BOOK REVIEW : The Soul of Man Under Socialism by Oscar Wilde

When he wrote this essay, first published in 1891, Oscar Wilde was very optimistic about the ability of socialism to rid society of poverty, and advanced machinery to rid society of burdensome toil. Or was he? I don't know much about the context, but Wilde was a playful provocateur. Perhaps by taking the promises made by socialists and running with them, he was trying to expose the fallacies of their thinking and explore what really might be necessary for an improvement in society.

He claims that the chief advantage of Socialism would be rescuing us from having to be concerned about alleviating the hardships of others. Poverty might be ended without the need for charity, which is degrading to the recipient.

What he means by socialism is the abolition of private property. He is not simply talking about some extension of a state funded welfare system. Of course he is writing well before the horrors which attended so many experiments with communism in the twentieth century. So it is possible his optimism is genuine.

We think of socialism as the surrender of the individual to the collective. Irony is at the heart of Wilde's wit, and here the irony is that he takes the promised Utopia of Socialism and explains how it can only succeed if it leads to the full flowering of Individualism.

The reason to abolish private property is that its protection and maintenance distracts us from cultivating our Individuality. The more we are our property the less we are ourselves.

His vision of socialism is more like anarchism. All forms of authority will cease and along with them all forms of punishment.

He turns to the teachings of Jesus, which he presents also as a call to Individualism.

It is common for people to wrongly associate Jesus' teachings with Socialism. There is a huge difference between appealing to one's followers to voluntarily help the poor and advocating that the state should force them to do so. Wilde isn't saying that Jesus was a Socialist. He's merely saying that Jesus advocated Individualism and asserting the opinion that Socialism, if properly pursued, would lead to greater Individualism.

He adds that Individualism would end family life, but that this would make the love of a man and a woman more than it has been, the implication being that that which is enforced is less genuine. Again he appeals to Jesus' refusal to recognise the members of his own family.

In the latter part of the essay, Wilde turns to literary criticism to show how hard it is for Individualism to find acceptance in various written forms.

Wilde's take on things may tend to be unrealistic. He argues ending private property will end crime. But in the broad strokes of his thesis is much food for thought.

It makes sense that a peaceful, cooperative and loving society, if such a thing is possible, would have to be made up of those in whom Individuality has found an unhindered expression. We can see an apt analogy in nature. A thriving healthy group of plants or animals are those least impeded in following their instincts.

Is a society possible where everyone is free from impositions on their Individuality and yet cooperation allows for the practical solution of the problems facing the group?

I think so, but the process to get there will not be easy as the healthy loving impulses are often buried beneath much resentment.

The abolition of private property is impractical because it requires either the consent or the control of the masses. On the other hand, Wilde is right that Individualism is the answer. The way to achieve it is through a mixture of assertion and healing. Strength and soundness are needed to stand firm in the face of all that opposes it. This is where Wilde's pointing to Jesus is so relevant. We don't need screwed up people uninhibitedly living out their reckless disregard for the well-being of themselves or others. Of course, we might see that they are not Individuals, because they are more of a programmed expression of those who have damaged them than of their authentic self. 

But we need a path of healing and it may be that the words of Jesus, rather than those of Socialists, have the ability to provide it.

Anyway, there is much to recommend Wilde's vision :

"For what man has sought for is indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment."

The Lord's Prayer for Unbelievers Like Myself

Photo by Serhii Datsinko - Ukraine

For a while I’ve been intending to do some more writing about what Christian ideas mean to me as a person who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. Why not have a look at a central text - The Lord’s Prayer? This is found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4.

“Our Father…”

I think it helps to draw meaning from this concept of “God the Father” if we acknowledge that it is an expression which originated in a patriarchal culture. The source and guiding principle of the universe might have been depicted as “The Mother”, but in this case it wasn’t, so what we have to ask is “What does the father figure mean to a culture in which a man was considered the head of the family?”

Our parents are the source of our existence. They came together and we were the result. So the father is a representation of the process by which we came into existence.

The father, in such a culture, is also the teacher of morals and the one who punishes us if we depart from them.

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but the term “God” is meaningful to me as a symbol.

First there is “God the Creator”. For me, this is a personification of the creative process of the universe whereby more complex and capable wholes come into existence. Somehow atoms came to be arranged in the meaningful form which allows me to exist as a complex intelligent entity sitting at my computer and typing this sentence. We know a lot more about this process now than we did when the Lord’s Prayer was first spoken, but it is still something worthy of the kind of awe we associate with the term “God”.

Then there is “God” as a motivating force in human behaviour - “God” as love. Here again we have something which brings into being more complex and capable wholes. While love is all too easily subsumed by conflicts of one kind or another - to the extent that there is such a thing as a friendship or a family or a tribe or a community, these are wholes which are greater than the sum of their parts made possible by love. Love being a form of communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity.

