Being raised Christian, and having long left behind the dogma and fundamentalism of that particular philosophy, I have spent much time trying to figure out my own beliefs.
For a while I decided that Christianity and religion were inherently destructive and useless, before I came to terms with, and found meaning in, the pain it caused me. Its a strange thing finding meaning and truth in something that hurt you – I feel that although religion gave me a lot of issues and hang-ups and confusion, it also gave me a certain philosophic and spiritual structure which I would not sacrifice.
I then settled on the perspective of ‘each to his or her own’; if Christ compensates you for some sort of psychological need – a comfort blanket or sense of wonder for example – then so be it. Perhaps it is useful. ?
Recently, though, I’ve come across a book called “Answer To Job” by the extremely influential 20th century psychologist Carl Jung. In this book he explores God as an evolving moral personality who, in the Old Testament, is largely unconscious of himself and acts without self-examination. Jung argues that although he was omniscient, he rarely consulted this supreme knowledge as he was incapable of self reflection. Hence the contradiction in the Bible of him being omniscient yet constantly surprised by humanity’s disobedience. Jung then goes on to argue that eventually, the need arose for God to be self reflective, hence bringing himself into the world as a human – Christ.
This is a ridiculously short summary; if you’re interested, go read the book. It is much more profound than anything I could write in a blog.
The point I’m trying to make is that, I can feel my philosophy on religion shifting yet again. This is a new perspective, one I’ve never come across, which posits God as a culturally psychological necessity. Is God necessary for humanity? I’m starting to wonder if he is…
Anyway,
Below is an excerpt from another of Jung’s books, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”. It puts into words an intuition that I’ve never been able to shake, despite trying to mire myself in rational thinking… I just can’t help being an agnostic.
“If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention.
Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing.
But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes — the second cosmogony [ed. note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the “noosphere,” the layer of “mind”]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain — found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.”
