LSP51: Do You Agree with Pope Francis on the Question of Hypocritical Catholics Versus Atheists?

Last week, Pope Francis made international headlines when he criticized hypocrisy among Catholics who rigorously observe Catholic rituals but don't apply Christian virtues to their daily lives. This in itself wasn't an original insight, as anyone who knows the Bible can tell you. What attracted attention was Pope Francis' decision to quote this popular modern sentiment: "But to be a Catholic like that, it's better to be an atheist."

So is Pope Francis right? Is it true that an atheist is capable of leading a more virtuous life than a person who believes in God? Are atheists generally less hypocritical than Christians?

First, I want to be clear about the definition I'm using for atheist. I'm not talking about the people who are troubled by doubts and questions about God and who therefore aren't sure which direction they should turn in; I'm talking about the people who are no longer troubled by such doubts or questions because they've a made a clear and conscious decision to reject the notion of a living God.

In my experience, it's the people who are most conscious about their decision to reject God who are the most hypocritical individuals I've had the misfortune to meet.

A few years ago, I worked for such a person, a store manager who was the boss from hell. For the purposes of this essay, I'll call her Celia.

Celia was a woman in her 40's who had worked in retail for many years. She was a married mother of three, and she had a special love for nature photography. She was also, as voiced almost from the moment I met her, a passionate advocate of progressive values and human rights legislation, a person who wouldn't tolerate the slightest form of injustice, and an avowed atheist who spoke with righteous logic about the many harms caused by organized religion. She was, in short, the very model of a virtuous Canadian atheist.

But Celia had a dirty secret. She was profoundly hypocritical. She used her position as a retail manager not to lift others up through positive example but to bash other people down through a particularly insidious form of schadenfreude that loves the law but not the spirit of the law.

Celia lived to find fault in others so she could judge them as unworthy citizens who had committed crimes and deserved to be punished, all in the name of righteousness. So, instead of doing her job as manager, she would sit in the back of the store and obsessively watch the store's security cameras so she could catch small infractions of the "rules." She would make new rules, fail to communicate the new rules to staff members, punish us for breaking the rules, then set aside the new rules and replace them with more new rules the next day. She seemed unaware of how fickle and unprofessional and downright nasty her actions seemed to the rest of us. Meanwhile, she was so busy hunting down criminals, she wasn't leading the sales floor, or organizing stock, or promoting good relationships among staff so the store could operate efficiently and compassionately. She was just . . . dedicating herself to her "higher calling," her calling as a righteous warrior.

She was living in her own little world of purity and justice, and, from her point of view, she was righting a whole series of terrible wrongs. So she felt justified in firing anyone who didn't meet her standards, which was pretty much everyone. (After a while, I started keeping a list.) At any given time, she had a "favourite" employee and a "probational" employee, though you could quickly and quixotically fall from being favoured to hated. One by one, she pushed us under the bus. I knew my time was coming to an end when she'd already fired everyone else who had given her "just cause." I was frantically looking for another job, but I wasn't fast enough. She'd set her vigilante sights on me, and there was no salvation for me. I got the boot because I dared to say in private to some other employees what I thought of her treatment of us. One of those employees was foolish enough to trust Celia's words about fairness and justice, and told Celia what I'd said. That employee didn't last much longer there than I did.

Celia's real problem was that she lacked any sense of true humbleness (with the meaning I've written about in previous posts). She was deeply narcissistic and absolutely certain of her "right to be right" (a brain issue I've also written about). She couldn't tolerate her own mistakes, so problems and doubts and questions always had to be somebody else's fault. Not only were the mistakes not her own, but she devoutly believed that all mistakes could be eradicated and that permanent perfection could be achieved through the proper application of human logic, law, justice, purity, and holiness -- with she herself, of course, being an excellent example of how to bring about a state of permanent perfection without relying on stupid superstitions like faith in God.

Well, guess what, folks. What Celia believed in, and what Celia lived by, was pure System 2 thinking and pure System 2 folly. Over the years -- perhaps as the result of a difficult childhood -- Celia had trained her brain to stop accepting the valuable input of her brain's System 1 processing system. She didn't want to feel empathy for others (because System 1 empathy, trust, and faith, unlike System 2 agreeableness, sometimes hurt from within). She didn't want to feel humble. She didn't want to ask difficult questions about God and do the hard work of coping with messy System 1 meaning and purpose. Most especially, she didn't want anyone else to tell her what to do or how to do it. She wanted control. She wanted to be in charge of the rules so she could change them at will and have a sense of power over others. She wanted to say she's a virtuous person without having to give up her "right to be right," her right to be happy in whatever way she damn well pleased.

In short, she wanted an excuse to proclaim herself a righteous warrior without ever having to do the hard work of loving your God and loving your neighbour as yourself.

She's an atheist because the atheistic worldview (with its eradication of System 1 brain input) gives her permission to be a controlling, narcissistic, unloving, hypocrite who speaks volubly about justice and mercy but actually prefers to terrorize others through her action.

