Eyre Lines

I’ve been tinkering with this post for a couple of months, thinking that it was going to go somewhere a little different from where this cut-down version ends. However, in the light of the “Charlie Hebdo” massacre, it seems to me that I need to post it, as in part it goes to what I see the root of why events like that occur.

I don’t much like the content of Charlie Hebdo. I don’t find the comedy of abuse funny these days, and they set their stall out to abuse people, and the more people were made visibly uncomfortable by that, the more Charb and Cabu used to skewer them. While the paper is something of an equal opportunity abuser, it’s racist, sexist and frequently – almost always – obscene, and I wouldn’t have bought a copy. However, it is not reasonable to muzzle them just because they abuse people, systems or religions, and totally unacceptable for them to be killed for doing it.

I continue this thinking after my previous writing.

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In a previous post I made a point of the confession “Jesus is Lord”. It does seem to me in the age of democracy that we tend to miss some of the implications of this confession, that a Lord (or King, Emperor, Caesar) is representative of the whole group of his followers (subjects, vassals) individually and collectively. What is done by or to the Lord is done by or to the entirety of his followers in a way which, while strictly speaking figurative, is treated as effectively literal.

This can be seen in nooks and crannies of our system here, as I live in a monarchy. Where in the States the title of a criminal case will be “People –v- X”, in England it is “Regina-v- X”, i.e. the Queen against X. As an example, many years ago, I was present in a court, prosecuting a case of noise nuisance, when the defendant pulled a knife and threatened the judge. This was technically in law an offence of treason. The judge was a direct representative of the Queen (in the secondary kingly function of arbiter of the law) and a threat against him was thus equivalent to a threat against the Queen herself; further, as the Queen represents the nation, it was a threat against the People as a whole. (I would mention that rather than acting in any way heroically, I hid underneath the advocates table until the man had been disarmed.)

It is, I think, also seen in the concept of blasphemy. As Christianity seems to have become more relaxed about this in recent times, let me use the example of the Danish cartoons lampooning Mohammed. In the same way as with my knife-wielding defendant, an insult against the Prophet (who is, in Islam, a direct representative of God) is equally an insult against all of God’s followers, namely every Muslim – and that on a personal basis, although actually more serious than would be a mere personal insult.

Of course, in a much more prosaic way, this can also be seen in the actions of a football supporter who comes away from a match in which his team has been successful saying “we won”. The supporter has, in truth, done little if anything to contribute to the win, but feels uplifted and strengthened by the actions of the team members who have actually played and won.

In 1 Cor. 15, Paul sees Jesus as “the second Adam” and as such representing not merely the people of Israel, but humanity as a whole, by analogy to Adam’s earlier representative status for humanity as a whole (I do not, of course, view Adam as an historical character but merely as representative of humanity as a whole, whereas I do view Jesus as historical; this is a view which is controversial with some). I would argue strongly that the sayings attributed to Jesus in the latter part of Matt. 25 (31-46) are also seeing Jesus as representative and as being represented, in that case by any individual human being. What you do to (or for) the least of these, you do to (or for) Jesus.

Jesus’ faithfulness unto death is then seen by Paul in Romans and Galatians as justifying the whole of mankind. Although Paul does not directly mention the Maccabean martyrs (see Macc. 2 and 4), his use of the term atonement must, I think, raise that parallel; in the apocryphal Maccabees 2 and the extra-canonical Maccabees 4, the faithfulness of the Maccabean martyrs in resisting the demands of the Hellenic overlords to do acts contrary to their religious beliefs (and thus being put to death) is seen as an “atoning sacrifice”, by which all Jews may benefit.

Similarly, in Paul, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice “rights” humanity with God. Arguably, within this logic, no particular act of any individual is required in order to benefit from this representative self-sacrifice, however, action may well be required in order to remain within the group identified as followers of Jesus (such as confessing that Jesus is Lord), just as the Maccabean martyrs’ self sacrifice was not seen as benefiting heretics by later rabbis.

