Spiritual/Psychological Analysis of Tebow and Lin

Earl Biddle’s description of childhood anxiety, imagination, and omnipotence offers deep insight into the inner life of a child, and into adult psychological development. His theories offer an interesting way to understand the recent phenomenon in popular culture called, ‘Tebomania’, and ‘Linsanity’. Before applying some of Biddle’s and Swedenborg’s insights to this phenomenon lets first look into Biddle’s theories. I believe Biddle’s ideas meld well with Swedenborg’s. I hope that in studying these matters we will learn something about the integration of psychology and religion, and most of all about our own souls.

          Biddle describes the inner life of the child and the importance of the child’s phantasies. (‘Phantasy’ emphasizes creative imagination, whereas, ‘fantasy’, implies more an element of illusory day dreaming):

Childhood is usually regarded as a period of life which is normally happy and carefree…But it is difficult to appreciate the extremes of anxiety and joy which the small child experiences throughout his everyday life. The small child dies a thousand deaths. Equally often he reaches the pinnacle of bliss…(These experiences) are very real to the child, but the adult says they are imaginary (Biddle, p. 32).

The small child under the age of three views his parents and other adults as gigantic, all-powerful people. They can do infinite good or infinite harm to him. But according to the logic of the child, a good person cannot do any bad, and a bad person can do no good… The child does not regard the gratifying father and the frustrating father as the same person. The same is true with the mother. Besides being real people the parents represent phantastic, illusory, or imaginary persons. The small child, then, has, in addition to his real parents, a phantastic father and mother who are preposterously good, and a phastastic father and mother who are preposterously bad.

Emotionally the child under age three experiences only extremes. When someone pleases him he does not simply like that person, but loves him with every fiber of his being. When someone displeases him he does not dislike him, but hates with murderous intensity.

These feelings remain latent within us throughout life, but are worked out, and refined and gradually become unconscious as we mature. When we react to people and circumstances we tend to regress to these feelings. Biddle describes how the child learns to process and work out these feelings in his or her imagination:

The child cannot physically handle the parents. He cannot defend himself against them when they appear to threaten him. The problem is worked out by a natural process whereby the child makes inanimate objects, which he can handle, represent symbols of the parent. A match stick may become an imaginary bad father who can be chewed, broken into bits, and thrown away…By this process of imagination the child “really’ gets rid of the bad parents because he destroys a real object which symbolizes a parent to him. The child can also change his inanimate objects from bad to good, and thereby improve the phantastic parents, which the objects represent. The imaginary threats are thereby relieved. The child never attacks the phantastic parent with the intention of doing harm. He may do so simply to assure himself that he is not really causing harm. He may in imagination harm the parent he has clothed in destructive phantasies only to find the real parent does something good. When this happens the child must in imagination repair the phantastic damage he has done.

Paiget (30-33) has done a great deal of work concerning the child’s conception of real objects. He confirms the psychoanalytic observation that the child animates and personifies all material objects. When a leaf is blown the child does not think of the wind moving it. To the child the leaf is a little person who walks, runs and flies…All objects when reduced to their primary symbolic meaning represent father and mother figures. Freud’s “phallic symbols” then can be interpreted more correctly as father symbols, and receptive objects as mother symbols.

The imagination of the child is so vivid that he cannot distinguish clearly between what is real and what is imaginary (43, Biddle).

The child uses the functions inherent in his own body as the means by which he exercises his imaginary omnipotence. In imagination he can annihilate the world by simply closing his eyes. Then he can recreate the world by opening them…His words have magic power. By calling Mama he can make his mother appear from ‘nowhere’. His tears, saliva, and bodily excrement are given phantastic destructive and creative power.

The child’s omnipotent phantasies are of tremendous importance in his psychic development. One need not fear that the child will continue to believe himself omnipotent if his phantasies are not disputed. A brutal assault upon the phantasies of the child renders him helpless and insecure in a gigantic real world with which he cannot cope…The entire life of every individual is shaped by the impact which the real world makes upon the imaginary world of the child. The adult helps the child to distinguish between reality and phantasy, but the phantasies cannot be eliminated. Strangely enough, the desire for omnipotence, which caused man to lose paradise, is essential to him in early childhood if he is to regain heaven. Only the genius of the creator could change what appears to be intrinsically evil desire into an essential good.

The phantasies of omnipotence do not continuously sustain the child. The child constantly fluctuates between feeling omnipotent and annihilated. There are many times too, when he is afraid of his omnipotent destructiveness. For instance if he ‘blows up the world’ he will have no place to stand.

The child’s omnipotence is relinquished not because of the threat of reality, as the psychoanalysts claim, but because of the safety of reality.

