Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers
Suzanne Evertsen Lundquist
Secondary
Narcissism as Collective Shadow and Imago Dei
Email - Profile - Subtheme # 4 - Abstract
PAPER
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of
ceasing to believe in God. The real
danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him.
C.
S. Lewis A Grief Observed 5
What
do I love when I love my God?
Jacques Derrida Circonfession
[T]he name of God . . . remains of the
utmost importance, a name to save . . ., not as the answer to every question .
. . , but on the contrary, as the question disturbing every answer, the
question of all questions . . . .
John
D. Caputo Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A
Conversation
with Jacques Derrida 173
It is only through the psyche that we can
establish that God acts upon us, but we are unable to distinguish whether these
actions emanate from God or from the unconscious.
C. G. Jung Answer to Job 106
In their book The Good Society, Robert Bellah and his associates note a difference between a great
society (an economically, technologically, and politically advanced nation) and
a good society (one struggling to integrate members into mutually beneficial
communities). Bellah
draws on the work of Walter Lippmann who asserted
that a good society should be moving toward not a single homogeneous system
but one that respects and encourages diversity and attempts to reconcile the
conflicts that spring from this diversity (280). Lippman believed
that good societies must possess a strong desire to be just and that: There
must be discernment and sympathy in estimating the particular claims of divergent
interests. There must be moral standards
which discourage the quest of privilege and the exercise of arbitrary
power. There must be resolution and
valor to resist oppression and tyranny.
For Lippman, There must be patience and
tolerance and kindness in hearing claims, in argument, in negotiation, and in
reconciliation (in Bellah 280).
The bases for Lippmans
considerations are the Western philosophical tradition combined with biblical
ethical insights. What Lippman envisioned was a democracy composed of virtuous
individuals from diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. In Lippmans
estimation, whatever their culture of origin, individuals within a good society
could move towards culturally articulated, yet personal maturity within the
larger, yet diverse, collective. Postmodern ethics, however, has revealed a
long-standing obstacle to such possibility in what Carl G. Jung identified as
the personal and collective shadow. Jung
explains that the shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole
ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without
considerable moral effort. To become
conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as
present and real (The Portable Jung 145). Resistance to recognizing the dark or
inferior aspects of ones personal or collective character in which one
participates is compounded by the emotional, obsessive, possessive
and seemingly autonomous qualities of the shadow. Resistance is also often bound up with projections,
which are not recognized as such.
Because of the nature of projection, Jung asserts that recognition of
the shadow components of ones character or culture is a moral achievement
beyond the ordinary (146). Jung, like
René Girard, insists that the cause of
the strong emotional resistance to recognizing the personal/collective shadow
appears to lie, beyond all possibility of doubt, in the other person,
ethnic group, or religion. What is even
more discerning is Jungs insistence that projections change the world into
the replica of ones own unknown face (146).
The identity of the shadow archetype that hinders the
realization of a good society, therefore, seems to be crucial to
understanding the implications of COV&Rs 2007
theme on Vulnerability and Tolerance.
Both perpetrators and victims are vulnerable when they fail to recognize
the unconscious motivations out of which their hostility comes. A brief perusal of claims made by key
philosophers concerned with bringing to consciousness those hidden shadow
archetypes might aid us in giving dominant collective shadows a name. For example, René
Girard identifies the scapegoat mechanism as
the cultural shadow hidden from the foundation of the world. The scapegoat mechanism arises out of
individual or collective desire for what our neighbors possess (Things
Hidden From the Foundation of the World 5-47). Such covetous desire produces conflictual mimesis that eventuates in internal violence
within human communities (I See Satan Fall Like Lightning 9). Covenant communities, however, have often
promised to love their neighbors as themselves (Lev. 19: 18), and therefore
envy of the neighbor is prohibited. As a
result, members of dominant cultures who envy their neighbors goods, lands,
relationships, or successes, unconsciously project their envy on to
unsuspecting and innocent victimsoften those who are identified by the signs
of the victim (The Scapegoat 25-26).
Girard suggests that we are blind to the mimetic rivalries in our
world, but each time that we celebrate the power of our desire we glorify it (I
See Satan Fall Like Lightning (11).
