Restoring the Sense of Wonder
Harry Willson
Copyright 2001 Harry Willson
published by
AMADOR PUBLISHERS
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Contents
What Kind of Person Do I Want to Be?
In the opening pages of Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud acknowledged the existence, in some people, of what he called "the oceanic feeling." It includes an awareness of one's smallness in the face of the rest of what is. Words like "awe" and "adoration" come to mind. This feeling isn't simply fear, or need not be. It may include a sense of unspeakable joy, a strong feeling of all-right-ness. Often there is an inclination to acknowledge some sort of obligation to do better, or to be better, as part of the awareness of Something.
Freud admitted to having never experienced this feeling personally, but for some reason he felt he needed to refer to it. No doubt he had read of it, and probably he had heard about it from some of his patients. He was a little puzzled by it, and then dismissed it.
In another book, The Future of an Illusion, Freud dismisses the "projected father figure" as an illusion, and says it has no future. This is what most people mean by, "God." Freud states that there is nothing to it -- there's nothing there; it is simply an illusion.
But the "oceanic feeling" is still there, for some if not all, and it needs additional consideration. Another name for this human experience is "the sense of wonder."
Unlike Freud, this writer has experienced the oceanic feeling, the sense of wonder. My earliest memory of it was a recurring dream, which was more like an audience than a vision. I was very, very young. I heard a voice, calling my name, deep and resonant, compelling, threatening -- "Harry! Harry!" It always called the name twice, in Biblical fashion. "Moses, Moses." "Samuel, Samuel." "Saul, Saul." "Harry! Harry!" I waited, trembling, for more. Just my name, and a compelling feeling that I had to do something, that I was not all right, that I was leaving something undone, or that I had done something wrong.
That Voice poisoned childhood. I have had to go back and recover as an adult the spontaneity and freedom and joy that the story-myths attribute to childhood. I have more "fun" now than I ever had as a child, and far more joy. Being a tormented child meant that life was all work and obedience and disobedience and trouble and weakness and misunderstanding and confusion and ignorance.
Much later I became convinced that that voice was a psychological mechanism, my father's authority internalized very early. Psychoanalysts would have called it The Super Ego. But I, and everybody around me, called it "God," and I had to take it seriously. It cost half a lifetime to break free.
But the oceanic feeling persists, even though the Voice has been unearthed and aired, and understood and removed. I have felt the sense of wonder many times, and now I deliberately seek that special awareness. I have come to believe it is a good thing.
As a child I sought it in the church, since it was assumed by everyone around me that the Source of that sense of wonder was to be found there. I joined in the pretence, willingly and eagerly at first, and then with more and more difficulty. The oceanic feeling did not come the day I was baptized. The water dried during the sermon and I felt no different. It didn't come in the communion services, with the trays of bread and the tiny glasses of grape juice. It did not come the evening I was ordained a "minister," even though I wanted it to very much. I could not force that sense of wonder to operate, by praying or preaching or reading the Bible or listening.
I could not force it, but from time to time it came to me anyway. It was always a surprise. I fully appreciated the title of one of C. S. Lewis' books, Surprised by Joy.
On one occasion, I was camping as a boy with a friend, and awakened by a strange light. It was not the moon, which was over there. This was another light over that other way, in the meadow. I sat up and pulled my glasses from my shoe and put them on. Could a car be coming on that steep narrow rut-track, in the dark in the middle of the night? No, it was not that kind of light, and the woods were silent.
We tried to walk quietly among the dried fallen leaves, but could not. We stopped at the edge of the meadow. "God Almighty!" my companion blurted, with a gasp. For an instant, I thought of stories of angels and holy light, but I could tell this was different, and this was not a story.
A cloud of light hovered at the far end of the meadow, moving inside itself, as high as the trees in some places, but mostly not taller than a boy. It grew as we watched it. The cloud sent out sections of itself along the edge of the meadow, into the trees, then pulled back, then extended further, taking over more and more space.
"It's coming this way!" my friend whispered, sounding scared.
"Yeah. What is it?" I asked.
"I dunno, but I think we should get outa here," he said.
"Not me. I wanta see what it is." We were whispering loudly, and the cloud of light was approaching. I was not exactly afraid. I was excited. I felt something, all right, but not fear. My heart pounded, and I could hear myself panting, as if I had been running. But I couldn't run away, and didn't want to. "Let's see what it is."
I studied the moving, growing, approaching cloud of light. I saw little points of light inside the big glow. Each one blinked on and off, as I watched. The blinking was especially plain out on the growing edges of the cloud.
The expanding arm of the mass of light came nearer to us. "I think I'm gonna go," my companion said, with a tremble in his voice.
"O.K.," I said, meaning, "You go if you want to. I'm staying."
I stood my ground. As the cloud approached close enough for me to reach out and touch it, I saw what it was. I had seen them before, but never by the millions. Fireflies. "Lightning bugs," we kids called them. But millions of them. They landed on my arm, and blinked on and off. They went on past me. They were circling the meadow, and crossing it, and filling it. I stepped out onto the grass, and felt myself surrounded by all those gentle little bits of light. At the same time, the whole cloud felt to me like something very big, very powerful, irresistible. I didn't know what to make of it. Magic, weird, perfectly natural, very strange, exciting, breath-taking -- I sat down in the meadow and let the lightning bugs play on me. I lay down and looked up through the cloud of light. They hid the stars. The light went deep into my eyes and did something to my insides. I stayed lying there for hours. I must have fallen asleep. When dawn changed the color of the sky, the cloud was gone.
