The Ultimate Temptation of the Christian

Once, out of time, the devil went for a walk with a friend. They saw a man ahead of them stoop down and pick up something from the ground.

"What did that man find?" asked the friend.
"A piece of truth," said the devil.
"Doesn't that disturb you?" asked the friend.
"No," said the devil, "I shall help him make a

belief out of it. Before long, out of the vanity

of his own discovery, he will end up worshipping

his belief. Then he will become blind to all other truth!"

And the devil laughed.

The temptation to use one's vision of God to judge others is the ultimate temptation of the religious person down through the ages.

Once we decide we have some hold on some truth, then bolster this by some appeal to the Bible or Creed, we put ourselves on the side-of-the-angels, and assume that God supports OUR view alone. Then we believe that anyone who opposes this view is either "blind," further removed from God, or perhaps even on the side-of-the-devil.

Our blindness in this is that we are more interested in proving the rightness of our point of view, than in discovering others views, finding out what else God may have said, or in appreciating that other sincere people, even good Christians, can come to very different points of view.

To the extent that we do this with some concept of faith, we have made an idol of our belief, and judged others by this belief. What concerns us is not God's truth, which in its depths is unknowable and incomprehensible, but such a passionate attachment to our idea of God that we find it impossible to believe that God does not share our vision.

Anytime we use our vision of God to judge others as further from God than we are, are we not guilty of a form of idolatry, a true perversion of belief? We reassure our own demons, and add to the forces of intolerance and prejudice. Thereby we add our speck to the power of evil in the world, all the while believing we are doing something good and holy. Unconsciously and symbolically we also re-enact the violent founding murder of Jesus by using the gift of faith to judge brother and sister.

Every convinced crusader, vigilante, book-burner, Klan-er, Nazi, Communist, Inquisitor, Censor, and now we can add Kentucky legislator, has the burning conviction that one is right with God or "good" on our side, and that WE stand against the forces of evil. Because our own conviction is so sincere and noble, ours must be of a different sort.

What is curious about religious history is that no church ever supported the right to dissent. Before the Enlightenment, any dissenter was ostracized as a heretic, with severe social consequences. Could it be that what we need spiritually is a truly radical humility, one which can abandon any need to be right in religious matters. .

Can we begin to understand that our need to be right has nothing whatever to do with any love of truth or God. Jesus didn't tell us to look for ways to be sure, but rather to take care: "Be careful lest the light in you be darkness." (Luke 11:35) Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century said: "Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything." Religious people still kill people "in God's name." Christians still brutalize each other over idols of belief, country, way of life, or passively through neglect. Wonder, however, makes us fall on our knees.

We are being asked today to realize that we live in a global community, that each's welfare is dependent upon all others. We are called to accept the we are truly brothers and sisters of one another. If we dare to call God "Father," then every human being is brother and sister.

Consider that we have often distorted the way of Being Christian into a "salvation" exclusively for us, for our group of believers, and further, been ready to judge others as further from God because they do not hold the same beliefs. Rather than a dualistic acceptable/non-acceptable division of people, perhaps the unique way of being Christian has more to do with total equality of discipleship, and that each of us can learn from another, no matter how divergent the path, history, experience, or sinfulness we confront.

"There but for the grace of God go I!" But righteousness based upon external observance can never admit that. Neither can the belief that salvation comes through adherence to orthodoxy. Often we must be confronted with personal crisis or the power of our dark side, what Carl Jung calls the Human Shadow, before we can accept that truth. Or those whom the circumstances of life have wrenched into a state of being marginal.

Many christians have succumbed to the temptation to equate their religious views with God's views, just as many assume without any historical awareness of the evil and cruelty their church has been responsible for, that their faith is uniquely the superior way to God for all. When we do this we make OUR WAY to God final and absolute rather that the ineffable mystery we call God. I suggest that e also recreate the founding murder of Jesus’ Body even now by the misuse of our belief system.

So we should be ready to give witness, but not to pass judgment on those whose convictions conflict with our own. This means that we must struggle to walk very humbly before God, to seek the truth and stand for it with passion but never act as if we have exclusive claim upon it.

How can we ever claim that our conviction, however deep, binds the conscience of another? When we consider the terrible harm done to millions in the history of religion, we must conclude that no moral crisis can ever dispense people of conscience from full respect for the freedom and responsibility of every other conscience.

Every article of belief, including the Ten Commandments and the Nicene Creed recited weekly in many churches, have been used to brutalize and murder countless numbers of human beings.

"You are confused about what has gone wrong, and how to set it right?" the prophet asks. "Then listen. This is what Yahweh asks of you, only this: to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8, adapted)

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Note: This is a revision of an article originally published as "What if...Religion and the Undiscovered Self" in Carl Jung and Soul Psychology, edited by Karen Gibson, Donald Lathrop and E. Mark Stern, Hawthorne Press, 1986; also published as Voices: The Art and Science of Psychotherapy. Copyright, Paschal Baute, 1986, 1991.