1 Boring Old Man » a crime and a sin…

about
search

Posted on Wednesday 11 November 2009

Some years back, I heard a seminar presentation entitled, Psychoanalysis and Religion: Is there a meet? given by a colleague who is both a Professor in the Seminary and a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. I knew him primarily as a talented therapist, and I wondered what he would talk about. It didn’t seem like a real question to me, since he was himself the answer to the question – one foot firmly planted in each place. After cataloging the myriad of goals the two disciplines shared, he finally got around to his point. Religion, he said, has to deal with sin. Psychoanalysis does not.

I had never really considered that distinction before. The people who present themselves for psychotherapy are hardly criminals. They are generally functional people, often highly functional, but have longstanding psychological tangles that interfere with happiness and a full life. While those tangles may have lead them to "sin," their infractions were usually in the "venial" category. So psychotherapists don’t know much about criminals [who rarely come to our offices]. If anything, we deal with people who feel too much guilt rather than not enough.

But that presentation must’ve been a good one because the question it raised lingered to the present – the part about sin. After the talk, I thought that religion’s preoccupation with sin was leftover from an earlier time in history when morality was in the hands of the church – that now we have laws that govern "sin" which I was equating with "crime." But that was a naive notion. I had missed the depth of the issue he was raising. From the religious point of view, there is an absolute "right" and an absolute "wrong" – usually dealt with by laws that come from the deliberations of men or from god. I was settling for the deliberations of man and leaving out the other option, our the concept of another option.

My own childhood religious exposure had imprinted Jesus’ revisions – love god and love your enemies – sort of a golden rule morality. The other Laws like the ten commandments and other biblical injunctions hadn’t made much of an impact on me. But for many, the laws of religion are sacrosanct. And so, the laws derived by men can be seen as having a lesser authority, or in some cases, no authority at all in that frame of reference.

In some places where human science and biblical narrative are widely different, I have no real comment to make. Astronomy, geology, natural sciences such as paleontology or anthropology are fascinating and poke grand holes in the concrete biblical narrative. In my way of thinking, that’s no threat to religion at all. Those ancient texts were created long ago by people filled with wonder at our universe. That wonder remains, but is simply more refined. I have no more trouble with the biblical creation stories than I have with the Cherokee Myths or the Tibetan cosmology. If people want to take those things concretely, it’s fine by me. It has no effect on my life or on those around me. My only complaint would be if they tried to restrict my child’s exposure to the fascinating modern sciences. This is not about sin, rather it’s about opinion.

But when the issue of abortion gets put on the table, or for that matter even birth control, the intrusion of religion becomes a real issue. I happen to think that the central issue for human beings is population control. To me, that’s so self evident that it needs nothing more than arithmetic to demonstrate it’s truth. Anything that we talk about has to have population control as its bottom line. We can build fuel efficient cars, use wind and solar power, eat granola and soy bread – but if we don’t control population – sooner or later, our efforts will be in vain. Our predominant religion proposes that we either ignore the problem or we control population by sexual abstinence – an experiment that centuries worth of data has proven ineffective.

We’re doing better than most [that’s us in the scaled little graph in the corner]. But the point remains. So, we’re in the age when unwanted pregnancy can be prevented with birth control or terminated with abortion. If we are going to let science and medicine help us survive – more of us healthier and living longer, it seems to me we should use science and medicine to counterbalance our manipulation of the environment for survival and longevity with some offsetting controls – decreasing the expansion of the population with the same finesse we use to increase it. But, the religious position is that abortion is murder ergo don’t do it. It’s being treated as a god-given law – covered under:

In order to take that position, one has to ignore the obvious extrapolation of population growth, the fact that the prime predictor of mental health problems and criminality is being an unwanted child, the impact of having an unwanted child on the mother, and the fact that that mother has hundreds of other shots at having a child at the time when she might want a child.

My first take after the compromise in the health care reform bill was that it was okay with me if people who don’t believe in abortion don’t want to pay for abortions. We should finance it privately. That could be done easily. I stand by that position. But that’s not all the opponents want. They want to outlaw abortion again – criminalize it again.

To my way of thinking, it’s fine for religions to talk to their believers about sin, but that’s not what is happening in America. They are proposing that religious law replace secular law. They are proposing that the law in our courtrooms be informed by the biblical ten commandments, that abortion be criminalized, that homosexuality be demonized [perhaps criminalized], that we are a Christian Nation and that they know god’s law in the absolute. In my last post, I quoted Newt Gingrich:

"… to understand a message of faith, a message of salvation, the centrality of the cross in this whole fight… I am tired of secular fanatics trying to redesign America in their image. I believe the most important question in the United States for the next decade is: ‘Who are we?’ Are we in fact a people who claim that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights? Or, are we just randomly gathered protoplasm — and lucky for us we’re not rhinoceroses — but that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees? Once you decide on this, almost everything else gets easier."

"Newt Gingrich is the most dangerous man on the planet," I said in 2007 [and previously]. He came out from under his rock in 2006 after a long hibernation, hoping we would forget his previous sociopathy. Now he’s trying a new tactic, piety. I’ll forgo ranting about Newt and stick to my point. He and his cohorts are proposing a Christian Theocracy. He proposes that our resistance to such a thing is that we are "secular fanatics trying to redesign America" – people who believe that we are "just randomly gathered protoplasm — and lucky for us we’re not rhinoceroses — but that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees."

So I’m back to my colleague’s talk and his assertion that religion has to deal with sin. We just watched what happens when religious law supersedes our own laws. It’s not enough to say that Major Hasan was crazy when he opened fire at Fort Hood, or that he misinterpreted the religious law of his religion, because all religious law is interpreted. There is no direct communication of god’s law. Only myths – Moses and the ten commandments, Mohamed and the revelations in the caves near Mecca, whatever drove King James’ scribes. The Religious Right is actually proposing that America replace the concept of crime with the concept of sin, and apply those standards to everyone.

Newt and his new best friends [the Religious Right] miss the essential and obvious meaning of, "... we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights." They think that the use of the term creator means we are a Christian Nation and a de facto Theocracy. What they miss is the real essence of our founding – that we are given certain unalienable rights. He is proposing that "that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees" while evading the fact that in a theocracy, "… power is defined by politicians and their appointees" – the ones that interpret god’s absolute law.

The whole thing that got me going on this topic was a simple comment in Obama’s eulogy at Fort Hood. He said, "But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice – in this world, and the next." The President, a religious person, made a distinction in talking about justice – secular justice and religious justice – crime and sin. So if I may borrow my colleague’s question and slightly paraphrase it, "Government and Religion: Is there a meet?" The answer is "No." President Obama’s distinction as to where things are to be judged is clarifying. For the religious person, the judgment for sin is in the next world, not this one. We made that choice a long time ago because the interpreters of god’s law [politicians and their appointees] regularly used their power to abridge other people’s rights. Our Founders thought that was a crime and a sin…

Carl

November 11, 2009 | 9:47 PM

A breathtaking wisdom attack, friend. I happen to think that the kind of ecumenical thinking so perfectly rendered here will carry the day(s). I’m even confident that God wants it that way.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.