The following winter, on a bitter cold night when my folks were worrying about the danger of the water pipes freezing, an uncle came visiting. He came on the coldest night of the year to bring the family a bushel of pecans from Florida. He greeted the grown-ups, delivered the pecans, and then turned to me. "Get a sweater on, and then your coat. Also a hat, and good mittens."
"Where we goin'?" I asked.
"Outside. I want to show you something."
We went out. It was very dark. The shoveled snow was piled up taller than I between the street and the sidewalk. The temperature was below zero.
We stood in the middle of the street on the packed snow and looked up. The sky had changed. Curtains of light hung down, from overhead, all the way to the north end of Arch Street. Moving sheets of color -- purple, green, dark red, pink, silver. The lines of color moved like draperies opening and closing, lifting and falling.
I was stunned. My heart pounded. My voice sounded little and far away. "What is it? What's happening?"
"I'll explain later," said my uncle in a hushed voice. After the first exclamations and questions, we both were silent. It looked like the entrance into Heaven. I stood there with my head craned back for a very long time, soaking it in. I was having a vision, better than Jacob's ladder. The curtains opened, inviting me to come up and in. They closed. They opened again. It was like a call to come up and in.
At last my uncle pulled me back down and away from that mystery, back into the house. While the family worried about the effect of the extreme cold, most of me was somewhere else. In the sky. In "Heaven."
My uncle taught me the words, "Aurora Borealis." He didn't think "Northern Lights" was good enough. And I was glad for the strange words. Really magic words, they were, for something marvelous and precious and totally mysterious.
The Aurora Borealis had no noticeable effect on the rest of the family, that I could notice. But it had done something to me. I could tell. It was like the previous summer's cloud of fireflies. Something. Something. The Whole Thing, maybe. Not our insignificant little sins. Something big and important and alive and powerful and gentle. I knew something I didn't know before, and was glad. I couldn't put it into words, maybe, but I knew. Something.
It was the sense of wonder. I felt it again as a teen-ager on my first airplane ride, looking down on my home town.
I felt it later, looking into a child's face as she died.
I feel it when I am swept away by sexual ecstasy.
I feel it, sometimes, as I kneel alone staring into the fire in the little fireplace in our living room.
I have felt it reading certain books, discovering new, previously unimagined continents.
And I feel the oceanic feeling every time, when, after an absence of months or years, I first see again the ocean itself. I wallow in that feeling, when I play in the surf.
The oceanic feeling is not always pleasant. Littleness is part of it. Helplessness often is. A sense of loss of control, along with fear and frustration, can be in it. An awareness of my mortality is in it.
I must state again that I have never felt it in church, although I sometimes joined in the pretence that we did.
I have observed that those who use the word "God" most glibly are usually very arrogant and unpleasant persons. TV evangelists, for example, and leaders of extremist political and religious movements. "God" can become an excuse and even a justification for plain old nastiness.
On the contrary, the oceanic feeling, the sense of wonder, can lead people to a humble awareness of Truth, with some sense of the human ego's relative size and importance, in all the Cosmos. More gentle and more loving human beings can be the result. I don't believe we want to get rid of the sense of wonder.
The sense of wonder, felt when looking through tele- scopes or microscopes, or into the heart of a volcano, or into the eye of a friend, does not require a Transcendent Entity, a projected personification of ego's fear.
The sense of wonder can enhance life greatly, rather than terrify or stifle and regulate, when it is arrived at from looking inward. All that power and order, and the wonder they inspire, are within. What transcends ego, which is something ego badly needs, is not Omnipotent, Omniscient, Wholly Other, but rather the connectedness of What is Within to the Innerness of all things. What is in me is in all, in us all, as well as volcanos and galaxies.
A restored sense of wonder can become an invitation to an inward journey. Let us confront the infantile fear, so easily projected outward as "the fear of God." Let us find the strange powerful unknown within each one, and make peace with that. Then we won't need an Entity "out there" to explain and justify things, from which we must then seek forgiveness. Let's go on in and find out how marvelous each one is, and how connected we are to everything else. Inner Peace comes, not from tricks of sacrifice that mollify an angry Entity that we have offended, but rather from accepting all the parts of ourselves. We'll find them inside there.
Scholars of the anatomy of the human brain have begun to identify that portion of the organ which deals with mysticism, mythology and mystery. There is plenty of mystery to be dealt with -- "Where'd we come from?" "Where are we going?" "What the Sam Hill is going on anyway?" Sometimes these are called "philosophical questions," and there are people who push them away as soon as they come up. Others go for pre-packaged answers to such questions without really putting to use this mystery organ which we all have.
The wonder organ, that section of the brain that senses wonder, or is in play when wonder is sensed, can be located in all of us and therefore must have had some kind of evolutionary advantage in past eons. Just thinking about that in itself will put your wonder organ into motion. What is it for? What survival function does it serve? Why did it evolve at all?
Which leads to the next question -- does the existence of this organ correspond to something "out there?" We have eyes because there is light out there and our eyes use light to perceive what else is out there. We have ears because there is sound, and our ears use sound to help us perceive what else is out there. So -- do we have the wonder organ because there is Something out there? Something that would help us perceive Something Else?
