HOW FAR WE'VE STRAYED

Abraham thinks it is OK to sacrifice another person in the interests (supposed) of his own personal relationship to the Divine.  We see here how in becoming separate from God with birth trauma, humans have also become separate from other humans.  No longer seeing the God within oneself, one fails also to see the God within others.  God is totally Other, demanding obedience and extracting fear, directing and ordering humans about in ways that a human does not and can not hope to understand and that sometimes go against his or her own conceptions of good and morality as well as against other persons.

The "postmodern," if you will, alternative to this position is Joseph Campbell's (1988) "follow your bliss."  More specifically, humanistic psychologists — notably, Abraham Maslow (1968) and Carl Rogers (1961) — emphasize the innate goodness of the human organism and its tendency to be self-regulating, self-actualizing, purposive and self-disciplining, interpersonally responsive, and socially responsible.  This is especially true, it is said, to the degree that one is open to the totality of one's experience and feelings.  Thus, our highest needs coincide, not only with our own greatest good, but with that of society and the people around us as well.  In light of the preceding discussion, we might also note the coincidence of our highest needs with the greatest good of Nature, also.

In a similar vein, consider Sathya Sai Baba's "be yourself," as well as his injunctions to find your own highest answers within you, to look inside yourself for the Baba within and to leave off relying on the external Baba when you are able to.  We also see an alternative to Abraham's nonthinking obedience in Sai Baba's invitation to examine and experience, not to accept what he says just on "faith," and ultimately to think and decide for oneself.¹

Philosophically, this alternative viewpoint is presented by ecosophists who see the modern "anthropocentric" humanism that undergirds our cultural mainstream and our Western scientific viewpoint as a dangerous sidetrip for our species, with the modern dangers of global annihilation as evidence of that.  George Sessions (1991), for example, writes concerning what must be done in this situation:

It means recapturing for humanity what philosopher Max Oelschlaeger refers to as "Paleolithic consciousness.". . . All of the ecological evidence and wisdom suggest that the other path (a continuation of the "anthropocentric detour") will lead inexorably, perhaps with the best of intentions, to an accelerating decline of the earth and all its inhabitants.  (p. 114)

How seriously do these people mean this?  Just how far do they really think we strayed, if we have, and how serious is the situation in their minds?

Michael Zimmerman (1991) notes how attracted many of these deep ecologists are to Heidegger's views of our history as a decline from a great beginning.  He points out also that these ecoactivists go even farther:

Such ecoactivists maintain that the whole ten-thousand year history of civilization has been one of decline from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of Pleistocene humankind.  Seen from the viewpoint of those who envy that lifestyle, the rise of civilization can only appear as a history of alienation, despair, and destruction of nature.  Such a view of history stands in diametric opposition to the progressive view of history promoted by the ideologues of anthropocentric humanism.  (p. 125)

Therefore, from a postmodern perspective that seeks to bridge the separation between the human and the Divine, what we see in Abraham and Isaac is hardly a worthy exemplar of religious conduct . . . to put it mildly.  On the contrary, the Abraham and Isaac story marks an epitome of the kind of patriarchal pathology that has come down to us through our agriculturally rooted patriarchal religious heritage.
 

PATRIARCHAL PATHOLOGY

I say that our patriarchal heritage is a pathology because this is clear from observing this phenomenon in its extreme form.  For example, several years ago newspapers around the country reported the incident of a particular man who, in broad daylight, stabbed and killed several people in a rampage on a city street.  Only police shots (many of them) and death ended his rampage.

He asserted throughout his spree and as he lay dying that God was directing him to do it.  I defy anyone to show me a difference between this incident and Abraham's, save that the outcome was different.  Of course, one could make the bald assertion that the difference lies in that God really was directing Abraham, and wasn't directing the man in the modern incident; but that is Monday-morning quarterbacking.