In the act of glorifying what we desire, we become idolaterswe worship
not God or Ethics but individuals, their possessions, or our interpretations of
our own religious or national ideologies.
Girard contends that this idolatry is necessarily associated with the
idolization of ourselves. The more
desperately we seek to worship ourselves and to be good individualists, the
more compelled we are to worship our rivals in a cult that turns to hatred or
a double idolatry of self and other (11).
As I move through the assertions of world-class scholars,
theologians, and humanitarians, I would like to allude to various aspects of
the History of the United States.
Although I recognize several honorable narratives controlling historical
consciousness within the US, there are important hidden narratives as
well. There is a sense in which US
history has been a story constructed to
promote self-worship. Perry Miller, in
his book Errand into the Wilderness, asserts that the federal marrow of
Puritan theology promotes a constellation of ideas basic to any comprehension
of the American mind (49). Central to
this constellation is John Winthrops conscious assertion that Puritans were to
create a New Jerusalem: For wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of
all people are uppon us (11). As Puritan thought developed in New England,
the liberty or democracy envisioned was inexorably bound up with theology. John Wise (1652-1725) asserted that, by
nature, human beings were born into the world with certain immunities: 1)
humans are free born . . . under the crown of heaven and owing homage to none
but God Himself (Miller The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry
124); 2) humans are Gods favorite animal on earth in that they are born in
Gods image (125)this means that humans, by nature, love themselves and
extend that love to mankind in general (126); 3) individuals are born with an
original liberty instamped upon [their] rational
nature [s] (127); and, finally, 4) that this original liberty should recognize
the equality of all men but be willing to surrender individual liberty for the
sake of the civil state (129).
However, as Miller notes: We have lately accustomed
ourselves to the fact that there does exist a mentality which will take
advantage of the liberties allowed by society in order to conspire for the
ultimate suppression of those same privileges (Errand into the Wilderness
14). The history of Women, Native
Americans, African Americans and other hyphenated Americans within the United
States bear witness to the suppression of libertieseven after amendments to
the Constitution have been made to counterbalance their exclusion from
Constitutional guarantees. Historically
many have been excluded, most prominently, under the doctrine of privilege
known as election. Election fosters
dualities among Christians between the Christian and heathen,
civilized/uncivilized, culture and nature, Euro-Americans and
non-Euro-Americans, the city and the wilderness. In fact, the errand into the wilderness
made of the natural environment something untamed, dark, and possessedusually
by wild life and savages.
Girards discussion of idolatry can be further
contextualized by placing his theories within a composite of Emmanuel Levinas treatment of Ipseity,
Jean-Francois Lyotards discussion of secondary
narcissism, Jungs identification of the Imago Dei, and Anne Wilson Schaefs recognition of religious addiction.
Levinas suggests that in modern
technological societies, the making of history has been the story of the human
ego in search for freedom and the same (self).
In other words, the course of [Western] history has been the
reduction of the other to the same.
Freedom has been the thinking beings refusal to be alienated in
adherence, the preserving of his nature, his identity, a feat of remaining the
same despite the unknown lands into which thought seems to lead.
According to Levinas, this focus on the self, ipseity,
rather than concern for the other, alterity,
has been Western Cultures primary theme (Collected Philosophical
Papers 48). Whether Western nations
have taken democracy, religion, or enlightenment to Natives or received
immigrants into their nations, the desire, according to Levinas,
has been to assimilate (to make similar) the other. Concomitant to ipseity
has been the desire to create envy for the dominant human imagedesire for
being male, white, Christian, of European heritage, well-married, and wealthy.
Lyotard identifies the tendency
to reduce the Otherthe immigrant, ethnic minority, or Native) to the Sameas
secondary narcissism (The Postmodern Explained 27). Lyotard fears that
this dominant form of thought and action in developed societies . . . may be
no more than the blind (and compulsive) repetition of an earlier
bereavementthe loss of Godwhich in truth gave rise to the mode of modernity
and its project of conquest (27).
Primary narcissism occurs naturally in children in their preoccupation
with their own needs and wants. During
adolescence and often during adult stages of development, when individuals or
cultures are confronted with insurmountable obstacles, they revert to the
narcissism of childhoodwhich is known as secondary narcissism. Insurmountable obstacles often interfere with
an individuals or cultures image of the
perfect self or nation.
