Fromm and Religion

Just a little note here about something I've been pondering.

I read Republican Gomorrah, and the author, Blumenthal, seemed to base a lot of his thoughts about the GOP on the ideas of the famous psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, who died in 1980 (so it's old stuff).

I found a book on this by Fromm called Psychoanalysis and Religion (1950).

Breaking it down:

Marx said "religion" is a narcotic of the masses.
Freud said religion is a neurosis (non-psychotic mental illness).

Jung saw religion as a projection of self into an ideal.

Fromm broke it down further. He said there a TWO KINDS of religion, from the psychological viewpoint:

AUTHORITARIAN - The "higher power" sets up a duality because, being in charge, he is in the sadist position and the disciple is in the masochist position. So it is sado-masochist in that sense. The follower must punish himself to receive acceptance from his higher power. This dynamic can be observed in some religions (and in some religious politics, according to Blumenthal).

HUMANISTIC - Man is the ground of the religion. It is human-centered, as in Buddhism. Man sort of saves himself. It is not necessarily relational to a higher power.

I don't think Fromm provides enough, because I think religion is observable but generally beside the point when we are talking about Jesus, who he is, and what he means.

A religion is a kind of group-think structured around an object of worship, whether that is God or Marduk or Buddha. Even if the religion lasts for thousands of years as a practice, it is still temporal. It won't last forever. And it cannot, really, accomplish its purpose. It succeeds if it actually does good and it fails if it doesn't.

If Republicanism is a political religion, it is, yes, probably authoritarian in nature. That means that the Liberal is probably more humanistic in the religio-political approach he takes. The clash, here, is caused by this duality of thinking. And it's all just thinking. We (our party or religion) are better than they because we are true: either because we are authoritarian or because we are humanistic.

In Christ, we find both dynamics. God, the authority manifest in flesh, the human. There is no more master-slave relationship and neither is man greater than, equal to, or potentially God in the fullest sense. God and man meet in Christ. Religion crashes and burns. And Fromm has now figured it out; because he is dead.

Two Witnesses

Revelation 11 (CET)

The Two Witnesses

1An angel gave me a measuring stick and said:
Measure around God's temple. Be sure to include the altar and everyone worshiping there. 2But don't measure the courtyard outside the temple building. Leave it out. It has been given to those people who don't know God, and they will trample all over the holy city for forty-two months.

It is disputed as to the exact date John's Apocalypse was written. If it was 95AD, it would be written AFTER the fall of the Jewish temple by 25 years. However, to the credit of the preterist argument, this still probably refers to the Jewish temple and people. Also, Revelation is an example of "Jewish Apocalyptic Literature," as was Daniel, the book that is connected umbilically to Revelation. So the Jewish explanation and the fall of the Temple is, for me, the most compelling argument.

3My two witnesses will wear sackcloth, while I let them preach for one thousand two hundred sixty days. 4These two witnesses are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand in the presence of the Lord who rules the earth. 5Any enemy who tries to harm them will be destroyed by the fire that comes out of their mouths. 6They have the power to lock up the sky and to keep rain from falling while they are prophesying. And whenever they want to, they can turn water to blood and cause all kinds of terrible troubles on earth.

If my analysis above is true, then this reference to Zechariah 14 would likely refer to the Jewish people who actually had been split into two kingdoms. The 1,260 days (times, time, and a half) would be symbolic of Jewish history from Abraham to Jesus. During those two centuries, the two greatest prophets were Moses and Elijah who performed the miracles mentioned here: lock the sky, turn water to blood. So while this statement sounds future (written in the future tense, a Jewish apocalypse tool), it is really about the past. We are looking back on the Jewish Age.

7After the two witnesses have finished preaching God's message, the beast that lives in the deep pit will come up and fight against them. It will win the battle and kill them. 8Their bodies will be left lying in the streets of the same great city where their Lord was nailed to a cross. And that city is spiritually like the city of Sodom or the country of Egypt.

The obvious meaning of "the Beast" here is the Roman Empire. The exact reference is the fulfillment of Jesus's prophecy that the Temple would be razed in Matthew 21:
2Jesus replied, "Do you see these buildings? They will certainly be torn down! Not one stone will be left in place."

3Later, as Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him in private and asked, "When will this happen? What will be the sign of your coming (disclosure, parousia) and of the end of the world (Jewish age)?"