“God” is seen as a teacher of morality and a judge. Love is the source of our morality. I believe we have an instinct for it which is born in us, and, if we are lucky, that is reinforced and encouraged by the example of those who love us. While we often suffer from experiences which are simply bad luck, we can also be taught lessons by life. We may make a selfish decision in which we neglect to recognise that our wellbeing rests within the wellbeing of those around us, and as a result life may teach us a lesson via negative consequences. I think “God the Judge” is a symbol for that process. Life could be imagined a bit like a video game. We have a certain capacity for love which can be recharged in positive encounters with others, like picking up power packs, and there are encounters with mischance and with the malevolence of others which may deplete us. There is a chance we may lose our way entirely. Maybe we will lose patience and “go over to the dark side” because it seems easier, less of a struggle. The idea of “God the Judge” is of someone who is keeping the score. Maybe there is no such entity, but our life situation and its consequences are real.

“…who art in heaven…”

To me, the word “heaven” represents a realm of potential which we can apprehend using our imagination. We can imagine what the human world would be like if it reached its creative potential, if love and reason ruled over all. In our world we see “God” as if “through a glass darkly”. Love shines out here and there amidst the darkness, but war and crime and depression and all the rest can easily seem to be the larger part of reality. And foolishness is more common than wisdom or reason. So we have to look to our imaginary vision of how things could be to see “God” clearly.

“…hallowed be thy name…”

“Hallowed” means “made holy”. As I’ve said, the creative principle of the universe is one which allows for the formation of more complex and capable wholes. “Holy” comes from the same source as the word “whole”. So that which is “holy” is that which is “whole” or “of the whole”. To heal is to “be made whole”. “God” is our symbol for all that “makes whole”.

“…Thy Kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

The essence of the prayer is that the potential for wholeness - through love and reason - be realised in the world as it exists in our imagination.

“…Give us this day our daily bread…”

A plea that we are able to obtain the means to meet our daily physical needs, but this also could be a way of symbolising our emotional needs for hope, inspiration and love.

“…And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

One of the major threats to wholeness, of the individual or the group, is lack of forgiveness. 

Conscience acts as a guide to our behaviour, but a healthy relationship with the conscience requires self-acceptance and the flexibility it makes possible. If our self-acceptance is undermined to the extent that the conscience becomes an intolerable source of oppression, then we can go to war against it. Instead of doing what we know to be the best thing, we may deliberately do the opposite of what our conscience would tell us. This seems to me to be the best way to understand the extremes of human malevolence. There are acts of evil which have a pragmatic purpose. One might torture someone to get information to help one’s own side in a war. But some people commit such acts without such an external motive. How do we explain such sadism? The impulse is the exact opposite of the love impulse. Is it unreasonable to interpret malevolence, of which this is the purest form, as resentment at a conscience which demands loving behaviour when, because of undermined self-acceptance, there is no more love to give? If hatred of the conscience were not a motivating force there would be no point in wasting time, or risking one’s freedom, by inflicting suffering when one could spend that time and effort indulging in sensual pleasure.

So a healthy relationship with the conscience is one in which forgiveness for past transgressions frees us up to do better next time. Self-forgiveness is a major part of self-acceptance. By self-acceptance I don’t mean complacency, because our potential to improve is a key part of what is being accepted. To be self-accepting is to recognise that one has nothing to prove about one’s self and thus be able to open up to intrinsic motivations for doing things rather than ones rooted in maintaining a fragile sense of pride.

And clearly the functioning of human groups require forgiveness amongst their members. It won’t work if there is an imbalance here, with some forgiving all the time and others always being the ones whose misbehaviour is being forgiven. So it is linked : “…forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” (the unforgiving don’t get forgiven) and followed by the next two lines which address the origins of the transgressions which might need to be forgiven.

“And lead us not into temptation…”

It’s all too easy to be tempted by opportunities to seek immediate gratification of some desire even when we know that the longer term consequences will be harmful to both ourselves and others. So there is a plea to limit such tests. Since I’m not looking at this as something involving a supernatural being, I would see this as an intention to develop the spirit of stoicism as an defence against impulsiveness.

“…but deliver us from evil.”

Once again a positive focusing on the power of love, reason and wisdom, personified here as “God”, to heal our malevolent motivations, An opening up to all that might lead us back to wholeness.

This is needed to compliment forgiveness. Forgiveness can’t be expected in the absence of a move toward better behaviour.

“For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever.”

The creative principle of life, expressed in inter-human affairs as love, is that through which everything becomes possible. In a limited sense it is possible to defy this principle, but such defiance is ultimately in vain as nothing worthwhile comes to us as a result. Selfishness is ultimately self-defeating, because we have far more to gain by working together for our mutual benefit. In this sense, that which we symbolise under the word “God” is the source of everything wonderful and the ruler of the system of which we are an expression.