Secondary narcissism within cultures manifests many of
the same eight characteristics as those individuals who have narcissistic
disorders: 1) grandiositya preoccupation or over-exaggeration with ones
achievements; 2) a feeling of superiority that denies the costs of achievements
on others; 3) a belief in being chosen mixed with the desire to be among other
chosen peoples; 4) a desire for excessive admiration; 5) a feeling of
entitlement; 6) a willingness to exploit others to achieve personal goals; 7)
an inability to empathize with the feelings of those who suffer from ones
narcissistic behaviors; 8) and the inability to recognize ones own arrogance (Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV Fourth Edition 661).
Without intent to
malign President George W. Bush, many of the above characteristics have been
assigned by critics of President Bushs administration. In a three-part series on BBC called Elusive
Peace: Israel and the Arabs, Abu Mazen, Palestinian
Prime Minster, and Nabil Shaath,
Mazens Foreign Minister, reported that in their
first meeting with President Bush, he told them: Im driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight
those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did . . . . God would tell me, George, go and end the
tyranny in Iraq. And I did, and now, again, I feel Gods words coming to me,
Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and
get peace in the Middle East. And by God Im gonna
do it(BBC Press Release). Bushs comments are similar in
tone, however, to those Englightenment emancipation
narratives outlined by Lyotard. Both secular and religious narratives have
the desire for certitude as their unacknowledged motivationwhether their
Gods be Reason/Modernism or the Judeo/Christian/Islamic Dieties.
Lyotard believes that several
emancipation narratives governed nineteenth and twentieth century thoughtthe
collapse of which brought on secondary narcissism. Lyotard identifies
these narratives as:
the Christian narrative of
the redemption of original sin through love; the Aufiklarer
narrative of emancipation from ignorance and servitude through knowledge and
egalitarianism; the speculative narrative of the realization of the universal
Idea through the dialectic of the concrete; the Marxist narrative of
emancipation from exploitation and alienation through the socialization of
work; and the capitalist narrative of emancipation from poverty through technoindustrial development. (25)
However, these emancipation
narratives were constructed by a we or an us that actually did
not include the agency of the third partiesthe them. What is more, according to Lyotard, these narratives have been invalidated by
numerous historical eventsincluding the Holocaust (29). These narratives were invalidated over the
same period of time that metaphysical narrativesmeta-narrativeswere being
brought in to radical questioning (30). Lyotard believes that these invalidations and collapses are
connected to a resistance to . . . the insurmountable diversity of cultures
(30-31). Diversity of cultures of
necessity involves diversity of truth claims or images of history and of God.
Confrontation with the diversity of cultures also
includes all living species. Ecopsychologists note that including entire
biological/botanical spheres adds another dimension to secondary
narcissism. James Lovelock, a scientist
at Green College, Oxford, contends: The Earth System behaves as a single,
self-regulating system comprised of physical, chemical, biological, and human
components (770). Ecopsychologists,
who adhere to such an assertion, use indigenous psychologies to illuminate the
costs of secondary narcissism through their identification of biomedical
reductionism (Theodore Roszk), original trauma (Chellis Glendinning), species arrocance (John E. Mack), and ontogenetic crippling
(Paul Shepard). Modern physics has
revealed to us the possibility that the earth is the only planet upon which
sentient beings live. According to
Native intellectuals, this includes humans, animals, plants, and the earth
herself.
Theodore Roszak uses the term biomedical
reductionism to identify those theories, since Sigmund Freud, that advance
the idea that: The normally functioning ego [is] an isolated atom of
self-regarding consciousness that [has] no relational continuity with the
physical world around it (10). Such
theories continue the false self/environment, culture/nature, interior/exterior
dichotomies that have been the ground of reality for several centuries. Roszak suggests
that coming to understand our ecological interdependence, might be seen as the
evolutionary heritage that bonds all things genetically and behaviorally to the
biosphere. Just that much is enough
to reverse the scientific worldview and all psychology based upon it
(italics added; 14). Roszak
also claims there is too much evidence to ignore the fact that humans are
actors on a planetary stage who shape and are shaped by the biospheric system (14).