I've encountered few atheists who will not resort to ad hominem attacks on people of faith at the slightest provocation (that provocation often being the simple wearing of a cross or the simple mentioning of God). Atheists who go on the attack (and many of them seem to believe it's their moral duty to attack) don't just argue on the grounds of logic or science but find it very easy to slip into hate-filled diatribes about the stupidity of anyone who trusts in God. The viciousness of an atheist in hot pursuit of a faith-based target is a scary sight indeed. (Survival of the fittest, no doubt?)

One aspect of being a cataphatic nature mystic is the sensitivity one develops to metaphors from nature. So when I went through my photo files to find an illustration to describe what it feels like to be attacked by an atheist, this photo, from a particularly nasty February 2015 storm, jumped out at me. The cold and vicious winds drove their payload of snow so strongly at every target that even the vertical bricks of my neighbour's house weren't spared. My personal faith is as sure and steady as these bricks, but when an atheist chooses to attack . . . it feels as if I've been blasted by calculated waves of pure, cold, logical hatred.

I agree with Pope Francis that all atheists will go to heaven, and I agree that all atheists should be treated with dignity and respect because they're human beings and children of God just like everybody else.

But this doesn't mean I find the moral choices of atheists acceptable.

There's no virtue to be found in an atheist's "right to be right." And atheists aren't less hypocritical than System-2-dominant Christians (the Catholic hypocrites Pope Francis has complained about). The only way for any of us to stop living as hypocrites is to embrace the full capacity of our human brains (System 1 and System 2 balanced in harmonious ways), to learn what it means to love and forgive and learn and grow at the deepest levels of heart combined with mind combined with soul combined with body on an ongoing basis till the day we die.

If you think you can do all this without asking God for help, you must really think highly of yourself.

LSP50: Where to Draw the Line on Free Speech? Conscience in the Identity Politics Debate

On this morning's National Post website (February 18, 2017), there's a commentary piece with this headline: "Where to draw the line on free speech? It needs to be guided by judgment and conscience, not rules." The author, Andrew Coyne, raises some good points about mutual obligations in a democratic society such as Canada's. He points out that "the spirit of free speech" is important, that "free speech exists, as a legal guarantee, in part because of the foundation of social values in which it is embedded."

What the author doesn't address in his very reasonable piece about free speech is the underlying crisis our society currently faces with regard to conscience. Conscience -- the source of our ineffable and awe-inspiring courage and inner strength -- is quickly and efficiently being killed off in our society. Without conscience, we simply aren't able to understand our mutual obligations, let alone grasp the meaning of "the spirit of free speech." Without conscience, we don't have the courage to recognize and confront hatred. Without conscience, we stagger from crisis to crisis and hurl cliches instead of insight at complex issues. Without conscience, we can't hold the line against any of the philosophical movements designed to eradicate differences between individual human beings and their neighbours. Without conscience, we start to believe there's only one right way to be: our way or the highway.

In short, without conscience, people aren't able to be the loving and potential-filled individuals we're capable of being.

 

The foundation of social values in which "the spirit of free speech" resides is due in large part to the long arc of Christian values that have slowly evolved over the centuries. Despite a history riddled with Christian leaders who perpetrated mistakes and terrible abuses (some of which have been acknowledged and atoned for), one important aspect of Christianity (and Judaism before it) is the strong emphasis placed on women's worthiness before God. You can't have a fully functioning human conscience unless you're willing to trust that God does not place men above women in Creation or in human society. Shown here is "The Vision of the Blessed Clare of Rimini" by Francesco da Rimini (prob. about 1333-40), on display at the National Gallery, London, England. Photo credit JAT 2023.

In place of conscience, without much awareness that what we're doing is dangerous to our longstanding sense of social values, we're tacking together a murky blend of laws, ideologies, logic, and dualistic right-and-wrong morality that currently masquerades under the noble banner of identity politics. Identity politics purports to be a salvific trend which will add to our foundation of judgment and conscience once we totally accept and absorb and see the wisdom of the myriad small but necessary laws that must be put in place -- just temporarily, of course -- to protect certain individuals who believe it's their RIGHT to never feel offended and never feel challenged in their personal beliefs. Identity politics is an ideology designed to give people permission to stop listening to their own conscience and to listen instead only to the System 2 pleasure and happiness networks of their own human brains. The strategy can be summed up in this way: if it gives you a brief neurological high, it's great; if it demands you do the hard work of understand and accepting your neighbour (or yourself!), it's not only awful and unfair, but should be made illegal.

We've seen its ilk before under other names, names such as fascism and totalitarianism and religious fundamentalism of any stripe. These philosophical movements may appear different in the specific political and economic laws they apply to their citizens, but one thing they all have in common is the methods they use to eradicate conscience among their citizens. Once you kill off conscience in the majority your citizens, of course, you can do pretty much anything you like, as successful tyrants such as Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot and Mao have shown us.

Regimes such as these -- along with many others now and in the past -- start by trumpeting their claims for Truth. (Obviously, they're not going to tell you it's really a Big Fat Lie.) Next they bombard you with a constant stream of words and speeches and polemical essays filled with countless "wisdom words" (e.g. peace, justice, liberty, sacredness, oneness) to try to force their way into the System 1 networks of your brain -- the networks that are responsible for important emotional and spiritual traits such as empathy, courage, trust, love, morality, fidelity, curiosity, patience, and openness to change. These networks are programmed to respond to cues around relationships and learning and purpose, so they're vulnerable to attack through heart-based words (as every spin doctor in history has figured out).

