Notes on Demons & The Powers: Part 3, Evil as Residual (or Hannibal Lecter)

Let me add a few clarifications to my last post.

The point I was making wasn't that modern people can't use the term "evil." Nor am I denying that once the term "evil" is admitted into human discourse that it might end up doing more harm than good. It might be safer, sociologically speaking, to keep the category evil on the shelf. This was, incidentally, the major theme of my series on monsters. It was the recognition that, while the monster category names something real in our experience (malevolent and violent Otherness), it is very often misused and applied to innocent people. This is vividly on display in the gospels. Jesus is accused of being demon-possessed and in league with the devil. Jesus is crucified and, thus, "cursed." And yet, Jesus is declared innocent by the Roman solider at the foot of the cross. This is the key to Rene Girard's reading of the gospel: Jesus, the innocent one, exposes how humans use religion (the Sanhedrin) and politics (Pilate and Herod) to justify violence.

All this is granted.

The point of the last post is that science has created means--biology (medicine, genetics) and the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology)--to explain human behavior. And when science has done its work with cases like Hitler we still feel that there is a residual, that some aspect of Hitler cannot be reduced to a scientific account. What we call evil is the experience of that residual. And, thus, by definition, evil can't be a scientific term. Evil is the malevolent residual that cannot be "explained" by the disciplines of psychology or psychiatry.

Again, to be clear, I'm not granting ontological status to this residual, saying that the residual is real. Of course, it could be. But science would deny that claim. That is all well and good. But what I am speaking about is phenomenological, the experience of a residual. Leaving metaphysics aside, it is a fact that the experience of this residual is real and pervasive, among the religious and non-religious. And, like it or not, the vocabulary of science, by definition, can't speak to or describe this experience. That's no fault of science. I'm just saying that science isn't poetry. Science is wonderful at describing the physical structure of the world but it does a crappy job at describing human experience.

By definition, religion is the vocabulary of the residual. Religion provides us language that is metaphysical or supernatural. Language of the residual. This is why I made the point in the last post that evil is a religious term, religion and evil speak to the experience of the residual, what lies outside the categories of science.

And yes, as I said above, I am aware of the dangers of reifying the category of evil. But I think everyone can agree that, as a phenomenological term, evil is speaking to the experience of a malevolent residual.

And here's my second point: This assessment is widely granted. It is simply one of the widely recognized symptoms of modernity. In a disenchanted age we lack the language to name our experience of the residual. We all have residual experiences but the only language that names these experience is "superstitious," the vocabulary of enchantment.

Let me give an example of what I'm talking about. Consider the movie Silence of the Lambs. It is a movie about evil and the experience of the residual. Hannibal Lecter, M.D. is the incarnation of evil. He is also one of the world's leading psychiatrists. Consequently, we are told in the movie, Dr. Lector can't be assessed or diagnosed with psychological and diagnostic tests. Lector can beat these tests. It's language of conquest. More, Lector can defeat, on their own terms and at their own game, the world's best forensic psychologists. In short, in Lector we see the defeat of science. Evil tosses around the tools of science as if they were child's toys, mere playthings. There is something in Lector that cannot be captured by psychology or science. Lector is a silver screen depiction of the residual. And we recognize and name that residual evil.

And this is only one example. In movies, novels and TV shows we see this same theme emerge time and time again. The truly evil character defeats the scientific experts. These experts often, then, turn to religious figures. They might wander into a church looking for answers or consult a priest. The character might start to pray. The experience of evil--the residual--draws the characters, as a last resort, to the religious vocabulary. Why? Because the person they are chasing is beyond criminal, beyond human categories. And, just as often, we see the truly evil antagonist defeat these religious shock troops. Hollywood knows it needs the language of the residual, the vocabulary of religion, to make movies which speak to human experience. Screenwriters are artists, not scientists. So they get what I'm talking about. But that doesn't mean that Hollywood is going to embrace organized religion! So priests in the movies are often killed by the evil figure (usually because the priest is a hypocrite). Regardless, the defeat of evil is going to rely on some sort of self-sacrificing goodness. The main plot of the movie is figuring out where that goodness is going to come from.

In sum, I don't think what I'm saying about evil, science and religion is all that new or controversial. It's simply an observation of what we see all around us.

Just go to the movies.

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The Last Day

I've seen two references to the amazing poem The Last Day by the Australian poet Kevin Hart. One at Ben Meyer's blog and also over at Brad East's blog (two theologian-bloggers who love poetry).

Hart's poem is a beautiful eschatological meditation.


The Last Day
When the last day comes
A ploughman in Europe will look over his shoulder
And see the hard furrows of earth
Finally behind him, he will watch his shadow
Run back into his spine.

It will be morning
For the first time, and the long night
Will be seen for what it is,
A black flag trembling in the sunlight.
On the last day

Our stories will be rewritten
Each from the end,
And each will hear the fields and rivers clap
And under the trees

Old bones
Will cover themselves with flesh;
Spears, bullets, will pluck themselves
From wounds already healed,
Women will clasp their sons as men

And men will look
Into their palms and find them empty;
There will be time
For us to say the right things at last,
To look into our enemy’s face

And see ourselves,
Forgiven now, before the books flower in flames,
The mirrors return our faces,
And everything is stripped from us,
Even our names.

--From The Flame Tree

My favorite part?

There will be time
For us to say the right things at last...

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Notes on Demons & The Powers: Part 2, Evil and Illness in the Modern World

Thinking over my post about how we, as modern Christians, should approach the biblical stories about demons, I'd like to make one other comment about why I think the label "demonic" is useful.

Psychology and psychiatry tend to frame mental and behavioral issues using what is called "the medical model." That is, we frame mental and behavioral issues in the language of medicine. Susan is diagnosed with depression (i.e., Major Depressive Disorder), which is a form of mental illness. If her symptoms get bad enough she will need to see a therapist, and even admitted to a psychiatric hospital where the mentally ill are treated by doctors often with medication.

Medical model language is so ubiquitous we often don't even notice it. But let's be clear, it is a model. And as a model it often obscures as much as it illuminates. For some disorders, such as schizophrenia, the medical model fits very well. But what about a child with ADHD? Is that child mentally ill? If not, why are they going to a medical doctor for a prescription? And what about gambling? Many people say gambling is an illness. Gambling is an addiction. But is that the best model for understanding gambling? Addiction is a physiological diagnosis (characterised by tolerance and withdrawal symptoms). So what is a psychological addiction? Does that concept even make sense? How is a "psychological addiction" any different from a temptation?

One of the concerns with the medical model is that what used to be framed in moral terms is now being framed in medical terms (e.g., addiction). This is worrisome for a couple of reasons. First, it undermines personal responsibility. I'm not bad, I'm just ill. I can't, because of this illness, be held accountable for my actions. Second, if I'm ill my treatment is in the form of a pill. But no pill creates virtue. In short, the medical frame causes us to look for "treatment" in all the wrong places.

And there is another side to all this. Given that the church has lost much of its moral authority to regulate behavior many have argued that the mental health industry has stepped in to take the place of the church. Psychiatry, then, like the church, becomes a form of social control, the stick that keeps us on the straight and narrow. Diagnosing people as "mentally ill" becomes a way of creating a warrant to effectively jail or "treat" social non-conformists. You see a version of this argument in the novel and movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Jack Nicholson's character isn't mentally ill. He's just a rebel and non-conformist. Psychiatry is portrayed in One Flew Over as a form of social control. The psychiatric establishment becomes a secular church, using Electroconvulsive Therapy as a modern form of exorcism. This argument is similar to the one made by Michel Foucault in Madness and Civilization and by Thomas Szasz in The Myth of Mental Illness.

The point in all this is that as we have moved from an enchanted to a disenchanted world the language of sin has been replaced with the language of medicine. We aren't bad, we are sick. We aren't evil, we are ill. This trend has had both good and not-so-good effects. On the good side we don't treat schizophrenics with exorcism anymore. On the bad side we've lost the language of evil and the demonic. The notion of evil is from an ancient enchanted world and it struggles to find a place in the world of psychology, sociology and biology. And yet, we still want to use the term. There are deeds and people who seem to warrant the label evil. For example, we want to apply the word evil to Hitler and to call the Holocaust demonic. But what, in a scientific era, do we mean by those terms?