Chellis Glendinning
suggests that humans experience ongoing trauma when they dont recognize their
connections to the earth and all her creatures.
Glendinning contends that such trauma is
systemic or collective and is endured by technological people like ourselves in
our systematic removal from the natural world and our lives from the kinds
of social and cultural experiences our ancestors assumed when they lived in
rhythm with the natural world (52). Glenndinning goes so far as to suggest that such
disconnections have led to both personal and collective addictions:
alcoholism, drug abuse, sex addiction, consumerism, eating disorders,
codependence, and war making (54). John
E. Mack suggests that madness comes from species arrogance: a
prevailing attitude, conscious and unconscious, toward the Earth. Mack outlines how species arrogance results
from an attitude that treats the Earth as a thing, a big thing, an object to
be owned, mined, fenced, guarded, stripped, built upon, dammed, plowed, burned,
blasted, bulldozed, and melted to serve the material needs and desires of the
human species (282). In his novel The
Children of Gebelawi, Nobel Laureate Nagib Mafouz extends species
arrogance to hierarchies perpetuated by religions and governments who promote
their religions as the One true faith or their system of government as the best
for all humans. Such arrogant insistence
on ideological superiority is often, as Mafouz so
ably demonstrates in his novel, secured and maintained through violence.
Tolerance is difficult to achieve when every faction at
war believes that their system is the way to salvation at the exclusion of all
others. The messianic is the hope for
salvation to come.
The messianic, often a
narrative professing ideological superiority, according to Jacques Derrida, is
the desire for salvation in the form of justice. However, as John Caputo so aptly suggests:
The distinguishing feature
of any messianism is that it determines the
figure of the Messiah, gives the Messiah a determinate characterization and
specific configuration, with the result that the Messiah is identifiably
Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or, God forbid, Capitalistic, where a supply-side
free market Messiah is the latest teleological consummation of History. (160-161)
Messianic narratives are
often absolutist. And yet, they also
promote territorial deities who prefer Greco-European Christians, or Jews, or
Arabs and speak English, Hebrew, or Arabic.
Such narratives also promote a particular national history where God is
on the side of a chosen nationoften a nation who identifies themselves as
being elected because they are children of the book. Such narratives exclude, however, the sacred
narratives and Gods of India, China, Tibet, Native America and so on. Another hidden premise within messianic
nations is the assumption that certain believers inherit certain lands. Covenantal promises often involve lands of
inheritance or promised lands. These
lands, furthermore, become sanctified because certain mythic events took place
upon the land. The Temple Mount in
Israel is just such a placesacred to three religions because of events
particular to their identity. The United
States, by extension, became a New Eden, a land of Milk and Honey, destined for
those seeking Gods will. However, the
empty continent that immigrants envisioned was populated by between ninety to
one hundred million Natives (Lundquist
20).
Paul Shepards
theory concerning ontogenetic crippling adds to the eco-psychological
discussion by showing how separationsfrom the environment and other
culturescauses humans to fail to individuate or grow up (30). Shepard contends that if individuals and
nations fail to understand their place within the contexts of the entire environment,
narcissism will be pathologically extended throughout adult life. Such arrested development results in
massive therapy, escapism, intoxicants, narcotics, fits of destruction and
rage, enormous grief, and subordination to hierarchies that fail to nurture
human growth and development on any level (35).
What often occurs, notwithstanding, is the presumption
that dominant world views are true and alternative world views are false,
ignorant, or on the lower rungs of evolution and progress. Minority cultures, as a result, experience humiliationthey
are vulnerable to intolerance and the expectation of assimilation. Democracy, in such contexts, is suspect. Think, for example, of democracy evolving in
the United States at the same time the rights guaranteed under the Constitution
were systematically withheld from over three hundred nations of Indians within
the United States. Over time,
thirty-nine sovereign Indian nations have been established. These nations are
dependent on the paternalism of the dominant culture; yet most dont want the
democracy defined by mainstream ideologies.