It is probably worth stressing here that the representative atonement of the Maccabees was taken as effective communally, rather than individually; it was atonement in that case for the nation of Israel. It may therefore be necessary for the whole of the nation (and not just each person taken as an individual) to abide in “right relationship” with the nation as a whole, interpreted as faithfulness to the Law in the case of Israel; this is effectively the “covenantal nomism” of the New Perspective on Paul, in which the covenant is freely given by God prior to the giving of instructions for living (and in the case of Abraham, for marking himself and his dependents as being committed to God via circumcision). In order then to remain in good stead within the body of people (in this case Israel, or the descendants of Abraham) and so to benefit from the covenant, the Law has to be followed. Absent particular acts of ‘atoning’ heroism such as that of the Maccabees (which is in fact the only example I can clearly identify as a representative act which confers a benefit), the prophetic history of Israel demonstrates that it is a communal faithfulness which is looked for rather than any individual following of the Law. Whether it is then truly justifiable to take any atoning sacrifice as having individual effect in the absence of communal faithfulness would seem a moot point.

However, looking at the passage above from Matt. 25, I would argue that the better way to view any representative connection is as operating individually AND collectively, as Jesus there clearly sees it as operating individually. Elsewhere, he clearly sees the actions of certain individuals as having the opposite effect, as in the speech against the Pharisees in Matt. 23:1-39 followed by the prediction of the destruction of the Temple in Matt. 24:1-2 which ends that speech. While in the historical Hebrew scriptures it is in general the actions of leaders which are held against Israel, here it is the actions of individuals, albeit a group of individuals.

Perhaps, however, the passage in Matt. 25 should be regarded as representative of whether the individuals in question were acting in accordance with the “new covenant” (Heb. 8:7-13, referencing Jer. 31:31-34), and thereby gaining benefit from identification with Jesus? Matt. 7:21-23 would be a supporting text here.

How about the opposite effect, which I mentioned above? Well, the mechanism of taking communal and personal pride (and, arguably, such concepts as justification and sanctification) from the positive achievements of our leader is well matched by the mechanism of being diminished, embarrassed and made to feel guilt or shame at their negative actions. We require our leaders to be perfect in every respect, otherwise their “feet of clay” rebound on us. The Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) are full of examples where the iniquity of a few rebounds on the many; the sin of Achan in Joshua 7:1-26, David’s census in 2 Sam 24 and the fate of sympathizers with (and the family of) Korah in Num 16:1-17:13 are examples, but the whole history contained in Joshua, Samuel, Kings and Chronicles is a litany of collective responsibility of Israel for its leaders, and the collective responsibility of neighbouring peoples (such as the Amalekites and Edomites) for actions taken either by their leaders or small groups from among them.

It can hardly be thought, for instance, that the attempted gang rape of Genesis 19:4-5 actually involved the whole male population, which is what the text indicates (what, for instance, of those under the age of puberty?) or that it was a matter of national policy, but Sodom and Gomorrah were said as a result to be destroyed – and not merely the male population but “all the people”. The text clearly indicates that the whole people were involved because, in the concept of collective responsibility, they all were, whether they lifted a finger or not.

This is not merely an historical tendency. Very many among us are currently inclined to ascribe to the whole religion of Islam the actions of relatively few hot-headed fundamentalists (relatively few, at least, in comparison to the billion Muslims currently alive). We feel shame when someone we regard as one of “our” group of any kind is shown to have done something heinous (though a very common reaction is to distance ourselves from them, even if we can avoid an attempt to minimize or excuse their actions). I am, for instance, embarrassed when some lawyer (or politician) is shown to conform to the stereotype of a lying, grasping, conscienceless individual, and for many years was reluctant to accept the label “Christian”, being aware of a long history of persecution by Christians (and often by entire Christian churches) of groups such as the Jews or native peoples in the Americas or Africa. I am still struck with a sense of collective shame when Christians persecute homosexuals or fail to accord equality to women.