Continuing Revelation 11:
9For three and a half days the people of every nation, tribe, language, and race will stare at the bodies of these two witnesses and refuse to let them be buried. 10Everyone on earth will celebrate and be happy. They will give gifts to each other, because of what happened to the two prophets who caused them so much trouble. 11But three and a half days later, God will breathe life into their bodies. They will stand up, and everyone who sees them will be terrified.

We're back, here, to allegorical or symbolic language, which permeates the entire book. There was probably celebration in the Roman Empire at the fall of the Jewish nation. Verse 11 is a little more malleable. If the Jewish nation was a precursor of the goyim regenerated through the Spirit, then the Jewish religion was not ended, it was transformed into a new or transcendent revelation. Futurists and partial-preterists might say this is a reference to the Jews returning to Israel in the 20th century.

12The witnesses then heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, "Come up here." And while their enemies were watching, they were taken up to heaven in a cloud. 13At that same moment there was a terrible earthquake that destroyed a tenth of the city. Seven thousand people were killed, and the rest were frightened and praised the God who rules in heaven.

Futurists and dispensationalists use the "Come up here" as a reference to the idea of "rapture" or "catching away" of the saints discussed elsewhere in this blog. I would have to lean to using this as symbolic language for the transformation of the Jewish religion to the new paradigm of life in Christ who is "heaven." (He said so.) The "cloud" is not literal here, or else it is not only literal. It is symbolic of the spiritual dwelling that is in Christ. We are lifted-up or snatched-up into the new disclosure or revelation that is launched through Christ.

Jesus was witnessed in Acts 1 as rising into the clouds and the angels announcing, "He will return in this same manner." This is likely where we get the popularization of the idea of this event referring to the "Second Coming," which is not specifically stated anywhere in the Bible. The word translated "coming" is parousia, and "coming" is a theological insertion in translations, missing what is likely the more sensible meaning of the Greek word, which is disclosure. So the 70AD destruction of Jerusalem is symbolic of a transitional "age-change" from the Jewish age to the age of Christ. I see no compelling evidence to say that the idea of a future "return of Christ" is not scriptural; but this is the closest meaning of the events described in Revelation 11, that the end of the Jewish age would be the dawn of the Christ age. But I am also still open to the NT suggesting more than this, including the future resurrection of mankind.

Captured Rapture

NIV 1 Thess. 4:

13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.

Many of us are familiar with these words from 1 Thessalonians 4 as a description of a doctrine called "rapture." This doctrine comes down to us through the dispensationalists Darby and Scofield who popularized this idea. They vouchsafed to us this eschatology that gave the church such popular books as The Late Great Planet Earth and Left Behind. Let me try to paraphrase this the way these believers might translate the same passage:

Brothers, we don't want you to be in the dark about those who have died. We believe that Jesus died and went up into heaven and will come back for them. We tell you that those who are alive when he returns will be preceded by those who died. He will come down out of the blue with a shout like the archangel, and with a trumpet blowing, and will raise the dead in Christ first. After that, the living will be lifted up into the sky to meet the Lord up in the clouds. And then we will forever be with the Lord.

We would say, then, that this is a "literal" rendering of the passage. But many passages in the Bible might also have a more symbolic interpretation. Consider if this passage were paraphrased through a more symbolic lens, concerning some of the imagery in these verses:

Brothers, we want you to understand about your friends who have died. We don't want you to lose hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, just as they died and will rise again. He will receive them. Those of us who are alive in the day of his disclosure will not be left out, either. Jesus is being revealed to all the world like an angel blowing a trumpet or like a voice out of heaven. The dead have gone on to meet him, and we aren't far behind. We are headed for a reunion with them and him, that great cloud of witnesses coming together again. We will remain with them and him in the ages to come.

What's the difference? The literal picture sounds a little wild and crazy. Not that God can't be wild and crazy if he wants to; but planes and trains crashing and people flying up into the sky out of graves and out of their houses? You've seen the pictures.

Maybe this already happened and is happening, since people die all the time. Where do they go? Into oblivion? Maybe this isn't to be taken as a future event as much as a reality of what has taken place through Christ in this world. He is taking us with him. It isn't that we're awaiting a "rapture," as such. We all will die at some point unknown to us. That's our rapture moment. That's when we "change as in the twinkling of an eye" and shed this mortal coil, as they say.