"Amen"

“Amen” means “certainty”, “truth” and “verily”.

Who Are the Meek and How Do They Inherit the Earth?

Photo by wisitporn.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Matthew 5:5

There is an old joke that goes : “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth (if it’s O.K. with the rest of you guys.)”

Meekness is often exploited. It seems as if the aggressive are more likely to get what they want.

There are different interpretations of this passage.

Jeremy Griffith, the author of Freedom : The End of the Human Condition, says that “the meek” are “the more innocent”, by which he means those of us who have been more nurtured and are thus less insecure and more honest in our thinking and less aggressive in our nature. By “…inherit the earth” he thinks Jesus meant that these individuals will “…have to lead humanity home to a human-condition-free world.”

Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, claims that a better translation of the Greek word ήμερος usually translated as “meek” is “those who have weapons and the ability to use them but are determined to keep them sheathed”. Those who take the right path are those who integrate their shadow, who acknowledge the dark side of their nature but do not succumb to it, gaining strength from their encounter with it. He is afraid that we may assume that meek is synonymous with “weak” :

Here is a guide to how the Greek word is generally translated.

Here is some discussion of Peterson’s interpretation.

One problem I have with both interpretations is the failure to acknowledge the meaning of the word “inherit”. An inheritance is something unearned which falls to us. Now it may have been earned in some instances, in the sense that someone may put us in their will because we have been of service to them or we may be written out of a will because we have done something to offend a family member. But none of this is intrinsic to the meaning of the word “inheritance”. The passage doesn’t say “the meek will earn (or win) the earth”.

I think we have to look at the context to get a better understanding.

This is the third in what are known as the Beautitudes. Jesus tells us that eight particular classes of people are “blessed” or “fortunate”. He then tells his followers that all of them are “blessed” or “fortunate” if they are persecuted because of him.

He first claims “blessedness” for the “poor in spirit” and then for “those who mourn”. Clearly these are not those who are blessed with good fortune in the world as it currently stands.

I think that, to understand the Beatitudes, we have to recognise that Jesus was an apocalypticist, i.e. a person who believed that some event was going to occur which would overturn the established social order and usher in some kind of paradise on earth. (I recognise that it is more popular to interpret the concept of a “Kingdom of Heaven” as some ethereal place we go to when we die, but that doesn’t make so much sense to me.)

The Beatitudes make sense in the framework of two worlds - the social world we know, with its injustices, its dishonesty and its oppressive power relationships - and a potential world of honesty and love which lies buried beneath its repressions.

Sermon on the Mount 1 Le Sainte Bible Traduction nouvelle selon la Vulgate par Mm J -J Bourasse et P Janvier Tours Alfred Mame et Fils 2 1866 3 France 4 Gustave Dor
Engraving photographed by ruskpp.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:3

Perhaps the “poor in spirit” are those who have been very wounded by their experiences of life. They have little spirit left in them. But in a world of love their wounds will be healed and they will be free of oppression. In terms of a transition to the new world, they have the advantage - “the blessing” - of not being invested in the old.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” 5:4

To be in mourning is not a form of righteousness that one pursues. As with being “poor in spirit” it is a disadvantage in the old world, but one which makes us less invested in it. We fixate on loving relationships which we have lost, through the death of the loved one or through a breakdown in the relationship. In a world where everybody loves everybody else, it will be easy to let go of the past and live in the present.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” 5:5

No amount of power or aggression can keep the old world from dying. Terrible destruction can occur. Nothing can necessarily protect anyone. But, only a healthy society will not eventually fall. If such a healthy loving truthful world comes into existence, it will belong to the meek as much as to anyone else. The point is that the powerful and aggressive try to hang onto the world, and, individually, they always fail. They can postpone the new world, but they can never have a world of their own which persists.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” 5:6

Those who long for a world in which we treat each other well, are not invested in a world in which we don’t. So, once again, we have a group of people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain in a transition from the old world to the new world.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” 5:7

Again, things don’t always work this way in the old world. But mercy is clearly the path to the new world. Our divisions keep us trapped in the old world. As William Blake put it : “Mutual forgiveness of each vice, Such are the gates of paradise.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” 5:8

I think this is where we come to what Griffith calls “the innocent”. As very young children we were aligned to the world of love. If God is the creative theme of the universe which is manifested in human behaviour as love, then children can “see God”. This is the source of their “enthusiasm”, i.e. “the god within”. It is the wounds of life, which sow the seeds of internal division and breed resentment, which “hide the face of God” from us. In a world in which these divisions are healed with understanding, everyone will live in full awareness that they are manifestations of this creative force.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.” 5:9

This is similar to 5:7. Peace between warring factions is keeping us in the old world. Those who can resolve conflicts are architects of the new world. The reward falls to all, not just to those who behave this way. It isn’t about pursuing righteous behaviour in order to pass a test and get a reward, it is about being a manifestation of a social process from which the whole of humanity benefits.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5:10

The old world is threatened by honesty and is insecure in it’s sense of its own worth, so those who tell the truth or act in a way which shows up the old world’s corrupt behaviour tend to be persecuted. It is necessary to keep the vision of the new world in mind in order to not give in to this pressure.