Science seeks to explain things. To identify causes and reduce phenomena to underling mechanisms. To approach Hitler scientifically is to try to understand, sociologically and psychologically, why Hitler did what he did. We examine his family life, his genetic makeup, his culture. But in trying to explain evil, identifying its causes, we unwittingly tame it. To explain evil, to understand evil, is to lessen evil. True evil can't be explained by psychology or history. Evil is inherently inexplicable. That is the source of its horror.

It short, we don't want to hear about Hitler's family life. We don't want to be informed about the traumas in his life. Because even if we knew of such "explanations" (excuses?) for his behavior we would instinctively feel that Hitler's actions could not be reduced to these psychosocial causes. What Hitler did cannot be captured by the language of medicine, psychology, or sociology. What Hitler did was evil.

This is, in my opinion, one of the advantages of the religious worldview relative to a non-religious worldview. The religious worldview has language that can capture our intuitive feelings about Hitler, horrific murders, child sexual abuse, or genocide. The scientific worldview can only diagnosis Hitler. Most of us find that inadequate.

In short, even as a psychologist, committed to identifying the causes of behavior, I feel the need to keep this superstitious term, this term of darkness from an ancient enchanted era. A era of angels, devils and demons. A era of good versus evil.

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Bubble Creek Canyon

H/T to Mike Cope for this humorous meditation on contemporary Christian culture:

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Did the Prosperity Gospel Cause the Housing Crisis?

A couple of posts ago, John pointed us to a recent article in The Atlantic--Did Christianity Cause the Crash?--by Hanna Rosin. The article explores the rise and continued influence of the prosperity gospel (the belief that God will financially bless the faithful) in American Christianity. From Oral Roberts to Joel Osteen, it is a much wider phenomenon than one realizes. From Rosin's article:

Among mainstream, nondenominational megachurches, where much of American religious life takes place, “prosperity is proliferating” rapidly, says Kate Bowler, a doctoral candidate at Duke University and an expert in the gospel. Few, if any, of these churches have prosperity in their title or mission statement, but Bowler has analyzed their sermons and teachings. Of the nation’s 12 largest churches, she says, three are prosperity—Osteen’s, which dwarfs all the other megachurches; Tommy Barnett’s, in Phoenix; and T. D. Jakes’s, in Dallas. In second-tier churches—those with about 5,000 members—the prosperity gospel dominates. Overall, Bowler classifies 50 of the largest 260 churches in the U.S. as prosperity.

The issue that Rosin's article explores is the role of the prosperity gospel in bringing about the recent housing crisis in America. A bigger and better home is one of the common images in prosperity gospel sermons, a clear sign of God's Providence and blessing. More, the faithful should aspire to such houses. In short, did many congregants of prosperity gospel churches end up "stepping out in faith" right into a risky subprime mortgage? It's hard to tell if there is a direct link, but there is a circumstantial case linking the prosperity gospel and home foreclosures:

Demographically, the growth of the prosperity gospel tracks fairly closely to the pattern of foreclosure hot spots. Both spread in two particular kinds of communities—the exurban middle class and the urban poor. Many newer prosperity churches popped up around fringe suburban developments built in the 1990s and 2000s, says Walton. These are precisely the kinds of neighborhoods that have been decimated by foreclosures, according to Eric Halperin, of the Center for Responsible Lending.

Zooming out a bit, Kate Bowler found that most new prosperity-gospel churches were built along the Sun Belt, particularly in California, Florida, and Arizona—all areas that were hard-hit by the mortgage crisis.

The scariest part of the article is how shady loan officers would come to prosperity churches to do "wealth building seminars" for the membership. With the sanction of the church these loan officers would use the seminars to sign up a bunch of subprime mortgages:

The idea of reaching out to churches took off quickly, Jacobson recalls. The branch managers figured pastors had a lot of influence with their parishioners and could give the loan officers credibility and new customers. Jacobson remembers a conference call where sales managers discussed the new strategy. The plan was to send officers to guest-speak at church-sponsored “wealth-building seminars” like the ones Bowler attended, and dazzle the participants with the possibility of a new house. They would tell pastors that for every person who took out a mortgage, $350 would be donated to the church, or to a charity of the parishioner’s choice. “They wouldn’t say, ‘Hey, Mr. Minister. We want to give your people a bunch of subprime loans,” Jacobson told me. “They would say, ‘Your congregants will be homeowners! They will be able to live the American dream!’”

There are almost no words for this. What makes it all so sad is how the prosperity gospel manipulates the poor and middle-class. First by making them ashamed and then encouraging them to take financial risks. All in the name of Jesus.

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Sex, Women, Religion and Unicorns

The blog double X has up a wonderful post by Nina Shen Rastogi about girls and unicorns: Why Do Girls Love Unicorns? Like with my posts about monsters it seem that unicorns are rich place for theological meditation. A bit from the essay:

The most popular myth about unicorns takes this image of a tough, wild creature and adds two crucial elements: women and sex. According to this enduring story—the exact origins of which are a bit fuzzy—the unicorn is an uncontrollable beast that can only be captured if a pretty young virgin is dangled in front of him. The girl’s innocence proves so intoxicating that the animal goes all weak-kneed and submissive, at which point the hunters pounce and bag their prey. This is the scenario depicted in the famous Unicorn Tapestries that hang in New York’s Cloisters museum and in countless other works of art.

In one of its earliest and most notable Western appearances, this tale was meant to be understood primarily as a religious parable. It was included in a collection of animal stories known as the Physiologus, which was popular throughout the Middle Ages in a wide range of translations and editions. In the Physiologus and the many bestiaries that followed it, the story has an explicitly Christian cast: The virgin stands for Mary and the unicorn stands for Jesus, the implication being that only a force as powerful as Mary’s radiant goodness could persuade the awesome deity to humble himself and be “captured” by mortality.

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Notes on Demons & The Powers: Part 1, How are we to think about demons?

Last week I got to thinking about demons. First of all, I went and saw Paranormal Activity. Second, some friends in a bible class at church were talking about Jesus casting out the demon Legion and sending it into the pigs. Some of them asked me about my take on that story. Since some of these same friends read this blog from time to time I thought I'd devote a few posts to try to answer that question.

To start, I'm calling these posts "notes" as I'm not going to be making an argument of any sort. Just a collection of observations. Plus, I'm mainly going to be summarizing material from theologians--Walter Wink, William Stringfellow and John Howard Yoder--who I find helpful in thinking about this topic. People with theology degrees will have read all this stuff already. These notes are aimed at a general church audience, someone unfamiliar with the literature on The Powers.

So, to start, how are we to think about demons? How are we to approach passages about The Powers, most notably Ephesians 6:11-13:

Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

To start, let's describe two approaches at opposite ends of a spectrum. Let's call the first approach the Literalist position. The Literalist takes the passages in the bible about demons and spiritual powers literally. The Literalist, thus, has a robust notion of spiritual warfare and believes in the reality of demonic possession (although they might believe this to be a very rare and extreme event).

There are, however, a couple of problems and concerns about the Literalist position. I'll just name two.

First, there is the ontological problem. It's just hard to believe in demons in a modern, scientific age. As Walter Wink writes in his book Naming the Powers:

We moderns cannot bring ourselves by any feat of will or imagination to believe in the real existence of these mythological entities that traditionally have been lumped under the general category "principalities and powers." We naturally assume that the ancients conceived of them and believed in them the same way we conceive of and disbelieve them. We think they thought the Powers quite literally as a variety of invisible demonic beings flapping around in the sky, occasionally targeting some luckless mortal with their malignant payload of disease, lust, possession, or death...

When we read the ancient accounts of encounters with these Powers, we can only regard them as hallucinations, since they have no physical referent. Hence we cannot take seriously their own descriptions of these encounters...

