Sick Souls and Healthy Minds

Conversations outside the blog have led me to back up a little. 

You may have been reading previous posts, and finding it difficult to follow my pessimistic assessment of human nature. This may not be the fault of my argument or of your ability to follow it, but a result of our respective religious temperaments. So, before I go further in describing Sin, it might not be amiss to reflect on the work of philosopher and psychologist William James (sitting at left above). If you are interested, his book The Varieties of Religious Experience is well worth reading, but I will give here brief descriptions of the religous temperaments he termed "healthy-minded" and "sick-souled"

William James well understood that people express religion in various ways, and that this had to do with experience and temperament. He noted that some speakers seem certain of the goodness of life, exuding confidence in human abilities to do the right and abstain from wrongdoing, who saw every setback in moral character as temporary and, in principle, correctible by piecemeal adjustments to our behavior and relationship with the world. He would use the term "healthy-minded" to describe their outlook. They were generally to be found in the liberal denominations of his day (and I would hazard in our own), and James thought that the Roman Catholic Church was generally amenable to the healthy-minded. For a healthy-minded preacher, think Ralph Waldo Emerson. Those sharing this temperament, we would call optimistic, and they certainly appear to live happier lives than the other grouping that James observed.

These he termed "sick-souled". Their assessment of nature and human character was much bleaker, not something to be remedied by piecemeal adjustments, but requiring wholesale conversion, understood to arrive "supernaturally", certainly from beyond the usual plane of human effort. These were often found in Protestantism (although, note the optimism of 19th century Unitarianism and Universalism). For a sick-souled preacher, think Jonathan Edwards. While the sick-souled live less happy lives, James considered they have something serious to offer us with respect to understanding the human condition.

James also understood that people lay on a continuum between extremes of healthy-minded and sick-souled. He held to a pragmatic philosophy, regarding as philosophically true that which was useful for our behavior. He was certainly not averse to searching for the true among alternative or opposing ideas, for which I consider him wise, since the sick-souled and the healthy-minded have much to offer to each other, if only we are willing to listen.

Our religious temperament also impacts on understandings of wrongdoing and evil. To the healthy-minded the problem of evil is the problem of "ills and sins in the plural, removable in detail". To the sick-souled the problem is "Sin in the singular, with a capital S, as of something ineradically ingrained in our natural subjectivity, and never to be removed by any superficial, piecemeal operations."

Traditionally, Sin has been understood as alienation to God. In an earlier post (Between Gods and Idols), I suggested a definition of God as Ordering Principle, along the lines of "that to which our thoughts and actions ought to be loyal". This seems to me a useful way of encouraging conversation among the widest range of belief. Whether gods are imagined walking on Olympus or in Eden, whether understood as disembodied intelligence or set of ideals, whether the "believer" calls themselves Christian, theist, agnostic or atheist, as long as they value some attitudes and actions over others, they will find a place in the conversation.

The problem of Sin becomes the question of what prevents our thoughts and actions being in the service of or directed toward this Ordering Principle, which I call God, and the question of how this alienation from this Ordering Principle might be removed. We are also interested in describing the consequences of Sin, and the consequences of its removal. Those of us who are Christian will want an account of this in traditional and biblical language, while those coming from other traditions or none may want to reflect on how they describe these terms.

Which brings me back to comments. Be assured, I'd be interested in your impressions to this developing theology, and so might other readers. Theology is a conversation. Please submit comments.

God is not a Billiard Ball

Many of my conversations with atheists feel like this to me:

Anelectronist: I don't believe in electrons, you know, little billiard balls of negative charge that whizz around circuits and make them work.
Electronist: But something must carry negative charge.
Anelectronist: From what I read, a single electron can pass through two slits at the same time and make an interference pattern on the other side, like ripples on water. Billiard balls can't do that, even really small ones.
Electronist: Well, physicists don't think of electrons as billiard balls anymore. They talk about wave-particle duality or "wavicles", which exhibit properties of both waves and particles, to describe really small entities like electrons.
Anelectronist: I don't know about that. I define electrons as billiard balls and many other people think of them that way. So, I have to say, in light of these paradoxes, electrons don't exist.
Electronist: So, what do you think carries negative charge? Something must carry negative charge.
Anelectronist: Well, maybe there's something to these wavicles, although it sounds kind of incoherent to me - I don't see how something can be a wave and a particle at the same time. In any case, you'll have to come up with a better word for them. I can't talk about electrons without imagining little billiard balls.