Another interpretation could be put on this sentence. Some people are persecuted because of a false sense of righteousness (what William Blake called “Moral Virtue”). A good example might be people who are persecuted for their sexuality. Someone who is in a loving gay relationship is being honest and loving - requirements of the new world - and someone who tries to persecuted them in the belief that they are deviating from righteousness, by not adopting dishonesty and suppressing their love, is part of the old world. The new world is for the person being thus persecuted as it is for all who have been persecuted.

So how does this apocalypse, this death of the old world and birth of the new take place?

What makes the most sense to me is that the human race has always been engaged in a kind of collective improvisation to find the path to the new world. Art, philosophy, religion, science… These are all ways in which our minds and our hearts have been engaged in a process of trying to sort ourselves out. We make mistakes, we strive to learn from them and compensate for them. We examine the world around us and try to better understand where we come from.

Photo by smileus.

Think of us as a computer trying to work out the bugs in its own programming. We can even see this in the evolution of different religions. We can see Jesus as someone trying to compensate for the flaws in Judaism, just as Judaism was an attempt to compensate for flaws in various pagan belief systems. It’s all a part of a process of trying to find something which works. And, in the modern world, we have new abilities and new problems not dreamt of in Jesus’ time.

The advantage we have is that this collective improvisation is taking place at an exponential rate. We can share ideas very quickly and with minimum censorship.

What should we do? Participate in the process. Speak what we feel to be the truth. Listen to the ideas expressed by others and test them for flaws. The conceptual framework of understanding which ushers in a new world will be the one which passes the test of such scrutiny. And we will know it because it works, because it heals conflict and spreads wellbeing wherever it is expressed. “Ye shall know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:16

Every day we see evidence of how rotten the old world is - lies and corruption are exposed. It’s time for the new world to find itself amidst the collapse of the old. It can only grow out of open, honest, spontaneous and generous interaction between individuals. Dogmatic utopias constructed through social programming or the impositions of more laws are part of the old world. We will know the truth by the fact that it sets us free from all that.

Photo by Gleb TV.

BOOK REVIEW : The Murder of Christ by Wilhelm Reich

This book by controversial psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich is unlikely to appeal to traditional Christian believers. Reich theorises that Jesus must have had sex with one or more of the women who surrounded him during his ministry. If Jesus was a naturally loving individual, Reich concludes, he must have exhibited the free genital expression intrinsic to a healthy character structure. 

Reich was not a traditional believer. He views Jesus as a man whose presence had a profound impact on the world because he was so healthy and the rest of us are so sick. The very tendency to interpret his specialness as something otherworldly, something supernatural, and to create myths of magical events such as virgin birth and resurrection from the dead around his memory, is evidence of how alienated we are from the functioning of our own bodies. 

We are born with primary instincts which direct us toward loving behaviour through the pleasurable streaming of the life energy in our bodies. But we are born into a society which is antagonistic to such feelings. The frustration of the primary instincts causes them to be re-channelled into secondary drives. These can take many forms, including various kinds of egotism, aggression, anxieties, etc.

What Reich admits he cannot explain is how this occurred in the beginning. The story of Adam and Eve gives this change from healthy functioning to antagonism towards the free operation of the life force, i.e. God, a mythological expression. We are caught in a terrible trap and that trap is our own neurotic character structure, which alienates us from each other and from nature. In the first chapter Reich gives a description of The Trap and the various ways we try to reconcile ourselves to imprisonment within it. Religion is one source of solace, a promise of a life outside the trap after death.

But Reich presents Jesus as a man who never entered The Trap. A man with a healthy character structure, a man who unselfconsciously gave expression to our original loving instincts. His wisdom was the honest clear thinking anyone would exhibit who was not impeded by the fears and frustrations that come with being divided against one’s own life energy.

Central to this condition is fear of our sexual feelings. This is the hook on which our loving instincts get snagged.

In Western culture things have changed a lot since Reich’s death in 1957. We are more honest about sexuality. He played a role in opening things up. It was he who coined the term “Sexual Revolution”. But that doesn’t mean that the problem he highlighted is any the less with us. What he felt was repressed in us was not so much sex itself but the loving expression of “the genital embrace”. It’s possible to have sex several times a day and still be a denizen of The Trap. Reich uses the term “four-lettering” to describe compulsive neurotic sex - the “wham bam thank you ma’am” kind of copulation that is all the world away from the gentle process which builds slowly and naturally to an orgasm which frees the soul to meld with that of one’s partner.