Darby's followers hatched up the word "rapture" for the Greek word harpazo, which means, basically, "to seize." I used the word "reunion," as a little less sensational way of painting the picture of what Paul is trying to say here in comforting the people of Thessalonica. He just means that death is the passage to better things now provided by Christ, to the afterlife meeting with him. When you think of it, death is, itself, like a seizing. It happens in a flash, in an instant, and then everything that person knew is gone.

I also use the word "disclosure" in place of the Greek word parousia, as discussed in another blog below. This word may not at all mean "coming," as in the second appearance of Christ, as much as it means he is being disclosed to the present world ongoing. And we are his "witnesses" of this disclosure. We are privileged to know who this is that is taking humankind to the next level, if you will - none other than the one we still call, in the West, Jesus the Christ.

Isn't this less confusing than Jesus crashing through the clouds on a white horse calling billions of people up out of the planet in an anti-gravity moment and then coming back with them armed with swords ready to carve up the carcasses of those hapless folks left on the planet? Hm. We have certainly had some imaginative theologians along the way. It could make an interesting movie (it hasn't yet), but I think we need to get a little bit more down to earth with this.

God's Problem

A little book report on Bart Ehrman's exploration of theodicy called "God's Problem":

Ehrman, a textual scholar who earned his chops at Moody, then Wheaton, and finally Princeton, says his faith was not derailed by Bible mistakes but by the problem of God and evil (theodicy). He just finally could not square a world of continuous suffering and injustice with a God who is supposed to be just and good.

Late in the book he admits to resonating most with the author of the Hebrew book Ecclesiastes. He takes from this writer the idea that there is nothing after this life so eat, drink, and be merry. Ehrman later appends this idea with a call to seeking social justice in this world. So while you're having the best time you can, be sure and carve out some time for good works - to alleviate some of the pain around you.

From page 200 of the book, here are the rudiments of the Biblical ideas explaining God's purpose for this imperfect world of suffering:

1) it is the result of and punishment for sin and disobedience;
2) it is actually caused by humans;
3) it is redemptive;
4) it is a test of faithfulness;
5) it is a mystery; and/or
6) it is beyond our comprehension.

These explanations are not good enough for Ehrman, thus he abandons the ship of faith.

His students often tell him the reason for suffering is because we must have "free will" in order to not just be robots. Ehrman doesn't buy this reasoning. To him, God simply, in the end, seems to be cruel and barbaric, if this is the method behind his madness.

Ehrman is a good read because he looks at the Bible and theology with perhaps extreme objectivity. But the problem of God and evil does not have to derail one's faith. Sometimes I get the feeling from Ehrman that he is burned out. In much knowledge is much grief.

In the end, the reason for evil is beyond comprehension. In fact, it is part of the reason to have faith, if we have faith at all. Faith sees beyond the present ordeal that is life. God may seem unreasonable, but Job says, "Though God slay me, yet I will trust him." Can good come out of evil? We'd better hope it does, because this world is indeed evil. And like the author of Ecclesiastes, it is vexing and full of vanity. It makes no sense.

Toward the end of the book, Ehrman recalls the famous chapters, in Dostoevsky's The Brother's Karamizov, around a chapter called "The Grand Inquisitor." Essentially, the brother Ivan makes an argument much like Ehrman's: he says that even if this evil, sucking world were to be fixed by God, he couldn't bring himself to side with a God like that.

The picture of this is provided by the father of geometry, Euclid (300 BC). Euclid theorized that two parallel lines, in infinity, can never meet precisely because they are parallel. Ivan points out that there are geometers who believe, in finite space, that they can meet. God could indeed fix things. For Ivan, that isn't enough. God shouldn't have allowed evil in the first place. So Ehrman's book doesn't solve the problem of theodicy, though it does bring some light to the matter. Ehrman's decision to abandon faith based on this problem, though, is not much clarified.

In Job's case, Job is reconciled to this nonsensical evil being part and parcel of the present paradigm. From the perspective of infinity, this 15 billion year old world is just a blip on the screen. God is just, the Bible tells us. No matter how sordid this world can be, it also witnesses good and even majesty. In this cauldron of evil, we still taste joy and beauty and see courage and virtue. And one would even expect, in a coming age, that the tears, rage, and war will be forgotten. God's problem is fixed by the savior - in every way. That is also hope where there is no hope.

