Taking Care of Business

I have been moved, this weekend, by a quotation from Brother Roger of Taize.

This morning during the common prayer I suddenly became aware of the quality of my brothers and am moved to the depths of my heart. They give their life - all their life. They pay dearly for the price of their commitment. I know that better than any. Then I can no longer say if my admiration is for my brothers or for Christ who has set His mark on them.

One of the side effects of the current recession is a certain harshness that has crept into relationships, especially in business settings. Talking to people in the community, I find that self-preservation has become the highest good for many people. Management has become so besotted with a drive towards efficiency (or the need to raise capital to stave off bancruptcy) that the human cost of redundancy has been forgotten. To an extent, this is understandable. If businesses are to survive they must make a profit, of course. But I do wish that managers would learn not to say that they are "trimming the fat" when they are laying people off. From what I understand, these decisions are often arbitrary. More importantly, they deny the dignity to their fellow-workers that we all deserve as creatures made in the image of God. I have heard horror stories of redundancies caused, not by economic necessity, but as a result of petty vendettas.

Servant-leadership, as modelled by Brother Roger, is a far more attractive option. As Christians, it is not our business to "lord it over one another" (Matthew 20:25 ) but to follow the example of the One who came not to be served but to serve, and to lay down His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).

So, my prayer is that I will see the dedication of those who give themselves so freely and generously for the work of the church, as precious gifts upon whom Christ Himself has set His mark. It's far too easy for the culture of the business world to seep over into the administration of the church. I think we need to be diligent and business-like in our organization, but I also think that we need to remember that we are a community, not a company. We need to be intentional about building a culture of respect.

On August 16 2005, Brother Roger was fatally stabbed by a mentally ill woman during the evening prayer service in Taizé.

Dachau

There are some things we need to remember, and there are some things we need to forget.

There are some things we need to forgive, and there are many things for which we need to be forgiven.

Art Katz in his testimony-book Ben Israel writes of his visit to the concentration camp at Dachau:

I was totally unprepared for what greeted me at this museum of death ... the gas rooms with the jets still in the ceiling. Here my brother-Jews had been herded like cattle into cars. Women and children. Stripped naked. Old men and young boys. Why was the ear of God silent to the shrieks and prayer of these helpless, innocent ones who were slaughtered like cattle? My stomach turned sick and my eyes blurred with tears ... Outside were the conveyor belts where the bodies were dispatched to the giant ovens ... the mutilated bodies were slowly and systematically fed into the flames. The huge smokestacks never ceased their ugly belching - twenty-four hours a day as the ovens were stoked with the House of Israel.

And later, on the train that took him on his way ...

In an instant the truth dawned: Katz, except for the accident of birth, the caprice of time and place, you might have been born a German Aryan. It could have been you stoking bodies into the ovens. He shuddered and looked long into the blue eyes of the German man opposite. "I have been to Dachau," he said quietly.

A photograph of Dachau, which was posted with this article, has been removed. My apologies; I did not realize that the photograph was under copyright.

Smoke and Mirrors

Where does religion come from? Sigmund Freud thinks he knows. His theory, entitled "the psychogenesis of religion" is to be found in Totem and Taboo (1913). According to Freud, every major religion venerates a father-figure. The reason for this involves "the Oedipal complex." This is what Freud means:

At some prehistoric time human beings lived in a tribe ruled by a chief. This chief was, literally, a father, having exclusive sexual rights over the women of his tribe. However, as the chief aged, and as his sons matured, conflict, fuelled by sexual frustration, grew in intensity. Eventually, the sons rebelled, overthrew their father, and killed him. Almost immediately the sons were overcome by remorse at what they had done. They created rituals in order to assuage their grief and guilt, and so religion was born.

Freud goes on to interpret individual religious experience on the basis of the Oedipal complex. For Freud, veneration of a father-figure is a childish response to a dominant human parent. Fear of punishment forces the child to subject his will to his father's, and then to project the characteristics of the father into an illusory spiritual realm. In effect, therefore, religion is simply the perpetuation of infantile behavior. The frightened child trusts that his father will protect him from the ogres under the bed. The timid adult trusts that his heavenly father will protect him from the very real ogres who inhabit our world. But this is little more than wishful thinking. A confident young adult moves away from his father's control and gains his independence. As he leaves behind the phobias of childhood, so he should also reject the delusion that is religion. He should grow up and deal with the real world, not hide away in a realm created by his own wishes.

