When the Disciple Comes of Age
#73 Living into a New Consciousness
When the Disciple Comes of Age: Christian Identity in the 21st Century
by Diarmuid O’Murchu
Concluding Chapter 5 of Helene O’Sullivan’s Précis.
Continuing the Human Archetype
Carl Jung considered the collective unconscious to have spiritual significance, of a quality transcending the formal religions known to humankind. For Jung, the archetype can manifest in the life of any person and tends to do so in our more creative moments. The mystics provide a more authentic expression of this as they are people who evoke in others awakenings and aspirations after a quality of wholeness that is never fully attainable but forever haunts and lures us. This is evidenced in the lives of inspiring people, such as Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
We can now offer a brief resume of the outstanding features that constitute the human archetype:
capacity for integrating light and shadow. While perhaps heroic in some ways, this person can also be a fragile human being prone to human error and sin.
One for whom the pursuit of rationality is of secondary concern, with intuition, imagination and the creative urge being at the fore.
One whose foundational identity transcends the cultural dictates of nationality, ethnicity and religious allegiance.
transcends the cultural dictates of nationality, ethnicity and religious allegiance.
trascends the cultural dictates of nationality, ethnicity and religious allegiance.
Jesus as an Archetypal Human
We now move on to consider Jesus as an archetypal person and to re-examine the Christian story from that perspective. Over the centuries, Christians have been doing this in their descriptions of Jesus as the Christ. It seems to me that the title of “the Christ” is better understood as an attempt at articulating and honoring Jesus’ archetypal nature. However, the term is so overloaded with historical baggage ~ patriarchal, imperial, religiously exclusive, and excessively anthropocentric ~ it is probably not a useful or responsible title anymore. However, I am committed to reworking the tradition, not merely discarding it as useless or irrelevant. As such, my attempted reconstruction begins with my taking my initial inspiration from the archetypal analysis of Walter Wink:
“The Human Being must be community to further the human project, because we cannot become human by ourselves. We are inseparably social. Individuation is not individualism. We are one body, not just as a church, but as a species.”
I also remind the reader of an elusive phrase that occurs in the writings of the late Marcus Borg: “The community that is Jesus.”
As archetypal humans we can never access the fuller and deeper meaning of Jesus solely by focusing on his individual human personhood, which Christendom has done for most of 2000 years. Jesus represents something much bigger, deeper and more mysterious. The Gos-pels describe it as the kindom of God. It is the exploratory material for our next chapter and the first major step at reclaiming Jesus as the archetypal human.
Beyond Conventional Assumptions
We need to outgrow several inherited qualities that we have employed in establishing an identity for Jesus. I have already alluded to the human projections we use in describing Jesus’ divinity. The all-powerful, all knowing God that Jesus represents is essentially a cultural stereo-type of the God that our patriarchal ancestors desired and the one still favored by those millions who view and connect with God in a codependent fashion.
A related factor is the messianic identity attributed to Jesus. To fully understand the messianic identity we need to understand the exiles that the Jewish people endured and how these exiles shaped their worldview and understanding of God.
Exile is a recurring theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. The first major exile took place in 734 BCE under the Assyrians and destroyed northern Israel. The second major exile involved the destruction of the southern kingdom and the city of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BCE when Solomon’s temple was destroyed and the dynasty of David came to an end. Almost 50 years later the exiled Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their city.
However, even after the return, exile took on another significance, namely, a sense of spiritual separation from God; consequently, geographical return alone would not resolve the felt sense of estrangement.
The Hebrew Scriptures, including the Book of Daniel, understood the exile to endure for many subsequent centuries with the people still awaiting deliverance from bondage. What exactly was this bondage that dictated such a persistent religious ideology?
The cultural/religious interpretation reveals an enduring sense of alienation and guilt around human failure in relation to God, and God’s prospective threat of punishment for such enduring infidelity. In the face of this dilemma, the notion of a messiah comes into play. Only God could rescue the people from the exile and alienation that they had known for so long. Moreover, only a powerful, king-like deity could bring about such release. King David became the historical ideal to fulfill that role, with an impact that endured into New Testament times.
The messianic expectation is interwoven with a quality of codependency that is endemic to patriarchal power and governance. The underlying script goes something like this: God has so designed the world that those who rule from on high have privileged access to the supreme ruling God. This hierarchal chain of command forever seeks to rope into line, into faithful obedience, wayward humans and all humans are fundamentally flawed. Humans have internalized this codependency with a collective sense of guilt somewhat akin to children who feel that they can never measure up to harsh parental demands.
Patriarchal religion makes tough demands but tries to convince the wayward, codependent humans that these demands are ultimately based on love – once again reminiscent of harsh parents trying to convince their children that they are being punished for their own good.
At the end of this convoluted process, humans are exhausted, and God is exasperated. God tries one last desperate ploy, sending his own beloved one to be a sacrifice (i.e. scapegoated) that will reverse the messy, age-long situation and reassure the co-dependent juniors that they stand a better chance of winning God’s good favor, although they will still never get it fully right. Neither the gods nor the humans stand any chance in terms of coming-of-age. Historically, these religions have a deeper wisdom but too much patriarchal baggage consistently undermines the more liberating vision.
Salvation as Human Breakthrough
This religious ideology, vested in the rescuing power of the ruling God, evolved out of a set of patriarchal projections in which the patriarchs tried to mold God in their own image and likeness. Idolatry, and not exile, is at the root of our problem. Divinity, therefore, is endowed with elaborate, extraordinary power, leaving humans powerless, estranged, and with little option, other than to throw themselves at the mercy of this all-powerful, redemptive, divine rescuer. In this process, humans lose all meaningful connection with the organic web of life, being persuaded by patriarchal religion that their best hope is to seek escape from this sin-infected vale of tears. Earthlings have been uprooted and exiled, not because of original sin or any other type of fundamental flaw but because of patriarchal religion itself. Coming-of–age is impossible in this situation.
How do we break the chains of this inherited bondage, and transcend the codependency in which we have been trapped for centuries? One remarkable passage from the encyclical letter of Pope Francis, ‘Laudato Si’, offers an important lifeline: “Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves, or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature, included in it and thus in constant interaction with it.” (#139).
I am not aware of any authoritative documents from any world religion that states it so explicitly: we are part of nature! Therein lies our redemption and salvation. We cannot evolve and realize a more authentic life as earthlings without a whole new immersion in the creation to which we belong. This is our deepest archetypal identity, our God-given gift of organic life. This is the coming-of-age, the spiritual home-coming, we have been pursuing amid the patriarchal distortions of recent millennia.
Our true humanity belongs to the earth and to all that constitutes the cosmic web of life, and in this interconnected web there is no metaphysical difference between the human and divine. The two are intimately inter-twined, as many of the great mystics have evidenced. The divine life force that animates and sustains the natural world is vastly more real than the supernatural imperial ruler above the sky that the patriarchs projected. Our natural homecoming is also our supernatural salvation.
We were never a species in exile, and we were never intended to be. It is a remnant of our internalized oppression, a convoluted attempt to keep us subdued under patriarchal control.
In the Christian narrative, Jesus provides a template of what that archetypal human, natural identity looks like, and how we can best live it. This is where coming-of-age becomes more transparent and empowering. Before going deeper, however, we still have to clear the imperial baggage that has haunted all the major world religions, which we will pursue in our next folder #74.