Furthermore, this modern incident is hardly an isolated one.  According to psychopaths and psychotics — as reported frequently in the media and observed on psychiatric wards — God is kept rather busy directing and commanding them to do all kinds of atrocious and violent things.  Also significant is the consistency with which the belief in a fearful God, which we saw was characteristic of the way of faith, correlates with these psychotic types.²

If these extreme versions are too much for you, keep in mind that examples of socially respected, even distinguished, religious persons are often claiming that God talks to them and directs them on what to do.  Many of us, however, are downright skeptical when we hear that God has told Pat Robertson to run for president or has told Oral Roberts to stay in a tower until so many millions of dollars are donated to his university.  We suspect the designs of ego here, not those of God.  What I am saying is that the same skepticism might rightly, no, more than that, should be applied to the assertions of Abraham.  Further, I submit that those same designs of ego, not God, might also be discerned in the supposedly divine promises to Abraham of fatherhood of a great nation and of a special relationship to the divine, superior to other peoples and other nations.

In fact, these promises of special privilege from the divine begin to sound like the manifest destiny of the white peoples in the Americas . . . which leads me to another point.

It occurs to me, now that its configurations have been traced on the level of the single individual, that there is much to be learned from looking at this phenomenon as it is exhibited on the mass or macrocosmic scale.  Less obvious, perhaps, but equally heinous versions of this patriarchal pathology can be seen in religious wars of massacre and genocide — crusades, for example; in manifest destiny and its legacy of bloodshed and genocide of Native American peoples; in Bible-, or Koran-, or scroll-thumping war mongering of all kinds (Vietnam jumps to mind).  And how can we omit the example of evil par excellence — the good Christian Nazis of Hitler's Germany whose God-fearing and obedient qualities were virtuous fuel for their sinister endeavors.  Indeed, any time that God becomes identified with nation or society (and thus becomes wholly Other), we have this tendency and its bloody wake.

Now, I say this pathology is a patriarchal one because, as we saw earlier, traditionally society was represented in the family unit through the father.  Thus, for little boys (and of course it is little boys who grow up to be the patriarchs of the next generation), there were two distinct phases in their psychological development.  One corresponded to the earliest years.  It was overseen by the mother, and it allowed for some individuality and indulgence of personal needs (although only comparatively).  Another phase came afterwards and was overseen by the father.  At this time all the preceding, so-called, "nonsense" was forever to be put behind one.

This transition time corresponds roughly to the time of the primal scene — age four or five — sometimes later in more "primitive" cultures.  At this time the child is forced "away from the Mother-world, forward to the Father-world" (cf., Neumann (1954) — which is the world of society, of duty to the collective, of repression of the child within, and of obedience to the outer God in His reflections in the world while simultaneously turning away from the inner God — the one who is seen and experienced directly in consciousness.

And it is at this time that the little "Isaacs," so to speak, become the new "Abrahams," the new patriarchs, who will in their turns terrorize their own little Isaacs into a denial of their own God within.  These events are ritualized in many cultures; the anthropologists refer to them as rites of passage.

So we see how this pathology is a patriarchal one.  However, as mentioned, this aspect of it has been carried farther in modern times.  These days, there is often a maternal as well as a paternal influence in this direction, so that — with child care, and earlier and earlier preschools and mothers who are not home — even the relatively blessed earlier years are denied many modern children.

In light of this, it may be the story of the prodigal son that will be seen to be the most relevant story of The Bible.  If so, we can only hope that its promise holds true and that we will, after our extended rebellion from God and Nature, in fact be welcomed back into our true Father's house — which is, indeed, our real home, the home of our real self, who is the God within.
 

BUMPER-STICKER WORDS OF GOD

Traditionally in our culture, and for many people even today, The Bible was the Word of God.  Therefore it was not susceptible to error.  And so the traditional interpretation of the Abraham and Isaac story held that it was a clear and wonderful depiction of the proper relationship — that is, of supreme faith and absolute obedience — to the Divine.  And, as such it was an important tool in the poisonous pedagogies of many Western generations as I mentioned earlier and, as I confessed, including my own.

However, modern historical research and cross-cultural information have allowed us to drop this impossible presumption and to interpret The Bible instead as spiritual literature, not as spiritual fact.  That is, we are able to interpret it as myth — not in the "untruth" meaning of that word, but in the sense that it represents something, a cognitive or psychological structure, which is open to interpretation.  This is what I have been attempting in this section.  But, further, this approach allows us to ask questions that are not even conceivable under traditional circumstances.