I should stop here and point out that System 1 (what we tend to call "the heart") is one of two major processing streams used by the brain. The other is System 2 (what we tend to call "the mind"). Researchers in Dual Process Theory, which posits the operation of two different yet equally important processing systems in the brain, are starting to see both the benefits and the pitfalls of having two brain systems with different priorities that can, under certain circumstances, start to compete with each other -- a problematic situation that all too many people today have experienced firsthand.

Once the non-empathetic but highly logical and fiercely dogmatic leaders of a ideological movement have forced their way into your brain's System 1 networks, they start to chip away at your own natural, built-in sense of self. They try to make you doubt your sense of self. They try to make you doubt that you should even have a sense of self. They try to force relativism on you and they try to force determinism on you (both at the same time!). They tell you there's no such thing as free will (i.e. a conscience through which you can apply your empathy and courage and other System 1 traits). They tell you that because people have no conscience and no free will, chaos will ensue and everyone will become traitorous and cannibalistic zombies who will attack you on the street and rape you and murder you. (Of course, these things won't happen if you and your neighbours have a conscience and know how to use it, but what the heck, who needs the truth about conscience when they're shovelling out their Big Fat Lies?)

Once you start to believe these lies, your brain will start to rewire itself to reflect your new beliefs. (This is the principle of neuroplasticity at work, and it's the scientific reality that explains how ideologies can reshape your brain if you're not careful and if you're not paying attention to what you're putting in your brain.) Your brain will try to do what you've told it to do -- it will start to demolish network connections that deal with System 1 emotional and spiritual priorities, and it will try to strengthen connections in the cortical layers that deal with logic, rules, competitiveness, agreeableness, neuroticism, schadenfreude, status, and happiness (which is not the same thing as meaning or purpose). You'll turn yourself into a member of a hive mind, or, as Star Trek writers describe it, a member of the Borg Collective, or, as Battlestar Galactica writers would say, a Cylon who's going backward instead forward in his or her relationship with Creation and God.

This doorway originally served the narthex of a 19th century Ontario church. Eventually the staircase that led to the door was entirely removed. You can still see the doorway, but you can no longer reach it. This is what can happen to your conscience if you allow System 2 ideologies to dominate your brain. You can still see the words that describe your conscience, but you can no longer access the feelings that accompany a fully functioning interior doorway to wisdom. The part of you that's supposed to express independent free will and conscience becomes all show without actual function. Feelings of depression and anxiety often soon follow.

After you've turned yourself into a member of the hive mind comes the brilliant prestidigitation through which the ideological leaders, who with one hand have stripped your brain of its ability to "know where to draw the line," mercifully offer you with the other hand the blueprint you need in order to become a happy and productive member of society. It will be a pure System 2 blueprint, of course, with eradication of anything resembling free will, conscience, empathy, openness to change, plus all the rest of the amazing human traits you're truly capable of if you're using all the potential of your brain instead of just your System 2's rigorous logic, obsessive organizational skills, and narcissistic perfectionism. And the System 2 blueprint will be presented to you as a salvific act of self-transcendence intended to create more justice and more righteousness for the lowly and the victimized in your society. But really the blueprint is just about the need for certain System 2-dominant brains to compete, to gain power and status, and to take pleasure from the suffering of others who have lost their own ability to tell right from wrong. Tyrants thrive where human hearts suffer.

It's a form of spiritual rape. To enter somebody else's brain and intentionally try to strip away their core sense of self and their access to their own free will and conscience is an unspeakable act of violence.

If we really want to have a society that understands "the spirit of free speech" and the meaning of mutual obligations, we must do everything in our power to raise our children so their brains can process and balance both System 1 and System 2 priorities -- and be able to tell the difference between the two. Only when individuals grow, maintain, and cherish their personal sense of conscience can we act together to recognize tyranny in all its insidious forms.

Conscience is our true protection against tyranny.

LSP49: Humanity's Search for Meaning in the 2016 U.S. Election

This post has gone through a lot of changes since I first wrote it just after the 2016 U.S. elections. But instead of deleting the entry, I've decided to use the changes as an example of this maxim: "How you do anything is how you do everything."

 

In 2021, after I moved into a new home, I discovered this plaster plaque had snapped in half during the moving process. I reminds me of what happens inside the biological brain of someone who has abandoned his or her own conscience. Angels stop gathering with you. Angels still love you and forgive you, but angels aren't obliged to help you if you're voting for the world leaders who know only Hate. Angels have Free Will, too. Photo credit JAT 2021.

 

Addendum March 1, 2025:  I wrote this short piece for an online forum. It expresses how I'm feeling about the current U.S. political swamp, so I'm adding it here. For context, I'm writing about the disastrous Oval Office meeting that took place between Trump 2.0, Vice-President Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28, 2025.

So yesterday afternoon, I decided it would be nice to lie down on my sofa and have a bit of a rest after lunch. The sun was peeking out after a long, heavy, winter rain, and I thought, "Yes, it can't hurt to have a nap."

And while I was sleeping, Trump and Vance decided it was a good time to try to wreck the whole world.