Native nations prefer communal systems over those systems based on
radical individualism. Individualism, private property, competition, taxation,
and capitalism are synonymous with what is meant by democracy within the United
States. Such a complex of interdependent
social practices are contrary to many Native beliefs. What is more, dominant American policies have
been a constant source of humiliation for Natives on reservations (now
sovereign nations). Inherited
oppression is a documented collective disorder that has resulted from
the imposed belief that Natives would be better off as individual, Christian,
citizens under the existing democracy (Lundquist 17-29). Mainstream America, however, can not see its
own colonial violence (Lundquist 260).
What is created by these narcissistic tendencies are
various attachment disorders extended, however differently, to both
dominant and minority cultures. The
failure of parents to nurture children is extended, by analogy, to the failure
of entire cultures to nurture both individuals who adhere to dominate
ideologies as well as native or immigrant Others. Contemporary democracies support radical
individualism, competition, and private property through capitalism and
taxationpractices that are taken as fundamental to human liberty but undermine
family, clan, or tribal identities. In
his book The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch
posits that pathological narcissism appears in profusion in the everyday
life of our age: dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by others combined
with a fear of dependence, a sense of inner emptiness, boundless repressed
rage, and unsatisfied oral cravings as well as an intense fear of old age and
death, altered sense of time, fascination with celebrity, fear of competition,
decline of the play spirit, and deteriorating relations between men and
women (33). All of these
characteristics are similar to those manifest in attachment disorders.
Idolatry, secondary narcissism, Ipseity,
biomedical reductionism, species arrogance, and attachment disorders seem
contrary to the purposes of both secular and sacred agendas. Certainly religions promote
connectionsbetween humans and God, humans and their environments, humans and
particular communities, and individuals and their personal potentials. Jung posits that humans desire
wholeness. In order to achieve such
wholeness, each individual must go through the individuation process. Individuation, according to Jung, denotes
the process by which a person becomes a psychological in-dividual,
that is, a separate, indivisible unity or whole (Memories, Dreams,
Reflections 395). Individuation is
more than the coming of the ego into consciousness, Jung claims. The self comprises infinitely more than a
mere ego . . . It is as much ones self,
and all other selves, as the ego.
Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the
world to oneself (395-396). Part of
this gathering includes the Imago Deithe God image. Jung says the God image is imprinted on the
human soul and is spontaneously produced in dreams, fantasies, visions, and
carried down through time in myths, rituals, folklore, and great works of art;
it is, from the psychological point of view, a symbol of the self . . . , of
psychic wholeness (394).
For Jung, the Imago Dei or the Self, is the
central archetype in the human unconscious.
It is the archetype of order; the totality of the personalitysymbolized
by a circle, square, quaternity [. . . ], child,
and mandala (398).
However, in his Answer to Job, Jung notes the many divine
inconsistencies that exist throughout the Old Testament but more particularly
in The Book of Job. Jung posits
that Job was naVve:
dreaming perhaps of a
good God, or of a benevolent ruler and just judge. He had imagined that a covenant was a legal
matter and that anyone who was party to a contract could insist on is rights as
agreed; that God would be faithful and true or at least just, and, as one could
assume from the Ten Commandments, would have some recognition of ethical values
or at least feel committed to his own legal standpoint. But, to his horror, he has discovered that
Yahweh is not human but, in certain respects, less than human. (21)
In his 1960 memoir Night,
Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel,
a modern day Job, puts God on trial for His failure to keep his covenant with
Judaism. In his 1995 autoethnography
All Rivers Run to the Sea, Weisel claims that:
Auschwitz may well represent a double tragedy, of the believer and his Creator
alike . . . . Auschwitz is conceivable
neither with God nor without Him.
Perhaps I may someday come to understand mans role in the mystery
Auschwitz represents, but never Gods (84).
Wiesels youngest sister, Tsipouka, grandmother Nissel,
grandfather Dodye, mother Sarah, and father Shlomo were among his many relatives who died during the
Holocaust. Alan L. Berger maintains that
the millennial struggle between covenantal claim and historical counterclaim
in its twentieth-century expression nearly resulted in the theological and
physical destruction of Judaism (16).
Perhaps one of the central questions raised by Gods seeming
indifference to collective human suffering or by the claims from many religious
traditions that they know God s will best is this one: How can humans exercise
faith in a God whose character and attributes are so variously defined and
experienced? During the twentieth
century, two hundred million people were killed as soldiers or victims of
warmany of these wars justified ideologically or as the will of God.