Maybe attitudes to adolescent sexuality are more enlightened than they were in Reich’s day. He talks of the sexual agony of the adolescent. This is something I could identify with. Even though I had sexually liberal parents, I was greatly disturbed by the onrush of powerful sexual desires at puberty. I remember wishing at one point that my sexual desires could be medically removed, because they were such a source of terrible anxiety. Why? I don’t know. Reich felt that young people were psychologically damaged by the sex negative attitudes of parents, teachers and the church, which caused them to fight against and repress their sexual desires instead of expressing them in a healthy way. Thus one generation of sexual cripples cripples the next.

Once again, the fact that young people today are more sexually active would not necessarily be a positive sign for Reich. Compulsive unloving sex is just another neurotic symptom.

In this book, which was written only a few years before he was imprisoned and died, Reich doesn’t try to make a carefully reasoned or evidenced argument about human nature or about the life and death of Jesus. This is written more in the mode of the prophet crying in the wilderness. His early work was supported with references to case studies and anthropological research. Here he simply states what he strongly believes to be true and it is up to us to either feel that it makes sense of our own experience and what we have read in the gospels about Jesus or that it doesn’t. Given that, in the middle of his career, Reich claimed to have discovered scientific evidence of the life energy, which he called “orgone” - evidence which was taken seriously by very few other scientists - perhaps this less scientific approach is preferable. One need not agree with everything Reich says to gain from the stimulation of his iconoclastic thought. We all need to be shaken up from time to time.

The story of the life and murder of Christ is, arguably, the most important story in Western history. Even those of us who are not Christians know its major events. It permeates our culture. It doesn’t matter that Reich is no Biblical scholar. Even if this were a fictional story, it is one which embodies the central human dilemma. Reich is using the basics of the story as a way of contemplating and illustrating the human condition. And he doesn’t hide the fact that he identifies aspects of his own situation with that of Christ. He too, at least in his own mind, is a speaker of truths unwelcome to the authority figures of his time. He too had reluctantly taken on a leadership role.

Reich presents Christ as a man who only gradually discovers that he is special. He has to learn that others are not free in the way that he is. His psychological freedom and loving nature make him very attractive to those around him. He wants to help them. But he doesn’t understand that their character structure is such that they will suck up whatever love he shows them and then resent him because they can’t be like him. They will seduce him into becoming a leader - into marching on Jerusalem - but it will all be for nothing. He will be killed because those with a sick character structure always have a murderous resentment for those who are still truly alive inside themselves.

It is this tendency which is the central subject of the book. For Reich, the murder of Christ is something that happens all over the world ever day. Christ was an embodiment of our original loving instincts as they are expressed in the body. And the Murder of Christ continues through the stifling of the expression of those instincts in every child. Who is the murderer of Christ? Reich points the finger at all of us.

Like Listen Little Man!, another book Reich wrote in the latter part of his life when he was at the centre of much hostility, The Murder of Christ is often a harshly accusatory book, but we may gain much through our encounter with its thorniness. Today we know more about the chemistry of love. We know that there are forms of intimacy, sexual or otherwise, which cause our bodies to produce the chemical Oxytocin. The experience of this chemical in our blood stream, which produces warm feelings of affection and bonding and thus, no doubt, works to melt the rigidity of our angry, frightened or resentful ego structure, is perhaps what Reich and his patients experienced as the flow of “orgone energy”. Perhaps it is true that a significant element in the dark side of our life as humans - aggression, sexual predation, greed, depression, loneliness - arises through a fear of bodily sensations which, were we less troubled by them, could lead us to a more loving society.

Eva Reich, Jerome Siskind, Peter Reich, Wilhelm Reich and Ilse Ollendorff in Maine

Can We Find Anything Useful in Christianity?

Copyright: udra / 123RF Stock Photo

There are many who criticise the supernatural beliefs of the religious. I prefer to take a different approach. What useful and valid ideas are there in a religion which don’t depend on such supernatural beliefs? If we don’t believe in the supernatural, we may be tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater, denying ourselves something profoundly useful because it is presented in a framework which also includes supernatural beliefs. And to take what is not supernatural out and test its effectiveness to bring benefit undercuts the argument that any benefit the religion may confer is evidence for the reality of the supernatural agency or agencies which are believed to lie behind it.

If we look at the philosophy expressed by Jesus in the gospels in isolation from any supernatural belief and outside the context of any particular form of Christian dogma, it centres around the concept of sin as humanity’s central problem and love as its solution.

