before He can forgive us. He just forgives us. When the prodigal son came home, the father was already running toward him with his arms open. He didn’t say, “I’d like to take you back, son, but my hands are tied. Who’s going to pay this Visa bill?”
When we think of Greek Orthodoxy, we probably do not have in mind such a conversational writing style. Nevertheless, Mathewes-Green is describing a central tenet of Orthodox (capital “O”) theology. And whether my friend’s thought harmonizes with Orthodoxy or otherwise, my conversation with students was profited by the possibility that Jesus’ sacrifice was motivated not by repayment or even necessity, but out of the kind of love that is willing to enter into the insanity, to become the insanity, in order to restore sanity, or, in this case, is willing to fully embrace and take into himself a morbid (if psychologically understandable) tradition that believes in blood sacrifice and scapegoats by willingly playing the part “if this is what it takes.” That is, after all, the stuff of heroic literature and movies, the hero who is willing to take on what is not fair, what is extraordinary, what is impossible, and to do it, without complaint, for all the right reasons.
Now of course we may not really believe any of these ideas. We may be like Flemming and decide that it is untrue, like Dawkins and decide that though we can be moved by the drama, the tale being told is little different than that of great literature. That, of course, has to be our decision, and no doubt, whatever we decide, we will have compelling reason for choosing as we do. What I am interested in, however, is how the conversation with these two students further unfolded. Rather than rewriting this portion of our conversation, I turn instead to the online discussion that emerged from the latest newsletter:
[W]hatever else the spiritual life may be, it is practical. There really is no such thing as secular and spiritual—not literally, anyway—particularly for the person who is spiritual and who has “eyes to see.” That is, there is a level of conscious awareness that begins to develop over time that transforms all of life, and it transforms it in truly practical and winsome ways. If we really have experienced this transforming touch—or perhaps I should say that “to the degree that we have received it”—we probably will not appear particularly “religious” to other people—and there is absolutely no reason why we should. Religiousness is usually not a sign of spiritual maturity; in fact, excessive piety is usually a reflection of its lack, a sign of a person who is trying too hard and has not yet learned the natural art of simplicity and a lack of affectation and pretension. Let me interrupt that thought with another that I have shared with students often this semester.
Many of us grew up hearing John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” What we may not have grown up knowing is the context of that verse. This chapter of John recounts the visit that the religious teacher Nicodemus paid to Jesus in the night. Whether it was Nicodemus who in his puzzlement phrased his question in this way, or whether (as I think more likely) it was a literary device the author of John employs, Nicodemus wanted to know how a man could be “born again” (“born” the Greek word for emerging from the womb—feminine in other words). The reason I tend to think this was a literary device of the author of John is because in the original Greek, the book is chock full of word play, one person misunderstanding with one meaning of a given word, Jesus correcting him or her with a variant of the word that highlights a spiritual truth. In this case, Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be “begotten of above” (“born again” is how it is usually translated). That is, “begotten” is a masculine word showing the paternal side of procreation. (See the last few paragraphs of He Who Is Not Against You Is For You.)
Now why would Jesus use the word “begotten” rather than “born”? Personally, I think it is because, as the previous newsletter before this one suggests, Jesus taught the rather radical idea that God was “our Father.” In other words, Jesus taught a level of intimacy with God that may have been known by some people in his day, but certainly was not the mainstream teaching. Jesus explicated this idea, suggesting to Nicodemus that he must learn to experience ongoing intimacy with his Heavenly Father. This process requires an opening to God, and the result is a gradual and ongoing inner transformation. What does that inner transformation look like?
Jesus continues on, telling Nicodemus about the wind: you neither see it coming nor see where it goes, but you certainly can see the effect it has when it arrives. The metaphor of the wind, in keeping with the literary devices in the book of John, should immediately clue anyone with any knowledge of Oriental symbolism in on the multiple meanings of the word. To the Eastern thinker, “wind” is synonymous with “breath,” “spirit,” and “life.” Our breath, in other words—the wind—is our life force. The “wind” is that which animates us from the inside out. The double play on words here is that “wind” (or “spirit”) also refers to the Spirit of God, which Christianity has since renamed the Holy Spirit.