I'm tired of hearing Trump say he wants the war in Ukraine to end because "millions of people of dying." If he cared at all about the lives of regular people, he wouldn't have chosen the dogs of hellfire to be his closest advisors.

The lies, the hypocrisy, the projection onto others of all his own venom -- these are the traits of a human being who has given up any semblance of decency, compassion, courage, and self-awareness.

Some commentators have suggested it would have been better if the conversation between Zelenskyy, Trump, and Vance had taken place behind closed doors. I disagree. Bullies, narcissists, and psychopaths adore secrecy, because secrecy allows them to deny they ever violated anyone.

Because it was all caught on film, individuals can now decide for themselves what they saw, what they learned, and what side of the debate they resonate with. Regardless of what one believed the day before yesterday about these three men, there's no unseeing the real intents that emerged in the Oval Office yesterday.

It's better that we know and keep remembering what we all saw (even though it's triggering for far too many people).

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Addendum posted November 2, 2024: Today, I'm doing something I've never done before. I've decided to delete the entire post I originally wrote on November 11, 2016. I'm deleting it because the election campaign of 2024 has taught me that vehement supporters of Donald Trump are willing to embrace any lies he tells them. These supporters have abandoned their own conscience and their own inner voice. They've decided they shouldn't have to take personal responsibility for their own choices. Many seem happy to follow any conspiracy theory rather than do the hard work of finding meaning through the Soul's courage.

If I leave the original post intact, it will be misused. And those who want to misuse it will get away with it because far-right Trump supporters aren't interested in the moral code taught by Jesus. They're trying to grow a very different kind of religious tree, one rooted in purity, piety, and perfection. They believe the glorification of Trump will bring about some sort of utopian restoration. They believe all their lies and all their violent, misogynistic rhetoric are justified because their goal is so worthy.

They are wrong.

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Addendum posted January 3, 2024: Because of recent changes in how individuals tend to read online posts and use -- or rather, misuse -- posts (by taking bits and pieces out of context and using catchy phrases to support their personal crusades), I want to say right up front, before you get to the paragraphs I wrote in November 2016, that I do not support former President Donald Trump in any way on any topic. Nor am I likely to ever change my mind. He is a coward -- a bullying, narcissistic, selfish coward.

In 2016, I didn't have the evidence to support or condone a flat out, across the board denunciation of the personality and policies of Donald Trump. But since the January 6, 2021 violence on Capitol Hill, Trump has, through his own words and actions, provided abundant proof about the kind of man he really is. Today, I wouldn't vote for him if he were the last person in Christendom.

Following this addendum is the post I originally wrote over seven years ago. You can decide for yourself whether Trump believes he's been elevated to the status of God.

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Addendum posted January 13. 2021: It's been a bit over 4 years since I wrote this post, and, during this time, a lot has changed. The entire world has been dealing with the unexpected travails of the novel coronavirus we call COVID-19. And the United States has again struggled with an election where a man named Donald Trump has forced a debate about the soul.

I'm writing this addendum on the day the U.S. House of Representatives is going to vote on a motion to impeach Trump for inciting insurrection. I hope the vote succeeds.

Over the past four years, Trump has shown with increasing clarity that he has no courage. He doesn't have the courage to listen to his own soul, let alone the souls of millions of Americans who needed a courageous leader during the 2020 pandemic, but instead found themselves saddled with someone who could only think about his own loss of Happiness when he lost the fall election.

On the plus side, people from both the Democratic and Republican parties have been appalled by the barrage of lies spewed by Trump and his closest supporters, lies that directly incited violence on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. America has been forced to see the ugly side of rhetoric, personality cults, and dualistic political mongering -- all negative aspects of System 2 when left unchecked by System 1.

It's a lesson we all should have learned from 20th century history, but apparently we needed a refresher. 

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LSP48: Parable of the Rift-Sawn Wood

Parable of the Rift-Sawn Wood
 

The ticket window of King Station as seen from the ticket master's side (King City, Ontario). According to the historical plaque, King Station, first built in about 1852, is the oldest surviving train station in Canada. It's built entirely of wood, though some sections have been repaired, as seen here. Photo credit JAT 2016.

 
Once upon a time, there was a judge who lived in a small community. Although the judge had no particular claim to either humble kingship or wise judgeship (his training having been in other disciplines altogether), no error of word or grammar or logic or math could escape his perfect eye. Flaws in the words of others shone forth as brightly to him as the sun in the noonday sky, and so, over time, he became a protector of sorts, demonstrating to his little flock the dangers of ill-proved words. He took pride in his calling as upholder of the One True Truth.

One day, during a harsh drought, he decided to build a wooden courthouse at the top of the hill so his humility, stability, and permanence could be draw others into the fold of the One True Truth. This, he was certain, would help them cope during their travails.

“I will build a courthouse to rival the halls of Solomon,” he said with unwavering dedication. “Those who enter will find only justice. But,” he continued, “the courthouse must mirror to everyone the perfection and permanence of my judgments, so every piece of wood you bring to me must be sawn so the blade runs perpendicular to the rings of springwood and summerwood. These planks are the purest and strongest. No others will do for our courthouse. Discard all the rest.”