In an ancient text about creation, Enoch sees the Lord
weep and asks: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all
eternity to all eternity. Enochs image
of God entails a being who has created millions of earths like this. Enoch says to the Lord: And thou hast taken
Zion to thine own bosom, from all thy creations, from
all eternity to all eternity; and naught but peace, justice, and truth is the
habitation of thy throne; and mercy shall go before they face and have no end;
how is it thou canst weep? The Lord
answers Enoch saying:
Behold these they
brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them
their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I
unto man his agency; And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given
commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me,
their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own
blood. (Pearl of Great Price
Moses 7: 29-33).
Is the Lord a loving God
who suffers because his children violate each other, or is he a God who plays
with the affections of various groupsplaying favorites, choosing Abel over
Cain, Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over his brothers. Or ought
such narratives to be read as cautionary tales exposing the consequences of
favoritism? Did Christ love the
Apostle John more than Peter? And the list continues. The echo can be heard through the Crusades,
Inquisition, Conquest of the Americas, and the war in Iraqthe justification of
exclusivity, envy, and violence in Gods name.
Many scholars are questioning inherited images of
God. For example, in God: A Biography,
Pulitzer Prize Winner Jack Miles rehearses the many roles God plays in the Old
Testament: In Genesis He is a Creator, Destroyer, Friend; in Exodus, a
Liberator and Lawgiver; in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, God is a Liege;
in Joshua and Judges, he assumes the role of a conqueror; in Samuel, he is more
like a Father; in Kings, He is an Arbiter; and so forth. And God, it would seem, continually plays
favorites. Miles sufficiently chronicles
Gods early intervention and final withdrawal from humanity in his study. In his Postlude, Miles asks if God has lost
interest (397). What is most telling,
however, is Miles implicit message: that inherited interpretations of Biblical
narratives are conflicted and give us a God who is as arbitrary in behavior
towards His human creations as the Greek gods appear to be. Miles believes it is time for critics to
rethink or rediscover the Lord God (418).
A central narrative revealing the ambiguous relationship
between God and his creatures is the story of Abraham, the first Hebrew, and
the commandment given him to sacrifice his son. What motivates God to command
that Abraham sacrifice his and Sarahs son?
And did Abraham, from the beginning, know that the sacrifice of his son
would not be required: My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt
offering (Genesis 22: 8). This story is
central to the conflicts in the world today; it is the story of the covenant
line. For Jews and Christians, this
story is also about Gods favoritism for Sarahs son over Hagars sonIsrael
over Islam. It is, for Christians, also
a story the leads to Christian triumphalism: The
belief that the biblical narrative is fulfilled in the New Testament which
announces God incarnated and the One true faith.
In the text that accompanied the Public Television Series
Genesis: A Living Conversation, Bill Moyers
explores the multiple interpretations of singular events in the Bible given by
various academics, theologians, and clergymen. In discussing the story of the
Sacrifice of Isaac, for example, Biblical scholar Phyllis Tribble
claims the story is anti-idolatrythat it is a narrative that brings an end to
Abrahams idolatry of his son as well as an end to child sacrifice (227). Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky
asks the seminar members if they arent troubled by Gods initial command for
Abraham to sacrifice his son: Arent you distressed , he asks, at the notion
of a God Who would ask for something that is essentially a suspension of the
ethical? (229). Professor Francisco O.
Garcia-Treto says: When we get to the point where we
feel that God is calling us to give somebody elses life up, were in bad
trouble. Theres no such thing as a
theological suspension of the ethical.
This is at the root of the worst things that religions have done
(229).
African American theologian, P. K. McCary
says: I was always taught that the story of Abraham and Isaac was really the
story of Gods ultimate sacrifice for us as Christians, when God sacrificed His
only son, and that it was intended to help us understand just how big and
meaningful Gods sacrifice really is. McCary adds a qualifier after this statement. Even so, I think that the taking of human
life is probably the biggest problem we have with this story. War, for example, involves the sacrifice not
only of soldiers, but of children and other innocent people. Furthermore, says McCary,
And wars are created by one or two or a group of men who have nothing to do
with the rest of us. That seems like
what God is doing in this story. What
God is doing really had nothing to do with usits simply Gods own ego
(240). Professor of Islamic studies at
George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr informed the seminar
group that many Muslims believe it was Ishmael and not Isaac that was taken to
Mecca and not Moriah to be sacrificed. And Hagar, not Abraham or Sarah, is therefore
the central character. This is not a
patriarchal story at all, says Nasr. Because of
this narrative, half the rites performed each year by two million people in
Mecca are based on what Abraham did. The
other half are based on what Hagar did (243).