Well, there is no question that there is something there all right -- all that Mystery, the Unknown, the Incomprehensible, the Indescribable. Some philosophers call it "the numinous." When your wonder organ is working, you're in touch with That. Right away someone is going to want to call it "God," but that will amount to short-circuiting a process that would do more good if allowed to work further without resorting to that word. It would be like taking a shortcut too soon. Jumping to "God" very well may shut down the wonder organ before it has had a chance to do much or learn much or grow much. If you watch carefully, you'll find that religions tend not to be much help in this wonder department, even though that's what they pretend to be all about.
When one looks carefully over the eons, one observes that the function of the religions for the most part, so far, has been to harness, channel, control, not to say stultify, mediocritize and asphyxiate, that sense of wonder or mystery that we are dealing with here. Religions channel ecstasy into pageantry. They trade conviction for tradition.
Religions are designed to make saints out of advanced wonderers, like Francis of Assisi or Teresa de Avila. The effect is to put their example out of reach. We're supposed to admire and even worship them, rather than do what they did or what they taught. Religious organizations prefer to control people, rather than turn them on to wonder, which will turn them loose, or make them free.
But wonder keeps turning up, overthrowing the way the social system wants us to think. The wonder organ can help us know, really know -- and then the spin-doctors appear in our eyes as users of falsehood and deception. We'll search for causes rather than cures, for things like cancer, and then it'll be harder for the perpetrators of the causes to keep us in line.
The sense of wonder, turned loose, can make us reach further and change our minds and even change what we've been doing. The sense of wonder, and our wonder organs, could make our lives so exciting, so vibrant, that it would become unthinkable that we would permit the life-hating forces and powers of religion to spoil everything.
So, the wonder organ is an evolutionary advantage. We, all together, need to exercise it well just now, because the species happens to be in considerable danger, and all the easy speeches that comfort cruel men aren't helping. Our wonder organs will make Freethinkers of us, if we let them. We will then be regarded as subversive and dangerous, a threat to the comforts and advantages that those who would destroy the world now obtain from their activities. It'll take courage, but it'll be exciting, and worth doing.
* * *
Many of the support groups which are so popular these days are designed to help persons become free of some obsession. Alcohol, nicotine, pills, food, sex, work -- whatever. The abuse of any of these things constitutes a problem, and the idea is that persons who have identified a common problem can often help each other.
This book is concerned about becoming free of still another obsession. It is more harmful and more painful than others, because it is not generally recognized as an obsession at all. The freedom being sought is generally regarded by others as a loss. "She lost her faith," someone will say. She may feel better, and be obviously better off, but the general attitude toward her, which she must learn to put up with, is that something unfortunate has happened.
The professor was explaining to his students the function of a priest, any priest in any religious system. He named two functions:
[1] to sanction whatever society is doing, in the name of a Higher Power, and
[2] to placate the numinous. He was asked to explain number two without jargon. "Get God off our backs," he said. Sacrifices, offerings, prayers, holy obligations, fasting -- whatever it takes to get "God," or whatever gods may be, to leave us in peace. "They'll pay you, a little," he growled, "and expect you to relieve them of ‘God'."
Then he shifted topics and began to explain the function of a prophet. That was the title used in ancient Israel, although other cultures and religions have other names for them. "The gadfly that stings," Socrates called himself. "Agents of cultural change," is a phrase used today, to refer to some artists. The prophet sees what's going on, applies some overarching standard to it, like Justice or Truth, or what he understands to be "the will of God," or "the word of God," and then he sounds off.
But, said the professor, just as the prophet gets going, "here they come with those damned rattles." Here they come, not interested in the prophet's objections to what society is doing. Here they come, demanding that the priest quit referring at all to "social issues" and return to his task, which is to get God off their backs.
I tried to be a sort of prophet, long ago, but didn't handle well at all the role of priest. I never got "God" off other people's backs at all. But now, unconnected to any ecclesiastical organization, I find I have gotten "God" off my own back, and wonder if what I've learned could help someone else figure out how to do it, too. So, I write this.
The dictionary defines an obsession as "a persistent idea, desire, emotion or pattern of behavior, especially one that cannot be got rid of by reasoning." We have a right to be concerned about those obsessions that make a person do things that are harmful to oneself or others.
"You smoke too much" -- it'll kill you, and injure those around you.
"You drink too much" -- it'll kill you, and interfere with work and family meanwhile.
"You can't get sex under control" -- it's ruining your life, and other people's.
"Your work has become an obsession" -- it'll kill you, and meanwhile leaves no time or energy for any of the rest of your life.
"God" in the minds and in the lives of many is a sort of obsession, which leads them to believe things which are foolish and patently not true, and to do things which are unwise and unkind, both to others and to themselves.
A mental or emotional disability is different from a
physical one. You adapt to the physical and go on as best you can. Eyeglasses, dentures, wooden legs, wheelchairs, limps -- you adapt. An obsession/disability is something to get rid of, if possible, because it makes you do unwise things. For example:
[1] "God" may lead you to thwart your desires.
[2] "God" may lead you to set aside your own best interests.
[3] "God" may lead you to feel guilty for things you didn't do.
[4] "God" may lead you to feel guilty simply for being the way you are.
[5] "God" may lead you to think more highly of yourself than you ought to think.
[6] "God" may lead you to think more lowly of yourself than you ought to think.