Each piece of wood was brought to the judge for his inspection. He turned each plank this way and that, peering at the rings from all directions, seeking only those boards that mirrored the timeless alternating pattern of springwood and summerwood, springwood and summerwood. He chose each piece with exceeding care.

As the floor and pillars of the courthouse slowly grew, so too did the piles of discards at the base of the hill. In one pile lay the boards that showed small knots, for the judge found evidence of branching deeply troubling and not at all reflective of humility. In a second pile lay the boards and burls that showed curved lines or cupped profiles or uneven grains, for the judge found irregular patterns toxic to his quest for stability. In a third pile, which was by far the largest, lay heaps of tangled roots and rugged, timeworn chunks of bark, for the judge found these ugly and unusable in a courthouse constructed to honour the teachings of the One True Truth.

At last all the trees in a wide radius had been cut down and the courthouse was complete. The judge nodded in satisfaction at his unobstructed view. The building was perfect, right down to the bold name Justice chiselled throughout. But it needed one final touch. This he accomplished himself. In the very centre of the structure, he placed a raised swivel chair upon which he could turn in every direction to see approaching newcomers. Each word they spoke, each point of logic they raised, came easily to his eyes, and made him shake his head in sadness when he saw the knots and burls and roots they carried. According to his duty, he took all newcomers on a tour of his courthouse, patiently showed them the perfection of his planks, and, though it pained him to do so, eventually sent each one away in tears to seek unblemished pieces of the One True Truth.                               

One autumn day, after a particularly cold, wet spring, and an even colder, wetter summer that had ended the drought, one of the judge’s followers came rushing in. “Sire,” said the follower (for his followers admired him and thought his mastery over words and logic made him wiser than Solomon), “sire, the rains have caused a terrible mudslide. The rain has poured down the hill and taken all the soil with it. A dangerous river, filled with rampaging branches and roots, has suddenly materialized. The town has been swept away. The roads are destroyed. The fall crops are gone. There is nothing to eat. You and I are the last survivors.”

The judge nodded sadly but wisely. “It was meant to be, my faithful friend. There’s nothing we could have done to prevent this tragedy.”

“What will we do?” said the follower. “How will we survive?”

The judge thought long and hard for several minutes. The answer came to him in a flash of brilliant light, the same flash he always saw when he studied the impoverished words of others. “We’ll take the wood from the courthouse and build ourselves a raft. We’ll travel. We’ll teach. We’ll save. You and I have been blessed with survival because we alone understand the meaning of the One True Truth, which is pure permanence from pure impermanence, pure freedom from pure determinism, pure justice from pure logic.”

The follower happily obeyed, and soon pillars and lintels had been torn down and refashioned into a raft. In many places, the word Justice peered up at them from the perfectly sawn planks.

“What shall we call our raft now that it’s finished?” said the follower. “Shall we call it Justice?”

“I think not,” said the judge. “You and I have transcended the simple justice of this courthouse. From this moment on, we will name our craft after the greatest law of universal determinism. We will call it . . . Mercy.”

LSP47: Affirming Ministries and the Curious Case from Mark

Here in Canada, many church congregations are asking themselves whether they want to become an Affirming Ministry, which, in the words of the United Church of Canada, means "ministries [that] declare, in words and actions, that God loves and accepts people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender." This is an important step on the journey of transforming the church from its roots in righteousness to its blossoming in God's love. But, as with any long journey where a lot of people are asked to walk together in the same direction, more or less, there are major disagreements and a whole host of new questions. Are we sure Affirmation is the right path? If God wants us to do this, why hasn't God left us a map? Why can't it be simple? Why can't it be clear cut?  What about Jesus?  Did he say anything about Affirmation?  Would he say anything about Affirmation?
 
For many congregations, the question of Affirming Ministries is a difficult and confusing issue.  Individuals must wrestle with complex questions about who we are as unique human beings, who we are as members of families,communities, churches, and who we are as children of God. Sometimes, in these discussions, our deepest beliefs emerge, and we can find ourselves alternately pleased and dismayed at our own inner reactions. All on the same day!

At a time such as this, I think it can be helpful to consider what Jesus said to us about a different but equally important matter.  It's sort of a "peripheral vision" technique.  When we stare and stare right at the middle of the Affirming Ministry question, sometimes all we can see is the main black and white issue.  But if we let ourselves see with our peripheral vision, too, where things are kind of blurry, but also much wider in scope, then sometimes we can see the bigger picture a bit more clearly.  I think this is something Jesus did, something he tried to teach others to do.  He tried to help others see God not only in the central issues but also in everything around us.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Mark's portrayal of Jesus as a physician scholar who was way ahead of his time in his understanding of what causes illness.

We forget, sitting in our comfortable, modern homes with access to a full range of modern diagnostic tools and medical interventions, that once upon a time -- during the time when Jesus lived, in fact -- the prevailing model for understanding neurological and psychiatric conditions was demonology.  Demons were thought to cause medical disorders such as epilepsy.