When reality is not safe, when parents are consumed with their own survival and cannot fairly perceive the child, the child is in danger of growing up to be self-centered, and have delusions about their personal power. If the child is made to feel overly fearful of his omnipotent power, then she grows up passive, shying away from life. This kind passiveness is not peaceful, but full of tension, and fear of conflict and anger, because the unresolved phantasies are stymied, and such a person feels diminished and destructive. As a chaplain one of my primary objectives when working with a person who suffered trauma and loss is to cultivate the kind of care and presence that helps people to feel safe. Appropriately, only when a person feels safe and can trust will they share their deepest issues, otherwise the conversation remains on the surface.

In the child ‘omnipotence’ is appropriate, because she is innocent and helpless. Objectively the child is born in ignorance, knowing nothing, can do nothing for her self, and must learn gradually. Swedenborg writes that all humans at birth have hereditary evil, but that it is latent. The creator clothes the child in innocence so that it is adored and taken care of; and the child’s actual experiences of love and loving are stored as remains in her soul. These remains of love connect her to God, and temper the hereditary evil in her as she grows. These remains are an essential means of reception of good from the Lord. Evil is latent because a baby has not developed an identity yet that is self-willing. The ‘omnipotence’ of the child is a reflection of the creator who is omnipotent and seeds us with this feeling for the sake of our protection and freedom. Remains are gifts of innocence and love married into the soul of the child from real feeling and experience. They are stored from experiences of pure love for parents, caretakers and playmates, and from utter enthusiasm for phantasy play with objects. Omnipotence is an appearance, but it is real to the child, just as every person that has lived appears to have life and freedom from themselves, but internally these are gifts from God. In the development of the child omnipotence is the seed that yields creativity and strength, if healthy; if held on to into older ages out of survival, it becomes the cause of delusion, self-centeredness, and mental disorders.

Recently I went to eat out with my seven-year-old daughter. I had some books and other objects with me and she had some toys. She spent time organizing everything on the table the way she wanted it. This was her way of working out and taking charge of her feelings – a healthy phantasy impulse. On the other hand when she is upset she has an extreme emotional reaction like the world is ending.

‘Omnipotence’ is the image of the creator in the child, because the creator is omnipotent. This is a psychological way of perceiving the spiritual truth that the Lord is intrinsic in the human soul. This psychological condition parallels the fact that freedom is the Lord’s nature, and the freedom we enjoy is entirely a gift from the creator. Omnipotence is the only form freedom can be expressed in an infant.

In this light the mission of life can be seen as working through the paradox of, on the one side, learning personal skill and competence; and on the other, returning fallacious omnipotent power to where it belongs – God.

The value of this principle is not so much theoretical and abstract, but it helps interpret what is always closest to us  – our inner life. What could be more important? Our internal life eventually determines our eternal life.

In adults we see all the time that the less one has inner self-knowledge the more they claim omnipotence (self-centeredness). In the adult the extreme of feeling that he or she is omnipotent is a form of insanity. Swedenborg writes of witnessing that the deepest hell is for those who believe they are God himslef. This is the ultimate example of an unresolved omnipotent fantasy. He says the spirits there completely believe that they are God and all others are subjects.

As adults when we regress, it is because we inwardly feel powerless and distressed, so we reflexively return back to the feelings of omnipotence for protection. These feelings are unresourced. Childhood omnipotence in the adult is by nature blind to others, and driven by survival. It is an ‘automatic’ default setting inside for the sake of self-survival. We may or may not have sophisticated ways of justifying it, but the quality and import of it is self-serving.

There is in regression, also, if we remain self aware, an opportunity. Regression points to the wounds within us that need development. If we react the same as in the past then there is no movement, but if we act with some measure of composure, we can change the phantasy within our self to a good one, or a better one. Regression is also an opportunity because beneath the feelings of childhood omnipotence are remains, the stored feelings of innocence and love. These feelings are often felt as a sense of personal ‘specialness’, because deep down we want and feel a core of good about our selves that is seeking expression; these are in potential and need development. If felt and opened, remains can be transmuted into a footing for submitting to God as the true source of ‘specialness’. And in yielding to Him we feel joy, more our self. This provides the inner security to care for others as much or more than our selves (which is the cornerstone of society and religion). Remains are in potential and need to be spiritually mined and thus incorporated into our will. This is spiritual remembering. God provides that remains are inside everyone, as a means of connecting with His will for life. Every time we regress there is an opportunity to renew the unresolved issue in our self that cries out for attention and healing.

Advertisers use the motivating energy of our need to sort out our omnipotent phantasies, and to believe in the good father and mother, all the time. A good advertising campaign attempts to tap the primal spot where we live inside; this way they influence us to identify satisfying our deepest drives with their product. Where advertisers put their money is a good litmus test of something’s veracity: by study and process of elimination they do what produces. They are acting from very practical motivation - the bottom line, maximum results, making money. One of the psychological means Advertisers use is to portray animals and objects talking and acting like humans. There is certain magic and delight kindled within us in seeing these absurd and exaggerated images. There are hundreds of examples of this on TV commercials and kids shows. We see talking animals, sponges, fruit, vegetables, and trees, constantly, and it never ceases to be funny! Recently, there has been a commercial of a humorous, straight-talking cow that tells the mom of a family what everyone is thinking when the mother shows up asking about her goofy clothes. The family is too afraid to say anything about it, but the sassy cow tells her like it is. It is hilarious for many reasons. It images for us a way that we can feel safe to hear what is underneath and real. The cow represents the phantastic mother being real, good, and refreshingly truthful to us; teaching us it is ok to express our perceptions. The modeling of truthful speaking helps us move through a barrier of anxiety. This is joyful to us because it develops inner skill, and real satisfaction. We move from being subject-to our anxieties, to a creative agent.