What is meant by “sin”? This is another word for selfishness. Take the example of gluttony. To enjoy eating is natural and healthy, but if we take more than our share and/or more than is health for us, then selfishness is taking precedence over the interests of others and over our own larger self-interest. Selfishness is not simply self-interest. We are all motivated by self-interest. Our behaviour is driven by our perception of what will maximise our pleasure or minimise our suffering. Selfishness is when our present needs are so powerful that they override our wider self-interest.

What causes selfishness? Selfishness is the natural self-directedness of the suffering or threatened individual. If you hit your thumb with a hammer you will have trouble thinking about anything other than your thumb.

While physical suffering can certainly make us self-directed for the period that it continues, it is not the central source of selfishness. The central generator of human selfishness (i.e. “sin”) is guilt. This is because guilt has the ability to form a negative feedback loop. If we feel guilty about our selfish behaviour then the guilt increases our suffering and thus our selfishness.

It was from this dilemma that Jesus wanted to deliver us. This selfishness generating sense of guilt is what alienates us from our basic loving nature.

What is love? Love is something which allows individuals to communicate and cooperate in a way which brings into existence a larger whole. It is that which allows a group of individuals to operate as a family or, on a larger scale, a community. Loving communication is characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and generosity. So clearly selfishness is a barrier to love.

Copyright: wavebreakmediamicro / 123RF Stock Photo

Jesus gave a name to the ultimate possible form of loving community - “the Kingdom of Heaven”. He saw this as something which exists both within and without the individual. It exists within us as our capacity to feel love and around us in the ways in which love is expressed and the potential that exists for it to be expressed further. The terms “Heaven” and “Hell” do not require a belief in the supernatural to be meaningful. It is illuminating to read each as referring to an imagined potential. Heaven is how the world could be if our natural capacity for love is set free and Hell is a vision of the world of suffering which the guilt-driven double bind inflicts upon us. If we look around at the suffering in the world from war, poverty, preventable disease, mental illness, etc., then we can see that Hell is already with us and that there is the potential for it to get far worse.

Love is driven by pleasure. The pleasure-giving chemical Oxytocin is released into our blood-stream when we engage in loving behaviour, thus rewarding and reinforcing it. Negative emotions such as fear or guilt block this from happening. If we view “God” as a personification of love (amongst other things) then the concept that “God forgives our sins” is a way of acknowledging that what is needed to move away from destructive forms of behaviour is to let go of guilt and fear and reconnect with our love of ourselves and, from that basis, our love of others.

While selfishness is the state in which we thinking mainly of ourselves, bliss is the state in which we forget ourselves. We can see this by thinking about the experience of orgasm. The French refer to it as “le petit mort”  or “the little death” because, in the moment of ecstasy, the ego (the conscious thinking self) is temporarily lost or forgotten. This is a good example because it challenges the puritanical stream of Christianity which saw suffering as being good for the soul and pleasure being harmful. Such a philosophy will tend to make the individual more dependent on belief in a supernatural afterlife by encouraging them to make their current life wretched, but it is unlikely to make them any less self-obsessed, and thus any more loving. Sexual lust is viewed as a sin for the same reason that gluttony is. If someone’s appetite for something is so great that it overrides their concern for the interests of others then it is a form of selfishness which stands as a barrier to love. But healthy erotic desires only turn into lust when we repress them for some reason, often because we have been encouraged to feel guilty about them. Sexual intercourse which consists of the affectionate sharing of pleasurable feelings is rightly described as “making love” (it is accompanied by the release of Oxytocin into the bloodstream). Even where sexual activity may take less healthy forms, repression is generally not the solution. Remove feelings of guilt and behaviour naturally moves in a healthier direction without the need for self-denial.

Creative activity is another example of love at work. While we are caught up in a problem solving exercise or in the creation of a work of art, our attention may be directed towards something outside ourselves to the extent that we forget about ourselves entirely. Only when we are finished do we realise that we are hungry or cold or tired.

The irony is that many turn away from Christianity because all the talk of sin makes them feel more guilty. It seems as if Jesus’ attempt to free us from Hell and admit us to Heaven has largely backfired. But this set of powerful symbols and stories, which has entered so deeply into the collective consciousness of our culture, still holds the potential to guide our transformation if we find the key to unlock it’s potential to do so.

Copyright: leonidtit / 123RF Stock Photo

A Non-Supernatural Interpretation of The Holy Trinity

Copyright: bernardojbp / 123RF Stock Photo

I don’t believe in the supernatural, but I have been greatly influenced by the ideas expressed by Jesus in the gospels. I’m a pantheist. For me God is a mythological or poetic way of referring to the creative principle of the universe which is intrinsic to all things, rather than extrinsic, i.e. supernatural - above nature. So I thought I would see if I can meet the challenge of interpreting a key aspect of Christian dogma - the Holy Trinity - in purely non-supernatural terms.