Not everyone believed this, of course.  Certain schools of philosophy and science had long been working on the idea of healing as a form of science.  But, for the most part, diseases were blamed on divine causes.  People went to priests, magicians, oracles, and holy men to find out which god or demi-god had been offended and what steps had to be taken to settle the debt and make things right again with the divine.  This was big business, and a lot of money was made by those who claimed to be gatekeepers for healing and exorcism.

The Gospel of Mark includes several fascinating stories that mention demons and spirits.  Even today, people tend to interpret these passages in Mark as proof that Jesus followed the lead of others in believing that demons were the cause of neurological disorders.

I won't go into all the background reasons for why I think this interpretation of Mark cuts out some of the very best and most helpful insights into Jesus' teachings, but I'd like to draw your attention to the curious passage in Mark 9:14-29 about the healing of the epileptic child.

It's quite a strange story to include in the middle of a religious narrative.  It's also a bit of muddle to us today.  If you read it carefully, it seems as if the author isn't sure how to describe what happens when a distraught parent brings his epileptic son to Jesus for healing.  The descriptions seem part medical science -- "whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid", which is medically accurate -- and part religious invocation -- "he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, 'you spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again.'"

To our ears, it sounds as if Jesus believes there's a demon inside the boy that can be exorcised.  But when you read the passage in its original Greek, you see some shades of meaning that aren't obvious to our English-speaking ears.  For starters, the usual Greek words for "demon" aren't used in the story of the epileptic boy.  Each time the spirit is described, the Greek word is a cognate of pneuma.  And pneuma is one of those tricky words in Greek that can mean a lot of different things, including breath, wind, spirit, disposition (as in personal characteristics) -- and sometimes a spirit with evil tendencies, though not always.  I think it's quite possible that Mark was using the word pneuma to describe a "force" that's real and tangible inside the head, even if we can't see it with our physical eyes -- the way breath and wind are strong forces that can't be seen directly with our eyes but are very real and measurable nonetheless.

It's Jesus' understanding of this real but unseen force inside the head (what we know today are abnormal cortical events causing seizures) that leads him to treat the boy and his family in ways that would have been unthinkable for most religious scholars of the time, whether Jewish or Hellenistic or Mithraic.  It's Jesus' understanding of the boy's condition as a scientific matter that leads him to ask the same kinds of questions a doctor would ask today: "What are his symptoms? When did they first start? How can we treat this right here and right now?"

Detail of "Christ Washing His Disciples' Feet" by Jacopo Tintoretto, about 1545-1555, on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo credit JAT 2018.

 We tend not to notice what Jesus doesn't say to the boy and his family.  Jesus never judges them.  He never says to them, "What did you do to deserve this?  How did you offend God?  How did your parents and your parents' parents offend God?  What sacrifices have you offered at the Temple to remedy your offenses?  What have you done to restore your purity?"

Jesus asks none of these questions.  He says only that it's a matter of faith and prayer.  And after he treats the boy as a person, and asks the right medical questions, and performs some sort of healing treatment (though we're not sure what), and stays with the boy as he convulses to the point of appearing dead to everyone in the crowd, Jesus does the most remarkable thing of all.

Jesus, a Jew, doesn't step away from the body, the body from whom the spirit or pneuma appears to have departed.  Jesus doesn't step away from the corpse to protect his own ritual purity (which would have been considered religiously appropriate at that time and in that place).  Instead, he moves even closer to the boy, taking him by the hand, lifting him up till he's able to stand, and (we infer) returning him to his father's care.

For Jesus, no one was unworthy of God's love and healing, despite what those around him said.  In first century Palestine, with its blend of Hellenistic and Jewish cultural norms, an epileptic child would have been considered a blemish, a punishment, a valid reason to revoke some or all of the family's "honour and status" and treat them as unworthy, little better than the dogs who eat the crumbs from under the table.  Today, we'd never dream of doing this.  But in Jesus' time, it was the norm to marginalize whole families simply because one member was sick and needed proper treatment.

It's interesting to note that although Jesus goes around the Galilee and the Decapolis to assess and treat many kinds of illnesses and neurological disorders, he's never once shown by Mark as trying to heal or "fix" somebody's sexual orientation.  It's pretty clear Jesus is keen on monogamy.  It's also pretty clear Jesus is keen on people not committing adultery.  But monogamy and adultery are altogether different issues from sexual orientation, and if we rejected everyone from the church who's ever broken faith with Jesus' teachings on adultery, I dare say the church would have snuffed itself out like a dying candle long, long ago.

Jesus does give us a hint about how the epileptic child is healed.  He says to his apostles in Mark 9:23 that "all things can be done for the one who believes" and then, in Mark 10:27, he adds some more information, saying, "'For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."  Jesus was a man of science, but he also believed in miracles.

It isn't up to us, as Christians, to reject the very children whom God loves.  Jesus' healing of the epileptic child tells us that even when we don't understand, as human beings, the unique challenges and talents given to each child and adult around us, God understands.  God loves what we don't see.  God accepts what we try not to see, what we try not to speak of or hear.  When we're ready, though, God shows us how to speak of and hear Divine Love, as the epileptic child began to speak and hear once he and his family accepted they were worthy of God's love and healing.  God stands by, ever ready to help, when we find the courage to take the same steps on the path of understanding and inclusion that Jesus once had to take.

God loves us all, each and every one.

God bless.