It is as impossible for most of us to believe in the real existence of demonic or angelic powers as it is to believe in dragons, or elves, or a flat world...

I'm picking quotes around Wink's main point, that this disbelief isn't necessarily a good thing, but his point here is well-taken: It's hard for many of us to take the biblical accounts of demons very seriously.

But my deeper concern with the Literalist move isn't ontological (i.e., Do demons exist or not?), it's moral. The trouble with many spiritual warfare literalists is that they often end up seeing all non-Christians as demon possessed. Or at least under the influence or thrall of demons. Let's call this The Frank Peretti Problem, named for the author of the spiritual warfare blockbusters This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. The Darkness books dramatically visualize spiritual warfare showing both angels and demons interacting and doing battle alongside their human counterparts. If you've not read This Present Darkness here's a taste:

As Sandy sat on the sofa in Langstrat’s apartment, her face full of joy and rapture, gleaming talons penetrated her skull as the black and gnarled hands of a hideous demon held her head in a viselike grip. The spirit leaned over her and whispered the words to her mind…

There were fifteen of them, packed into Carmen’s body like crawling, superimposed maggots, boiling, writhing, a tangle of hideous arms, legs, talons, and heads. They began to squirm. They moaned are cried out, and so did Carmen, her eyes turning glassy and staring blankly.

As fiction I don't mind this. But there is a moral problem in seeing your neighbors in cahoots with the devil, demons filling them like maggots or inserting talons into their heads. Ironically, by seeing demons everywhere you begin to demonize the people around you. In short, in the effort to fight demons our neighbors and coworkers end up as collateral damage in our spiritual warfare.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Literalist position we have the Liberal position. The Liberal will follow Rudolf Bultmann and other liberal theologians in the process of demythologizing the New Testament. Specifically, Bultmann suggests that the mythological structure of the New Testament is irrelevant to its deeper meaning. The mythological world of the NT is characterized by the following (demon stuff is highlighted):

The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings -- the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Even the earth is more than the scene of natural, everyday events, of the trivial round and common task. It is the scene of the supernatural activity of God and his angels on the one hand, and of Satan and his demons on the other. These supernatural forces intervene in the course of nature and in all that men think and will and do. Miracles are by no means rare. Man is not in control of his own life. Evil spirits may take possession of him. Satan may inspire him with evil thoughts...History does not follow a smooth unbroken course; it is set in motion and controlled by these supernatural powers. This æon is held in bondage by Satan, sin, and death (for "powers" is precisely what they are)...

Modern Man, Bultmann continues, cannot accept this mythological structure. Some bits from Bultmann:

Can Christian preaching expect modern man to accept the mythical view of the world as true? To do so would be both senseless and impossible. It would be senseless, because there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age...

Man’s knowledge and mastery of the world have advanced to such an extent through science and technology that it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world...

Now that the forces and the laws of nature have been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil...

It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.

Given that Modern Man cannot take the mythological world of the bible seriously, the goal for a modern reader of the bible is to focus on the existential aspects of the text, how the text speaks to our spiritual and moral condition:

Our task is to produce an existentialist interpretation of the dualistic mythology of the New Testament along similar lines. When, for instance, we read of demonic powers ruling the world and holding mankind in bondage, does the understanding of human existence which underlies such language offer a solution to the riddle of human life which will be acceptable even to the non-mythological mind of today?

Bultmann would answer yes to that question. The language of demons isn't speaking to a ontological situation (the "dualistic mythology" of physical and spiritual). Rather, demons are speaking to an existential situation, feeling enslaved to dehumanizing and violent forces. We understand demons existentially rather than literally.

So we have these two positions. On the one hand we have the Literalists who believe that malevolent spiritual forces--demons--affect day to day life. As Christians, our battle is against these spiritual forces. And, hopefully, our neighbors won't get hurt in the crossfire. At the other extreme is the Liberal position that interprets the word "demon" as an existential construct which points out the forces of dehumanization and violence in the modern world. Such a move escapes the intellectual scandal of reading the New Testament literally, but it can reduce Christianity to philosophy. Which isn't a bad trade-off for many. But for others this liberal move strips faith of its spiritual depth and significance.

So, given these two positions, let's return to the question: What are we to think about demons? Personally, I lean toward the Liberal position. And yet, I don't want to reduce the notion of "the demonic" to existential philosophy. I think the demonic is a real, even spiritual, force in the world. In this I resonate with the Literalist camp. This is why I gravitate toward the work of Wink, Stringfellow and Yoder. These thinkers help me thread the needle on this topic (as best as it can be threaded). They allow me to see demons as "real" in a way I find intellectually respectable. More on how they do this in the posts to come.

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Tex-Mex, Poor Man's Cake and Other Depression-Era Cuisine

I grew up in Pennsylvania before there were national Mexican food chains. So the first time I ever went to a Mexican restaurant was when I came to college in Texas. I found the menu completely baffling. I could order tamales, burritos, enchiladas, chimichangas, fajitas. I had no visual image what any of this even looked like. I didn't know what queso was, so the phrase con queso just flew right past me.

I eventually got my bearings.

After getting a handle on the menu I thought I was finished. But then I would hear people say things like, "I don't like Mexican. But I love Tex-Mex." Apparently, all this time I had been eating in two different kinds of restaurants. Some were Mexican. Some were Tex-Mex. But to my eyes the menus looked the same. How could I tell which restaurant was Tex-Mex and which was Mexican? "Well," people would say, "a Tex-Mex restaurant combines Mexican food with a Texas influence." That much seemed obvious to me. I'm not an idiot. So, I would ask, "And what, exactly, is the 'Texas influence' part? How is the 'Mexican' menu different due to the 'Texan' twist?" No one, you might be surprised, had an answer. Everyone around me was saying the word "Tex-Mex" with some even claiming they preferred "Tex-Mex" without, it seems, having any clear idea what they were talking about. Which, I guess, is not surprising as I think this is how 99% of the world operates: Just saying stuff without really knowing what you are talking about.

Finding this situation unsatisfactory I did what I like to do best: Research. So I began to hunt for the origins of Tex-Mex and the differences between it and Mexican food.

The story goes back to the Great Depression. Mexican food began to make big inroads into White culture in the decades before the Great Depression. Much of this was happening in Texas. However, during the Depression certain modifications happened to Mexican dishes that created the fusion we now call "Tex-Mex." Two of the most important were the following:

1. The Introduction of Chili
During the Great Depression meat quality dropped. So, to make meat edible chilies were made. This both softened tough meat and covered the flavor of poor meat with lots of spices. The proliferation of chili eventually lead to it becoming combined with Mexican dishes. One of the clearest differences between a Mexican restaurant and a Tex-Mex restaurant is seen in how they serve an enchilada. In a Mexican restaurant the enchilada comes with a red sauce on top. This is traditional. By contrast, a Tex-Mex restaurant will have chili on top of an enchilada. In short, when people say they prefer Tex-Mex what they are talking about, if they know it or not, is that they like chili on their dishes rather than red or green sauces.

2. Yellow Cheese
During the Depression the US government, to help with food shortages, would issue big blocks of American cheese. This yellow cheese was, because it was available, also incorporated into Mexican dishes. Traditional Mexican dishes use a white cheese. In short, another clear sign you are in a Tex-Mex restaurant is that all the cheese and queso are yellow rather than white.

Of course, over time Mexican and Tex-Mex dishes have been so blended that it's hard to tell sometimes if a given establishment is one or the other. Regardless, the cheese and chili markers are the best way I know of to distinguish between the two.

For some reason I was thinking about all this on the way to work today. (I'm a very strange person.) I was thinking about how the Depression affected family meals. The creation of Tex-Mex was driven by people mixing the food they had on hand. In that case, chili and yellow cheese. This made me think about other Depression-Era recipes in my family.

The best Depression-Era recipe in my family is The Beck Chocolate Cake. Of course, that's its name in our family. The cake is more commonly known as Poor Man's Cake. It's called Poor Man's Cake because the cake requires no dairy products. No eggs. No butter. No milk. Ingredients in short supply during the Depression. Surprisingly, the cake gets its body and lift from the chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar. That's right. No eggs or milk but vinegar! You'd think such a cake would be horrible. But it's wonderful. When made right it is one of the moistest cakes you'll ever eat.