Thus, we might ask anew — and reinterpret in the light of at least a small amount of release from the dungeon of our poisonous pedagogical heritage — the central issue presented in the myth.  That is, What do you do when God tells you to go against your own conscience, your own sense of right and wrong?  What do you do when God tells you to kill?
 

DIVINE RELATIONSHIPS

Abraham, in the Genesis account, has been said to epitomize "the human of faith." The way of faith is one manner of relationship to the Divine, and it can be contrasted to the modes characteristic of what have been called the "archaic human," the "historical" or "modern human," and the "posthistorical" or "postmodern human."

What characterizes the faithful human is separation from the Divine, strict obedience, and fear of God.  The archaic human, by contrast, lives in harmony with Divine order and, through ritual, seeks the re-creation of that order.  The modern human is even more separated from the Divine and makes historical, this-worldly, interpretations of events — that is to say, this person does not attribute to events a Divine significance or see them as part of a Divine order or as indication of falling away from that order.  (Eliade, 1954)

What characterizes the postmodern relationship to the Divine is conjecture as yet, but it has been said that it contains elements of all three of the other relationships and that in it the Divine is most clearly identified with the person.  That is, that the Divine order is seen as identical to that within the deepest parts of the person or that the order is created out of the highest expression of the person.  At any rate, it is that the person's deepest (or highest) will is identical to God's will.  It is in this sense, also, that the postmodern attitude might be called existential.  It is in this sense that it coincides with the view of the perennial philosophy.

My reason for bringing out these different modes is to indicate that there are different ways of interpreting the Divine relationship.  The Abraham story in the Bible expresses one of these types, but only one.

His story is said to be the prototype of the faithful human.  And within itself the story is consistent, and it points to an interpretation that corresponds to it.  The interpretation is the obvious one; and it is the traditional one — specifically, that we can not know the ways of the Divine and therefore our relationship to it should be one of strict, nonthinking obedience.  God does not have to make sense to us, to satisfy our intellect or our feelings of right and wrong.  The essence of faith is in taking that leap outside of one's own considered judgment and placing total reliance, dependence, and trust in something other than one's self.

For illustrative purposes, let us briefly compare the different relationships to the Divine along the criterion of separation from God.  Doing so, I believe, yields something like the chart that follows:

 

 As you can see, in the postmodern perspective, persons are identified with God, whereas there is separation between God and the person in the relationship of faith.
 

KNOWING GOD'S WILL

With these distinctions in mind, now, let us turn to the story itself.  The first question I wish to ask concerning this story, as reproduced at the beginning of Chapter Eleven, is, could Abraham have really known God's will?  Can we really know God's will?  If so, how do we know God's will?

There are many ways that we attempt to discern the will of the Divine.  Chief among these has been the use of The Bible and other holy scriptures, dreams, divination, hallucinations, visions, and intuition — intuition that is used both in and of itself and as brought to bear upon one or several of the foregoing.  For us, then, intuition is essential; we must seek to discern or uncover, in the light of reflection, meditation, or contemplation, what it is that the Divine will have of us.  The message must be gleaned, as it were, from the stuff of personality, or ego, or simple randomness; the wheat separated from the chaff.

In the Abraham story, however, the communication of God's alleged will comes to him directly, as spoken.  Keep in mind that our interpretation of all that follows in the story hinges on our acceptance of this assertion, hinges thus upon a fundamentalist and literal interpretation of these verses, hinges upon our acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God.
 

MISUNDERSTANDING GOD

In light of the preceding statement of how we can know God's will, such a question might be, could Abraham have been wrong?  Could he have misunderstood the Lord, or misinterpreted God's will?

So let us consider if Abraham may have misinterpreted God's will.  This notion is supported when we consider the story's placement after the fall from grace in Eden.

Everything that happens in the Bible, then, can be taken in the light of its occurring after the separation of humans from God.  Cain can kill Abel — and even lie to God about it — and so on.