Now to tie back into the idea of not necessarily seeming “religious”: one does not see the wind. The wind is mysterious, coming and going as it pleases, having great, invisible power. So too, the person who has undergone this rebirth from above now possesses this “wind.” He or she does not need to waste much breath—pun fully intended—talking about it. Instead, though people may not fully understand what is different, other people will nevertheless see the effects of this inner wind.
We might again mention that the way we acquire this inner wind is with intimacy with God: as Jesus so radically taught, God really is our loving Heavenly Father. And enjoying this kind of intimacy with God is not a matter of talk, it is experiential. It transforms our consciousness by degrees and we begin to see how all of the world is his creation. Secular and sacred may still be words that we use, but they have been emptied of the meaning most commonly associated with them. Instead, all men are my brothers, all women my sisters, the earth, sun, moon, and stars my fellow sojourns. Reality is one and there is no division of parts.
It so happens that Hawk, who had not at the time read the previous post, asked me about the meaning of the word “spirit.” It seemed ironic to know that he posted his question without having read what I had just written above. Specifically, he writes:
The Bible does not use the word “spirit” in Hebrew or Greek. It uses the word air. I already knew that but it seems that I just now “got it.” So, as I am reading, there is no spirit in man, either dead or alive, but it’s air. We have this picture that we receive God’s breath from his lungs to ours but it is a picture of understanding Job 32:8 and light Prov 20:27. The picture I am now getting is that this “air” that is in us is a source of life, a source of understanding, but it is not life in itself. The idea of a Holy Ghost, then becomes pretty far off. It’s Holy Air as a picture of our understanding from God.
As you can imagine, I had much to say to Hawk, and I moved his question into the thread above where it might enjoy fuller discussion. That prompted a series of replies, and in them is included the following from Nafas al Rachman—the breath of the Merciful, which I like as a source, as it shows a cross-cultural comparison of what the word “breath,” “spirit,” and “wind” signify. I first noted that we know well of the need for food and water in order to survive, but we do not often stop and consider that without oxygen (perhaps the most important “food” of all) we die very, very quickly, I followed with the excerpt just mentioned:
Soul belongs to God
The word ruh in Urdu means soul, but it has a large number of other meanings. The basic sense however is that which is not solid. In fact it is like a breeze. From there, it brings us close to the sense of breath.
Allah says ruh belongs to Him. The breath that belongs to human beings is called nafs. The root nfs means self and breathing. It has two plural forms out of which one is common: nafoos meaning many persons. Anfaas means breaths.
In Hebrew ruh is not used for soul. The word for soul is nefesh, implying that the fine discrimination that one finds in Arabic is not there in Hebrew. English word spirit comes from the same root as breathing: aspire and respire.
Because alcohol is created through a process of distillation (as if the matter was breathing) it is named spirit. In its pure form it is supposed to evaporate like a soul.
English soul comes from the Germanic group and its root means something quick-moving. Here again the implication takes us to breeze or wind, which moves quickly. In Russian dusha (soul) is closely connected to dukha (breath or blowing wind). In Sanskrit, pran means both soul and breath.
The root rwh for ruh (soul) means the blowing of wind...
Ruh is Allah’s own attribute given to human beings. The Quran doesn’t say the ruh of man but ruh of Allah.”
Soul belongs to God —Khaled Ahmed
* * * * * * *Spirit: The word translated here as spirit, ruh, comes from the same root as rahah. It is also related to rih, which means “wind,” mirwahah, meaning “fan,” and istirwah which means “respiration.” The term “Spirit” translates the Hebrew word ruah, which, in its primary sense, means “breath,” “air,” “wind.” Jesus indeed uses the sensory image of the wind to suggest to Nicodemus the transcendent newness of him who is personally God’s breath, the divine Spirit (Jn 3:5–8).” The words “vibrations” and “cool breeze” are used to imply the same meaning. For those wishing to comprehend the awesome reality and deep mysticism of Al-Qiyamah it is vital that these meanings are imbibed and remembered at all times.
In any case, not only do we have a stronger argument in place for the literary flourishes of the author of John, we also have in place a better understanding of how this dual thrust of Jesus—inward transformation and intimacy with God—might be actualized. It involves an awakening, a quickening from within, a begetting from above. When we open ourselves to the I/Thou relationship, we open ourselves to spirit and life: they are the same, as the interrelated etymologies imply. Why are they the same? Because all of reality is of a single whole. There is so much more that could be said on this point alone and its implications, but we are leaving my students hanging and it is not getting any earlier.