[7] "God" may lead you to stay aloof from fine people.
[8] "God" may lead you to meddle where you have no business.
[9] "God" may lead you to approve of nonsense.
[10] "God" may lead you to approve of wickedness.
Very much of that kind of thing can mess up life badly.
Individuals can change, however, especially when they want to.
"I can't handle this any more. It's beyond my control. I know it doesn't make sense, but I can't stop myself. I need help." There is already in existence a Fundamen-talists Anonymous organization, designed to de-program people from fundamentalist Christian cults. Perhaps there is need of an even wider-reaching movement. God Anonymous, offering help in getting rid of the God-obsession.
If "God" -- whatever definition one may be using, whether deliberately or by default -- feels like a disability and a hindrance to a full life, then this discussion may be helpful. If there are forbidden topics in one's mind and conversation, unthinkable points of view, unimaginable companions or friends because of what they believe or even what they look like, it may be the "God"-obsession which is hindering the fullest sort of experience.
"God" may be an ogre left-over from childhood training, which still troubles the nightmares of an adult. If that's so, it can be understood and outgrown.
Having noted that, it is necessary to be aware that there is a risk here. After probing into all this, defining "God" more carefully, at last, and noting some of the remarkable history of the idea, there is the danger that the seeker will decide that everything humans have ever meant by the term is nonsense, and everything they have ever done in the name of "God," is worse than nonsense. There is no doubt that a great deal of very bad behavior and very harmful teaching has been justified by appealing to "God." But one can over-react.
The danger is that the inner search, the quest for meaning in life, the sense of wonder, and the seeker's response to the sense of wonder will all be rejected, in the name of one's personal freedom from this far-reaching obsession.
We want freedom, and clarity and truth, but when we find them, we want them to enhance the sense of wonder. There is a great deal to wonder about, with or without "God." The quest, the search for meaning, does not need "God" to justify itself. We are trying to root out an obsession, not our remarkable ability to wonder about life and the world we are a part of.
* * *
"Is The Cosmos self-aware?" I asked.
"Surely it is," the philosopher replied.
"I suspect it may be," I said, and then added, to myself, some of the following:
By pondering the arrangement of things and the known rules of that arrangement, and imagining the myriad unknown rules of the same arrangement, I find myself supposing that The Cosmos may be self-aware. It does contain some aware entities, you and me, for starters. It contains at least a kind of partial self-awareness.
Even if the Cosmos is self-aware, we should not call that self-awareness "God," because that word conjures up too many notions that range from the preposterous to the wicked, and we'll waste much energy having to refute what no longer needs refuting.
Teilhard de Chardin knew all that, and allowed the Pope and the Jesuits to keep the word "God," while he went on, and left them scratching their heads in utter perplexity as to what he meant by his far-stretched notions, like Point Alpha and Point Omega. I'll admit that his ideas are far from crystalline in their clarity, but he was trying. He was hindered by a strange loyalty to the Pope and the Jesuit Order. I am grateful that I am not.
Who else is not hindered by philosophical axioms and theological presuppositions, but still willing to wonder about The Cosmos? Is The Cosmos just? Does it care about Justice, really, or is that idea nothing more than a deceptive ploy on the part of the powerful to justify their own misdeeds? Is The Cosmos stupid? Is The Cosmos fooled by our rationalizations and explanations and excuses and sacrifices and rituals and atonements of one kind or another?
Could those of us who still want clarity on this matter ever find each other, or must it always be a loner here and a loner there, calling out like crickets in the night, chirping but not finding each other, not hearing each other, longing for someone to share the quest but questing nevertheless, with or without a group? I needed to become free of "God." My own liberation now seems like such a marvelous wonder that it impels me to turn back to those still imprisoned and say, "You, too, can be free! You can repudiate that authority, and remove those fingers at your throat. You can breathe!" To those who have instinctively insisted on breathing rather than choking, I want to say, "You don't need to feel bad about ‘betraying' that which held you prisoner. Be glad and proud that you're free."
All of you who are not imprisoned, hindered, hampered, hobbled, hamstrung, or wing-clipped by "God" -- ignore me. You're the lucky ones, and you can go your way without hesitation. I'm looking for those who want loose, who want out, who want to fly, to run, to sing, to dance, to say what you're thinking, to say, "No!" because that's the honest thing to say. And I'm looking for the others who have found their way out, one way or another, and may be feeling a little scared and bewildered out here in the fresh air.
I need to warn you, those around you will say you're going crazy. That's what going sane and free looks like from inside the prison. It'll take courage, but it'll be worth it.
Do you feel at home in The Cosmos? Or do you think "God" is after you, watching you, snooping, prying, objecting to your pleasure, binding heavy burdens on you, obligating you? It's a trick that has been played on you, by parents, siblings, neighbors, teachers, peers, authorities -- to make you know your place and stay in it. When you're ready, you can wise up, and take charge of your own life.
Now, having gotten that far, can we go back to the original question? Is the Cosmos self-aware? Does our own curiosity about the inner, the mysterious, the connections between aware persons, the way our own consciousness can reach and stretch -- does any of that mean anything? I think it might, if we can get past the pat little pre-arranged assumptions and answers.