Here are two other Depression-Era recipes from my youth:

1. Cream & Peas Over Toast
Ever had this? I love it. It's just toast covered with a simple cream gravy with peas in it. I still love this dish. When I was a first year Assistant Professor Jana and I were broke. So we had this dish quite a bit. It was very cheap and I loved it.

2. Fried Bologna
This is more a childhood memory. Anyone ever have fried bologna as a kid? When meat was scarce or too expensive my mom would fry bologna for us. It is an attempt to make the bologna into a thin sort of steak or pork chop. It's not really the same of course, but I do remember liking it as a kid. I can still hear the bologna sizzling.

None of this has anything to do with psychology or theology. I was just musing today about making due, living simply and being creative with what you have.

Maybe, on second thought, there's some theology in here after all.



Postscript:
Please feel free to share any other Depression-Era or Hard Times recipes from your life or family.

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Subways and Original Sin

I'm going to confess. I'm a Pelagian at heart. With Erasmus over Luther. And Joseph Arminius over Calvin.

Part of this is my religious heritage. The Churches of Christ are Arminian and we don't teach the doctrine of original sin (sorry Augustine!). But part of this is also my conviction that I think people, generally speaking, are pretty decent. I know it's easy to point to cases of total depravity and evil, but 99% of the people in the world today got along with their neighbors. They went to work, did their job, and went home to dinner. Note that I'm not claiming that any of these people were Mother Teresa. Most of these people gossiped, lusted, or acted on some prejudice or stereotype. So I guess it's a matter of standards. For the most part, I tend to think that most of what counts as human "sin" is the product of stupidity rather than vice. Folly and foibles rather than "total depravity."

I was reminded of this today while reading a great article in Slate about the psychology of subway behavior. The article, Underground Psychology, is by Tom Vanderbilt. The article surveys the quirky, surprising and illuminating research conducted by psychologists looking at how we behave in the mass transit "laboratory":

So it's no surprise that, over the years, subways have regularly been the scenes of applied psychology experiments. Indeed, for a time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as theories of "personal space" percolated through sociology, Edward T. Hall's study of "proxemics" was having its heyday, and the field of environmental psychology was coming into its own, it seemed that any New York City subway rider might be some psychologist's "confederate" and everyone else a possible bellwether of la condition humane. A banal note from a 1969 article titled "Good Samaritanism: An Underground Phenomenon?" from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology captures the spirit: "About 4,450 men and women who traveled on the 8th Avenue IND in New York City, weekdays between the hours of 11:00 A.M. and 3:00 P.M. during the period from April 15 to June 26, 1968, were the unsolicited participants in this study."

One of the surprising things these studies reveal is that people are not as bad as we think they are. Two examples from Vanderbilt's article:

On Giving Up Your Seat for a Stranger:
In one of the most well-known studies, social psychologist Stanley Milgram had students spontaneously ask subway riders to give up their seats. As Thomas Blass recounts in The Man Who Shocked the World, this experiment arose from the seeming erosion of a subway norm. As Milgram's mother-in-law had posed it to him: "Why don't young people get up anymore in a bus or a subway train to give their seat to a gray-haired elderly woman?"

Milgram wanted to know: What if you simply asked them to? And so students in his experimental social psychology class took to the underground to ask for seats, under a number of conditions (either with no justification, or offering a rationale like "I can't read my book standing up"). People were surprisingly compliant—a total of 68 percent either got up or moved over in the "no justification" condition.

On Helping:
The crucial context for many of the 1970s studies was the Queens murder of Kitty Genovese, whose cries for help were purportedly ignored by her neighbors. The Genevose story became the ur-narrative of uncaring urban pathology (even if its details were later called into question). The subway offered a perfect testing ground for the emerging subfield of "bystander studies." The aforementioned "Good Samaritan" paper, for example, had a Columbia University student stagger and collapse on a subway train, "looking supine at the ceiling." In some trials, the subject acted drunk; in others, ill. (People were more likely to help in the latter condition.) Interestingly, that study found no support for the so-called "diffusion of responsibility" effect—the idea, per the Genovese murder, that the more bystanders were present, the less likely it was that any one person would help. In fact, the reverse was found.

Maybe humans are depraved. But if Saint Augustine collapsed on a New York subway people, complete strangers, would rush to help him.

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The Jesus Manifesto

A edited version of a recent essay of mine is up at The Jesus Manifesto. Please check out the site and their wonderful array of resources, essays, conversations and reflections. And a warm thanks to Mark for inquiring about and helping with the essay.

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Loneliness and the Church

Over at The Happiness Project blog Gretchen Rubin posts Some Counter-Intuitive Facts about Loneliness.

Here's Rubin's take home point:

Without thinking it through, I’d assumed that being lonely would make people warmer, more eager for connection, and more accepting of differences in others. If you’re lonely, you’re going to be open to making friends and therefore more easy-going, right?

To the contrary! It turns out that being lonely has just the opposite effect...

Loneliness is often the product of failing to break into already formed social groups at work, church or school. When we fail to penetrate these groups we often become bitter and resentful. And, in many cases, for good reason. Cliques are awful.

We often think that churches are good places for people to make connections. But there are lots of lonely people at church. Pre-existing groups of friendship are hard to break into. Once people find a niche of community at church they stop looking around to welcome newcomers into their circle. Very often you find small groups at church fearful of adding new people because they worry that the comfortable vibe might change and that something will be lost (e.g., intimacy, rapport).

Thinking out loud about this, I also wonder if we are not making the problem worse by framing church life in social terms. Many people seem to think that deep friendship is the sine qua non of the church. I can't tell you how many times I've sat through sermons where the church has been called to "get into each others lives."

There is nothing wrong with this. But we are confusing means and ends. "Getting into each others lives" is not an end as it is so often framed. It's a means toward an end. What end? A moral end, to be a better person today than you were yesterday.

In short, we need to think of churches as moral rather than social communities. When I go to church I need to have ethics on the brain and not intimacy. This, I think, is a huge problem with many churches. People go to church to have their relational needs met. They don't go to get morally challenged or changed. Thus, if I have a good social time at church then church is great and fulfilling. Conversely, if church is a lonely affair I stop going and think it sucks.

The goal of church, to my mind, is to be better, not to be known. Of course, in the effort to become better I become known. I'll need to confess and ask forgiveness. I'll need to give an honest moral accounting of myself. And so on. These things promote community and camaraderie and even friendship.

Again, don't get me wrong. Relationships are important. Feeling known and connected is important. But if these things become the focal point then church is just a club and people will start evaluating it like a club. Worse, once you get "inside" the club there is little incentive to let new people into your church, clique or circle of friends. Once you find your "group" you relax. You are no longer lonely! You've finished the race. Won the price. And fought the good fight. Well done good and faithful servant!

And best of luck to those people left on the outside.

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Walt Whitman, Patron Saint

If you are like me you struggle with cynicism and misanthropy from time to time. People, man, are just the worst.

When I get in funks like this I turn to two places: Jesus and Walt Whitman.

As I've written about before, Jesus' ministry of table fellowship, of eating with "tax collectors and sinners," always lifts my spirits. I love how Jesus offends religious people by always hanging out with the wrong people. If you went looking for Jesus today and had two places to look, a bar or church on Sunday morning, where would you check first? I know my answer.

Whitman, for similar reasons, does the same thing for me. I love how Whitman absorbs and identifies with all of humanity. Male and female, slave and free, saint and sinner, rich and poor. Whitman, to use his words, embraces multitudes. And I want to embrace multitudes. Whitman embodies what the theologian Miroslav Volf calls a "catholic personality," making space within the self to accommodate others. And I think that is often missing in religious people. We fail to make space in our hearts and minds for other people.

