During a lengthy period of reading, listening to historical material about early Christianity on DVDs as well as my own thinking, I consider it seems that hardly anyone has ever clearly described or explained how we are to become spiritualized human beings. The Bible tends to describe this in examples of sudden transformation, such as through the miracles of Jesus. For most of us, however, the so-called “spiritual journey” tends to evolve more slowly and unsteadily, often taking years or even decades to mature into anything resembling a personal consistency between faith and action, introspection and charity or reconciling the Natural world with the divine realm of altered space and time, as described by those who have (usually unluckily) visited Heaven during near-death experiences. The Church, whether Catholic or Protestant (or Jewish, for that matter), tends to rely mostly on doctrines and worship services for this purpose, along with the occasionally inspired sermon. Few in the Church ever really ask: how do we help to make our parishioners more spiritual, less egocentric and capable of finding God in our lives during the other six days of the week?
I have become interested in the (pre-Catholic) history of early Christianity because I want to try to understand “what went wrong” after Jesus and Paul died, after the Gospels were written, when we no longer had any of “the originals” left to tell us about what actually happened during Jesus’ ministry. My bias about the Gospels is that they are stories formed to tell us about Jesus to show the range of His work on earth, but they can feel static, and it is too easy to reduce the Gospels to something akin to a textbook to be endlessly recited and studied over our lifetimes. They feel more like photographs than moving pictures, and I sense that “the real story” of Jesus was actually different and perhaps even more interesting than what we can only read of Him. What would the moment-to-moment, day-to-day life of His disciples have been like, since we barely hear from most of them in the Gospels? It is clear that they struggled to understand Jesus, particularly His notion of “the Kingdom of God,” how they were to continue His work after His resurrection, and what was their evolving sense of God’s divine realm? If we assume that most of the disciples were largely illiterate, they could not even read the Old Testament (Tanakh), and so knew of their Judaism primarily through indoctrination from family and their synagogues. Jesus tried to pull them out of “what had always been,” though He was only partially successful until the disciples could witness His resurrection.
Judaism itself has been described as a “book religion,” though God is not a book, and He never had to write anything. I do not believe in the notion of Biblical inerrancy, so I don’t think we can absorb Him merely by reading endlessly. Jewish rituals and festivals, the 613 laws, circumcision and purification, the dietary laws and insular culture have served to form a sort of Jewish religious social psychology that said this is how we find God: through Scripture study, remaining obedient to the Law and keeping to ourselves. But the Old Testament frequently returns to Jewish disobedience toward God, including idolatry and wanton sinfulness. Multiple prophets railed against this, often to no avail. Many Jews today do not keep kosher laws, perhaps out of cultural weariness. Aspects of Judaism, particularly the prohibition on eating pork and shellfish along with circumcision, strike me as pagan, and not likely to lead to a genuine, fully-formed spiritual life. Judaism is too dependent on texts, rituals and history to ignite a broad-based, muscular spirituality that is not merely a reflection of their historical religious culture. Hence Jesus, whom they generally reject as a Messianic figure. Some early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, mocked the Jews’ religious preoccupations by calling them “superstitious.” What did God want the disciples of Jesus to do with His more radical message of nudging Judaism to nearly its breaking-point, which wound up getting most of them martyred?
The Catholic church replaces the 613 laws, circumcision and the dietary restrictions with its own more conceptual doctrines, honoring of Mary and their saints with a strong dose of discouraging sin through regular church attendance. I recently watched a video of a Latin Mass, which is highly prized by many in the Catholic church, and found it curious but rather hollow. It is highly choreographed for the clergy, interesting to watch (once in a while), but ultimately does not really qualify as a deeply spiritual experience for me. It is clear that there is great admiration for Judaism by Catholics, who see a kinship of rituals and immoral prohibitions indoctrinated through catechism in children. Like Judaism, Catholicism relies upon its history of practices more than any alembical challenges toward a personal spirituality. Certainly, there is a lengthy history of Catholic writers who looked deeply into Christian spirituality, but not in terms of any integration of individual psychology and spiritual transcendence that can be put into practice, with the possible exception of Mother Teresa. I am likely being unfair to both religions, but, from the outside, this is how they strike me.
Protestantism, as it has evolved, has lost focus and become too bland. It means too many things to different people, and the denominational strife over homosexuality in recent years highlights its inertia and intolerance. Seven years ago, I left the Presbyterian church because it has never really had much to offer me, it was what I was born into as a child. My problem was that I never had a satisfying church home, and so gave up trying to find one. God and Jesus, in contrast to the church, have always been more interesting. How do we become genuinely spiritual without the aid of non-viable churches?