The Trinity consists of :

1. God the Father

2. God the Son

3. God the Holy Spirit (or Ghost)

God the Father

I’ve said that, for me, the term “God” is a poetic way of referring to the creative principle of the universe. Matter is structured energy and some forms of matter have a highly complex form of structure which allows them to grow and reproduce. And some of these highly complex forms have the capacity to use reason to aid their self management. Science is always advancing our knowledge of how this creative process of increasing organisation and complexity takes place. What is undeniable is that it does take place and thus there is a creative principle of some kind at work. This principle is one through which more complex wholes are formed from smaller and simpler wholes, e.g. our body is made up of cells, the cells are made up of molecules, the molecules are made up of atoms.

So all matter and all life comes about because of the agency of this creative principle. “God” created all things.

But what of we humans as individuals? Does the creative principle operate through us? A principle need not operate always by exactly the same means. What brings atoms together to form a molecule is not necessarily the same thing which brings a group of single-celled organisms together to form a community which may later become a single multi-cellular organism. The principle is a tendency for more complex organisations to develop where circumstances allow. The means by which that tendency is realised will change at each level of complexity reached. We humans can make a reasoned decision to come together as a cooperative group, whereas atoms don’t have the capacity of using reason as either a motivation or a means to an end in their formation of a molecule.

So how does the creative principle operate within us? Emotionally it is our capacity to feel love which motivates us to bond and cooperate with others and thus to become a part of a larger social whole. This is a biological process involving the production of the chemical messenger oxytocin. But our intellectual capacity for reason is also a manifestation of the creative principle. It is through this function that we are able to gain understanding of the world around us and bring into being new arrangements of matter which never existed before. Art and technology are expressions of the creative principle.

It has to be remembered that this principle is blind. It is improvisational not goal-directed. It creates an ecosystem the relative stability of which arises from balance. But it can give rise to something which upsets that balance and threatens the system. One of the perennial questions for religious people is : If God is all-powerful why does he allow evil? I think that this conception of the creative principle as God gives an explanation for this mystery. What do we mean by “all-powerful”? Do we mean “able to do anything which is possible” or do we expect this to also mean “able to do the impossible”? Someone who believes in a supernatural God will expect them to be able to do anything which can be imagined, but it may be possible to imagine many things which are impossible. If we don’t believe in the supernatural then “all-powerful” means able to do anything which is possible. If the universe is a deterministic system in which everything which happens is part of an interconnecting web of cause and effect and the creative principle is the process by which all of this happens then that process is “all-powerful”. And because this principle is blind it cannot predict or prevent the rise of destructive tendencies through its own agency. In fact destruction is an intrinsic part of its operation. Death for instance destroys one living being and thereby provides food to other living beings. As long as it occurs in a balanced way the system as a whole is maintained. What we identify as evil is usually destruction which does not seem to confer a benefit on the local system or the larger system. Generally we are thinking of human behaviour when you use the term. We don’t call a tsunami that kills hundreds of people “evil”. So how did human evil arise from the creative principle?

The creative principle gave rise to human intelligence and with this development a powerful new force came into play which had the power to unbalance the systems within which it arose. I’ve said that the creative principle is improvisatory rather than being orientated towards a more distant goal. Improvisation is characterised by spontaneous responsiveness to changes in the environment and therefore a system made up of improvisors is a system likely to maintain its sense of balance. On the other hand, if an individual sets their sights on some goal which is not directly based upon their current environment, then they are liable to act in a way which upsets the balance of the system. We can see this clearly in our time when our power is such that we can destroy whole ecosystems in order to achieve some economic purpose.

One factor in our becoming out of balance must have been the arrival of idealism. The idea that we should strive to pursue good behaviour and avoid bad behaviour and put pressure on others to do likewise is an example of well-intentioned goal-orientated behaviour, but it brings with it the problem that demanding high standards of behaviour from ourselves or others has a tendency to undermine self-acceptance, which is required for us to have the psychological security to sustain loving cooperative behaviour.

This is not to say that goal-orientated thinking and behaviour is to be avoided. Rather it needs to be grounded in an holistic awareness of what is needed to maintain the stability of the system within which we hope to attain that goal.

I’ve said that the creative principle of the universe is blind, but that is only true up until the arrival of human reason. To the extent that we are conscious agents of this creative principle it is not blind - it sees with our eyes and reasons with our mind. To carry creation forward in a sustainable way, however, we need to be released from our propensity for evil behaviour.