Of course, I have loaded this rhetorically. Nearly anyone who thinks about it would realize that not believing in electrons is absurd, and that scientists are at liberty to update their models of reality as the data come in. I don't know of any "electronist" fundamentalists, for example, who continue to maintain billiard ball electrons in the face of the evidence! Nor of "anelectronists" who refuse to talk about electrons.

I suspect this has more to do with the human psychology of identity formation than with the facts on the ground. No one I know regards the existence of electrons as important in their view of themselves, but religious (as well as those who identify themselves as not religious) people often respond to criticism of their beliefs as if they were attacks on themselves. From a rational perspective, electrons exist in some form whatever an electron fundamentalist or anelectronist tells me! But when our deeply-held beliefs, theist or atheist, are under attack, a rational perspective is difficult to bring to the fore.

From the religious side, when I'm not annoyed, I can identify with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb:

And [the angels] said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." (John 20:13)

Whether the perceived attack comes from a fundamentalist or an atheist, it can feel as though something very close to me is being taken away to who knows where? Scripture reminds me that Christ cannot be taken from me anymore than he could be taken from Mary. The resurrected Christ may also appear quite differently from the Christ I had remembered, yet still feel deeply the same.
A wider theological objection than atheism or fundamentalism is a traditionalism that would proscribe new ways of thinking. In the "existence-of-electrons debate" the traditional electronists would argue that billiard balls have been and continue to be quite adequate for everyday purposes, so why confuse people with complicated and unconventional electronology, when it gets in the way of useful stuff like building circuits, or whatever.

Whether traditional electronism is viable I don't know, but we do, for example, teach Newtonian mechanics in school, which is adequate to navigate the solar system, in spite of Einstein's relativity. We even start by simplifying it to ignore air resistance in calculating the path of a tennis ball from a moving train. We certainly allow paradoxes to remain in science, as of the incommensurability of relativity and quantum mechanics, even as we attempt theories of everything. So there may be pedagogical as well as pragmatic reasons to use simplified models in theology, just as in science.

In fact, theological models beyond stale tradition exist quite widely. What we learned about God in childhood may well be outgrown as we experience life. Thus, if life is good for us, then it's rather easy to imagine that God works things for the good. As we see and experience pain and injustice we may come to question what we were told about God. Traditionally, for example, classical theism claims that God is omnibenevolent (possibly meaning: infinitely good) and omnipotent (possibly meaning: all-powerful). The existence of evil and suffering suggests that the God of classical theism is either unwilling or unable to prevent them. The inability of people to grow in their thinking within their church of origin leads many to leave the church, often at the high emotional cost of disrupted relationships.

While there are biblical passages that support an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God, there are others that place limitations on God. Thus, the Bible itself encourages healthy debate. In the field of theology, Open Theism and Process Theology are just two ways of rethinking the God of Christianity to help us make religious sense of the data of human experience. I will go into no detail here - another post for sure - because my only point in mentioning them for now is this: God is not a billiard ball.

Between Gods and Idols

Once upon a time, people believed that the gods walked on Earth and any suggestion that they lacked material bodies would have been greeted with uproar. More recently, it has been held that God is something like a disembodied spirit, and has attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience and omnibenevolence. Other theologians have offered other ways of understanding God which critique some of these. Process theologians nuance omnipotence, preferring a God who lures us toward right actions, while the existential theologian Paul Tillich would argue that God is not an existing being, but is Being itself. My point being, that people who are interested in such things have never agreed on a definition. No doubt they never will; and it will always be in transition as our experiences change.

It's not just theological words that do this. Consider the word atom. I am fairly sure that atoms exist. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus supposed that one could minutely divide matter until one arrived at something that could not be further divided, an atom. Then we found even those could be divided further with components of positive and negative charge. How we imagined atoms made of positive and negative charge has changed from plum pudding to electrons orbiting a nucleus to orbitals and wavefunctions... We don't have to understand all this, but even scientific words change their meanings and embody evolving concepts.

Language is never static. I will be using a broad definition for the word "God", as I will for other words with religious connotations - including "religious". For example, when I think "idol", I do not merely imagine a thing carved and painted and worshiped. I think of how we worship our own creations; our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes speak of "idolatries of the mind and spirit". Now I realize that using definitions like this will not make everyone happy. People on both sides of the religious divide ("believers" and "unbelievers") have their interests in particular definitions, rather than the broadest ones. The broad terms bring the greatest number to the conversation, and allow us to examine traditional authorities in a modern (post-modern) light.
What to me seems essential about the term God, is how beliefs and faith concerning God have served historically as an ordering principle to people's lives, whether they understood it to be corporeal or spiritual, and whatever other attributes gods have been thought to possess. In his essay "A Faith For The Free", Unitarian Universalist James Luther Adams uses this line of thought as he asserts that everyone has faith in something.

