christianity

July 4^th is coming up soon, and there will be many celebrations, Bar-B-Qs, and parades. But for what, a United States that currently exists in name only?

Before the Declaration of Independence, this country’s forefathers struggled to unify the various colonial factions, allowing less-than-ideal incentives to all to achieve the much-sought-after unity. Those less-than-ideal incentives eventually led to a civil war, after which another unification was sought, reunification. Throughout our history, we have had to sacrifice bits of our unity for something exclusive so as to stay connected.

Unity has always been elusive because human egos often get in the way.

Unification is not a one-sided process. It demands inclusivity, a value that is crucial in maintaining unity. It is through embracing diversity and different perspectives that we can truly achieve a unified and harmonious society.

A philosophy or leadership or government that attempts to unify by denying that which disagrees with it is a false philosophy from a false god, no matter how religiously supported. It is a philosophy born of the individual or collective personality.

But even a false god must be included in a context of wholeness, aka unity.

God unfolds itself in the form of syzygy (paired opposites), e.g., day/night, male/female, liberal/conservative, and you and me.

God has also provided the “means” for bridging the pairs to unite them. It’s a way to transform the lower material into the higher and spiritual, i.e., the alchemist’s dream of turning lead into gold through the creation (discovery/development?) of the philosopher’s stone.

But that “means” is exclusively individual yet must include everything else. It requires dissolution before resolution. To find it, one needs to embrace the dark to see its light. Many books have been written on how to do this, and they are all genuine and useful, but the answer will come from outside their pages. It’s in plain sight but with many useless detritus covering it up.

I’ve been rereading one of Jung’s books and listening to a blog reviewing his book “The Undiscovered Self.” Though Jung’s comments were from the late 50s, much of what he had to say is quite relevant to modern-day events.

I frequently use words such as spirit, spiritual, individuality, religiosity, and beliefs but rarely explain my relationship with these words. So, what do I mean in the context of the American society I live in?

The following has been stimulated by the psychoanalyst and dream therapist Carl Jung’s thoughts on “mass-mindedness” * in the West and “the plight of the individual in modern society” * and is mixed with some of my own.

It appears to me that the U.S. lacks spiritual depth in that individual discernment is all too often discouraged both politically and religiously. There is also a high degree of materialism, regardless of religion, where the individual is only part of a statistic and a metric to be exploited. The country has become a mass of non-thinkers unable and discouraged to think for themselves, being redirected toward a political party or cause.

It is said by many that the primary religion in the U.S. is Christianity. What passes for Christianity in this country is anything, but throughout much of the country, it supports hatred, exclusion, indifference, and hostile rhetoric as part of God’s will. Some sects have a lot of belief in their religion, but mostly, it’s just rhetoric with little to no authenticity in that they don’t live what they believe. The idea of faith for many can be translated as rigid and uncompromising. In many regions of the United States, the religion of Christianity has devolved into the religion of nationalism. Yes, small groups of religious practitioners still believe in cooperative counsel, love, compassion, and inclusiveness, but they are not the dominant voice. Instead of being a united states, we’ve become several fractured communities with loud self-interested masses and few, if any, individuals or clusters of individuals with any moral or spiritual stature. Thus, we haven’t a community but a loosely knit mob.

Though I’ve used the word “individuals,” I believe there’s not much in the way of “individual” thinking but more on the order of a mob looking to some political party or leader or cause to show them the way. There’s little of the “individual” in this way of thinking. There are a lot of psychological puppetries going on in churches, media, and political rhetoric but little individual thoughtfulness. Most people don’t know what they blindly follow and where it might lead but are desperate for something to save them from their vague fears of doom. We all have the capacity to really think but have become too lazy and complacent. This plays into the hands of politicians and marketers alike, who can exploit the shallow thought processes of the masses and manipulate them to their advantage. These people are not personally invested in a democracy, with personal power being their primary, if not only, goal.

For those who have awakened to what is and has happened, the dominant voices have tarred them with discrediting titles such as “Woke” or to humiliate anyone who doesn’t follow the party line. This, in effect, blocks any actual dialog between people, keeps us separated, and allows those trying to gain power or who have already wrested the power to keep their positions under control. An example is the continuous lie that elections are being exploited, that some are trying to steal away their rights, and that there can be no modern changes to the sacrosanct 10 amendments that have replaced or been woven into the old and outdated 10 commandments. Real individuals are acutely aware that a rigid interpretation of the First and second amendments is folly. Buying more guns or allowing more communication of any and all kinds is not a rational response to us routinely killing each other with both guns and words. This is magical thinking, and this kind of thinking actually kills the magic of the world and the magic of our place in it.

We cannot expect something outside ourselves to do the work needed. There’s no Lone Ranger in a white hat, politician, militia, automatic weapon, religious leader, religion, or God that will save us. We have to do it ourselves and so far, we are making a right glorious mess of it.

Life is messy, a puzzle and none of us came into it with an instruction manual, so we have to figure it out for ourselves. The responsibility for figuring it out is on us, and it takes some work; no one can do it for us. We all must be our own leaders amongst all the other leaders we run into along the way.

Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

But that dream has to come from real individuals who are in community with each other, believe in their own counsel, and are little swayed by the emotional rhetoric of others. It doesn’t just magically happen. The more we separate from each other, the less likely we are to have our dreams realized.

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*From C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, New American Library (1958)