While arguing that this narrative is a story about human obedience, Nasr also contends: While this is not a should story on
the level of external ethics, it is one on the level of mystical
understanding. On the mystical level,
Isaacor Ishmaelis really our carnal, passionate soul, that must be sacrificed
before the altar of divine reality in order for us to really be a friend of
God (236). For Nasr,
our passionate soul is that which disperses, that which separates, that which
fights against the truth. It is the
source of all evil toward other human beings.
Once you offer to sacrifice that soul to God, without flinching God
will not really kill you, but will transform your soul into that which is
luminousfull of charity and love, and close to him (237).
Christian theologian, Thomas A. Idinopulos
questions Christianitys adaptation of Christs ministry following His death
and resurrection. Idinopulos
says that the Holocaust ought to make a difference to Christians in
their fundamental beliefs about sin and redemption and Jesus Christ (44). In this statement, Idinopulous
italicizes ought to underscore the moral imperative that makes the
Holocaust an event that calls Christianity in to radical questioning. The soteriological
significance of the Christian religion is sharpened to a deadly point when one
admits the historical evolution of traditional Christian anti-Judaism into
modern racial anti-Semitism, an evolution which the consequence ultimately and
finally was the Holocaust (44). Idinopulos asks two significant questions: If Christianity
possesses integrity of faith, an inner unity of belief and practice, then the
Christian, precisely as a Christian, is morally and intellectually
obligated to answer the question: what difference does the Holocaust make to
ones faith in Jesus Christ? (45). The
second question is: how can Christians bring the sin, suffering, and evil of
the past two thousand years in line with [their] theological commitment to the
victorious cross? (46). Idinopulos draws on critics of Christianity who claim that
Christs coming, death, and resurrection have not appeared to make much
difference in the quality of history. Idinopulos quotes German existentialist Karl Lowith, who contends that: History is, through all the
ages, a story of action and suffering, of power and pride, of sin and
death. Lowith
asserts that as a historical world religion, Christianity is a
complete
failure (47). Idinopulos,
however, believes that the victory of Christs cross is a prior truth,
a formal, not empirical truth, a truth established independently of history,
faithfully adhered to as true belief apart from the factual evidence of
history (48).
So many theological struggles are revealed in the above
discussion: 1) how ought scriptures to be understoodas literal/historical, as
mythical/symbolic/psychological, or as a source of endless speculation? Furthermore, whose interpretations of
scriptures are most accurate. Certainly
the Shiite /Sunni conflicts in Iraq are bound up with answering such
questions. 2) If Muslims feel that their
Quran is the restoration of the true interpretation
of Jewish narratives and Christians feel the New Testament is a triumph over
all sacred narratives, where does that leave the witnesses of the Jews or other
religions. Hinduism, for example, is the
third largest religion in the world after Christianity and Islam. Where does
Christian triumphalism leave the Native American Old
Testaments concerning the creator and his son?
3) Why is Israel so central to world affairs when there are only twelve
million Jews and nearly two billion Muslims and Christians? Certainly, all three religions of the book
are wanting the Temple Mount in Israel as their exclusive sacred place. And why doesnt God do something about all
these violent rivalries? Where is Gods
justice and how can humans recognize that justice?
Failure to work towards human justice as a common human
project, according to Anne Wilson Schaef, is a
consequence of religious addiction. Most
Westerners can recognize substance addictions; few, however, understand process
addictions. Religion can be a process
addiction. Schaef
is not talking about being religious
or being spiritual, she is speaking about those groups of religious
people who avoid dialogue with followers of other religions and claim to have
all the answers. Says Schaef,
The religion addict is
very different, inside and out, from the person who is involved in spiritual
growth. The religion addict loses touch
with personal values and develops behaviors that are the same as those of the
alcoholic or drug addictjudgmentalism, dishonesty,
and control. (23)
For those addicted to
religion, God is a Controller (47).