In addition, psychologists (and Swedenborg) write that all children up to a certain age believe that their play animals and dolls are alive. Experiencing this as children is part of our original experience of the mystery of spirit. Robert Kegan refers to it as embodied childhood spirituality. Biddle calls it a developmental precursor to belief in the spiritual world and God. Swedenborg calls it remains, or the experience of love and innocence married into our soul. In a humorous way the commercial reminds us that as children we believed that magic is real. The act of remembering this kind of thing as adults is part of the process of integrating the forgotten remains of childhood. We are all engaged in the continuous activity of building a good image of the phantastic father and mother. We need the good father and mother because it helps us feel safe in the world, that we have a positive agency toward life and others.

The innocence of childhood is external innocence and only becomes internal when combined with intelligence. Then it becomes wisdom. By the same token wisdom is only genuine wisdom when at its core there is innocence.

Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin have stimulated passion in the soul of millions, without intending to do so other than persevering in their own passion. They are men who have a quality of innocence, yet they are successful in a real, tough world. They are unusually successful as beginners in their sports. Their success is tenuous, and the lasting power of the skills is much debated. They are natural leaders on their team and inspire team spirit. They do not have a sense of entitlement, as some others around them tend to. Jeremy Lin is an ordinary guy who used to tag along with his big brother and just wanted to be involved. Now both are living out an omnipotent phantasy, except they have the skill to live it in real life. The great thing about sports is that we get to see how it all plays out for ourselves on TV. We can see it and feel it, and judge the story for our self. They are acceptable heroes because they show at one and the same time phantastic success, and before our eyes they demonstrate transferring omnipotence to God. They give credit to their teammates and to God, and they usually accurately take responsibility when they miss the mark. They do these things to an unusual degree, and in an unexpected medium. It is powerful symbology to watch, and it stimulates deep passions and yearnings.

Tebow is a football player that has become a lightening rod of controversy and inspiration, partly because he openly and sincerely expresses his faith in God. On the field he is accused of having too poor passing skills for a professional football player, yet he wins. To make up for his passing skills, his coach designed a mostly running, option offense that is normally only used in college. On a team that previously was losing, Tebow pulled-off 6 straight wins. Then, he lost three in a row. Everyone says again he can’t make it in the pros; they point to his terrible passing statistics. He has terrible statistics in the first 3 quarters, but great statistics in the forth quarter. Then he wins a playoff game by making great passes. On the field Tebow is working out his tenuous competency before our eyes. Everything about him is confusing, extreme, maddening, and inspiring.

The symbol of Tebowmania is the pose he strikes at important moments. After a great play, or after winning, or after losing, Tebow kneels on the ground with his head down, his knuckles to his forehead, closes his eyes, and prays. This is a potent image of transferring omnipotence to the good father. In this pose, after the mighty struggle to achieve, he submits to God, and thanks God. The act of kneeling itself is a bold, demonstrative act of humility and honor. It is like the knights of old who kneeled before the King.

In Swedenborgian psychology Tebow represents the son with ‘good proprium’: Hiesman trophy winner, physique of a Greek god, good Christian. Some people dislike him for these qualities. Proprium refers to the part of the soul that is inherited, and comes from self-will, not God’s will. Swedenborg warns that good proprium is at least as much a danger as bad proprium, because there is not much in the soul to overcome, and as a result the fighting spirit for good is not developed. Jesus often teaches that the person who is forgiven much and overcomes much is closer to heaven. Victor Frankl similarly says that it is the fighting spirit in the soul, no-matter how bad the circumstances, that makes the man or woman. In Frankl this comes from good authority, because he survived Auschwitz, where he led people to fight to live, and to keep their identity and faith. Conversely, the person with good proprium is often complacent, which corresponds to being lukewarm. But Tebow, with his image of good proprium and upbringing, demonstrates tremendous fighting spirit, and care for others.

Part of the fascination with the Lin story is that he is a somewhat marginalized person, in a cultural sense because he is the only Asian in NBA basketball, and in a basketball sense because he is the only player from Harvard. Before exploding he was very discouraged because he had been rejected from two teams, and nearly cut from NY. He was sleeping on his brother’s coach. When his brother needed privacy he ended up on a teammates coach. Then he suddenly got his opportunity.