The first night of my conversations, my student and I did not leave the building until after 2am. I was honest with him about a lot of things. I was honest about how Christianity itself often seems a little antiquated to me, how I like to think of my perspective as “enlightened” and “progressive,” how the atheist is quite right in pointing out that the transformation in my life and consciousness are at least potentially explainable by principles that do not necessitate drawing God into the equation, principles understood well by Buddhism and the states attainable through meditation. Still, I said, I had to admit that on some very, very deep level, there was a side of me that was childlike, naive, a side that really did believe in spite of the fact that I might have a very hard time defending it from the standpoint of critical thinking, the very subject I was teaching and the student with whom I was speaking was taking from me. Nevertheless, I suggested to him that it really did seem that when I prayed, I connected with a very real presence. And, in keeping with the idea that when we look at what Jesus taught without reading it through the backward theology of the cross, different possibilities emerge as to what and who Jesus might be. I was saying that it did not matter to me if the “heresy” of Jesus being only a man was proven true, for if he was only a man who the Father was pleased to raise to the stature of the Christ, what did it matter? As the Christ, Jesus is the gateway between worlds, the one who connects all religions, all cultures, all of time and space. If that assessment is true, the dogmatic particulars are little more than a bit of icing or glaze and certainly not the main course.
In this candid reverie, I went on to tell my student that if there is an area of intersection between religious faiths, most likely there is good reason. I had earlier mentioned the latest newsletter about the blind man, or at least the idea and analogy behind it: that virtually every source from which we may gain information likely communicates something true to us about the world. Christianity does not have a monopoly on spiritual faith, even if many believe it contains an indispensable element found in no others, namely Christ.
Having been honest thus far about “the things of which we do not speak” (because they are generally too deep or personal to share with another), I spoke about my theories of Jesus literally being the “narrow gate,” and of my mystical dreams of the beating heart of Jesus being at the very center of the universe (on some level beyond words), the point from which all else emanates, the point upon which all else converges. If what my friend says is true about Jesus being willing to fulfill even erroneous ideas about God, I continued, this mystical vision makes perfect sense. Jesus was “all things to all men” reconciling all to himself, having “other sheep, which are not of this fold.”
Let us assume, for the sake of an argument, that Jesus really was only a mortal man, but a man the Father saw fit to honor as the firstfruit of many brothers because of what this man was willing to sacrifice on behalf of his union with his Father. What if God saw fit to honor and elevate Jesus to the status of the “cosmic Christ”; what is Jesus was handed the keys that held together worlds, such as those between heaven and earth and life and death, a bit like a bodhisattva? And on the subject of Buddhism, what of parallels to the Pure Land sutras where the bodhisattva goes and prepares a resting place where the devotee may fellowship with him before embarking again on the inifinite journey? Or what of near-death experiences (NDEs)? On that latter note, I recounted the story of Ian McCormack, the Australian stung by deadly box jellyfish who traveled through the proverbial tunnel of white light. He describes how beams of radiant light pierced his body without harm or injury; how these were beams of living light—they were alive—and they were emanating off some very bright figure standing at the far end of the tunnel. McCormack is convinced that this figure emanating living light was Christ, and reports that the level of love and compassion that emanated from him were almost overpowering.
Probably none of these ideas would seem particularly strange to a Buddhist, and I mused about how it really did seem to me that somehow, in some way, on some very deep level, I really was in contact with more than just a state of enlightened awareness as a Buddhist achieves through meditation. It seemed, rather, like I had (and have) an ongoing encounter with a person who is more than a person, a figure who is on the other side of death and yet living, a friend who can stick closer than a brother because not even death separates him, a Friend (capital “F”) who seems to me none other than the “cosmic Christ,” (I repeatedly used—and use—this term, for want of a better one) who appears to me sometimes in my dreams and whose presence, though fleeting and coming and going at will, nevertheless seems so very, very real. But still, I confessed, that did not comprise the bulk of my world these days. Experiences do not happen to me that often, and my world, especially in the midst of teaching, becomes settled, less given to mystical anything and much more dominated by ordinary reality and rational thought.
