RUNNING AWAY FROM REALITY
Christianity asserts that God immersed himself in human existence for thirty years; it makes a difference to the way ordinary people behave in their daily lives and so it’s not an illusion. Psychologists and communists say it is; that Christians are running away from the stark realities of everyday life. The church has a quota of escapists, just like any other group of people. There are many weak characters that can’t face the reality of their position. There are many Christians in psychiatric wards, many who call Jesus “lord, lord” but have no intention of involving themselves in costly discipleship. Jesus says they are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. This escapism among Christians does not invalidate Christianity.Karl Marx considered Christianity as an opiate administered by the bourgeoisie to keep the workers docile. For him it was the illusory compensation offered to the oppressed, hence that religion will die a natural death as soon as true socialism came in. It’s true that there was hypocrisy in Victorian religion but the best preachers were just as vehement as Marx in denouncing this state of affairs; as with Charles Spurgeon.In the days of Jesus, there was a religion which was the opiate of the people as we find Jesus denouncing it; “you devour widows houses and for a pretence you make long prayers”. “Woe to you, hypocrites… how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” Marx ought to have remembered that man’s nature without the power of Christ is likely to become self-centred. This is equally evident in capitalist and in communist societies as we see in the atrocities of Russian leaders. The Christian truth is that all men suffer the disease of self-will to which Christ provides total cure. Karl Marx was wilfully blind, to the historical evidence but swallowed the absurd theories about Christian origins by Strauss and Bauer which have many times been decisively refuted. It is a gaffe for Marx to view Christianity as a mass movement arising from the frustrations of the common man in the war-wearing world of the mid-second century because that age was one of the most prosperous; contented and stable periods in history. Christianity gave the ancient world a powerful injection of social equality. Communist like Lenin took on to the view of Marx on Christianity that it offered “cheap justification for all their exploiting” and “low price tickets to heavenly bliss”. The reason for communist hatred arises from the Russian Orthodox Church in the beginning of the twentieth century as it appeared to be a tool in the hands of Czar, and was implicated in appalling abuses of government and oppression of the poor. In 1918 all church property was confiscated, priests disenfranchised, seminaries closed, religious teaching forbidden except inside church, Christian marriage replaced by civil ceremony but the church refused to die. In 1921 persecution was added and in 1929 it was one of the first five year plans. During the rigours of German invasion in the Second World War churches were reopened and museums of atheism closed. Despite all these with intense atheistic propaganda the church is still stronger as we find Baptists and the orthodox flourishing. Stalin’s daughter returned to religious faith just as Martin Bormann’s (Hitler’s Lieutenant) children to Christians with one missionary speaks a lot; that the communists are running away from reality. The communists are escaping by forbidding Bibles, frowning at debates with believers as Michael Bordeaux notes that “no atheist ringleader has ever dared allow those under him to study the Bible, even for the purpose of spying out the enemy’s territory in order to conquer it”. The Marxist attack on religion and intensity of persecution of Christians is a form of escapism from reality.In the future of an illusion; Freud believed that when Christians talk about their heavenly Father, all they are doing is to project into the empty skies their image of their own father. Freud was ignorant of genuine Christianity and spent all his time among the abnormal and mentally ill which influenced his judgment. He failed to distinguish between religious fantasy as observed in the mentally sick, and religion as a reasonable attitude to life adopted by healthy and intelligent people. W.B. Selbie wrote in “Christianity and the New psychology” that ‘many of the psychologists are living in a fantasy world of their own, and the kind of religion they are dealing with is largely the product of their own not very healthy imagination.’ Freud says Christianity is a wish-fulfilment and obsessional neurosis, but he fails to note that this could be applied to his own pan-sexual theory of psychoanalysis. In his ‘Future of an illusion’ Freud said ‘science is no illusion. But it would be an illusion to suppose that we could get anywhere else what it cannot give us.’ He had an obsessional illusion that science and psychoanalysis were omnicompetent. The destruction caused by science is due to selfish human nature which is never transformed into love by any scientific process. This hope of a religionless scientific utopia was criticised as ‘the illusion of a future’ by Theodor Reik in his book ‘From Thirty Tears with Freud’.The limitations of psychoanalysis is that the analyst unconsciously attempts to establish a new and rival religion. This had been recognised by many psychologists as they realised that scientific optimism and infallibility of analysis were Freud’s illusions. The same was true with ‘Lenin’ and H. L. Philip says Freud’s “concept of reality was so narrow” in his book ‘Freud and Religious Belief’. The professor of psychology H.C. Rumke in ‘The psychology of unbelief’ rebutted Freud’s claim that religion is an illusion and gave reasons to show that unbelief is a symptom of arrested development. All these men gave value to psychoanalysis but they wanted to make clear that psychoanalysis can bring out, under favourable circumstances, the best in a patient, but it cannot supply anything extra to support weak personalities. The patient finds no comfort and no solace in this final attempt at self-sufficiency as Stafford Clark puts it. He says he knows no answer to this as a psychiatrist, but as a man he can only say with humility that he believes in God. This shows that when making judgments about God psychologists give their own opinion not the findings of their science. Psychology is a descriptive and not a prescriptive discipline; so it analyses the nature and origin of people’s beliefs, but cannot dogmatised upon their truth or falsity.In order to validly show that God is real and so is Christianity, we’ve to use the test of history. Christianity is a historical religion. It has been shown that Jesus is not a myth as the historical nature of Jesus of Nazareth is true and his impact on the world; right from the dating of our era which is derived from his birth; his love, courage, insight, integrity etc. his death and resurrection were real. The character is another test of validity as seen over the ages that this faith has made the immoral chaste, the greedy generous, the selfish loving, the cheat honest. Charles Darwin testifies about the transformation of character as he commends on the work of the preacher Mr Fegan in his own village; ‘Your services have done more for the village in a few months than all our efforts for many years. We have never been able to reclaim a single drunkard, but through your services I do not know that there is a drunkard left in the village’. Delusions tend towards disintegration of character, unbalanced behaviour, and either the inability to achieve one’s aims, or else the dissipation of energy in some strange byway of living Christianity on the other hand makes men whole. The next test to see that most illusions fade at the approach of death. Christians are convinced that death is a defeated enemy that’s why ‘they die well’. They are confident that because their master rose, they will share his life. They fear no death. Perfect love casts out fear. Note the letter Hermann Lange wrote to his parents in prison before he was to die ‘I am, first, in a joyous mood; and second, I filled with great anticipation.’ The victory over fear of death is one of the great moral triumphs of Christianity. It is inexplicable on the theory of illusion or auto-suggestion. Christ is at work on the side of fearlessness. He is real, alive, able to help, control and empower the Christian through out his life right up to the end and beyond it. Christianity is the key to life at its best.
Christianity asserts that God immersed himself in human existence for thirty years; it makes a difference to the way ordinary people behave in their daily lives and so it’s not an illusion. Psychologists and communists say it is; that Christians are running away from the stark realities of everyday life. The church has a quota of escapists, just like any other group of people. There are many weak characters that can’t face the reality of their position. There are many Christians in psychiatric wards, many who call Jesus “lord, lord” but have no intention of involving themselves in costly discipleship. Jesus says they are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”. This escapism among Christians does not invalidate Christianity.Karl Marx considered Christianity as an opiate administered by the bourgeoisie to keep the workers docile. For him it was the illusory compensation offered to the oppressed, hence that religion will die a natural death as soon as true socialism came in. It’s true that there was hypocrisy in Victorian religion but the best preachers were just as vehement as Marx in denouncing this state of affairs; as with Charles Spurgeon.In the days of Jesus, there was a religion which was the opiate of the people as we find Jesus denouncing it; “you devour widows houses and for a pretence you make long prayers”. “Woe to you, hypocrites… how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” Marx ought to have remembered that man’s nature without the power of Christ is likely to become self-centred. This is equally evident in capitalist and in communist societies as we see in the atrocities of Russian leaders. The Christian truth is that all men suffer the disease of self-will to which Christ provides total cure. Karl Marx was wilfully blind, to the historical evidence but swallowed the absurd theories about Christian origins by Strauss and Bauer which have many times been decisively refuted. It is a gaffe for Marx to view Christianity as a mass movement arising from the frustrations of the common man in the war-wearing world of the mid-second century because that age was one of the most prosperous; contented and stable periods in history. Christianity gave the ancient world a powerful injection of social equality. Communist like Lenin took on to the view of Marx on Christianity that it offered “cheap justification for all their exploiting” and “low price tickets to heavenly bliss”. The reason for communist hatred arises from the Russian Orthodox Church in the beginning of the twentieth century as it appeared to be a tool in the hands of Czar, and was implicated in appalling abuses of government and oppression of the poor. In 1918 all church property was confiscated, priests disenfranchised, seminaries closed, religious teaching forbidden except inside church, Christian marriage replaced by civil ceremony