There are in the Old Testament a number of hair-raising stories about dealing with the transgressions of others which might, in the thinking of the OT, affect me – and this article deals with a couple of them. In that thinking, it is not merely the impossibility of perfection in loving God and loving your neighbour as yourself (in a proactive way) which is problematic, it’s also the actions of every other person who is a member of a group with which you identify.

Clearly, it is not merely the actions of our leaders which can cause us shame or guilt, and in times past (for some, not so much past) would found a feeling that God would rightly punish us for the sins of our co-religionists, countrymen or relatives. “Thus says the Lord: Behold, I am against you, and will draw forth my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked” (Ez. 21:3). The prophet goes on in the next chapter to predict a wholesale destruction of Israel, based on the transgressions of some.

And yet, three chapters earlier, Ezekiel issues a lengthy statement that denies collective responsibility for parents and children alike, and for any past transgressions, dependent only on repentance (Ez. 18 in total, though the nub of it can be seen in the first verses). Is there, perhaps, a conflict here, within the sayings of one prophet?

Clearly there is. But then, there is a tension between our feelings of elation when our representatives do something good (winning a match, ruling wisely, doing something heroic) and when they or others who are “one of us” do something bad (losing badly, ruling disastrously, acting in a bigoted, xenophobic, racist or sexist manner). Where is the balance, or, indeed, is there a balance?

For me, this does not throw up the difficulty of potential inconsistency in the actions of God. I do not see God as judgmental and severe, but as loving and accepting. This is definitely a “new testament” attitude (though the NT is not univocal in proclaiming a non-judgmental God), but also appears in places among the Hebrew prophets, as in Ezekiel 18, Hosea 6:6 and several other places.

If the tension is not within God, then is it within us? I would suggest that it is; whatever the reality of the thinking of God (and there I pray in aid Isaiah 55:8 – his thoughts are not our thoughts – or at the least “it’s above my pay grade”) as I said, it is a psychological, experiential reality for us. It’s the way we’re made, the way we’ve evolved. We do bask in the glory of our leaders (or cringe at their feet of clay) and we do feel embarrassed at the actions of others in whatever group we identify with, or uplifted when one of them risks life and limb to pull a child from a burning building.

Comdemnation thus comes to all of us through our association with (for some Christian examples) the Fourth Crusade or the antics of Westborough Baptist Church picketing military funerals in the USA, but exaltation equally comes through our association with (for example) Pope Francis or in a non-religious way from the local to me unknowns, part of “my” community, who recently rushed to a burning house to save some children from the flames instead of safely keeping their distance. Which of these prevails is at least in part a function of our psychology.

But our psychology can be changed.

It is, of course, possible to reduce the scope of those we identify with until it is a very small and very controlled circle. “I didn’t vote for him”, or “they’re foreigners, what can you expect?” or “he can’t be a true Christian” are all moves in that direction. Perhaps the ultimate end of this move is the rampant individualism seen in (for instance) Margaret Thatcher, Niezsche and Ayn Rand, for whom links to others are weaknesses rather than something to be acknowledged and even treasured.

However, if we are to regard Christ as the head of the body of which we form part (Col. 1:18), he is our representative, and as the second Adam, the representative of all humanity. We cannot escape being members of the group of all Christians, and even the group of all humanity (with the collective responsibility that entails) and remain followers of Christ. In my case, having a mystical, panentheistic consciousness, it is in any event impossible for me so to wall myself off from others in order not to be embarrassed by their actions. Any boundaries are not real, and cannot be maintained for long. As John Donne wrote: “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

The question has to be how much weight we place on which action, the negative and the positive alike. Before I get to Paul, let’s look at the template he must have been referring to in his talk of atonement, that of the Maccabean martyrs. Seven brothers, their mother and their teacher are in this story (from 2 and 4 Maccabees) killed by the Seleucid Greek imperial rulers for refusing to adopt elements of Greek religion; their self-sacrificial martyrdom is there seen as atoning for the whole of Israel. Clearly, a self-sacrifice which result in death is experienced as having a massive effect compared with the transgressions of individual members of Israel, sufficient to cover over (the original impact of the term translated “atonement”) a plethora of failings and evil-doings.