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It was in the 2nd Century C.E. that the early Christians began to try to make sense of what Jesus was all about. Their handicap was that, once the last of the Apostles and their followers died, there were no living brethren from whom to extract what made Jesus uniquely special in religious history. Although the Gospels were circulating and initial attempts at forming a New Testament canon were being made, what began to take too much precedence was theology, and not just the Trinity. Early attempts at theological discourse can be seen in the Apostolic Fathers during the first half of the 2nd Century as the early, pre-Catholic church settled into its rhythm of establishing a permanent presence in religious society. Jesus could now only be conjured and contemplated, but never again could He be directly witnessed, and this loss has haunted Christianity ever since. In an earlier essay, I described how God’s invisibility led to the development of theology in all religions, as it serves as the primary vexing point for how we are to understand Him. Theology began to replace experiences as the primary route to spiritual discipline and practice, salvation and redemption. One of the worst debates was over faith versus works, which began with Jesus’ brother, James, and languished on until Martin Luther, who hardly resolved the matter, at least to my satisfaction. Theology is complex but easier than trying to harness the meaning of having witnessed Jesus, as had the disciples, who wound up writing so little compared to the many, many theologians who would follow them, until the present day. Theology is too much akin to philosophy: both can be purposeful, but both can too easily miss the mark. Theology’s dominance in these early centuries became clotted enough for Constantine, as a newly-converted Christian, to gather the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE to try to settle a particular theological dispute, again with only partial success. Theology can be like wet soap in our hands: grasping it too tightly often leads to its slipping onto the shower floor.
We are thus caught in a permanent bind regarding Jesus and His disciples: we can read about them every day and year, we can contemplate them theologically, all the while too largely denied any certain historical clarity as to what they actually said and did on a daily basis. The Gospels are at best a storied approximation of what happened, a decent set of photographs but not a movie, certainly not videotape, and thus as frustrating as they certainly are “better than nothing.” We are never sure what is fact, what is embellishment and what is outright fabrication—yet this is our best source about Jesus and His disciples. No wonder people become discouraged. My own answer to this frustration (as I am studying John’s Gospel at the moment, with the aid of priestly and scholarly guides) is to accept this situation as part of the larger set of unknowables: what does God look like, how was the universe actually created, and will there really be a Second Coming. Rather, I would like to attempt to take what we conjure and know to go somewhere else: toward a better sort of spiritual functioning than was described by more than a few Catholic sages over the centuries. We simply need something more, and perhaps something else.
Since none of us has divine abilities to affect others’ health or any direct conversations with God, what does it really mean to become an “imitator of Christ?”
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Introjection is a concept introduced by Sigmund Freud to describe how we are affected by the persistent influences of others, particularly our parents. Introjection illustrates how such influence becomes notable or even dominant in our own behavior. It is being influenced enough to enact an influence at least indirectly to reflect that influence. Although Freud talked about introjection mostly in interpersonal and especially familial terms, it can be seen in other ways. We all introject basic driving rules such as speed limits, stop signs and traffic signals. In a democracy, we vote for candidates who will hopefully reflect our political interests, since democracy is only a concept until it is enacted. Freud thought that parental influences served as the principal introjected material for children, whether positive or not. Children of alcoholics are a clear example of problematic introjection related to witnessing abusive parental drinking, often accompanied by lying and denial, auto accidents and impaired family functioning. This introjection can then be reflected in children’s school functioning and life plans, choice of romantic partners and overall happiness. Introjection becomes “what we carry around inside us” for even decades, which affects how we function as adults. People, whether they realize it or not, often go to psychotherapy to correctively deal with negative introjections. Freud saw this repeatedly with female patients in particular, who intuitively knew of this and would describe it in detail, most common in regard to their poor self-esteem. Introjection, whether for better or worse, is a naturally cumulative process which often leaves an indelible mark on people, sometimes for a lifetime.
Jesus’ disciples strived to introject His teachings, miracles and ways of relating to their fellow Jews, not by reading but by witnessing His ministry on a daily basis. He chose them because of sensing some sustainable introjective potential in these twelve men, who could later carry on His work on their own. The Gospels at times reflect His disciples’ struggle with introjecting Jesus’ words and actions, particularly their reflexive confusion over His miracles. In John’s Gospel, they are often confused by or misinterpret what Jesus tells them, and so He corrects them. Jesus offers His disciples a combined maternal and paternal positive introjection to further their own spiritual independence to do God’s work in the future after His resurrection and ascension. The eventual success of their introjection is seen in the likely martyrdom of at least some or most of the disciples. Jesus is gifting them something they could never receive otherwise: a direct linkage to God, unobtainable through only reading the Tanakh or obeying the Jewish Law. Such introjection would slowly and then more steadily ripple further over the next several centuries to propel Christianity into becoming the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. Introjection is a psychological process which can serve as the foundation for our own evolving spirituality, with God and Jesus leading the way.
While it is admirably necessary to indoctrinate children who attend church with the basic tenets of the Christian faith, this alone will generally prove insufficient to establish any deeper introjected spirituality by itself, beyond a simpler charitable orientation. Even the complex rituals of Judaism are specific to its religious practices, and do not necessarily translate into anything to be used outside the synagogue or home, although Jews will likely disagree. Religion by itself, regardless of type, mainly orients us toward the divine realm and a charitably giving interpersonal stance to the world. But anyone can easily be completely disinterested in God, Jesus, Mohammed or Buddha. Rather, it is how any of these figures become spiritually vital that is of interest here. Religion and spirituality nests itself within our already established introjections by the time we are late teenagers or adults. Young people who attend evangelical churches, sometimes describing themselves as “on fire for God,” have introjected an at least rudimentary spirituality to serve others in some fashion, if mainly by spreading the good news of the Gospels. What has come to interest me as a starting place is when people take a suddenly strong interest in reading the Bible because of its distinct descriptions of how God affects His people in a certain place and period of time: namely Jews between ca. 1,500 B.C. and 90 C.E., and what relevance this has for us in now the 21st Century. Book religions must become introjected and not merely discussed and memorized to be of real spiritual value. So how does that happen to some individuals, but so few of us collectively?