* * *
I have felt a great deal of shame and bitterness about the past. No, I'm not an ex-felon. I never robbed or murdered anyone. I am an ex-clergyman and an ex-missionary. I used to pretend that I knew about things which no twenty-five-year-old could possibly know. I used to try to counsel people in trouble -- alcoholics, people near death, people in grief, people in collapsing marriages, mentally ill people, heart-broken people, people who were angry or frightened or proud or greedy or nasty or mean-hearted, -- as if I wasn't in trouble enough myself, as if I had answers to their questions and solutions to their problems.
My wife told me the other day that the only thing in her full life that she's ashamed of is her former connection to the church, how she used to believe all that and take it seriously and really try to act out the doctrines and the teachings. I feel plenty of that, too. All the arrogance, all the judgmental evaluation of what was really other people's business, all the interference, all the stupid waste of energy and time and concern -- I also feel shame just remembering those things.
But now it must be let go. What is done is done. A person has to start from wherever he is. I had to do that then, and I have to do it now, and so does everyone. What is to be done now is to understand it better, be wiser because of it -- and let it go.
I really want to be rid of the arrogance. I'm ready to mind my own business. It's time, and past time, to tend to my own life, which is the only thing I can legitimately change in any way anyway and the only thing for which I am fully responsible.
And I want to give up the regret over wasted energy. Sometimes I feel plain foolish, remembering what I did and tried to do, as a person seriously trying to do what I thought "God" wanted. I suppose everyone my age feels some of that foolish regret, God or no God. We have to let it go.
I watch, with considerable envy, the kids wasting energy, working off energy, seeking ways to exhaust themselves. I find myself wanting to do some energetic thing, but I arrive at exhaustion sooner than I used to. Maybe I'm trying too hard to recover the shattered dreams of childhood that I never really had then. I was a victim of what some of us now call "spiritual abuse."
The First Big Question was disallowed, for instance. "What do you want?" It never came up. The shattering of the dreams of childhood was impossible, because there weren't any. I got over it, at last, in the second half of this strange journey. I began to dream, but not until after I got rid of "God." The great obsession poisoned the first half of life.
An old verse comes back, and means more than ever. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
* * *
We need to rescue myth from The Great Obsession. We need to get rid of that obsession or it'll be the end of us. But we can't get rid of myth, of mystery, of infinity, of choice, of causation, of responsibility for previous actions, of memory, or the magic of true friends and a shared life.
The Great Obsession is "God" -- or rather the human belief that there is a God, an Entity who made the world, who owns it and operates it, who is in charge of what happens in it, who selects certain people to be related to him in a way different from people generally, who makes demands of all people and special demands of the special people, whose demands are impossible to meet, who condemns, who demands sacrifice, who forgives and makes fresh demands on those forgiven.
This great obsession hinders personal development and the growing of an authentic self from the inside. The self will inevitably be inclined to be disobedient and will be accused of selfishness. Any who believe that this disobedience is a bad thing will find their own lives badly hampered and will almost surely participate in the condemnation and disdaining of all the other people nearby, who are busy trying to live their own lives. We need to examine this great obsession in more detail, and let history and reason help put it into perspective.
A remarkable quantity of criminality has been sanctioned and approved and even encouraged over the centuries -- in the name of "God."
The ultimate expression of human madness and violence, that is, armed conflict without rules -- wars of all kinds, declared and undeclared, covert and overt, with all the unspeakable cruelty and destruction -- this has been declared permissible and even "just," for many centuries by both participants and observers, in the name of "God."
According to the story, Joshua invaded Canaan, at YHWH's behest, and conquered, and slaughtered everything in his path in a genocidal clean sweep. When something less than total annihilation of the defeated enemy men, women, children and cattle was allowed in an exceptional case, YHWH violently disapproved and withheld support for the next battle, which resulted in disaster for Israel. "God" was demanding nothing less than total genocide.
A couple of centuries later the scribes assert that YHWH assisted David in the formation of a huge Israeli empire by military conquest, held together by military force and occupation.
Several centuries later several of the prophets declared that "God" had changed sides, and delivered Israel into the hands of the Assyrian conqueror, Sennacherib. The reason given was that Israel had not been faithful in the worship of YHWH. Later, according to the interpretation of events given by the prophet Jeremiah, "God" assisted Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in the conquest of Jerusalem.
In the early fourth century, A.D., "God" assisted a Roman general, Constantine, enabling him to win, by force of arms, the position of Roman Emperor. "God" used wholesale slaughter to make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.
"God" and Christ enlisted knights and soldiers and even children, to march to the Near East and kill and be killed in an effort to take the so-called Holy Land by force from persons who were not Christian. Much of the maniacal anti-European and anti-American feeling in that same territory today is the pent-up retaliatory response. Nothing begets terrorism better than terror, and if "God" is brought into the picture, first on one side and then the other, reasonableness inevitably has trouble being heard.
"God" recruited priest/soldiers, who robbed, slaughtered and enslaved the peoples of huge empires in Mexico and Peru. The violent destructiveness of the God-obsessed wiped out the art and science and finally even the written languages of the losers. All this destruction of beauty and knowledge, and human life, was done in the name of "God" and Truth and Love. Since those conquests, the theft of wealth, minerals, sugar, coffee, rubber, and soil fertility has continued without ceasing.
Puritan preachers in New England gave special thanks to "God" for plagues of measles and small pox which spread from the whites to the natives and exterminated whole tribes in time to open their land for "settlement."