Role models can be young or old. Not that Lin and Tebow have it all together; they simply popular figures that remind us of these of forgotten feelings and issues in us. We need good role models to help us perceive ways of incorporating the phantastic good parents in the world and our life; that magic and reality can come together, that we can achieve and transfer power to God. The central value of Christianity is to walk the narrow path; to not retaliate in the face of unfairness and conflict; to feel anger and not become it, but use it; to be steadfast in winning or losing. Anytime we see someone do this no matter how small, we recognize it as heroic.

A lot of people are struggling and these guys show people something good. They are mirrors of our yearnings, and remind us of our struggle with the narrow path.

Lets Hang Out

 

I have found working with groups as a chaplain very valuable. It helps patients to grow and transform in a way that doesn’t happen sometimes in one on one session.

When we had 6 young people in the rehab center I was talking with one of the nurses and he suggested the idea of putting on a Friday night party for the young folks. I worked with Betty (aka), the rec therapist, and we called it, ‘Lets Hang Out’. We consulted the nurses and provided root beer floats. One young man could not eat or drink, and another had to have the root beer float with thickened water.

In the first meeting we talked about sports and hobbies. This went on for a while, and then one man said, “So what happened to you guys?” I knew the guy very well that said this. He reluctantly came to the party and said he would only come if I were there. I knew him from the ICU. For a long time he gave the nurses a hard time. He tended to want to ask a lot of questions, and didn’t cooperate very well. The nurses said he was very bored. I think he did this as a way of fending things off and having a measure of control. Seeing this tendency, in my interaction with him I volunteered things about myself and commented on our surroundings, instead of asking him questions, and he became interested in my visits. The nurses began to encourage me to see him a lot because they found it helped. I played guitar with him and we talked about music. He finally told me his life story and all his feelings and concerns about what happened to him. He had been shot through the chest from the side. It had been his goal to get off intubation and to the third rehab center for a long time. Anyway, when this young man asked his question it suddenly led to a very in depth discussion. Each person told their story.

The first to tell his story was a 20 yr old black youth, lets call him Henry. He had been giving the doctor some trouble. He was a pretty nice guy but very reticent and guarded about doing some of his therapies. For instance the doctors were trying to talk him into using a motorized chair, but he didn’t want to be ‘that guy’.

He told us that it was hard for him to talk about what happened, and he felt scared to do so. But he began talking and told the whole story in amazing detail. Very briefly he was on a youth outing day and was on a little boat in a lake. He dived off, but the water was only 2 feet deep. Be broke his neck, and couldn’t move. He was in a life jacket, but face down. He said he panicked and struggled desperately for a time but could not move his arms or legs. He knew people were around and not far from him, but could do nothing. He needed them to notice. The man in the boat later said he thought he was playing. He was very angry with that.

He began to tell the story with a lot of passion and emotion. He said that he gave finally gave up. He knew he couldn’t move and there was nothing he could do. He was breathing in and out water.

The boatman’s wife who was working with little kids in the water grabbed him by the foot and pulled him, but she didn’t know he couldn’t move and didn’t turn him over for a time. Then she pushed him over and he breathed.

He started to repeat himself, but we all listened in complete silence. He acknowledged he had been traumatized. He talked about how he was cocky and felt he was invincible, but deep down he said he knew he was out of control and needed to change, but didn’t know how to begin.

The next day the doctor asked me what happened with Henry. She heard I had had a party with the kids, and she said that Henry was much more interested and cooperative. She said that he suddenly wanted to use a motorized chair. He said he had seen the other guys in these chairs and he wanted one. The doctor was kind of amazed at the change in him.

Each young person talked about their experience. One young man had severe aphasia and could not speak well. I assisted him a little in getting attention and interpreting what he said for the others, because I had visited with him and his dad several times and knew his story. It became kind of a fun game to understand what he was saying, and all the youths wanted to help him get his story out. (This young man suffered an off-road motorcycle accident).

There was a general theme the youths shared that went like this: They said that they knew inside that my life was getting out of control, but they didn’t pay attention. They felt they were wasting their time and nothing could happen to them. A couple said that now they know they need others, and they know who really cares about them. They said that they feel that they are still here for a reason, and that they want to give back and be a team player, not a lone wolf.

I felt that hearing each other speak in this way had a profound effect for them beyond what I could bring. I stayed with them until everyone was ready to go, about 7:00. It was a bonding experience for all of us. It is important to young folks that a mentor stay the course with them, according to what one promised.

How the Lord is the living Word

      The Lord is the living Word made Flesh. This is a phrase Christians often say, but how is it to be understand.

      Swedenborg describes this process in a way I have never seen anyone else articulate. He writes that the Lord progressively became divine truth while in the world by the actions of his life, particularly each time he fulfilled the prophecies about himself made by the prophets in the Word:

Because the Lord, by the assumption of a natural human, made himself divine truth in outmosts, he is called the ‘Word’, and it is said that ‘the Word was made flesh’; moreover, divine truth in outmosts is the Word in the sense of the letter. This the Lord made himself by fulfilling all things of the Word concerning himself in Moses and the Prophets. For while every man is his own good and his own truth, and a man is a man on no other ground, the Lord, by the assumption of a natural human, is divine good and divine truth itself (D.L.W. 221).