LSP46: Don't Know God from Adam

Adam: So God, I was thinking.  I've decided I should become a more spiritual person, so I thought maybe you could give me some tips.  Nothing biblical, of course.  I'm thinking of something more modern.  I'm thinking . . . oh . . . maybe something with a bit of a Jesus feel to it.  Jesus seems to fly well with just about everybody. You know, all that love and forgiveness stuff.  How about it?  Any suggestions for how I can be more like Jesus?  I'd really love everybody to love me.  The way they love Jesus.

God:  Hmmm.  Interesting choice, son.

Adam, shrugging:  Hey, it's, like, just a little something I dreamed up.

God:  Well . . . it's certainly doable, son.  How would you like to start?

Adam:  I'm very big on the idea of respect, so we should start with that.

God:  Oh.  You'd like to know how to respect me?

Photo JAT 2015

Adam, chuckling:  Of course not.  You have such a sense of humour, God.  No, I was thinking it's important for me to state what I need.  That way, the boundaries will be clear, and there'll be no misunderstandings between us.

God:  I see.  That's not the way Jesus started his conversation with me, but go on.  Let's see where this takes us.

Adam:  Great.  Just so we're clear . . . you and I are equal partners in this, okay?  I mean, I don't even have to be doing this.  I could just carry on with the life I've been living.  I'm pretty impressed with the choices I've been making so far, and other people have told me how great I'm doing, so this spiritual stuff -- it's an add-on.  If I don't like something, I'm gonna say so and I'm gonna stop right then and there.  That's my bottom line.

God:  You have free will, son.  I give that to everybody.

Adam:  Another thing.  You're going to guarantee me the results I want, right?  You're going to make sure I'm even more popular and successful, right?

God:  You know Jesus was hated by the people he loved, don't you, son?  You know he pushed all their buttons?

Adam:  Yeah, yeah, the crucifixion thing.  But that was before we got smarter and more accepting of others in our culture.  That wouldn't happen today.  We wouldn't let it.  Today we know the difference between love and hate.

God:  You know the difference between status and lack of status.  I'm not sure it's the same thing, son.

Adam:  So back to the Jesus plan.  How do I start being more like Jesus?

God:  Well, I need a lot of help getting practical things from the people who have them to the people who need them.  Do you think you might be able to help with that?

Adam:  You mean I should write a cheque to a charity?  I might be able to squeeze out a few bucks for you.

God:  Actually, I was thinking about a young man who lives in your community and could use a kind word, an encouraging smile, and a fair chance at getting a job.  You're going to cross paths with him on Monday at 5:00 p.m.  Think you can help me with that?

Adam, checking schedule on phone:  Uh, well, sorry, but Monday isn't good for me.  I have to be at the gym by then.  Another day would be better for me.  What's Friday like for you?  I can squeeze in some time at 7:30 p.m..

God:  Shouldn't you be home with your children at 7:30 p.m.?  I'm just wondering, since Jesus placed an extremely high priority on the emotional needs of children, and if you were to spend time in the evenings with your children, it would be a great first step.

Adam:  No problem.  I always give them a kiss when I get home, and during the day I sometimes text them.

God:  You know, Jesus was pretty keen on the idea of visiting people in person.  He did his teaching and healing in person, even though he could have written long sermons and sent them out by messenger the way other teachers did.  Think you could be more of a hands-on guy?

Adam:  Interesting thought, God.  Interesting thought.  I don't think it's really my style.  Thanks for the suggestion, though.

God:  Your children have free will, too, Adam.

Adam:  Hey, don't tell me how to raise my children, God. Next you'll be telling me I should say out loud I believe in God.  Nope.  I draw the line at saying -- or even thinking -- I believe in you.  It ain't gonna happen, God.  That's one of my ground rules.

God:  So . . . . to be clear . . . you want to be like Jesus, who believed in me with every shred of his being  . . . but you don't think you should have to believe in anything beyond yourself?

Adam:  You got that straight.  I know my rights.

God:  Okay, son.  Well, I think I'll be on my way now.

Adam:  Wait!  I'm not finished!  If this is going to work between us, I expect you to listen!  You're supposed to help me when I ask for help!

God:   . . . .(offstage whisper) Where's my copy of Horton Hears a Who?  Anyone see my copy?  Jesus, you borrow it again?  Never a copy around when I need one.  The kids love it  . . . (smiling) . . .

Adam:  See?  Just what I thought!  All talk, no commitment.  Where are you, God? What kind of God are you, anyway?

LSP45: Atheism: You Think You've Escaped the Perils of Religion . . . So Why Isn't Your Life Getting Better?

If the militant atheists are right, and the world's greatest ills can be blamed on religion, then I'm wondering why, at the close of 2015, when more people than ever are rejecting faith and religion and relationship with God for the simple logic of atheism, the world is looking less loving, not more loving?

Could it be that militant atheism, in its religiosity, pure ideology, anger, lack of empathy, and anthropocentric hubris, is simply a new manifestation of the same neurophysiological patterning that leads to fundamentalism of all stripes?