Slavery and genocide predominated in the establishment of the new experiment in "self-government" in the Western Hemisphere. The inferiority of the victimized colored races was regarded as something "God" had arranged, and was widely preached and believed at the time -- and still is.
Because of Manifest Destiny, that is, the gift from "God" of the whole central swath of North America to the white invaders, wars of conquest in the name of "God" took the U.S. Marines all the way to the Halls of Montezuma, in order to secure the theft of more than half the land mass of Mexico.
The British took over one-fourth the land mass of the entire globe, in the name of "God" and the crown, convincing most of the population of the planet that "God" is a special weapon in the hands of white people.
In our century, obliteration bombing of whole cities was justified, in the belief that "God" fights on America's side and approves of whatever horror the Americans can devise for the destruction of their opponents.
The build-up of sufficient nuclear warheads to destroy the very biosphere itself many times over in the name of "liberty," is widely seen as an act of obedience to "God." He requires us to defend ourselves, it is believed, and it would be better to end altogether the experiment of life forms on this planet rather than let atheists who do not believe in "God" have any say in anything. This is not only wickedness, to prepare to destroy the planet itself, it is also madness. Where were the destroyers planning to live after they finished?
This nonsensical wickedness proceeds apace, and many persons obsessed by "God," some in high places, believe in the myth of Armageddon, the last battle between good and evil. There is one reference to Armageddon in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation. The language is mythical, describing angels, dragons, a beast that is part leopard, part bear and part lion, with ten horns and seven heads. Three foul spirits like frogs issue from the mouths of the dragon, the beast and the false prophet. The frogs go abroad to the kings of the whole earth, to assemble them for battle, and they gather at Armageddon for the last clash. That's all it says.
Armageddon may be a real place -- the Plains of Megiddo, in Israel, where King Josiah met his untimely end, killed in battle in the year 608 B.C. by Pharaoh Neco of Egypt. Josiah allowed himself to be called away from serious and encouraging reforms which he had earlier initiated, seduced tragically into geopolitics and war.
That reference to Megiddo is ancient history. The rest of the story in Revelation is myth, and not at all clear. To call those references to dragons and frogs "prophecy" about current events is nonsense. And to take this particular myth of Armageddon literally at all is evil. But persons obsessed by "God" are doing just that. To accept the idea of, to believe in, and then to prepare for, the destruction of the entire world in fiery violence -- it is wickedness.
These people believe that the World is evil and that it is full of evil people, who deserve to be destroyed. Most of the inhabitants of the planet are to be sure non-white and anti-American, but that alone doesn't make them evil. It is evil self-hating nonsense to believe that they all deserve to be incinerated. Maybe the author of the Book of Revelation believed that. If so, his way of following and obeying the Prince of Peace was pathetically and pathologically twisted into a life-hating, world-hating, orgy of imaginary destruction. It is still evil nonsense, and far more dangerous now than when he first wrote it, because now it is possible to bring about what he envisioned.
The power to bring about all that destruction is in our time not a myth. It is a literal fact, many times over. It is madness, also. To destroy a planet is evil madness. To approve of it, to get ready to do it, to help pay for getting ready to do it, to "upgrade" and "keep in dependable readiness" the instruments by which it can be done -- all that is taking part in the same evil madness.
There is no "God" who wants to destroy the world. Some humans, in their pathological unthinking hateful cynicism, may want to destroy the world. We ought not depend on a supernatural "God" to stop them. You and I must stop them. And, sooner or later, and sooner would be better than later, we'll have to dismantle all that weaponry which makes this myth something to take seriously. We may as well get at it.
Backing away, for another view of all this, we see that the systematic, piecemeal destruction of the natural world has characterized from the beginning the expansion of this culture which we call "western." It is a culture obsessed with "God." Another myth is at the root of the motivating attitude. "God" gave the world to man, to subdue, the story says. "God" gave man superiority over the beasts, making extinction of species no crime. God gave man the forests and the sea, the mountains and the prairies, to exploit, buy, sell, divide, fight over and destroy.
The comparatively new ecological awareness -- that Life is all one organism, not a plaything of humanity but a destructible, fragile characteristic of this very unusual planet -- such ideas have a difficult time burrowing into people's heads and hearts, because the obsession with "God" tends in the opposite direction, feeding man's inclination to be proud and selfish and thoughtless and stupid and mean.
From still another angle, we may say that cruelty to children has been perpetrated in the name of "God." Adults obsessed by "God" want to thwart that spontaneity, control that freedom, harness that innate honesty and truthfulness, hem in that curiosity, "spiritualize" that sensuality, spoil the pleasures, add to the fears, exaggerate the weakness and littleness, teach duty and guilt.
The process creates adults who have fears to get over, unreasonable feelings of obligation to puzzle out, up-tight attitudes toward their own bodies and other people's, difficulty smiling or touching or enjoying, guilt about success or good fortune, expectations of trouble and misery and illness and incompetence.
The ultimate wickedness, in one's own personal life, is cruelty to self. The victim tends to blame himself or herself, thus making whatever else is the matter worse. Or an adult may be nursing belated hostility, which hampers life now. In my case I raged, deep inside, late in life, against my father. Not as a child -- that was unimaginable and totally impossible then. But later, when I saw what had been done, and how unfair it was, I was furious -- and still no better off.
In my case I began to feel better when I admitted to myself that I allowed it, and that pleading weakness and littleness did no good. The important new development was that I was no longer weak and little, and did not need to allow cruelty any more. To the extent that I still continued to allow it, it was my own doing, and cruelty to self, which needed to be stopped.