     When Jesus declares in the synagogue the words, ‘This day the scriptures are fulfilled’, we realize that He is the fulfillment of the prophesies about the Messiah. It is an extraordinary moment that is the culmination of centuries of prophecy and preparation, and is the convergence of the divine truth of the Word with the divine good in the human, Jesus. In the light of this historical event (and many others like it where he fulfilled prophecy), the process Swedenborg is describing has profound implications that are readily understandable. Lets grapple with the basic process: the Word is divine truth itself that has been accommodated down to humans by discreet degrees. The celestial sense of the word is all about the Life and development of Christ from the time He was a baby. When the Lord came into the world He lived all that was prophesied about him, he fulfilled the prophecies by his life actions. Thus He embodied divine truth, and became the living Word. This is not a metaphor, but a historical accomplishment that was centuries and centuries in the making . So first I would like to describe how it is that the celestial sense of the Word is all about the life and development of Jesus Christ.
     Gardner Perry has pioneered the insights I am about to share, except in far greater detail than I express here. His work has to do with the correspondences between the Old Testament Genesis and Exodus stories and the spiritual development of the Lords life and mind. The story of the Lord’s life is contained in these Old Testament stories in the inner sense. Many people are aware of this, but Rev. Perry has studied the details of these correspondences that chronicle the development of the Lord’s mind, body, and soul. He also studies this subject in the light of modern psychological developments.
      For instance, his Study points out that Jesus’ first great awakening to the infinite potential of His soul corresponds to the Promise made to Abraham by Jehovah that all of humanity would become his progeny, like the ‘dust of the earth’. This is an expression that the Lords love and wisdom for humanity, and governorship over humanity would become infinite in content and depth. At the same time the Lord began to see the depth of Humanities suffering. The Lord saw the rampant nature of evil of His time, the great suffering, cruelty, and hate of humanity. Humanity was in an external state of worship and He would have to deal with this difficult circumstance. He knew his mission was to save humanity but at this point He did not know how He could accomplish it. His greatest anxiety/temptation was the uncertainty over how and whether He could save humanity from the terrible schemes of the evil forces. Like a diabolical terrorist evil sought to foil the Lord by torturing the humanity he so loved.
     At the same time, while on the earth, the Lord was working in a community teaching people how to be in internal relationship and worship, and not in external worship: because the vast majority of society at this time was mired in external worship. This ministry of the Lord on earth developed the seed for the new church to develop from, while, at the same time, in the spiritual world, he was subjugating the hells and progressing toward divinity.
      I share these few details of the Lord’s inner development according to the celestial sense to provide a deeper picture of the tension between the internal and the external state of the Lord. I also share this with the reader to give a feel for how the celestial sense of the Word is one with the life of the Lord, in the sense that He is the living Word. Holy Scripture is joined to the Divine of the Lord by discreet degrees: first there is the divine truth of the Lord, then the celestial sense is joined to the spiritual sense, and the spiritual sense is joined to the natural sense, and the natural to the literal sense, which is the published Bible. This is how the Word is the living body of Jesus, as Christians say. According to Swedenborg it is not a metaphor, but a metaphysical reality. The Word is a nexus that conjoins the Lord and humanity. This is important to keep in mind because divine love and truth is the first cause of all things and this is what the Lord was conjoining himself to as He progressively fulfilled the prophecies. I believe this is part of how He gradually “returned from whence He came”.
       How the Lord is ‘the living Word’ is still an illusive idea to grasp, so lets look at this process from the perspective of our daily life. There is a common saying that holds a great truth – ‘A man or women becomes what they do’. What we believe and will leads to what we do. The essence of our humanness is in our will and understanding, and what we actually will to do forms our soul. When we are stripped away of all the externals, as we will be when we die, we are left with what we really love and believe, because this is what composes our internal soul.
     It is the same thing with the Lord. He became what He did. By coming here he separated himself into an external and internal, which is the situation of all humans who are born. There are many places in the Bible where it says that Jesus performed a deed ‘for the sake of the fulfillment of prophecy’. I can't repeat them all here, but there abut 20 to 30 in each Gospel. In his last temptation on the cross when Jesus speaks, “It is finished”, he accomplished fulfilling all prophecy. By progressively fulfilling all prophecy in the Word to the end, He made his external body and internal divine soul one, so there was no more separation. Therefore his physical body became divine, because that which merges with the divine is divine. When you break metal in two and then weld it back together, the weld becomes the strongest part. He became what He did, and what He did in his life is fulfill the prophesies about Himself from the passion in his soul. He embodied divine truth. 