Then we arrive at Abraham.
 

COMING HOME

To the traditional person of faith, God is not in him- or herself, God is not in nature, and God is not in other people.  As Bette Midler recently popularized it, "God is watching us . . . from a distance."  Considering this separation from God and the corollaries that go with it, it is not surprising that the Judeo-Christian heritage has produced the Crusades, the theft of the New World, Western imperialism in third-world countries, environmental pollution, the poisoning of the food and water supply, and corporate capitalism.  All of these derive their life blood in the separation of God from humans, humans from other humans, humans from nature, or all of the above.

I conclude, therefore, that the faithful human represents a devolution in psychological health and spirituality from the archaic human.³  It is one more step removed from our identification with the infinite, corresponding, no doubt, to an agricultural way of life that encouraged the perception of children as economic assets.

Thus, as concerns the question posed at the outset — viz., what do you do when God tells you to go against your own conscience? — the bumper sticker slogan from the postmodern era responds clearly:  you "QUESTION AUTHORITY."

A final note:  It is interesting that at this stage of history we have such an explosion of literature and information of all kinds — including that of spirituality, religion, and philosophy — that the Bible's claim to be the sole possessor of divine Truth cannot help but be radically diluted.  It is interesting because this diversity — together with its attendant multiculturalism — of their own diminish the likelihood of the Abraham mistake.  With the collapse of sole authorities and the authoritarian power structures on both the macrocosmic and microcosmic level that are fed by them goes the viability of the attitudes of nonthinking and unquestioning obedience that they required for their maintenance, hence also the undermining of the remnants of the poisonous pedagogical techniques that instilled them.  People are forced, as it were, to make their own sense out of the current chaos of meaning and authority.

So I believe that we have good reason to hope for the final removal of the poisonous pedagogies, their attendant social institutions and cultural conventions which threaten our global survival (not to mention well-being), and their still-hidden remnants in our current child-caring practices.  For with no viable authority without (and hopefully we are doing our part to undermine science's undeserved claim to such ultimate status), we have no choice but to, sooner or later, look within, to our own conscience, to our own inner link with the Divine, to our own God within . . . and thereby making our way, at long weary last, to our home.

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CHAPTER TWELVE NOTES

1.  From Hislop, My Baba and I, 1985, p. 70:

A doubt may arise:  "Baba is far away in India and I am unable to talk with him.  How am I to know God's 'inner guidance'?  Is not an 'inner voice' doubtful?  People have even claimed the 'inner voice of God' as the reason for harmful actions."

The question was directly put to Baba as follows, "Baba says that conscience is God's voice.  But how could that be?  Millions of people have been killed in religious massacres, and the 'inner voice of conscience' tells the person doing the killing that what they are doing is right."

Baba replied, "Not so.  In such cases an idea or concept from outside has been accepted.  If the individual would stop, discard all ideas and concepts from other people, turn inward and ask his conscience, a true answer would be forthcoming."  [return to text]

2.  The angel said to Abraham, "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."  (Genesis, 22:12, emphasis mine)  [return to text]

3.  More correctly, this analysis reveals a devolution from the hunter-gatherers, who may or may not be considered to have an archaic-type Divine relationship.  [return to text]

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CHAPTER TWELVE REFERENCES

Campbell, Joseph. (1988). The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday.

Eliade, Mircea. (1954). The Myth of the Eternal Return or, Cosmos and History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Hislop, John. (1985). My Baba and I. San Diego, CA: Birth Day Publishing Company.

Maslow, Abraham H. (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

Neumann, Erich. (1954). The Origins and History of Consciousness. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Rogers, Carl. (1961). On Becoming a Person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Sessions, George. (1991). Ecocentrism and the anthropocentric detour. ReVision, 13(3), 109-115.

Zimmerman, Michael E. (1991). Deep ecology, ecoactivism, and human evolution. ReVision, 13(3), 122-128.

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Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema

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(To continue, click on the link:  Chapter Thirteen:  Can It Be Otherwise?)

Comments?  E-mail me by clicking on: mickel@primalspirit.com      Mickel Adzema

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