Last night our church small group gathered as we do every Sunday evening. We are a mixed lot. We have homemakers, writers, social workers, computer scientists, musicians and, yours truly, a psychologist. Our task for the night was to bring a text outside of the bible that speaks to us. We read Bob Dylan lyrics, a bit from The Chronicles of Narnia, a passage from Uncle Tom's Cabin, and selections from G.K. Chesterton and Thomas Merton. My selection was from Whitman, these lines from the poem I Celebrate Myself:

This is the meal pleasantly set….this is the meal and drink for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as for the righteous….I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The keptwoman and sponger and thief are hereby invited…the heavy-lipped slave is invited….the venerealee is invited,
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

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Hell is Good for Capitalism

In light of the last post, George pointed me to this article in The Boston Globe by Michael Fitzgerald. The article is entitled Satan, the great motivator: The curious economic effects of religion.

The article discusses recent research linking religious belief with economic effectiveness. A particular focus in the article is on a recent research that showed that belief in hell to be predictive of economic success:

What makes economies grow? It’s a question that has occupied thinkers for centuries. Most of us would tick off things like education levels, openness to trade, natural resources, and political systems.

Here’s one you might not have considered: hell.

A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies - and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell.

Why would there be a relationship between hell and economic success?

Hell is, at root, a behavioral regulator. The fear of hell keeps people on the straight and narrow. When this fear is coupled with a conflation of virtue and work--the Protestant Work ethic--you have a powerful cocktail, fear aiding capitalistic productivity. Fearing hell we strive to be a good person and this means, in America today, working hard, being punctual, and forming the "seven habits" that make us "highly effective."

The article also points to another link between hell and work ethic. Specifically, we want our kids to internalize the faith but we don't want them to become so religious that they hurt the economy. From the article:

Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.

In short, it seems that belief in hell is nicely portable. Hell regulates behavior outside of the church building and helps to keep us at work.

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Christians and Torture: Part 6, Hell and Torture

This is the final post surveying our research into the relationship of faith and torture endorsement. This final study was also done by the team of Alison, Whitney and Courtney.

Recall that our research was stimulated by the Pew Research that had found that Christians were more likely to endorse torture than non-Christians. Thinking through that trend the students and I had enough experience with Christianity to know that "Christian" is so broad a label as to be almost worthless. And yet many people, the media in particular, us the word "Christian" as if they are talking about a homogeneous and like-minded group of people. But nothing could be further from the truth. Christians are all over the map. Some are Republicans. Some are Democrats. Some are pacifists. Some serve in the military. Some are creationists. Some are evolutionists. Some are orthodox. Some are heterodox. Some are exclusivist. Some are inclusivist (or pluralists).

In short, there are many, many different kinds of Christians.

So when we saw the Pew Research we asked the question: What group within Christianity is driving this pro-torture trend? Because when you see a trend about Christians that is what is going on, some subgroup within the faith is pulling the "group" average in one direction or another. So we asked, which group was doing the pulling in this case?

In approaching this question we wanted to focus on theological issues rather than political affiliation. That is, we wanted to know if there was something within Christianity itself that promoted torture endorsement. We ended up focusing on three variables:

1. Fundamentalism/Dogmatism: Biblical literalism combined with a strong sense of certainty.
   
2. View of God: Is God primarily perceived as wrathful or loving?
3. Traditional View of Hell: Belief that non-believers will be tortured in hell forever without end
   

One of the measures used to assess fundamentalism/dogmatism was Batson's Quest scale. One of the things the Quest scale measures is how one feels about religious doubt and the value of questions in the faith journey. Sample items on the Quest scale include:

• I am constantly questioning my religious beliefs.
• For me, doubting is an important part of being religious.
• I find religious doubts upsetting. (reverse scored)

We predicted, like with all fundamentalisms, that Christian fundamentalism would be predictive of torture endorsement. That is, low Quest scores would predict pro-torture ratings.

We also felt that God Image would affect torture sentiment. Is God experienced as wrathful, vengeful and punishing? Or is God experienced as merciful, loving and forgiving? When one looks at Christian hate groups one finds their God to be as hate filled as they are. That is, was we saw in the When God Sanctions Killing research, God is often viewed at the source of violence or hate. Consequently, we predicted that a wrathful God image would predict pro-torture sentiment. We assessed this by asked participants to rate two items asking how wrathful and merciful they felt God to be.

Finally, we assessed beliefs about hell. Specifically, if God is going to horrifically torture people, even many good and decent people, for all eternity then why should we get squeamish about torturing bad people for a short time in this life? In short, we predicted that admitting torture into the life and nature of God would function as a tacit endorsement of torture in the name of justice (or God). We could find no measure of hell belief in the literature so the students created their own. The items were:

1. Hell is a real place.
2. The pain and suffering in Hell will be worse than anything experienced on Earth.
3. Hell is everlasting, it never ends.
4. Hell is an experience of extreme pain and torment.
5. If one is condemned to Hell they can never leave.
6. The biblical description of “burning in a fire” is an accurate description of Hell.
7. God created and controls Hell.

The items were drafted to assess the reality, duration, severity, never-endingness and God-sanctioned facets of hell belief. We predicted that high scores across these items would predict pro-torture sentiment.

What did we find?

Christians who were more fundamentalist and dogmatic were more likely to endorse torture. Conversely, Christian who entertain doubts and value questions were less likely to endorse torture.

Christians who saw God as wrathful were more likely to endorse torture. Christians who saw God as merciful were less likely to endorse torture.

And, finally, Christians who believed in a horrific and never-ending hell were more likely to endorse torture. As God tortures so we torture.

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"Jesus Fixes Everything": Faith, War, Mental Health and PTSD

The Daily Dish pointed to an interesting article in the Boston Review by Tara McKelvey. The article is entitled God, the Army, and PTSD: Is religion an obstacle to treatment? and it discusses the effect of war upon faith and how faith affects the treatment of those suffering from the psychological consequences of war.

As you might expect, war can dramatically affect faith. McKelvey discusses a recent study of faith and Vietnam vets:

In a 2004 study of approximately 1,400 Vietnam veterans, almost 90 percent Christian, researchers at Yale found that nearly one-third said the war had shaken their faith in God and that their religion no longer provided comfort for them. The Yale study found that these soldiers were more likely than others to seek mental health treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home. It was not that these veterans had unusually high confidence in government or especially good information about services at VA hospitals. Instead, they had fallen into a spiritual abyss and were desperate to find a way out. The trauma of war seems to be especially acute for men and women whose faith in a benevolent God is challenged by the carnage they have witnessed.

Unfortunately for veterans of our Gulf Wars, McKelvey reports that faith has gotten in the way of veterans receiving proper mental health treatment:

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.”

As you might expect, as a Christian psychologist, I wrestle with issues like this all the time. What is the relationship between faith and mental health? Can mental health issues be treated effectively with prayer, bible study and the spiritual disciplines? If you are a Christian are you, via your relationship with Jesus, more immune to mental illness? And, if you do experience mental health symptoms, is that a sign of a lack of faith?

First, I do think there is a connection between faith and mental health. The research bears this out. Faith, we all know, can be a great resource in dealing with loss, stress or trauma.

And yet, the correlation isn't perfect. And it's a weak association at best. Being a Christian doesn't grant you immunity. More, as McKelvey's article points out, the relationship between faith and mental health is interactive. Faith can support us in times of stress and trauma. But times of stress and trauma can also undermine faith. Given the interactive nature involved it would be silly to tell people to rely on faith to get them through tough times when those tough times are making belief very, very difficult. Your cure is actually a symptom of the disease.

I'm also not surprised at the "Jesus fixes everything" sentiment. It is widespread in many sectors of Christianity. Many churches are very suspicious of psychology. To these churches, psychology embodies the values of secular humanism, the very values these churches believe are destroying the world. You don't need to go to a therapist. You need to go to church. In fact, I've had bible faculty at my school look at my psychology majors and question their faith and career choice. So it is not surprising to me at all to hear about Christians in the Bush administration expressing similar sentiments.

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2012, Apocalypse and the End of the World

2012 is now out. I haven't seen it yet, but plan to this week or next. In case you've been living in a hole, here's the theatrical trailer.