Could it be that militant atheism is a fundamentalist philosophy with characteristics no different, say, than the Middle East movement known as ISIL, which purports to be a religious movement, but is really just a haven for human beings who have damaged their brains and have turned themselves into the Four Horsemen of the Dark Psychological Tetrad (Psychopathy, Narcissism, Sadism, and Machiavellianism)?

Black Beauty T. Rex at Royal Tyrrell Museum, Drumheller, Alberta.  Photo JAT 2015.  Sure, it's unrealistic and unscientific for Creationists to deny the evidence of the fossil record and claim that Planet Earth is only a few thousand years old. No argument there. But it's also unrealistic and unscientific for militant atheists to deny the evidence of the quantum record, which speaks of weird phenomena such as non-locality, the conscious observer, bosons, fermions, and magnetism, not to mention all the dark matter and dark energy we know almost nothing about. From my perspective, the atheist belief that "dumb luck" led to the evolution of the universe requires a much higher degree of sanctimonious denial than the Creationist position could ever muster. Are we humans really so incredibly amazing that the entire universe evolved just so we could have consciousness with all the rights and privileges of the conscious observer effect? Really? We can't even manage our own bank accounts, let alone act as wise custodians of Planet Earth, so why would the universe evolve to give humankind the unique right to mess with the laws of physics?

The militant atheists I've known (and I've known quite a few) strut and preen in exactly the same harsh way as the spiritual and theological narcissists I've known. They're certain of their rightness, certain of their objective intellect, certain they have all the facts. They're quick to judge and even quicker to punish. They have no empathy (though they rush to claim they live by the laws of empathy's hobbled cousins "compassion" and "mercy"). They rely almost exclusively on the brain's System 2 thinking processes (linear thinking) and pour contempt on the brain's much older and more adaptive System 1 thinking processes (creative and intuitive thinking). They're slow to learn from their mistakes and even slower to admit they made any mistakes in the first place.

Here's something else I've noticed about militant atheists and other fundamentalist philosophers: they're really, really poor at constructing a whole and complete argument. In fact, most of them couldn't argue their way out of a wet paper bag. But don't say this to their face, because they'll go into a rage -- maybe even erupt in a narcissistic rage reaction -- and they'll make you pay BIG for pointing out they're not really as smart as they think they are.

I take issue with militant atheist philosophies on the following fronts:

• They use restricted data sets and then claim they're using a complete data set. One example is an extreme reliance on Materialist cause-and-effect "Law" without regard or deference to the non-Materialist laws that govern most of the universe. Why is it "wrong" for religious leaders to ignore the actual laws of physics but "right" for atheists to do it when it suits them?
• Another example, taken from the field of religious studies, is a tendency for atheists to conflate many different topics into a single "bugaboo" called religion. Sure, religious fundamentalists conflate stuff all the time -- but why is it okay for atheists to fall back on conflation, over-simplification, literalism, and myth-making of their own?  
• Atheists, in my experience, rely heavily on "revelation" to an extent that rivals the worst abuses of "religious revelation" from major world religions. Under the category of "revelation" you find "proofs" such as "Because I said so," "Because I'm smarter than you," "Because I cherry-picked one small fact from an entire body of knowledge and used it out of context to show how smart I am," and "I just know it's true."
• Atheism has its own set of gods, though it likes to pretend otherwise. Top on the list of atheism's idols are "The Perfect Human Mind," followed closely by scientism, algorithmic solutions, and variations on the "it's not my fault I'm a scumbag because my genes made me do it" argument (which is really no different than the ancient religious argument that says "it's not my fault I'm a scumbag because my demons made me do it").
• Atheism is marked by a petulant, narcissistic refusal to examine the enormous and interconnected questions of scale, time, peripheral vision, alternating current, bonding, probability wave currents, and other non-linear, non-Materialist questions related to God and consciousness and Creation. They use their own personal human limits as proof that God can't actually exist! (as if God has ever understood questions of scale, time, etc. in the way a human brain does!) 

How are these philosophical approaches any different, characterologically speaking, from those used by religious fundamentalists?

How can you expect to become a happier, healthier person who understands patience and love and forgiveness and calmness and flexibility and healing and scale and time and bonding and breadth of knowledge and self-directed morality when you've made the choice to turn yourself into an "iceberg thinker" who refuses to look at anything except the small percentage of data floating above the surface of your System 2 thinking?

And why do you think it's wrong for religious teachers to do this but okay for you to do exactly the same thing?

In my view, militant atheism is hypocrisy in as pure a form as one can get.

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March 2, 2016 addendum: A recent piece by Brian Bethune in Macleans highlights some interesting research by social scientists Diego Gambetta and Steffen Hertog into the unusual percentage of Islamist terrorists who have engineering degrees: http://www.macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-engineering-degrees/. Bethune says: "That takes Hertog and Gambetta to the thorny question of “mindsets for extremists.” Different types of people are attracted to different kinds of extremism—engineers mostly on one side, social scientists and humanities grads on the other—and the authors went in search of traits found in both secular and jihadi extremists as well as among engineers. Three stand out among conservatives in general in recent psychological research: disgust (or the felt need to keep one’s environment pure, which can underpin everything from homophobia to xenophobia); the “need for cognitive closure” (a preference for order and certainty that can support authoritarianism); a very high in-group/out-group distinction."