An adult can understand it, and then put a stop to it. If the perpetrators of the cruelty will not stop, one can get away, out of their reach, and then outlive them. One is not required to let them use "God" to persecute adult victims. And one dare hope that those who have figured this out will not be inclined to use "God" as an excuse for cruelty toward anyone else.
* * *
Children in Sunday Schools, adolescents in youth groups, and adults listening to sermons are often challenged and troubled by the question, "What is God's will for my life?" The chanted statement of purpose of the youth group I was part of long ago was quite ominous, looking back on it. "... to discover God's will for our lives, and do it."
Each one subjected to this teaching is asked to believe that "God" created him or her, and put him or her here for a specific purpose. The task laid on us was to discover what that purpose was. Individuals were often perplexed by the fact that "God" hid his purpose so well, making each one of us unsure, requiring each one to dig and ponder and wonder and squirm and puzzle over it.
The hiddenness of the supposed purpose should have been a clue, but often it wasn't. "If God wants me to do something, why doesn't he say what? Why would he tell Dad, or the minister, instead of me? I'm the one who will have to do it finally." Instead, that uncertainty became part of the problem, making obedience harder. Perhaps I suffered on account of this uncertainty more than some others subjected to the same teaching.
I felt called to obey, but didn't know what God's will for my life was. Finally I made up answers to that question, and then persuaded myself that they came from "God." I then proceeded pell-mell with admirable single-mindedness and remarkable stupidity to execute the imagined orders. I was eager to obey orders, and found in them a great relief from the uncertainty.
Incidentally, the military analogy of obeying orders, which I am now using, was and still is widespread among those infected with this obsession. "The Church Militant" means the Christians who haven't died yet, in contrast to "The Church Triumphant," who are reigning with "God" and Christ in heaven. "Onward, Christian Soldiers, marching as to war!" We've all heard of "The Salvation Army." One of the names of "God" is "The Lord of Hosts," which means "Commander of Armies." I have since learned to be suspicious of this emphasis, preferring both freedom and responsibility for myself, over mindless obedience. But way back then clear orders were a relief, and I didn't notice that I had simply made them up.
I was sure, at age sixteen, that God wanted me to be a medical missionary. I even knew where, in an almost unknown Asian country, which soon became much better known, not as a place for missionaries but as a place for soldiers -- Korea.
God's will for my life was the question. When I was young and stupid, I knew exactly what it was. It was not based in any way on the first big question, "What do you want?" It had nothing to do with, "What aptitudes do you have? What skills do you have? What interests do you have? What intentions do you have? What kind of human being are you?" It wasn't even based on the question, "What needs to be done in this world?"
The will of God was a plan imposed from the outside, by persons who were bigger, and loaded with psychological influence, onto a terrified young pip-squeak. "What is God's will for my life?" In order to end the pressure, and the dreadful uncertainty, an answer to the question was invented and pounced upon and grasped and hung onto for dear life.
But then a problem arose. Desire raised her beautiful
ugly head. "What do you want, Harry?" The question had never been allowed to surface before, had never been allowed to sneak into consciousness at all. But Desire is powerful stuff, and hard to bottle. Freud admitted in one place that humans experience "somatic pressure," as he called it, in varying amounts. He admitted to experiencing only a little, which makes him seem strange to me, even now. I experienced a very great deal of somatic pressure, for which I am now thankful. I have learned to refer to this crisis in my life as, "Saved by the Glands."
I found myself in the odd position of having to talk "God" out of his will for me! What audacity! The Eternal Source of Power and Justice and Love in the Cosmos has this plan, established before the foundation of all worlds, and this little squirt is asking him to change it! Here is some evidence that people are capable of believing marvelous quantities of nonsense.
Desire, including the glands, but not limited to them, persuaded "God" to change his mind about Harry, and let him go to seminary instead of medical school and become a missionary, but not of the medical kind, and, incidentally, to get married. So, Harry latched on to this new "Will of God," and proceeded again, pell-mell, hell-for-leather, to obey the new set of orders.
It is absurd. What is the will of God? A plan? A previously determined and inexorable course of action? A general divine intention? A correct method of responding to every one of the hundreds of choices, big and little, that confront every human being more or less all the time? A notion which makes understandable and acceptable, after the fact, whatever happens? It is hardly any wonder that it is so difficult to discover the particulars of what it is. I know a lady who "lays before God" the decision as to whether to have peas or beans for supper. The concept begins to look preposterous on both the large scale and the small.
The whole philosophical discussion of free will and predestination could be dragged in here, but may not be necessary, because before we're finished, we may succeed in altering radically the idea of "God" in the phrase, "will of God." Then all that argument will be moot and really merely theoretical.
As it works out in practical questions of living, the phrase "will of God" is used by some people to persuade other people to do certain things, and not to do other things. "Obey your parents. It is the will of God."
"Become a doctor. It is the will of God."
"Gird on your sword and march and fight and slay the infidel. It is the will of God."
"Resist the urgings of your glands. It is the will of God, even though he made them."
"Do not take charge of, and change, your life. Instead, continue to obey the will of God." That means, "Obey me!" -- "me" being whatever human authority is giving the orders.