The date, 2012, comes from a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar. As best I can tell, because of course you read this blog for all your Mayan calender questions, December 21 , 2012 will mark the end of a the longest unit of the Mayan Long Count calendar, the b'ak'tun. A b'ak'tun is 144,000 days, about 394 solar years. December 21, 2012 will mark the end of the 13th b'ak'tun in the cycle which started at the beginning of time, 4 Ahaw, 8 Kumk'u (August 11, 3114 BC). The 13th b'ak'tun began on September 18, 1618 and will end 144,000 days later on December 21, 2012. On January 1, 2013 the 14th b'ak'tun begins.

That, or it's the end of the world as we know it.

As a psychologist I'm kind of worried about all this. Millennial, end of the world, fevers make people crazy. I fear we'll have some zany stuff going on as we saw when we rung in January 1, 2000 and all the Y2K anxiety. To avoid this, I'm going to be doing my 2012 shopping early just to stay away from all the crazy people. Can you imagine what WalMart is going to be like the minutes before midnight December 21, 2012?

On second thought, as a psychologist, maybe I should be there, notebook in hand. Hey, if the world is ending I might as well be working and productive. On the other hand, I don't think I'd like to meet the End of Days in the Frozen Meat section of my local WalMart. So who knows where I'll be. Maybe I'll succumb and you'll find me, gun in hand, in a bunker I dug in my backyard. Seriously, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity already have me convinced that Obama is the Antichrist. Because, you know, this is what the Antichrist would do, seek ways to cover poor people with health care...

Back to the movie 2012.

At the last Summit at ACU my friend Stephen Johnson had a presentation about apocalypse and movies. In the presentation Stephen classified end of the world movies into types. I can't recall his taxonomy, but it was something like Nuclear, Natural Disaster, Extraterrestrial, etc. I can't recall if there was a Religious category. But you get the idea.

After creating the taxonomy Stephen tracked these types across decades, noting clusters that corresponded to the fears of the time. For example, the apocalyptic films of the 50s and 60s tended to feature Cold War or nuclear threats. In the 90s, as concerns were mounting about environmental catastrophes (e.g., global warming), we saw less nuclear apocalypse and more natural disaster apocalypse in the movies.

But what about 2012? What class of apocalypse is it? Why would the Mayan calender, of all calenders, be synced so precisely with the End of Time? Particularly given its fairly arbitrary (to our mind) and factually inaccurate starting point?

Here's my take. There is this feeling that the ancients were more in touch with the cosmos. That their time-keeping and rituals were somehow more synchronized with the cosmos. Their time feels more "real" than our time. Our time, or at least the rhythms of our day, are driven by the work time clock. Their time was synced with the moon, sun and stars. Our time, by contrast, has no spiritual or cosmic significance. Our time just tells us when when to start the commute home or that we are late picking our kids up from soccer practice. In short, movies like 2012 speak to our spiritual dryness. In this case, how that dryness manifests itself in our time keeping devices and our calenders. Another symptom of this dryness is how many Protestants, given their historical ties to the life of work (e.g., the Protestant work ethic), are increasingly attracted to the Liturgical Calender.

In short, my time is trivial, empty and myopic. The ancients, by contrast, well, their time is transcendent and takes in the entire vista: It starts with Creation and terminates, on December 21, 2012, with the End of Days.

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Chocolate Jesus

I love visiting with my friend Dan, a professional artist and colleague in the Art Department at ACU. Dan and I have been collaborating on research regarding the psychology of Christian aesthetic judgments. I've written about some of this work before. Our current project involves examining how death anxiety affects judgments of crucifixion art.

Dan's been pulling stimuli--various artistic depictions of the crucifixion--for me to use in the study. Today he showed me the fruits of his labor. After looking over the pictures he had found for the project he showed me some other interesting depictions of the crucifixion. (Dan and I have a taste for the provocative and shocking.) I was particularly struck by the "Chocolate Jesus."

"Chocolate Jesus" is actually entitled Sweet Jesus. Sweet Jesus is a 2005 sculpture by Cosimo Cavallaro. The sculpture is a six foot tall, nude and anatomically correct Jesus. Made entirely from chocolate. In 2007 Sweet Jesus was a part of an Easter Week exhibit entitled My Sweet Lord. Beyond the Chocolate Jesus the exhibit also showed Cavallaro's "Sweet Saints", little chocolate saint sculptures. The My Sweet Lord exhibit in New York was greeted with a cry of outrage, mainly from Catholics. Here's a bit from the Boston Globe account of the show's cancellation:

A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled yesterday amid a slew of complaints including those of Cardinal Edward Egan.

The "My Sweet Lord" exhibit was closed by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan, said Matt Semler, the gallery's creative director.

Semler said he submitted his resignation after officials at the Roger Smith Hotel shut down the show.

The 6-foot-tall sculpture was the victim of "a strong-arming from people who haven't seen the show, seen what we're doing," Semler said. "They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions."

But word of the confectionary Christ infuriated Catholics, including Egan, who described it as "a sickening display." Bill Donohue, head of the watchdog Catholic League, said it was "one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever."

You can surf to Cavallaro's Chocolate Jesus page on his website. His voiceover discusses a bit of the controversy which seemed to center mainly upon the nudity.

But the thing that strikes me about the work isn't the nudity. It's the medium. The chocolate and its Easter associations. What does the use of chocolate signify?

I have two thoughts about this.

First, is the use of chocolate a way to comment on the cheapening and commercialization of Easter? We all know Christmas has been captured by the retailers. Easter as well. All the chocolate bunnies and eggs and Easter baskets. Might a chocolate Jesus be a way to comment on how the cross has been transformed into candy? And might there be something scandalous about that? To me, the artwork speaks about that: The transformation of Easter into chocolate we buy at Walmart. Is that what Easter has become? And shouldn't I be shocked when I confront that fact in the artwork?

Second, there is something shocking about an edible Jesus. And yet, that is exactly what Jesus said during the Last Supper: I'm edible. You will eat my body. In short, the chocolate Jesus recovers the scandal of the Eucharist.

Dan also finds significance in the title "sweet," the biblical notion of that the Word of God is sweet to taste.

Love it or hate it, Dan and I agreed: Chocolate Jesus makes you think.

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Comment Card

Hello Everyone,

You may have noticed lately that I've changed my blogging style. I had settled into a style of 2-3 posts a week, each reading like a chapter out of a doctoral dissertation. Long and technical. Lately, I've been experimenting with short, newsy, topical posts, linking to something of interest. I'm still doing the 2-3 longer posts each week (for example, I'm walking through the research I did with students about torture attitudes and there was my Veteran's Day post) but sprinkled between these are quick hit, quirky and topical posts. You may hate the change or like it. Let me know if you care to. I'm just playing around with all this.

Anyway, I didn't want you to think I was having some kind of manic episode or something. It's just an experiment I'm up to.
Best,
Richard

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Breast Implants and the Bible

You may recall Carrie Prejean, the Miss California contestant who was asked a question about gay marriage during the competition. Her answer sparked a great deal of TV and Internet chatter, on both the right and the left.

Prejean now has a book out and there is an interview with her in Christianity Today about her life, the controversy, and her book. Some readers of the interview are talking about this exchange:

Christianity Today:
You wrote that you don't regret getting breast implants. Have you ever wondered whether it might be incompatible with your Christian faith?

Carrie Prejean:
No, I don't think there's anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian. I think it's a personal decision. I don't see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn't get breast implants.

I agree that breast implants are a personal decision. I'm glad the government isn't making the call on this. And I would try not to judge anyone on this score. My main question is biblical: How in the world would the biblical writers have known that they should have banned breast implants?

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Water on the Moon and Demythologizing

It looks like there might be water on the moon (H/T Huff Post). As a backyard astronomer (with my tiny 4.5 inch Dobsonian) I love stuff like this.

But there is a pinch with my religious faith in all this. Right? Jesus goes "up" into heaven? The creeds say he "descended" into hell?

This is why I've always been attracted to Bultmann's demythologizing approach and, recently thanks to Tracy, the work of Tillich.