Thus, when Paul is talking of Jesus’ death on the cross as an atoning sacrifice, he is drawing on the same level of atoning efficacy, but increased. The Maccabean martyrs are ordinary Israelites, whereas Paul sees Jesus at the least as the principal agent of God (and presumably as the kingly messiah as well). The self sacrifice of a particularly exalted leader has an impact beyond that of even 9 common people, and while I do not think that Paul actually thought of Jesus as one member of the trinity (this was a theological development which, to my mind, postdated even the Fourth Gospel, though perhaps not some of the pseudo-Pauline epistles), Paul saw it as efficacious for all people in all ages. How much more so when in terms of later theology it was (and is) seen as God sacrificing himself. Not so much “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son…” but more “he sent himself to be crucified”.

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Now in the news we have 10 journalists, including Charb and Cabu, and three policemen who died. We have at least four terrorists, three of whom are now dead. We have a number of dead hostages with no apparent connection with Charlie or the police, though they were shopping in a Jewish supermarket…

We have the opportunity of feeling identification with any or all of these. Vast numbers of people have instantly fixed on the journalists, with the tag “Je suis Charlie” – after all, they are the most obvious martyrs. As I am, like them, a white male straight middle class European intellectual, they’re the obvious choice for me and a whole load of my liberal-minded friends.

An increasing number of those are, however, realising that in identifying with Charlie Hebdo, they are also identifying with abuse, racism, sexism and a host of other politically incorrect attitudes. After all, that is what Charlie Hebdo stands for – as its masthead occasionally says, irresponsible journalism. Thus we have a number of “Je suis Ahmed” tags, referring to the Muslim policeman who died protecting Charlie Hebdo despite the fact that it attacked his religion and ethnicity on a weekly basis in the most offensive terms.

He’s clearly a martyr who is untarnished, at least until the press dig into his background, assuming they bother. He’s also a Muslim, so we can show that we’re not racially or ethnically biased. My mind turns to the insistence in the New Testament that Jesus was spotless, without sin, despite the fact that I can identify a number of episodes in which criticism could be levelled – violence in the cleansing of the Temple, for instance, even if we do not believe the polemic attributed to him in the Fourth Gospel against “the Jews” and which has founded 2000 years of antisemitic atrocities is authentically his.

I am, however, a panentheist. I am forced to identify with all the players in the tragedy which has unfolded over France in the last few days, including the terrorists. Matt. 25:40 compels me to think even of them as being representative of Jesus, my lord and representative, even if my base panentheistic experience of existence didn’t. I think the piece on representation above gives some clues as to one place from which their actions have arisen – the Prophet represents them, and Charlie has been merciless with the Prophet over some considerable time.

And they too thought that they were being martyrs. Not a martyrdom I am particularly happy to accept, but with John Donne, I am involved with humanity and cannot avoid it. They also no doubt saw themselves as being at war with the West.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis tous ces gens. Je suis un être humain.

 

In “The Idolatry of God” and in some of his other work, the philosopher-theologian Peter Rollins makes use of Jacques Lacan’s concept of the “mirror stage” in child development to indicate that at a very early stage of our development (between 6 and 18 months) we first become aware of a distinction between ourselves and the “other”, that this represents the inception of the sense of self. In two recent posts,  “The Fall and Rise of Original Sin” and “Falling further”, I developed a reading of Genesis 2 & 3 which saw Original Sin as being in substance the self-centredness and self-seeking which stems inevitably from the development of this sense of self, which agrees well with Rollins conception. Quoting from the Alcoholics Anonymous book “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions”, “The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear—primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.” What AA describes as “character defects” I think we can reasonably call “original sin”.