but the church refused to die. In 1921 persecution was added and in 1929 it was one of the first five year plans. During the rigours of German invasion in the Second World War churches were reopened and museums of atheism closed. Despite all these with intense atheistic propaganda the church is still stronger as we find Baptists and the orthodox flourishing. Stalin’s daughter returned to religious faith just as Martin Bormann’s (Hitler’s Lieutenant) children to Christians with one missionary speaks a lot; that the communists are running away from reality. The communists are escaping by forbidding Bibles, frowning at debates with believers as Michael Bordeaux notes that “no atheist ringleader has ever dared allow those under him to study the Bible, even for the purpose of spying out the enemy’s territory in order to conquer it”. The Marxist attack on religion and intensity of persecution of Christians is a form of escapism from reality.In the future of an illusion; Freud believed that when Christians talk about their heavenly Father, all they are doing is to project into the empty skies their image of their own father. Freud was ignorant of genuine Christianity and spent all his time among the abnormal and mentally ill which influenced his judgment. He failed to distinguish between religious fantasy as observed in the mentally sick, and religion as a reasonable attitude to life adopted by healthy and intelligent people. W.B. Selbie wrote in “Christianity and the New psychology” that ‘many of the psychologists are living in a fantasy world of their own, and the kind of religion they are dealing with is largely the product of their own not very healthy imagination.’ Freud says Christianity is a wish-fulfilment and obsessional neurosis, but he fails to note that this could be applied to his own pan-sexual theory of psychoanalysis. In his ‘Future of an illusion’ Freud said ‘science is no illusion. But it would be an illusion to suppose that we could get anywhere else what it cannot give us.’ He had an obsessional illusion that science and psychoanalysis were omnicompetent. The destruction caused by science is due to selfish human nature which is never transformed into love by any scientific process. This hope of a religionless scientific utopia was criticised as ‘the illusion of a future’ by Theodor Reik in his book ‘From Thirty Tears with Freud’.The limitations of psychoanalysis is that the analyst unconsciously attempts to establish a new and rival religion. This had been recognised by many psychologists as they realised that scientific optimism and infallibility of analysis were Freud’s illusions. The same was true with ‘Lenin’ and H. L. Philip says Freud’s “concept of reality was so narrow” in his book ‘Freud and Religious Belief’. The professor of psychology H.C. Rumke in ‘The psychology of unbelief’ rebutted Freud’s claim that religion is an illusion and gave reasons to show that unbelief is a symptom of arrested development. All these men gave value to psychoanalysis but they wanted to make clear that psychoanalysis can bring out, under favourable circumstances, the best in a patient, but it cannot supply anything extra to support weak personalities. The patient finds no comfort and no solace in this final attempt at self-sufficiency as Stafford Clark puts it. He says he knows no answer to this as a psychiatrist, but as a man he can only say with humility that he believes in God. This shows that when making judgments about God psychologists give their own opinion not the findings of their science. Psychology is a descriptive and not a prescriptive discipline; so it analyses the nature and origin of people’s beliefs, but cannot dogmatised upon their truth or falsity.In order to validly show that God is real and so is Christianity, we’ve to use the test of history. Christianity is a historical religion. It has been shown that Jesus is not a myth as the historical nature of Jesus of Nazareth is true and his impact on the world; right from the dating of our era which is derived from his birth; his love, courage, insight, integrity etc. his death and resurrection were real. The character is another test of validity as seen over the ages that this faith has made the immoral chaste, the greedy generous, the selfish loving, the cheat honest. Charles Darwin testifies about the transformation of character as he commends on the work of the preacher Mr Fegan in his own village; ‘Your services have done more for the village in a few months than all our efforts for many years. We have never been able to reclaim a single drunkard, but through your services I do not know that there is a drunkard left in the village’. Delusions tend towards disintegration of character, unbalanced behaviour, and either the inability to achieve one’s aims, or else the dissipation of energy in some strange byway of living Christianity on the other hand makes men whole. The next test to see that most illusions fade at the approach of death. Christians are convinced that death is a defeated enemy that’s why ‘they die well’. They are confident that because their master rose, they will share his life. They fear no death. Perfect love casts out fear. Note the letter Hermann Lange wrote to his parents in prison before he was to die ‘I am, first, in a joyous mood; and second, I filled with great anticipation.’ The victory over fear of death is one of the great moral triumphs of Christianity. It is inexplicable on the theory of illusion or auto-suggestion. Christ is at work on the side of fearlessness. He is real, alive, able to help, control and empower the Christian through out his life right up to the end and beyond it. Christianity is the key to life at its best.
No comments:
Post a Comment