Having so recently talked about Eastern understandings of spirit and how that ties into Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, I could not resist talking to some length about Eastern philosophy. What my students do not necessarily know is that my understanding is in keeping with that expressed by Sara, when she writes: “Okay...I’ll admit it. Christianity is my favorite. But I need the others, too.” I do not know if Christianity is “my favorite” or not—I sometimes feel a high level of ambivalence toward it—but it remains the faith that most defines me on the deepest levels that lie below the threshold of conscious awareness. And I certainly agree that I need the other religions as well, or, if not that, I firmly believe that an understanding and appreciation for all religious traditions can and usually does enhance our own spiritual life in delightfully unexpected ways.
The fact is, the simple concept of the yin and yang, the interplay of complementary opposites that blend together in the center, makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. Paradox is the rule and not the exception of the universe, and lies at the heart of all things deep. What is more, the yin and yang are pairs, which introduces two new elements to the understanding. There is, on the one hand, the idea of relationship: you cannot have a pair of something without having some kind of interplay between them. And the second idea is a further manifestation of the first: you cannot have relationship without dynamism, without motion, without liquidity. The yin and yang is not a static idea at all, but represents the one constant in the universe: change. This part of the conversation hearkens back to the third in the recent series of newsletters, namely The Ministry of Reconciliation: “Ever New” Under the Sun.” We tend to dislike change very much, but in actual fact, rather than the universe being nailed down tightly the way we might like, instead it consists of a continuous creative-evolutionary process constantly “making all things new,” each ending a new beginning.
Speaking about this process, this ever-unfolding, tends to create a sense of zest and enthusiasm in me, particularly when I have a “not-unwilling” captive audience. However, I am also mortal, and at this point in our conversation, the hands on the clock having already passed midnight some hours ago, I am starting to fade pretty fast. During the first of these conversations, I mentioned how balanced and orderly the symbol of the yin and yang seemed to me, how reflective of reality. By contrast, I confessed that the symbol of the cross or the crucifix seemed, by contrast, barbarous. In fact, it was the week before that I had watched The God Who Wasn’t There, and Flemming’s excerpts from Gibson’s Passion were still fresh on my mind: Christianity is a religion of blood. I was not quite sure why I was telling my student turned confidant all of these things, but I was: the cross seemed a barbarous symbol by comparison. Then it suddenly hit me in a flash why I was seeing things backward, why the cross or crucifix transcends even the yin and yang.
Three interrelated elements simultaneously came together in my mind. I thought of a chapter from the book by John A. Sanford entitled Dreams: God’s Forgotten Language. In particular, Sanford is an Episcopalian and is connected with Morton T. Kelsey and others who have studied Jungian psychology, so the chapter The Christian Problem, long since a feature on this site, came to mind. In particular, he talks about the cross as being the reconciliation of opposites, though his language and approach is that of the psychoanalyst and can be a little off-putting if one is not in the mood: it is essentially a Swedenborgian or Unity approach. In this case, Sanford talks about Christ as both the gentle lamb and the fierce lion, representing two conflicting sides of the human psyche. His symbolism intrigued me, but I did not have the full context until the epiphany struck.
I thought also of Carl Jung himself, who suggested, “Nobody can doubt the manifest superiority of the Christian revelation over its pagan precursors,” and “The central symbol of Christianity must have, above all else, a psychological meaning, for without this it could never have acquired any universal meaning whatever, but would have been relegated long ago to the dusty cabinet of spiritual monstrosities” (Collected Works, 1969, “A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity”). That is, Jung has long since argued that there is something in the fundamental psychological make-up of humanity that makes Christ indispensable, that makes the symbol of the cross so powerful and necessary.
What had so recently brought Jung and Sanford to mind was a nightmare I had had not so long ago where I dreamt I was in hell. I was struck by the fact that such darkness could exist within the human psyche, whether a factor of repression or something else. As I told the student, we may think of Jung’s dream analysis and studies of mythologies as being interesting but ultimately wasted, lacking in scientific rigor, failing to tell us anything objectively important about the world. However, I suggested, such studies do at the least tell us something objective about ourselves. A study of dreams and world mythologies is not worthless: a study of dreams and world mythologies is a sort of map to the strange, inner realm of the human psyche. Of all the things in heaven and earth dreamt of in our philosophies, it is the philosophies themselves and even more the mind that dreams them that is most fascinating and complex of all. Rather than studying the rare reptile or bird, what of studying the eye that studies it? And rather than studying the eye, what of studying the brain that focuses it? And rather than focusing on the brain that focuses, what of the mind that relegates it all into meaningful “human information”? The inner world of dreams and visions is nebulous; it is also (conceptually speaking) more real than any outer world, because it is through this inner world that the outer world is known. To have a map of its inward contours, however strange in content, is surely not worthless.