I’m currently reading Richard Beck’s latest book, “The Slavery of Death”, which I picked up after writing the previous posts. Beck, interestingly, starts with a reading of Genesis 2 & 3 from the perspective of the Orthodox Church which sees death as originating in this story (which I don’t) but then equates the fear of death with original sin, and as the effective power of the devil; he goes on to develop this concept. He quotes the Orthodox theologian John Romanides’ “Ancestral Sin” in saying “Any perceived threat automatically triggers fear and uneasiness. Fear doers not allow a man to be perfected in love… Being under the sway of death and not having real and correct faith in God, man is anxious over everything and is ruled by selfish bodily and psychological motives and, thus, he is unable to love unselfishly and freely. He loves and has faith according to what he percieves to be to his own advantage… Thus, he is deprived of his original destiny and is off the mark spiritually. In biblical language, these failures and deviations are called sins. The fountain of man’s personal sin is the power of death that is in the hands of the devil and in man’s own willing submission to him.”

I note, however, that death is the ultimate threat to the self, so with the reservation that I think the sense of self and fear for loss of any part of what is regarded as “the self” is more fundamental even than the fear of death (and gives rise to it) I can follow on with Becks other arguments. I’m certainly with him in not considering that it is necessary to posit a personal embodiment of sin and evil in order to call this self-centred sin diabolical, something of the devil; personally I do not find the concept of an anthropomorphic personification of evil to be useful, but others may do so.

Beck goes on to discuss the conception of evil in the world developed by William Stringfellow and Walter Wink (inter alia) as being the Powers and Authorities; all groupings, ideologies and systems in the world are identifiable as the physical expressions (at the least) of what can be regarded as spiritual powers, and pursues the concept that inasmuch as we give our allegiance to such human structures, whether these be employers, political parties or ideologies, football clubs, governments or even churches we are giving our allegiance to effectively diabolical powers which are, in effect, giving ourselves over to the power of death (as all such structures will end, i.e. die, and also their demands are inimical to us living our own lives for ourselves and our loved ones, and so these allegiances become a partial death.

At this point I need to recap on one of the fundamental aspects of the mystical experience through which I inevitably see existence, that of the disintegration of the boundary between self and other, between self and God. This has a number of results – firstly, I am unable to see others as in any real sense separate from me, and thus the mechanism which Rollins posits of the fundamental drive being to exert control of the other ceases to have real effect, insofar as I remain in contact with the mystical experience. That which is me, the self, can and does expand to include all those around me, or all people of my town, my area or my country, or all of humanity, or all living things, or all that exists inclusive of such part of that-which-is-God which is not immanent in all of those more restricted categories.

Seeing this from the point of view put forward by Rollins/Lacan, this viewpoint relieves me of the need to seek some external object which will give satisfaction, which will make whole the lack seen in the self when considered in relationship with the Other; there is, in truth, no “Other” (or, formulated differently, there is no “self” to put in opposition to the Other. Rollins points out that the loss, the lack felt in the inception of the sense of self, is illusory in that before the inception of the sense of self, there was no self to have anything taken away from; from my point of view the lack is illusory because the boundary itself is ultimately illusory.

Seen from the point of view of Beck’s writing, I am similarly relieved of the fear of death (and this should not be taken to indicate that I am not extremely scared of most of the ways of becoming dead, as I am not a great fan of physical pain, nor to indicate that all of my subconscious mechanisms share this view – this is “SR” speaking here with unconditional assent from “GF” but lesser support from “EC”, and none from mechanisms such as the “reptile mind”). Nor is it something I can claim as an achievement – the initial experience was either given or thrust on me out of the blue, though I have expended energy on repeating and building on it.

Beck does caution in these words:- “In summary, timor mortis is a fact of life and a regular feature of the Christian experience. The fear of death is always with us, moment by moment and day by day, and its absence would signal an indifference that could be, by turns, pathological, triumphalistic, or a spurning of the gift of life. The fearlessness we should seek is not an emotional blankness in the face of death. Such a blankness would be unable to make a distinction between life and death, and thus would be an act of ingratitude to God for the gift and goodness of life. Rather, the fearlessness we are speaking of involves an overcoming rather than a numbness, a refusal to let death be a motive force in our decision making and identity formation.” Having gone through a period of several years of severe clinical depression, I can testify to what it is like for this to turn to a pathological indifference; a year ago, I really had no way of making a judgment between life and death from any of my own resources, and am here now largely because I considered that I owed it to people who cared for me. It is not like that now, but it is also not a conscious overcoming. It is not triumphalistic (what do I find to triumph in in that this particular part of the All does not fear death?) and since the depression lifted, I am all too ready to give thanks for the gift of life.