     We take all this now as a foregone conclusion, but He risked everything by coming here. The fate of the universe was in a little baby. Unlike the disciples, all hell knew who he was on site, and they attacked him and tried to foil his mission with unrelenting fury. Evil spirits tried to bring despair upon him by destroying humanity, for the salvation of humanity was and is the love of loves in his heart. Evil used the age-old tactic of all terrorists - destroy the leader by destroying those he or she loves. Nevertheless, the Lord only willed love and mercy, and He defeated the evil forces continually. He did so by His might alone, a might far beyond our ability to imagine.

Case story about a man's experience of hell

In this blog I am sharing a story I was told by someone I met. I am mostly telling his story here without interpretation, so that you can share your ideas about what it mans to you. For instance do you think the man's description of hell is real, as he says, or a dream, or a vision. I will share more about the how things went with him in the next blog.

I met with H the first day he came in. He was in a car accident and broke the front and back of his neck. His face and upper body seem mostly unaffected. He has a strong upper body, except that his fingers are curled, but his lower body is paralyzed. He has a round head, mostly bald. On first impression he sort looks like a fighter. He has earthy good looks and a big smile. His face is engaging and he makes strong eye contact. There is charisma in his smile, but it sometimes fades to weariness.

When he had the accident he had two kids with his wife, and his wife also had a son before they were married.

He launched into telling me the following story: Early in his life he had done drugs and was heavily caught up in the gang world in LA. Some of his own gang members turned on him over a girl and tried to kill him, but his mother saw what happened and tricked him into moving to a central CA city. He got out of gangs, and got married. One night his stepson wanted to go out to some SF clubs. His wife let him because his son was a little depressed and getting over a break-up. His stepson was only 20. At the club there were not many people and H felt like they should leave. The club had three dance floors. His stepson sees a girl and followers her to the ‘underground’ floor and starts to drink. H goes down, and in the corner of the room he sees 5 demons. He said they were black, shadowy, and kind of see-through, and had red horrid eyes. He asks his stepson if he sees anyone in the corner, and his says, “No, what are talking about’. H still sees the demons and they beckon him to come over. But he goes with his stepson to get a drink. After that he doesn’t remember anything for almost two hours, but he must have been partying. Later it was told by doctors that his stepson had ecstasy in his blood. H conjectures that someone might of slipt him ecstasy, but doesn’t know. (Others suggested that sometimes devious people slip ecstasy into drinks just to watch how people act). In any case at around two in the morning when they leave, and as soon as H steps outside he faints, and can’t stay awake. His stepson who is waisted drives home, and they get into a terrible accident.

In the hospital he finds that his wife is only concerned about her son and doesn’t pay attention to him. The doctors tell him they can operate on his neck but they don’t have much hope that he will live. His wife has power of attorney for, but she doesn’t attend to H properly. He feels abandoned by his wife. He tells the doctors to operate now, and his wife finally comes to agree.

He has a series of operations and each time the doctors are surprised he recovers better then they thought, and they keep taking further steps because he is improving. He begins to regain feeling in his body. During this time of his operations he said he was in an induced coma for three months. While in a coma he experienced the following:

             He saw a light, and it was an opening to a tunnel. He went through the tunnel and on the other side he came out. He saw a black and red sky, and a demon flying in the air. He noticed the demon had broken wings, though this didn’t affect the way it flew. He looked down and saw a large river. It was very bright, like hot lava. He said that as he looked closeley he saw people in the river making horrible screams and trying to get out. He said there were thousands and thousands of people in it. He saw that the river led to a lake.

He was on a sort of ledge above watching, and then the 5 demons came near. They came after him, and he felt there was nothing he could do. He felt terror and that this was it - the demons were going to throw him in the river like the others, and he would be like this forever. Then he heard someone speaking in his ear. He felt the presence of the Lord. He felt the Lord enter his ear and move through his head, then down through his body into his heart. The demons tried to grab him, but somehow they couldn’t touch him. They were hideous, powerful, and enraged, right in his face, but could not touch him to throw him in. Then he felt something pull him from the back of his head and spine as if he had hair. But he was bald. He felt the Lord lifte him out from hell, and he woke up.

C4 – What did you feel when the presence entered your ear and your heart?

P4 – He was talking to me. It was the Lord. I felt so happy. I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was done for the rest of my time. I have been bald for a long time. He lifted me by my body.

C5 – How come the demons couldn’t get you?

P5 – He was protecting me. They were so mad, but they couldn’t touch me. I was so thankful and happy. There was nothing I could do. I owe everything to him for saving me.

C6 – What was the point that you feel that you changed?

P6 – You know when I was younger I went to church sometimes. I knew that I was moving too fast and doing some wrong things. I heard God’s voice, but I didn’t pay attention. I said, “I’ll do it later”. But when he came in me I felt joy, and I said I am never letting go of this, and I never did. This is my witness.

P7 – What happened with your wife?

P7 – Things were still hard on me when I started to get better. I lost everything when this happened. My wife wasn’t there for me and left me, and I lost my kids. I only see them sometimes now. I can’t do anything to take care of them or get them back. I lost my job. I lost everything.