This notion of control extends to government leaders who, according to Schaef, assume God-like posturesespecially when they are
convinced that their policies are the only correct policies. Our government sees its purpose as regulation
and control, says Schaef. And as a result, Our relationships fall into
the controlling-controlled pattern (47-48).
Addiction to religion also produces individuals who believe their lot in
life is to rescue those around them. As
rescuers, they make themselves indispensable to others (30). This rescuing mentality also makes addicts
good sufferersGood Christian Martyrs.
Their goodness is directly related to their suffering and the rewards
they expect (and receive) because they are willing to sacrifice so much (30).
Religious addicts want to be good, to be liked, and even to be envied; but they
do not respect others (31). When
addicts say they want to be responsible, what they really mean is that they
want to take control or to have power.
And power often means ascendancy over others. We learn to equate power with authority,
domination, and sovereignty (42).
Furthermore, Schaef contends that such
addictive processes actually cause a loss of spirituality.
What happens, says Schaef, is that the Addictive System creates God in its
own image and then distorts that image to suit its own purposes (91).
Schaefs discussion of
addictive systems are relevant to secondary narcissism in that the focus is on
the self, ones culture, ones image, and ones ability to control others. This is Ipseity at
its worse. And the Imago Dei
becomes not the path to individuation and wholeness but an Icon of
control. With so much chaos generated
from diverse God images and the use of God terms to justify violence, it is a
wonder that modern man feels any ontological support of the universe (Purcell
161). Where is the sacred narrative, the
transcendental signified that can provide an ontological narrative of meaning
that transcends national, ideological, and religious boundaries to the degree
that controlling governments dont feel justified in taking the lives of
Others? Has, as Miles suggests, God
withdrawn from the world? In speaking
about Levinas and Theology, Michael Purcell contends
that
God withdraws, and even
becomes silent, to give place to the human . . . . The retreat of God enables the advance of the
human; atheism, as Levinas understands it, is the
prelude to an ethics of responsibility and a commitment to justice. Humilitys first move is a distancing, a remotio. Alterity, or otherness, challenges from the outside,
and refuses both system and ontology by the very fact of its non-participation
or incorporation. (161)
Peace can not be
established unless the narcissistic shadow component of the collective is
brought to consciousness and dealt with in a way that leads self-righteous,
religiously addicted, selves towards Others.
Levinas believes that the proximity of God
is in the countenance of [our] fellowman (in Purcell 161). Levinas contends
that the movement of the Same toward the Other prevents the return to the
Same. This means that casualties of war
arent abstract numbers whose deaths are necessary sacrifices for the
establishment of democracy or freedom.
This means that Christian Fundamentalists can not use their aversion to
same sex marriage as a camouflage for the infidelity in Christian marriages or
the rise in pornography as a private addiction among a large portion of
mainstream men. This means that
fundamentalists cant use the image of the aborted fetus to cloud other failed
human rights. This means that Muslim terrorists cant use the flaws of
industrialized nations to camouflage their own inadequate realization of
maturityespecially with regards to womens rights. This means that President
Bush can not project evil on to the Middle East as an aversion to confronting
the continual denial of human rights in the United States.
If Levinas is correct, that God
withdrew so that his children could assume responsibility for their beliefs and
actions, then collective therapy is needed.
The collective shadow is not God, but mans image of God and Gods will
projected on to the world. This means
that how I choose to act reveals my God.
Suzanne
Evertsen Lundquist
Works Cited
Bellah, Robert N. et. al. The
Good Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1992.
Berger, Alan L. Crisis and Covenant: The Holocaust in
American Jewish Fiction. New York:
SUNY Press, 1985.
Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders Fourth Edition.
Washington, D. C.: American Psychiatric Association,
1994.
Elusive Peace: Israel and
the Arabs. http://www.bbc.co.uk/print/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10>october/06/bush.shtml
Girard, René. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. New York: Orbis
Books, 2005 edition.
Girard, René. The Scapegoat. Trans. Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U P,
1986.
Girard, René. Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the
World. Stanford: Stanford U P,
1987.