If there is a God, how can anyone know his will, for the other person? Yet that is the common use of the idea. When the other person is little and susceptible, it results in pressure, manipulation and misery. It's always meddling.
When Peter asked about Jesus' plans for John, Jesus became quite blunt. "What is that to you?" Anyone who claims to know the will of God for someone else is an oppressor. He needs to be disarmed and steered clear of.
Self-deception is another matter. Certain people seem to need to indulge in it. Some persons are not yet ready to go on in life without clear plans and directions, not yet ready to tread water, not yet ready to wonder about what new unimaginable adventures life has in store for this new day, as each day dawns. They need to have it all planned and packaged in advance, and for them the will of God is a handy tool for the necessary self-deception. With the will of God firmly in place, persons can fool themselves into believing that everything is all planned and guaranteed to be O.K. -- all safe and secure.
But it isn't.
* * *
Persons who are weak and little and whose pain- receptors are functioning properly feel afraid, at least sometimes. Some are afraid of falling; others are afraid of the dark. Some are afraid of sabre-toothed tigers, or imaginary monsters; others are afraid of thunder and lightning, or deep water, or earthquake.
Some are afraid of being hit; others are afraid of blood. Some are afraid of big kids; others are afraid of adults. Some are afraid of the loss of love -- this one is the root of guilt. Some are afraid of punishment. Some are afraid of failure -- this one can cause complete paralysis. Some are afraid of what others will think or say -- this one in the hands of oppressors replaces hitting in the assortment of tactics used to keep other persons under control.
All the phobia-words are fun to catalog. Agoraphobia is the fear of open spaces. Ochlophobia is the fear of crowds. Acrophobia is the fear of heights. The cartoon character, Charlie Brown, a fearful young fellow, was discussing these words with Linus. Linus finally found the word which described his problem. "Pantophobia."
"That's it!" shouted Charlie. The fear of everything.
Some are afraid of "God." I never saw or heard the word "theophobia," and now I wonder why. "Theophobia is the beginning of wisdom," the proverb says.
The fear of God offers great advantages to those who feel it. If indulged in seriously enough, the fear of God can liberate one from all the other fears. Fear God, the Maker and Ruler of all the powers that be, and you need not fear anything else. Fear God only.
I tried to live that way for a while, but found myself puzzled over things I observed. I wondered how persons who said they feared God could approve foreign policies based on larger and larger body counts. I wonder yet how persons who truly fear God can vote for and pay for the nuclear warheads of the world. I still wonder how persons who fear God can poison the air and the water and the soil of the only planet we have to live on.
"I tremble for my country, when I remember that God is just." Thomas Jefferson said that, thinking of slavery and foreseeing the Civil War, and thinking of his own already famous words about how all men are created equal. His own personal career as a slave-owner may have been in his mind, also.
Foreign policy, elections, ecological considerations, and that sort of thing convinced me finally that most people do not fear God. They may be trusting in some para-normal Force to protect them while the rest of the world perishes, but what kind of God would that be? It is all quite confusing. Perhaps human behavior makes no sense at all.
Yet people are afraid, of many things. At the moment the most fearful thing around is unemployment. Any folly and wickedness can find approval, if "jobs" are connected with it -- the tobacco industry, the nuclear war industry, the napalm industry, the nerve gas industry. The basic fear seems to be fear of deprivation, fear of want, fear of hunger and nakedness, fear of not keeping up with the neighbors economically, fear of being broke. The fear of radiation, blast, burns, nerve gas consequences, lung cancer -- all that is less frightening than having no job. Even the fear of illness is more financial than physical or existential these days, which is an interesting commentary on the type of "health-care" system we now have.
People are obviously afraid of death. The clue is that so few will talk about it. The current low regard for the elderly is due to the fact that we remind them of that other set of "facts of life" -- not how it begins, which is now completely unmysterious, but how it ends. Or rather, the simple fact that it does end. We are so afraid, we refuse to face it.
The old verse may be in error. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." It no doubt depends on what one means by "Lord," but the beginning of wisdom is more likely to be found in accepting the fact that one is mortal, rather than pretending otherwise.
When a human being is afraid, what is doing the fearing? Some fears seem to be almost physical. The body, the nervous system itself, reacts. For example, falling, or sensing an impending head-on crash, will cause a gut physical reaction.
But most of our fears take a little mental processing, and thus can be called psychological. Analysis indicates that what is doing the fearing is one's sense of oneself, what each one refers to as "myself," what Freud labelled the Ego. The Ego fears annihilation, or anything that may lead in that direction.
So, to get rid of fears, perhaps we could try, instead of the annihilation of this or that object or force in our environment, or the annihilation of the very environment itself, which the nuclear warheads and the pollution techniques now make possible if not inevitable -- perhaps we could try getting by with less ego. Is that possible?
The idea of the fear of God points in that direction. If you fear God, your ego is not in charge -- God is. "Are you willing to be damned to the glory of God?" A lover and fearer of God could only answer "yes" to that strange question. I mean, if you say "no," God is no longer God. Are you going to detract from the glory of God, in order to salvage your puny little ego?
Someone could propose that we try to lessen ego by increasing the fear of God, but observation indicates that it doesn't work. Leaders of religious organizations, who theoretically know God best, do not lack ego. The popes have always had plenty. So did Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Wesley. So do William Graham and Gerald Falwell and Patrick Robertson. Their loyalty and subservience to "God" do not diminish perceptibly their sense of ego.