As I said, it hit me in a flash why the symbol of the cross or crucifix makes the yin and yang pale in comparison, why the blood and the barbarism are so absolutely necessary. I said as much to my student turned confidant, but in order to explain myself better, I decided to relate a fairly well-known tale from folk-lore. The Indian tribal elder was speaking with a promising young brave who had sought his council. The old chief told the boy that within him lived two wolves. One wolf was black and fierce and was the origin of all the baser passions: anger, lust, greed, hatred, spite, envy, chaos, and all that is not fit for the light of day. The other wolf was also fierce, but this wolf was of the purest white and was the origin of all that made a man proud to stand and be counted a warrior. This wolf represented bravery and honesty and charity and loyalty and courage and compassion and strength and all else that deserves to walk upright under the sun. The two fell silent for some time before the boy spoke again: “Which wolf wins?” The wise old chief said simply: “The one we feed.”
My student had never before heard this story, but I could tell that it moved him in an odd way, beyond the surface of the words. I then mentioned to him the idea of jihad, not as the holy war Westerners think of when they think of the term, but jihad in the deeper sense the Koran intends. It is a holy war, yes, but that holy war is raged within oneself between the two conflicting natures. The idea of jihad, then, is the idea of inner struggle, the struggle between the fierce black and white wolves.
You see, I told the student, as human beings, we have within us all that is sublime and God-like. But we also have within us the seeds of chaos, destruction, and anarchy as well; our minds are capable of entertaining the most shameful perversions and every evil known to humanity. The yin and yang may speak to this dualism, but as best as I can tell, the yin and yang are a little too civilized for this kind of discourse. That which should not see the sun may not be denied, but, so far as I know at least, it is also not admitted openly. However, I now understand. The symbol of the cross or the crucifix is love, the kind of love that is willing to play an unnecessary game where scapegoating and blood sacrifice is not seen as a perverse and barbarous practice but an acceptable, even necessary, means of atonement. For that matter, blood sacrifice was necessary, but only because we demanded it be, because we had wax in our ears and mud in our eyes and stone in our hearts. The symbol of the cross is the kind of love that is willing to enter into the very depths of a person’s hell in order that it might bring light. The cross is splattered with blood precisely because it alone reconciles the black and the white wolves, taking both into itself. The cross symbolizes total unity, the junctions between all worlds, dark and light, pleasure and pain, heaven and hell, life and death. It is necessarily bloody, it is necessarily morbid, it is necessarily hideous because in an act of total surrender, all was united upon a single point, and it is this point, the beating heart of Christ, from which the entire cosmos emanates. I now understand. Love makes the difference. The cross goes beyond the yin and the yang, for while the yin and yang does represent the interplay of opposites, the cross represents their reconciliation. The cross, then, binds together not only complementary forces, but has room to reconcile even blatant contradiction. As Jung suggests above, “The central symbol of Christianity must have, above all else, a psychological meaning, for without this it could never have acquired any universal meaning whatever, but would have been relegated long ago to the dusty cabinet of spiritual monstrosities.”
Taking a last look at the clock, I told my student that we really did need to be getting home. His girlfriend would be worried and besides, Mondays are always long days, teaching two classes as I do. We said a few words more, I turned out the lights, turned the key in the door and heard the distinctive click, and we descended the stairs, departing out into the night sky. He took a Northwesterly route, my own was pointed Northeast, and drawing my jacket collar up tight around my ears to shield off the biting wind, I turned the key in the lock fifteen minutes later and let myself into the dark apartment. Too much coffee in my system, it would be several hours more before sleep finally reclaimed me for another evening. The next morning I woke up around noon feeling a bit hung over, but for all of that, I felt basically happy. There were the usual tasks awaiting me: papers to grade, e-mails to write, and lessons to prepare.
God bless,
Eric
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