One of the ways in which this lack of fear can make sense to me is touched on by Beck; in his formulation (which owes much to Ernest Becker) our fear of death is alleviated by making some contribution to the power or authority of our choice, as that contribution is seen as persisting for the life of that power or authority which we (wrongly) think of as immortal; Beck talks of the “hero system” in which achievements within some human system are valued and extolled, and give a sense of self-worth which placates death anxiety. Granted, Becker (and thus Beck) see this as a way of alleviating anxiety about death while I see it as alleviating anxiety about the wider context of diminishment of the sense of self, in particular linked to the desire to control the “other”.

For me, I view this more as a limited way of moving towards the mystical erasure of the boundary between self and other; inasmuch as we identify with some organisation, it becomes to an extent a part of the self, and that part may well survive the death or the individual. Of course, it may not survive the individual, and hence we suffer a major loss of identity in, for instance, the closure of our employer’s business (or our losing our job with it), the end of a marriage, the fall of a state (or radical change in it) or the disgrace of an ideology, for instance in the fall of communism as seen as a viable way of structuring society. It seems to me that people (in the main unconsciously) actually do perform this transfer of self-identity ; I am enabled by the mystical consciousness (again, insofar as I remain in close touch with it) to move my concept of self to such structures temporarily, but only fleetingly, as more extensive identifications (or less extensive ones) are always available.

One of Beck’s major themes is our reaction to the “other”, and he elsewhere builds on (for instance) Rene Girard’s concepts of mimetic violence and scapegoating and on the concepts of holiness and purity (in “Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality”). In “The Slavery of Death”, he devotes some time to outlining how the neurotic desire to protect the system in which we trust to alleviate our fear of death (in his formulation) or in which we invest a major part of our sense of self (in mine) leads to rivalry, exclusion and conformity and even violence. This has echoes in some of Rollins’ work as well, where he looks to destabilise excessive reliance on our favoured structures; “Insurrection” and “The Fidelity of Betrayal” are along those lines, as are his “transformance art” occasions.

Beck goes on to talk about various techniques for improving what he calls an “eccentric” sense of self, “eccentric” in that it is not focused within the individual, drawing substantially from St. Thérèse de Lisieux. In the main, I see these as “act as if” methods. Modern psychology is confident from much experimentation that “act as if” works, and that as you act so will you eventually come to believe. As an aside, I feel that this rather punctures the Apostle Paul’s strictures against works righteousness; certainly feeling smug about works is a negative thing, but actually acting in the way you would wish to have flow from your inner convictions does clearly operate to produce those inner convictions. On this I’m with James; faith without works is dead.

Finally, Beck goes on to talk about what he describes as “the slavery of God”, in which a conception of God becomes part of a death-avoiding concept of self-valuation, and is then protected at all costs. Beck rightly identifies this as a form of idolatry. So, of course, does Rollins in “The Idolatry of God”, seeing the idolatrous “God” as being the “big other” which can fill the void resulting from our sense of primal loss. Both writers suggest ways in which this can be avoided, Beck’s being less dramatic and contraversial, and probably therefore more practical. I commend both books, and frankly suggest that if you’ve read either “The Slavery of Death” or “The Idolatry of God, you should go on to read the other as well.

 

I would also go on to strongly recommend the development of a mystical consciousness, which tends to resolve both problems, except for one thing – my own experience is of being given this, and I’m uncertain to what extent the various practices which various mystics over the ages have recommended can function to create a mystical consciousness where none existed previously. Beck’s practical suggestions and Rollins’ radical ones may, however, go some way towards this – and so do meditation and contemplation.

Enough of writing about it, I need to go and act!