“The question concerning faith is not, ‘Shall I be a [person] of faith?’ The proper question is, rather, ‘Which faith is mine?’ or, better, ‘Which faith should be mine?’ for, whether a person craves prestige, wealth, security, or amusement, whether [they live] for country, for science, for God or for plunder, [they show] that [they have] faith, [they show] that [they put their] confidence in something.

“The faiths of the twentieth century have been as powerful and influential as any that have ever been. They have created its science and its atom bombs, its nationalisms and its internationalisms, its wars and its 'peace,' its heroisms and its despairs, its Hollywoods and its Broadways, its Wall Streets and its Main Streets, its Gestapos and its undergrounds, its democracies and its Fascisms, its socialisms and its communisms, its wealth and its poverty, its securities and its insecurities, its beliefs and its unbeliefs, its questions and its answers.

“We must not believe every ‘pious’ [person’s] religion to be what [they say] it is. [They] may go to church regularly, [they] may profess some denominational affiliation, [they] may repeat [their] creed regularly, but [they] may actually give [their] deepest loyalty to something quite different from these things and from what they represent. Find out what that is and you have found [their] religion. You will have found [their] god. It will be the thing [they get] most excited about, the thing that most deeply concerns [them]. But speak against it in the pulpit or in the Pullman car, and [they] may forget what [they call their] religion or [their] god, and rush ‘religiously’ to the defense of what really concerns [them]. The veins on [their] forehead will be distended, [their] eyes will flash, [they] will begin to raise [their] voice. What moves [them] now is more important than [their] creed or [their] atheism; it gives meaning and direction to [their] life...”

This rings true for me. I particularly like the phrase "you will have found [their] god", because it suggests to me a commonality through which we all might be able to talk about gods and Gods, even people who would say they believed in no god. Many conversations begin with an assumption that God is very particularly defined, and then proceed to demolish or provide proofs of existence from there. I do not find this a useful approach. I am interested in the role of god or God in people's lives - this is my pragmatism speaking here. From that perspective, the only important attribute is that god directs the believer's life. In fact, this suggests a good working definition for god: that which directs and gives meaning to a believer's life is their god or gods. To the extent that everyone lives to some kind of purpose, it makes sense to talk about this common experience of seeking and living purposeful lives, of following god. I would have no trouble with calling this entity, one's ordering principle (or even Ordering Principle), except that it conveys nothing of the history of its potential meanings - and is nearly six-times longer!

How this god is related to God is also suggested by the Adams passage. God (upper case G) is that which we should have faith in, as opposed to what we actually have faith in, which would be god (lower case g). I would suggest that there are of necessity some gaps here. First, between what we really should follow and what we actually follow, and second, between our ideals and how we actually live. The first would be a measure of idolatry - in the sense of worshiping what we have made. The second is a measure of something, but I'm not sure what to call it, living below our ideals.

At first sight, the inevitability of idolatry and living below our ideals might seem discouraging. Usefully, though, it is a call to humility, recognizing that there is no completely right opinion, and allowing for a heuristic pursuit of theology. And although there are surely limits to acceptable degrees of idolatry and a point where our behavior becomes hypocrisy, we might want to be cautious about using such labels of others.

Addressing the question of living below our ideals, only low ideals are easy to attain. Thus, the gap between ideals and actions can reflect well on the ideals we are striving for. Striving may be the operative word here. As long as we are stretching toward the ideal, not much more can be asked of us. Adams seems more concerned with those who claim one allegiance for appearances, but actually live for less noble ends, which hypocrisy really is about - play acting. And he may also be thinking of those who sincerely profess one creed, but live another.

Those religious traditions which do use images for worship stress that the image itself is not worshiped, but the divine is worshiped beyond the image. So we might say the same about god and God - that we aim to discern God through our god. I might also temper my skepticism with the thought that even if we cannot know exactly, then maybe we can know well enough for the purposes at hand.

In summary, from a pragmatic perspective, I am thinking of God as Ordering Principle, that from which a person ought to derive purpose and direction. I am making no other claims for that entity; it may or may not be corporeal or spiritual, have particluar powers, or be encapsulated in any specific creed or tradition. My claim is based first on my experience of people - they appear to live with purpose - for good or ill, they put their trust in something; and second, on the intuition that some purposes really are better than others. For example, that living for greater love and justice is better than living for plunder or prestige.

Toward which God (Ordering Principle) do you reach? What kind of life purpose do you have faith in? What thoughts, words and deeds align with that purpose? And why (to each of these questions)? And then, what inspires you to live and be that way? These are the kinds of questions in the field of faith and theology.