For me, the most telling response to Freud's theories of the origin of religion is simply to point out that he is creating an hypothesis, not stating a fact. Freud has absolutely no evidence to support the theory of a prehistoric patricide; the Oedipal complex has no foundation. He has merely invented the event in order to give credibility to his theories, which in turn support his prejudices. This is eisegesis of the worst kind. Freud massages the evidence until it appears to support his conclusions. But it is all a game with smoke and mirrors. Freud is the illusionist, not the Christian.

And yet, how many atheists continue to use this argument? Belief is still condemned as infantile. Obsessional neuroses are blamed for being the hidden persuaders behind religious ritual. Believers are told that they are foolish children, reacting to trauma by repressing their instincts and their emotions. Christians continue to fool themselves by creating castles in the sky.

In truth, though, these criticisms tell us more about the repressed spiritual urges of those who reject Christianity than they do about the origins of religion. Atheists have created their own myth. There is no evidence for its truth, but they continue to advocate for the illusion because they cannot bear to think that they might be wrong. Sound familiar? Freud's psychoanalytical atheism is an hypothesis, nothing more. Christians have no reason to fear an illusion.

Wishing Doesn't Make It True

Is our desire for God anything more than wishing Him into existence? It's an old argument that has been going the rounds since Ludwig Feuerbach. I recently came across the debate still festering on http://www.opposingviews.com/

In a way, I'm surprised that the debate is ongoing. Over a hundred years ago, Eduard von Hartmann pointed out the logical fallacy in Feuerbach's argument, but that doesn't stop the anti-God lobby from using it. Alister McGrath quotes von Hartmann in one of his books, "It is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it." Things do not exist simply because we desire them. But it does not follow that, because we desire something, it does not exist. Feuerbach's argument is a logical fallacy. What's the argument about?

Feuerbach wrote that religion is simply a projection of our wishes. We would like the world to be ordered, for the good to go to heaven and the evil to go to the other place, and so we wish it, and convince ourselves that it is true. In The Essence of Christianity (1841) Feuerbach argues that the idea of God arises from human experience. Human beings long for something beyond themselves, for immortality, for justice, for love. And so we translate our experience of longing onto an illusory plane and create the idea of God. In a sense, as Sigmund Freud was to argue, religion is a childish response to our dependence upon our parents. When we continue the culture of dependence into our adult lives, we substitute God for our earthly father. If only we would grow up we would realize that our search for spiritual reality is a study of our own experience. There is no external reality to be discovered.

Feuerbach has been very influential, though few remember his name today. Karl Marx adopted his critique of religion. Freud promoted it; in his The Future of Illusion (1927) Freud said that religious ideas are "illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest, and most urgent wishes of mankind." It's an argument that is still rolled out with great regularity today.

You can't really argue with Feuerbach, or his disciples. He simply states his hypothesis as gospel, and that's the end of the argument. Religion is wish-fulfillment. Nothing more. With a condescending smile the popular psychologist encourages us to grow up and grow out of the delusion. Only then will we be free.

Feuerbach's arguments are predicated upon the assumption that all religious experience is actually human experience. Specifically, as Schliermacher wrote, religion is based upon the human experience of being dependent. This was a popular idea at the time but, as many have pointed out, Feuerbach ignores the doctrine of revelation. As Christians we don't have to rely upon our subjective interpretations; God confronts us through His Word. He is prior to and independent of our experience. We aren't just listening to ourselves. God speaks. More to the point He often says things that we probably we would not wish to hear, especially when He calls us to repentance, to turn from sin and to turn to Christ. How can it be wish-fulfillment when it would be easier all around if God did not exist, if there was no judgment to fear?

Most of the time, though, Feuerbach doesn't depend upon arguments. He just insists that he is right. Curiously, it's like arguing with a charismatic who claims a direct line to God. There can be no argument when all opposing viewpoints have been eliminated, a priori, as nonsense. Even the glib, self-satisfied smile is the same, "Of course you wouldn't understand."