C8 – My God, that must of hurt so much. You must of felt abandoned.

P8 – Yah it hurt me a lot. Everything was so hard after that, trying to move and being helpless. But I had to let go of all that. I put all my heart in prayer and God, and knew that he would help me to get better. I had to focus on healing.

The weariness in him seemed to be from all the difficult things one after another that he went through, from the pain of operations and having to fight back.

How Does Trauma Relate to Belief in God? Some Pastoral Thoughts

       I developed the following ideas from my experience at seminary and as a chaplain in a world class rehab center. I was doing both simultaneously, and it was painful for me to see the place where others had a hard time believing in God. I had to process through my experience, feelings, and perception about these things. It was not easy because everyone has different views for different reasons. In seminary it was a very political situation, because the Pacific School of Religion is very progressive, and all too often some people there move into an ideological corner. You'd be astonished how many folks there don't believe in the spiritual world, and certainly not that there is a hell. And some don't believe in God, or at least a Christian God.

        My interest is in the practical application of theology, so I would like to offer some thoughts on the pastoral implications of the belief that God is the cause of evil, and that God inflicts harm. I do not believe he in any way shape or form is the cause of evil, but I will address that theological question in another blog. To believe that the Lord inflicts evil in the least degree can have destructive consequences. What pastor has not heard the question in time of crisis, “Why did God allow this to happen? Why did this happen to me? Is God punishing me?”  I asked a patient recently how he expressed his sense of spirituality. He said, “I guess I don’t. My wife has Parkinson’s and I blame God for it. I am angry at God for it.”

       The feeling is understandable, but this is reasoning from emotion. The questions above are a first response when the shock of tragedy begins to set in, and one has to deal with it. Often as people begin to talk further about their feelings and beliefs, they reveal that they do not really believe God is punishing them, but they are still angry. It is normal and healthy to feel so; in fact, it is very Biblical. In lamentations the response to deep suffering is modeled for us; the people wail with complaints at him, and wrestle with what God is doing, but they are taking their feelings to him. Lamentations shows how God is big enough to handle all our anger and despair, and that these feelings are safe with him. When we open and witness our feelings to each other and to God, they are shared suffering and gradually transformed into thankfulness and love.

       There are other times that people get stuck in their anger. Reasoning that God is punishing them involves the assumption that God is inflicting evil on them; that is how it may appear and how it feels. To work with this pastoral it helps to seek to discover the root of the anger and emotion, because it is trapped emotion that drives this belief. One needs to offer deep acknowledgement and compassion for the cause of the emotion. (This is the primary factor in all of this, but not the focus of this essay). Later, at the appropriate time it may be possible to help them rethink theology from a place of loving God. There are other times though when a person does not change the feeling of anger nor their intellectual belief that God is punishing them. Lets explore how this works a little bit.

A friend approached me yesterday and we talked about his marriage struggles. He described how his wife was so emotionally attached to her family and their drama that she can’t bond with him. He has tried to help his wife’s family with their many compelling dysfunctional issues, even helping some of them by letting them live in his house. When he had to stand up to certain issues he got a lot of grief, not only from his wife’s family, but to his dismay – from his wife. He said he suffers because his wife’s love-hate relationship with her family prevents her from being able to fully bond with him. She is psychologically consumed in battling with, and trying to prove herself to her family. He said she suffered a lot of trauma in her youth and the unresolved anger around it is booby trapped with self-protect mechanisms against dealing with the pain. He said that she has even let go of her relationship with God, and refuses now to talk about God. This is a hardened place for her.

With the first shock of trauma we react from a default place of emotion, and think from appearances. The natural reaction is felt in this way: if no one cares about me, then I don’t care about you, or me. This is a cut-off, and feeds the forsaken feeling that ‘God is punishing me’. This may explain what is happening in the story above. These feelings are not necessarily bad. As I said above, often after the first shock people are put in a position to wrestle with God, and are able to incorporate a more spiritual perspective. They re-define and deepen their connection. But other times the pain of trauma is too deep, people have erected hardened barriers around it, and will not let their position be budged. Swedenborg gives us a great framework for understanding this subject. He writes:


  To think and conclude from the internal is to think from ends and causes to effects, but to think and conclude from the external is to think from effects to causes and ends. The latter progression is against order, but the former is according to order; for to think and conclude from ends and causes is to think and conclude from goods and truths clearly seen in the higher region of the mind. Such from creation is the nature of human rationality itself. But to think and conclude from effects is to conjecture causes and ends from the lower region of the mind where are the sensual things of the body with their appearances and fallacies (CL, 408). 

Feeling God is punishing us is an example of coming to a conclusion from external thinking. We see the evidence of, lets say a stroke; we appropriately feel anger and pain and loss, and from appearances conclude that God is punishing us. But this is from natural thinking. As we process the situation spiritually we can see that our experience is part of the human condition, and that God is the foundation stone that we can trust in our hearts. Healthy anger springs from the desire to find, establish and reclaim our identity. When we feel the grief there is an opening up, because grief is a form of love; it is love when there is the pain of loss. Bitter, hardened anger concludes that ‘no one cares, and there fore we are not going to care’ (although this is, of course, never true; it is either defiance, or crying out for help).