Why do we say “God the Father”? Is this simply a reflection of the patriarchal nature of the societies in which mono-theism arose? It seems to me that it does also have a degree of appropriateness as a poetic expression when we consider that it is the male agency which provides the vital ingredient for the life within a woman to be realised. There had been goddesses before this which represented nature itself, but the creative principle is not synonymous with nature. Rather it is a key that unlocks nature’s potential. Of course, in reality it is neither male nor female, these distinctions having been one of its later products. The other thing we have to acknowledge is that, in the Jewish religion God was personified as a stern disciplinarian. So, while an acknowledgement of the creative principle of the universe lies at the heart of the God concept, many people have projected onto this figure various forms of neurotic feelings arising in their childhood.

God the Son

Jesus is viewed both as “the Son of God” and as God himself. If God is the creative principle of the universe then clearly Jesus was a product of this process. In this way he was the Son of God in the same way that we are all sons and daughters of God. But, if love and reason are the manifestations within the human species of the creative principle (i.e. God), then, to the degree that someone loves and is a truthful reasoner, they are the creative principle (i.e. God) in human form.

We may not think of Jesus as a rational man because he spoke poetically, but what he expressed in this way was an insightful description of human psychology and interpersonal relations. He was a untrained but highly skilled psychologist, which explains his reputation as a healer. It seems unlikely that he literally cured the blind, but that he “cast out demons” (i.e. healed people of mental distress) seems perfectly credible.

For the intelligent individual the biggest impediment to effective thinking is dishonesty. Only if we can be completely honest can we think effectively about ourselves, others and the world generally. In Jesus we find an honest thinker, and thus a person in whom the power of reason was strong.

We also have a loving individual, someone who showed unconditional acceptance of people, if not of their dishonesty. He talked honestly to people about their sinfulness (i.e. selfishness), but not in a condemning way. He told them that God forgave their sins because he realised that it was guilt about those sins which made them selfish. His aim was to return them to their capacity to love each other. He spoke harshly of the Scribes and Pharisees because he realised that they were too entrenched in their lies to liberate directly. The best he could do was to break the spell of authority they cast over those who could be helped.

Not only did Jesus speak poetically, but the stories which were handed down about him were mythologised before they reached the written page. Take the story of Lazarus. There may have been a man who was so depressed that he lay there doing nothing and his family said that it was as if he were dead. Jesus finds a way to release him from this state so that he becomes a happy productive member of society once more. The story travels down the grape vine and eventually you have Jesus literally raising a man from the dead.

What about his resurrection? Jesus would have been a very powerful presence, someone who changed those around him in a very profound way. At first the shock of his horrific death would have left his friends inoperable. But he still existed inside them. Who hasn’t experienced a sense that a dead friend or relative is still with them? With Jesus this effect must have been much more powerful. Maybe it was even so powerful that some experienced hallucinations of his physical appearance. What Jesus had given to them was still alive in them. It had a new life, one which made their own lives so meaningful that they did not fear death. What mattered to them was the creative principle. It had become their true self and it is eternal. Thus, for them, they had found the secret to eternal life.

God the Holy Spirit (or Ghost)

The word “holy” means “whole” or “of the whole” and the spirit of something is its essence. What is the essence of the whole? Truth. When we assemble facts coherently into an understandable whole we are perceiving the truth. The truth is the essence of that whole. And in the social sphere, truth holds the potential for cohesion. If we each believe something different we will be divided, but if we can all perceive the truth then it will provide us with a solid foundation for a loving cooperative society. Truth has the capacity to set us free. Science is our main tool for exposing the truth - it is the quest to lay bare the holy spirit. Sometimes the term “Holy Ghost” is used. Like a ghost, truth has an existence separate from the material phenomena it describes, but that existence is of a non-material nature.

The Three are One

How can three things be distinct and yet be one? That is the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

Jesus was an expression of the creative principle. Think of an animal. Take a dog. If I point at the dog and say “That is life” I am telling the truth. The dog is an example of life. Life and the dog are the same, but the word “dog” and the word “life” are not synonymous. Life refers to something more extensive than the dog, but it still does refer to the dog as well.

If Jesus was an expression of the creative principle of the universe who spoke truthfully, then when he spoke he spoke for the creative principle of the universe. He was an accurate mouthpiece for the principle. He spoke for God. When he spoke it was God speaking.

Only if he spoke the truth was his voice the voice of God. Truth is the holy spirit. If truth is the defining factor in the voice of a man being the voice of God, then God is Truth. Once again, in the factor of human speech God and Truth are the same thing, but they are not synonymous, because God describes something broader than truth. Truth is God in the same way that a dog is life.

God (the creative principle) is Jesus and Truth (but not just Jesus and Truth).

Jesus is God and Truth (in action) (but not just God or Truth, because he is also a human being).

Truth is God (in one form) and is a defining quality of Jesus (but not just God and Jesus).

The unity of the trinity is a key symbol because it forces us to acknowledge the interconnectedness of all things.

SaveSave
SaveSave
SaveSave