Spiritual introjections are both different from and more allusive than what Freud espoused, because, unlike having stop signs or parents to see on a daily basis, God is always invisible, and for us, Jesus is always only readable, or more beneficially to me, viewable in films. The basis for a fuller-voiced Christian faith has to deal with He who is unseeable who gifts us His Son, who is for us also unseeable. Mother Teresa said she heard Jesus talking to her on a train as a young nun, and this is what provoked her to begin her charity work—-yet she did not claim to see Him. What can we more easily introject from the Gospel stories about Jesus as a starting place? I would say it is His being a medium for the divine realm, since without both His miracles and resurrection no one would consider Him memorably special. Miracles drew the crowds and His resurrection allowed for the spreading of the faith after His ascension. No other person in the history of the world claimed to be resurrected and then appeared to people on earth afterward. Jews struggle to accept Jesus as their Messiah because crucifixion and resurrection were and are not part of the messianic story of their future. Beyond the parables and other teachings, the miracles and even His Transfiguration, what can be introjected most readily from the Gospels is Jesus serving as an intermediary between God and ourselves, which no other person has ever done. We introject His spiritual uniqueness first, that has to be of interest or nothing else happens. Atheists can not accept the existence of the divine realm because of their materialistically scientific orientation, and so become incapable of spiritual introjection. We Christians instead accept and gravitate toward the divine realm because God lives there, and our bias is that He created the universe nearly 14 billion years ago, probably through the Big Bang. The Natural world is all we see of God, that it belongs first to Him. That is why pantheism is so attractive, because God infuses Himself into our living visible world, which is where our spiritual introjection also begins and daily sustains itself.
If the Gospels render Jesus familiar to us and God is reflected in Nature, how then do we evolve toward what is called “faith in action?” Endlessly reading the Bible as a kind of perennial textbook to be swallowed whole usually does not, by itself, turn us into “imitators of Christ.” Jesus never told His disciples Just read Scripture, just obey the Law. He prodded them to go out into the world, first by twos and later in the Great Commission. Jesus gave no theological lectures or rehashed the finer points of the Torah. His efforts were for the disciples to introject all that they had heard and witnessed from Jesus to go and do for others. But this is how our spiritual introjections flounder: we study the Bible and read related books, go to Bible studies, maybe participate in occasional service projects or even try out mission trips, as some churches do emphasize service work. How does all of this settle and meld into spiritual discipline and service? How far can we nudge ourselves toward gaining faith in action? Why do a relative few succeed in this effort, while many of us plod along and only favorably pretend to be functional Christians?
I answer this question with two more psychological terms: the familiar term narcissism, and a less-known word resistance. Simply put, narcissism denotes our variably intense self-centeredness which impedes our ability to care for and serve others. Narcissism also describes the limits of our abilities to understand what others are telling us. The disciple Peter sometimes blurts out responses to Jesus which reflect his understandably human perspective, which Jesus then has to correct. When Peter offers to die for Jesus, he is instead told he will deny knowing Jesus several times by the next morning. Such denial is, of course, self-serving in a time of great distress and uncertainty, with Peter correctly fearing that Jesus is about to die. Resistance is what it sounds like—-an impaired desire to fraternize and aid unknown others, whether out of disinterest or fear of the unknown. We are often reluctant to help others out of “not wanting to get involved.” Narcissism stokes resistance, which results in spiritual inertia. I would say many Christians regularly experience such spiritual inertia, because we are not being pushed by others to grow and help, or resist such prodding. Our Christianity becomes easy and safe. It is what we do on Sundays, and the rest of the week “live our normal lives.” One of the Apostolic Fathers, Ignatius of Antioch, was seized by an intense desire for martyrdom, such was his zeal for Jesus, and this eventually occurred. He had been relieved of his narcissism and resistance toward God and Jesus, even though he never met Them. Some Christians are like this: like Ignatius, like Mother Teresa, like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed during World War II for his faith. Such people are rare, and I am not one of them. I have never been visited by the Holy Spirit, and transformed into a disciple who fully trusts in God as to my life and fate. What are people like me and many other Christians to do about our too-shallow faith to try to live out Jesus’ conviction: go and do?
My answer so far is to both continue to circle around Jesus’ basic stance of serving others when and where possible (akin to the old cliché about the moth and the flame) as well as search out some service activity to pursue on a longer-term basis, since I am retired. My introjection of God and Jesus seems to need some external push at this point to guide me deeper into any real spiritual service. I will continue studying and thinking, as always, since that has helped a lot since I left the church. Other people who have settled into service activities could also provide some guidance.
October 2020