       It is my experience and observation that, quite often, the cause of the stuck place is unresolved emotion from trauma. The unresolved emotion drives a wedge between our selves and our loved ones, between God and us. To maintain the wedge requires dissociating from what we really need to deal with, which manifests in all kinds of addictions, and evasive behavior. It also causes us to use ideologies as dissociative tools, such as using relativism to justify any position we want so as to not face our self, or using the dogma of religiosity to avoid vulnerability and pain. If the dissociation becomes chronic, it causes a distancing from the foundation of our being - God. The anger and pain don’t go away, and the wedge displaces our ability to receive the Lord in our hearts. This phenomena of displacement is I think very significant. Swedenborg says it this way: To the degree we harbor evil, we cannot receive good.

      Many people have suffered trauma in their youth. The trauma could be at the hands of religion, one’s parents, political organizations, schools, relatives or any number of things. Trauma due to abuse causes a deep emotional imprint in the heart, and in the neuronal networks of the brain. It can also be added to by ones own misbehavior, which compounds self-inflicted hate and poor identity. These experiences cause disillusion, suffering, and despair. People learn strategic ways to protect themselves against these emotional scars. Even those who do a lot of processing work around the issue often don’t get to the core of it. Intense emotional experiences of injustice become internalized, held in a place where they can’t cause further pain. If this kind of emotional hiding persists the ‘underground’ emotion can displace our reception of good. The stuck emotion inside feeds-off polarized feelings from childhood that habitually and reactively dart between helplessness and omnipotence. These are drasticized childhood feelings that we regress to as a default strategy. Self-protection around the underground pain has been made a matter of survival, leaving us with un-resourced places inside, at least when it comes to certain matters. When triggered, we regress back to this place and react from it, unconsciously employing tried and true self-defense mechanisms, or escaping through some form of dissociation. The stuck person protects this emotion at all costs, even if they unconsciously hurt others. It sometimes doesn’t matter how much psychological or religious information a person has gained in their life; in fact the more they have, the more sophisticated the self-protection mechanism, and the more elaborate the intellectual framework that is used to mask it.

In this condition, deep down there is anger at others, and even deeper anger at God. There can’t help but be because God is the foundation of our being, and the true source we eventually need to humble ourselves toward to resolve it. Providentially God is always working to prevent these ill feelings from becoming trapped and unseen, where they become like poison in the blood. This is the essential meaning of the Biblical phrase to be hot or cold, not lukewarm. We are to let our love or hate of God, and each other, see the light of day where it can be worked out and removed.

       To say that God inflicts evil is not only a theological falsity, but what is worse; it inflames the negative and self-destructive impulses in the suffering person. Imagine telling someone who is struggling with the feeling that God is punishing them that God is the one who inflicts evil. If they really theologically believe that God is against them, then there is nothing that can help – end of story. Such a notion arises from external thinking. God never causes evil, but allows evil for the providential purpose of removing evil. The Lord is the redemptive force in our hearts and minds. He is the comforter; and his love is closest when we are most ill and suffering.  It is irrational to blame God for the evil that happens, because God is good itself.

        When trauma causes a gap in our psyche, we suffer a distortion, at least in some areas of perception. For instance, I was in a preaching class and a man gave a sermon on the story of how Mary came to Jesus and washed his feet with her tears. The student preacher was a talented speaker, and gave a very dramatic presentation of a traumatic event. He told of being in his room at the age of seven, and hearing disturbing noises in the living room. He desperately wanted them to go away, but they persisted. He heard thumping and crying. He stepped out of his room and into the living room. His step-dad was beating and abusing his mother. This story was very intense and shocking to hear. The preacher went on to exegete the scripture by offering this provocative interpretation: he said Mary was not there to worship and seek forgiveness from Jesus, but it was Jesus that needed to seek forgiveness from Mary.

         It seems to me most people would agree this interpretation of the text is inappropriate. It appears his interpretation was made in the image of his emotional reaction and traumatic imprint. This is the distortion of trapped emotion and trauma. It is good therapy for him in the right setting, which is not to be minimized, but that is not the purpose of the situation. In a sermon one is a servant leader to the people of the congregation, and looks to the tethering of God to make meaning of the text for the lives of the people, not ones own emotional needs. One needs to pay attention to, or seek to tether themselves to the urging of the Holy Spirit to make meaning for the sake of the congregation. We are always tethered to something, whether we know it or not, and sometimes we tether ourselves to money, addictions, people, and material ambitions, and emotions all of which can displace God. The point of this is not to judge people, but to be resourced as a practitioner in assessing what is going on, and seeing what people’s needs are. By discerning the particulars we have a better chance to be present and compassionate to the needs of our self and others.