Ehrman is staring into the abyss of the post-modern predicament we are headed toward. In that cauldron of difficulties and conundrums, we may well understand God in a new way. But theologians should pay attention to Ehrman, because there they will hear the existential questions of humankind abandoning certainty. And when we abandon certainty, we are not abandoning God, necessarily. We can: it is a choice. But it is also in that very uncertainty that we can find him again, and appreciate him the more.

Swallowing Camels

Matt. 23: 24You blind leaders! You strain out a small fly but swallow a camel.

I love this verse. In many translations it is stated, "You strain AT a gnat..." But it refers to an ancient practice of getting little bugs out of your drink - bugs that aren't kosher. The practice came from this verse in Leviticus 11:

20-23The only winged insects you may eat are locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets. All other winged insects that crawl are too disgusting for you to eat.

Jesus is, at least in part, referring to the religious tendency to be hyper-scrupulous while completely missing the point of faith. But I see more to this wonderful phrase than just that.

I think he's pointing out a human tendency here. We nit-pick and concentrate on the small stuff while completely missing what we really should be after. We think we're being wise when we're really being dumb.

Eating these small bugs was the same as eating camel: both were forbidden by Moses' law. In Leviticus 11: 4 - Nevertheless these shall you not eat of them that chew the cud, or of them that divide the hoof: as the camel, because he chews the cud, but divides not the hoof; he is unclean unto you.
So, in very simple terms, we can say, "You concentrate on small things while making a huge error."

I think the "blind guides" Jesus was talking to - the Pharisees who participated later in killing him - were glaring examples of this common fault frequent in all our thinking.

This is common, for instance, in politics, where pundits concentrate on pointing out some failure in an opponent - chipping away at their character or mistakes they made - while the pundit veers away from dealing with the information that actually needs to be dealt with. The Pharisees dealt with Jesus this way. They were looking to trip him up and degrade him in the eyes of his fans. Meanwhile, they swallowed the camel of missing the point that he was the Messiah they were looking for, and they wound up conspiring to have him killed.

Essentially, the point here is to use this verse as a reasoning tool to deal with how we process all information. For instance, science is built on studying minutia in order to reveal truth, but in the process can miss truth. It can dismiss that which it can't study as irrelevant, that is, for instance, the existence of God. Likewise, the Pharisees were focused on religion and missed the very reason they had a religion. They destroyed that which they were hoping for, and for the very reason that they were too concentrated on gnats. They couldn't see the forest for the trees.

They were so busy straining out gnats they failed to see they had swallowed the camel.

Hatred As Murder

Matt. 5: 21"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment (krisis, justice).'
22But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother (adelphos, neighbor), 'Raca (spit, "idiot," heaping contempt on someone),' is answerable to the Sanhedrin (the court). But anyone who says, 'You fool! (immoral person)' will be in danger of the fire of hell (gehenna, full punishment, fires of ultimate justice).

To paraphrase: Of old, it was said murderers deserve justice. But if you are simply angry with someone else, you are no different. If you malign someone as an idiot or as stupid, you belong in court yourself. If you decide someone is in folly or immorality, you fail to see that you are in the same condition.

These verses come from the Sermon on the Mount. This entire "sermon" is really a set of teachings in which Jesus expands on the law of Moses and the ten commandments. He takes the behavioral aspect of the commandment and stretches it to motives - just the act of thinking about doing something wrong. So this teaching is like a sword piercing down to our motivations about why we do things. It exposes the deepest flaws in human character - the hidden, darkest areas of our human nature.

This teaching also really leaves nothing uncondemned. There is no human alive who can qualify after this examination. So we have to have something else to justify us before God. This exposes all human hypocrisy. We're all in this boat together, and Jesus came to visit.

We're all familiar with the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." It's primary religious education for all monotheists and, likely, all pantheists, too.