From the beginning of Bultmann's Kerygma and Myth:

The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings -- the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Even the earth is more than the scene of natural, everyday events, of the trivial round and common task...

All this is the language of mythology, and the origin of the various themes can be easily traced in the contemporary mythology of Jewish Apocalyptic and in the redemption myths of Gnosticism. To this extent the kerygma is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete. We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel today, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. If not, does the New Testament embody a truth which is quite independent of its mythical setting? If it does, theology must undertake the task of stripping the Kerygma from its mythical framework, of "demythologizing" it.

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Paranormal Activity and the Joy of Fear

Last night my friend Andrea and I went to see the movie Paranormal Activity. It was the scariest movie I ever saw. I watched the final scenes while peering through my fingers as I held my hands over my face. It's like I was fending off a looming physical threat, protecting my psyche with my hands.

I thought Paranormal Activity was going to be a ghost movie. It's actually about a demon. You can think of the movie as a cross between Blair Witch and The Exorcist. It's like Blair Witch in that it is a low budget independent film that uses a first person style. That is, the filming is done by the people in the movie. We, as viewers, watch the recovered film left behind. Paranormal Activity is like The Exorcist in that the film is rooted in one location, a house, with most of the action occurring in a bedroom. And, like The Exorcist, the issue is a girl and a demonic possession (or haunting).

It was a very effective film. Andrea and I were both pretty freaked out. On the way home she asked me, "Why do people like going to scary movies?" I didn't have a great answer. The two I floated were:

1. Physiological: We like physiological arousal. So we ski, ride rollercoasters, drive fast, take risks gambling and go to suspenseful or scary movies.
2. Psychodynamic: We like to confront death or the uncanny. We like to confront and process our fears.

I don't know if those answers are right. So I thought I'd float the question: Why do we like going to scary movies?

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Gay Rights or the Homeless? You Choose DC.

From The Los Angeles Times:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it would be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District of Columbia if the city refused to change a proposed same-sex marriage law.

The threat could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and healthcare.

Under the legislation, which the City Council is expected to pass next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey laws prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians.

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Christians and Torture: Part 5, Torturing a Family Man

In the fourth post of this series we talked about empathy and torture, showing that if you increase empathy you reduce pro-torture sentiment. My second team of students--Whitney, Alison and Courtney--approached this same topic from a different angle.

Specifically, they noted that these torture questions tend to be very abstract. There is usually just a generic reference to a captured "terrorist." Very little humanizing information is given. More, the word "terrorist" acts like a cipher, allowing us to project stereotypes into the blank. We usually think the terrorist is a male and Muslim. Beyond that, we add few personalizing details, details that might show similarities between ourselves and the terrorist.

Given all this, this team did a simple manipulation. What if we added personalizing information to one of these torture questions like the one the Pew Research Center used? Their choice focused on manipulating information about having a family and children.

One group of participants read the following description before rating torture endorsement. No family information was included:

No Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?

A second group of participants read a similar description, but this time family information about the terrorist was included (I've highlighted the change):

Family Context Prime:
A suspected terrorist has been captured by the US military and brought in for questioning. This suspect is a 30 year old male who is married and has two children (boy age 3, girl age 8). He is believed to have crucial information that could save the lives of many people. However, getting this information may require using torture and other enhanced interrogation tactics. Do you think it is acceptable to use torture in this situation?

The students found that adding humanizing detail--in this case information about age, family, and children--significantly reduced torture endorsement.

This outcome isn't surprising, but I find it highly significant. Violence requires dehumanization. Consequently, I worry, as we discussed in the first post, that many Christians, more so than non-Christians, favor torture. It's worrisome in that Christians are allowing their hearts to be affected by the forces of dehumanization. As a result our empathy is being compromised.

To Create an Enemy by Sam Keen
To create an enemy
Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.
Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.
Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.
Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.
Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares—devils,
demons, minions of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

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More Eschatological Dogs

Awhile back I wrote about being a new dog owner and how surprisingly and unexpectedly happy that experience has been. Over at The Daily Dish they pointed to a website that is collecting YouTube clips of dogs greeting their owners after they return home from a tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's the clip they featured:



If you are a dog owner, you've been greeted by your dog like this many, many times. The joy and excitement they feel is infectious. After a long day at work I love being greeted by Bandit.

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99.999...% Pacifist = 100% Pacifist

In light of the conversation going on (please weigh in if you'd like) concerning my last post, I'd just like to offer up the following mathematical argument to prove that, in fact, I'm a pacifist.

As the comments in my last post show, the conversations about pacifism tend to contemplate extreme scenarios that, for all practical purposes, never occur. Or, if they could occur, we can contemplate an infinity of responses to the situation.

Which means that 99.99999...% of the time I and the 100% pacifist will act identically 99.99999...% of the time. In short, we agree way more than we disagree.

In fact, I can prove, mathematically, that I--the 99.99999...% pacifist--and the 100% pacifist are the same. It has to do with showing that .9999... is equal to 1. The proof:

1. Have x = .9999...
2. Multiply x by 10: 10x = 9.9999...
3. Subtract x from both sides: 10x - x = 9.9999... - .9999...
   
4. This leaves you with: 9x = 9
5. Solving for x gives you: x = 1
   
6. QED: .9999... = 1
   

Which means that I--the 99.9999...% pacifist--am equal to the 100% pacifist!

And there was much rejoicing and merriment...

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Grandpa and Pacifism: A Veteran's Day Meditation

I think of my grandpa a lot on Veteran's Day, and on Memorial Day and on the 4th of July. He fought in World War 2 and was wounded in France. He was lying down, facing the enemy lines, when a bullet entered his hip, ran the length of his leg, and exited near the foot. He survived, convalesced in France, and came home with a Purple Heart.

When I think about my grandpa I often ask myself questions about pacifism. I do think John Howard Yoder is right. The grain of the universe goes with the pacifists. Theologically, I get that. I know that non-violence is the Christ-like ideal.

But psychologically, I tend to identify with Reinhold Niebuhr. In my heart I'm a realist. I think, like grandpa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that if I had a chance to kill Hitler I would have tried to kill the son of a bitch. If I saw a man raping a child and I had a baseball bat in my hand I know I'd hit him with it. And if I had to hit him in the head to get him to stop I'd hit him in the head. And if I had to kill him to get him to stop then I would kill him. I know myself, despite my intellectual sentiments and pontifications I know how I'd act in that situation.

Mainly, if you care to know, it has to do with how I feel about bullies. I cannot abide a bully. And when I see someone hurting someone weak and vulnerable a rage takes over. Psychologically, I'm not a pacifist. I hate, I despise, bullies.

But this makes me very sad. Because I know that in trying to kill Hitler or hitting the rapist with a bat that I'm sinning. It's wrong. And I'm guilty. Again, I know Yoder is right. Violence isn't going with the grain of the universe.

In short, and I think Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer would agree with me on this point, the issue of pacifism isn't an ethical issue, as it is often framed. For me, it's a theodicy issue. The world is evil. And I'm stuck in it. And to fend off these evil people, to protect the "least of these", I also commit evil. It's a shitty situation.

But to be clear, I believe in turning the other cheek. My rage isn't self-interested or self-protective. It's other-directed, protecting the weak and small. Hit me all you want. Just don't hit other people, particularly those who can't defend themselves.

But I strongly believe there should be pacifists. As I've argued before, I think communities of pacifism must and should exist. They are like monastic communities in this regard. The pacifist is an eschatological person. Pacifists show us the Day. They show us the grain of the universe. As such, pacifists don't fit in or function well in this Present Age. They will look irrational, paradoxical, inconsistent, immoral and irresponsible. Why? Because pacifists don't belong here. This is not their time. They come from Heaven. They are forerunners of the eschaton.

In short, I think there are Christians who will fight bullies. There are not a whole lot of other options in this broken world. Evil to fight evil. The best you can do is fight mightily within yourself so as not to become a monster in the process. But on this side of heaven we are all monsters. Struggling to hold on to our humanity.