What we understand is that just because an argument keeps being repeated, that doesn't make it right. When I was at Birmingham University a young girl, who used to attend the meetings of the Christian Union, suddenly stopped coming. Eventually we found out why. She was dating an undergraduate from the Department of Psychology. This genius had read a little Freud and decided that he had no further need of "the god hypothesis." And, because he wanted her to do away with her "bourgeois, oppressive, Victorian morality," he persuaded her that her religion had been a projection of her insecurity. She responded, not by slugging him, but by agreeing. Rejecting the moral code of her childhood she was free to debate philosophy between the sheets. I don't know what became of her. I pray that she woke up.

Of course, the irony is that she created a new reality on the basis of her wishes. She wanted to be found attractive to this young Lothario, (and for her brain not just for her looks), so she wished for a world in which her constraints evaporated. And they did. She mistook anthropology for theology. She thought that she had argued herself out of a need for God. But God is not dependent upon her needs, neither is He perturbed by her denials of His existence. She may wish for a world without God, but wishing does not make it true!

Why should we be expected to abandon the Christian faith just because Ludwig Feuerbach tells us that we are projecting our wishes instead of experiencing God? It's still a very unconvincing argument, no matter who tells you otherwise.

Dead Men Rise Up Never

Proserpine - by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Jack London has a tale, from his youth, of going to sea on the Sophie Sutherland, a three-topmast schooner, seal hunting off the coast of Japan. London tells of a fellow-sailor, an unpleasant man known only as "The Bricklayer" who died and was buried at sea, with "a gunnysack, half full of galley coal... fastened to his feet." Against naval tradition, the seventeen year-old Jack London took over his recently-departed colleague's bunk. His other shipmates warned him that the Bricklayer would not be pleased. He would come back to haunt the lad.

Then, on an ugly night, Jack was startled to see an ominous shape on deck, near the spot where the Bricklayer had been tipped over the side. Intellectually, he could not fathom what he was seeing. Was it a spectre, risen from the deep? Surely, "dead men rise up never." Finally, after an agony of self-doubt, Jack plucked up the courage to confront the ghoul, only to find himself face to face with an equally terrified Newfoundland dog.

The title of Jack London's short story (later purloined by others) comes from Swinburne:

From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no man lives forever

That dead men rise up never

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

The Garden of Proserpine: A.G.Swinburne 1866

Is it true, though, that "dead men rise up never'? Ernst Troelsch, the German sociologist, had an unsophisticated answer to this question. His response is typical of many today. Troelsch argued that, since dead men do not rise, Jesus Christ could not have risen from the dead. And that's the end of that. The central pillar of Christianity is swept away, by fiat. Troelsch simply declares, like David Hume before him, that resurrection just does not happen. Since there is no evidence of dead men rising in our experience, it follows that no dead men have ever risen, or ever shall.

What are we to make of this argument, given that, as Paul says, "if Christ is not risen we are, of all men, most to be pitied" (I Corinthians 15:19)? Wolfhart Pannenberg points out that Troelsch takes a very dogmatic approach to the question of resurrection. Based upon his presuppositions, Troelsch dictates what can and cannot happen. According to Troelsch, and a horde of modern disciples, the question of resurrection is non-sensical. It does not happen today and it did not happen 2,000 years ago.

Troelsch's argument is based upon inductive reasoning, moving from a particular example to a general rule. The particular example he chooses is his own experience. He then proceeds to draw his conclusion based upon his chosen premise. This is obviously unsatisfactory. Observation cannot eliminate the possibility of resurrection, it can only establish probability.

If "dead men rise up never," how do we account for the witness of the New Testament? It cannot be wish-fulfillment, given that the devastated disciples were in no fit state to create the fiction. Neither would they have been prepared to suffer so cruelly for an obvious untruth. Could it not be that the bodily resurrection of Jesus provides the best explanation of the events? Often, it seems, our response to the empty tomb tells us more about ourselves than we imagine. Secular people give a secular response. But Christians tend not to be so concerned. We judge matters of life and death on the basis of what we know about Jesus, not the other way round, and certainly not on the basis of Troelsch's dogmatic metaphysical presuppositions.

We don't need to apologize for our faith. When our opponents dismiss the resurrection of Christ out of hand, they merely display secular fundamentalism. Swinburne's vision of the underworld was of a grey place without fear but also without hope. Is it wrong to hope for something better?