Apparently, the motive for killing is hate and anger. It starts there in these deepest recesses of the human psyche. At some time in our lives, we've probably all said to someone, "I wish you were dead," or "I hate you." Many of us harbor all kinds of prejudices. We despise people for a whole laundry list of reasons: skin color, cultural differences, education level, how much money they have, religious beliefs or lack thereof, political persuasions, and so on. All of this despising leads ultimately to all kinds of conflicts. This is evil. And apparently God isn't liking it. He doesn't want us killing each other. He doesn't want us to even hate other people. He tells us to "love our enemies." If he tells us that, he too has to love his enemies. And all available data says he does.

How many times and in how many ways do we call others fools and imbeciles? In fact, we find it humorous (think, Three Stooges). In that case, we are laughing at our folly - we all are potential fools. And that's the point Jesus is making.

Jesus is telling us to rise above the fray (as much as possible). "As much as lies in you, be at peace with all men," says Paul.

How does this translate into real-life application? If this is true, the church has strayed far from this teaching. How do we love our enemies, and seek peace with everyone no matter what they believe, and stop calling everyone who disagrees with us an idiot or immoral person. Instead, we have gone so far as to try to wipe them out or control them in a quest to build a "Christian" habitat on this earth. I think Jesus is saying here (and elsewhere) that he is against theocracy.

I wonder what would happen if the church actually grasped what Jesus is saying here. What if we applied it, and actually learned how to make peace instead of constantly cooking up wars among ourselves and with the world around us.

The Disclosure of Christ

Below are 15 of the 24 verses in the NT that use the Greek word "parousia," which, in our modern translations, are usually rendered "coming." That use may have been a theological conclusion rather than an exact rendering, which might more clearly be "revelation" or even "presence." I inserted the word "disclosure" below as it is another synonym for revelation. When read, with this word inserted instead of "coming," with that word's theological implications, I see these verses taking on a different character.

In the first Matt. 24 verse I also inserted the word "Jewish" in parentheses, adjoined to the word "age." A futurist would place the word "church" here; but a preterist reads this as "Jewish." That is, to preterists, Jesus's disclosure to the world replaces God's Jewish emphasis. The disclosure of Jesus renders the old age as past, if not obsolete.

Futurists would see this disclosure of Christ as a future event, which I don't think is totally invalidated by the preterist view. In that case, the full disclosure doesn't occur until the end of this present "church age," instead of the Jewish age. That's why I'm also exploring an added, logical concept suggested here: the parousia is ongoing, or progressive in nature. That is, Jesus was disclosed in the ruination of Jerusalem and in the subsequent history of the church, culminating in the full disclosure at some future date, when all of mankind will actually see him at the resurrection.

Matt. 24:3 - "And as He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, 'Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of Your disclosure (parousia), and of the end of the (Jewish) age?"

2. Matt. 24:27, 37, 39 - Jesus repeatedly said, "So shall the disclosure (parousia) of the Son of Man be."

3. 1 Cor. 15:23-25 - "But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, after that those who are at Christ's at His disclosure (parousia), then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet."

4. 1 Thes. 2:19 - "For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord at His disclosure (parousia)?"

5. 1 Thes. 3:13 - "So that He may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the disclosure (parousia) of our Lord with all His saints."

6. 1 Thes. 4:15-17 - "For we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the disclosure (parousia) of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord."

7. 1 Thes. 5:23 - "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the disclosure (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ."

8. 2 Thes. 2:1 - "Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the disclosure (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together to Him."

9. 2 Thes. 2:8 - "And then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His disclosure (parousia)."

10. James 5:7 - "Be patient, therefore, brethren until the disclosure (parousia) of the Lord."

11. James 5:8 - "You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the disclosure (parousia) of the Lord is at hand."

12. 2 Peter 1:16 - "For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and disclosure (parousia) of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty."

13. 2 Peter 3:4 - "And saying, "where is the promise of His disclosure (parousia)? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation."

14. 2 Peter 3:12 - "Looking for and hastening the disclosure (parousia) of the day of God, on account of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning and the elements will melt with intense heat!"

15. 1 John 2:28 - "And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His disclosure (parousia)."

You could also place the word "presence" where I've placed "disclosure." These are meanings of the word parousia. When we do this, the meaning of each verse seems to transform from the theologically suggestive word "coming." "Coming" suggests a singular event: "disclosure" or "revelation" are words that suggest something that is happening. Christ is being revealed in the process of history. It isn't just tied to an event like the general resurrection or the razing of Jerusalem.