And at the same time I think there are Christians called to pacifism. They walk with the Lamb Who Was Slain, carrying crosses with the grain of the universe. They show us a time to come.

Is this position paradoxical? Yes it is. But it's the only way I can reconcile the tensions in my own heart. I think both Yoder and Niebuhr were right. I embrace them both.

I hope there is never another Hitler. But if there was I think I'd join up. I can't abide a bully. And yet, I'd love and agree with my pacifist brother or sister who called me a sinner. They would be, of course, exactly right about that.



Thinking of you grandpa.

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Christians and Torture: Part 4, Empathy and Outrage (9/11 versus Abu Ghraib)

The second study conducted by Page, Bonnie, Dan and Kelsey involved the effects of priming upon torture attitudes. Specifically, the students were struck by the way media outlets invoked different images when talking about the torture debates. Those images activated very different moral impulses.

Our innate moral psychology is a mixed bag. One the one had we have a great capacity for empathy, sympathy and compassion. For example, Adam Smith built his theory of human morality in The Theory of Moral Sentiments around these emotions. On the other hand we have a great capacity for that is called moralistic aggression, the impulse for revenge to "even the score." Moralistic aggression sits behind the notion of lex talionis, the ancient rule of "an eye for an eye."

Both aspects of human moral psychology were (and still are) in play during the torture debates. On the one hand, media pundits and politicians would invoke 9/11. This would prime moralistic aggression, the impulse to repay the terrorists for killing Americans. Moralistic aggression prompts a pro-torture sentiment.

On the other hand, the events of Abu Ghraib were still fresh in our minds. These horrific images prompted empathy and sympathy. Pundits and politicians pushing for investigations of Bush/Cheney tended to prime viewers and listeners with images of Abu Ghraib rather than 9/11.

The students suspected that the media and the politicians were messing around with our moral sentiments, pitting empathy against moralistic aggression depending upon how the torture debate was framed. The students wondered if these various ways of framing the debate were, indeed, effective.

In the study the students had two groups of participants rate the Pew Research question on torture (i.e., Could torture often, sometimes, rarely or never be justified?). But before the two groups rated the question they were exposed to one of two different "frames." The template for each frame was as follows:

Due to current events, there has been increased attention put on the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques and its place in US life and policy. Obviously, torture is a controversial subject and evokes strong emotions on both sides of the argument. For instance, we all remember the events of ___ which affect how Americans view the debate. The haunting images from ___ are still fresh in our minds:

This frame was then followed by two pictures. In the 9/11 group the blanks in the frame above was filled in with "9/11." Then these two pictures followed:




These images were selected by the students to prompt moralistic aggression, a desire to get even with the terrorists.

The second group read "Abu Ghraib" in the blanks for the frame. This group then saw these two images:




These images were selected to prompt empathy.

The research question was simple: Would attitudes about torture be affected by how one morally framed the debate? Would an empathy-frame reduce torture endorsement? Would a moralistic aggression-frame promote torture endorsement?

The results confirmed these expectations. Participants with the empathy-frame (Abu Ghraib images) had significantly lower pro-torture ratings relative to the moralistic aggression-frame (9/11 images).

These results are interesting on three counts:

First, how one frames the torture debate affects attitudes and opinions. Beware of how the media is manipulating you! And it's also not surprising that Dick Cheney keeps talking about 9/11 when the issue of torture comes up.

Second, both responses--empathy versus moralistic aggression--seem moral and right to us. Which is scary given that these impulses go in opposite directions. No wonder the debate is full of both conflict and righteous indignation.

Finally, what would Jesus do? Frame the debate with empathy or moralistic aggression?

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Swearing, Pain and the "Oh my God!" Phenomenon

Given my interests in the psychology of profanity, my friend David at ACU sent me a link to this article in the Boston Globe.

The article discusses a recent study published in NeuroReport by Richard Stephens, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston. Their paper is entitled Swearing as a response to pain. Here's the abstract from the study:

Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals' experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word. In addition, sex differences and the roles of pain catastrophising, fear of pain and trait anxiety were explored. Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing. However, swearing did not increase pain tolerance in males with a tendency to catastrophise. The observed pain-lessening (hypoalgesic) effect may occur because swearing induces a fight-or-flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception.

Neuroimaging research suggests that we store the denotations and connotations of words in different parts of the brain. For example, "sexual intercourse," "making love," and "f**king" all have the same denotation (i.e., they all point to the same activity). This denotation appears to be stored in the cerebral cortex (temporal and frontal lobes). However, the connotation (emotional coloring) of each word is very different. These emotional overtones appear to be stored in the limbic system of the brain. This is why, when we hit our thumbs with a hammer, we involuntarily curse. The word spits out from the limbic system without the forethought and control of the frontal cortex (which inhibits the impulses of the limbic system).

Given this close association between pain, emotion and profanity this new research is not surprising, but it does suggest that profanity might have a coping function, a means to activate the fight or flight response in the face of injury.

Here's a thought balloon about all this. Given the association between emotion and swearing what happens when pleasure and joy are activated? That is, in the NeuroReport research we see swearing in response to negative emotion. But what about positive emotion? Might this be the explanation for why people, even irreligious people, exclaim "Oh my God!" when happy or surprised? Seriously, watch a reality TV show where someone is incredibly and joyously surprised. People just say, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!" over and over again. How might that flip our notions of "taking the Lord's name in vain"? People involuntarily saying "God" when joyous?

Maybe saying "Oh my God" isn't a sin a all...

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Would Jesus Discriminate and Adelphopoiia

A couple of months ago when we were driving through Dallas Jana and I saw the following billboard sign:


I later found out that these signs were a part of the Would Jesus Discriminate campaign. (Are the signs still up? Any Dallas readers want to tell us?) Here's a Dallas-area news segment about the signs we saw along with a little debate between an "ordained minister" and one of the leaders of the WJD (not to be confused with WWJD!) campaign (H/T Andrew Sullivan):



The crux of the argument in the clip supporting the Matthew 8 sign above is the interpretation of the word pias. You've heard the WJD interpretation of pias in the clip. Here's a take that rejects that interpretation.

It seems to me that a great deal of the biblical debate concerning homosexuality hinges on interpretation (for example, the words arsenokoites and malakos). Recently, (H/T to CP) I found that the historical case also hinges a great deal upon interpretation. CP recently me sent this article which is based upon John Boswell's book Same-sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe. Boswell's argument, as best I can tell, relies upon his interpretation of adelphopoiia, literally "brother making." Adelphopoiia was a ritual in the medieval Orthodox church and historians debate its nature and purpose. I'm sitting here wondering about its nature and purpose. Boswell makes the claim that adelphopiia was the Medieval church's equivalent of same-sex marriage.

I haven't read Boswell's book. Even if I did I still wouldn't be qualified to make a judgment on the nature of the adelphopoiia ritual. Nor do I have the language skills to weigh in on Matthew 8 or the interpretation of arsenokoites and malakos. Nor does 99.9% of the human population. In short, we lean on scholars.

And the scholars disagree. Pick you poison.

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Science as Prophet and Messiah

Interesting article (H/T to George) about science overreaching a bit when it comes to the business of prediction.

From Stuart Blackman's piece:

At its most enthusiastic, science has always been prone to promise rather more, and sooner, than it has managed to deliver. It can sometimes feel as if cures for diseases are forever 10 years off, while nuclear fusion seems to have been 50 years away from practical reality for about half a century now. It might be easy to look back and laugh at claims that eugenics would spell the end for not only heritable diseases, but also of social problems such as vagrancy and crime, but a 1989 Science editorial’s claim during the run-up to the human genome project that the new genetics could help reduce homelessness by tackling mental illness is perhaps fresh enough to make biologists’ toes curl with embarrassment.

I love science. Perhaps too much for some of my religious friends. However, I do think think science carries some messianic hopes, that what is broken amongst us and within us has a technological fix. The cure. A green economy. The pill that stops the aging process.

Not that I'm complaining. I'm a lover of the Enlightenment and my air conditioning. It's just that there is no drug, surgery or stem cell therapy that can fix what is broken in me.

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