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In this episode, Sean McGrath continues his conversation with Jungian Analyst Jakob Lusensky, in seeking the secular Christ.
Canadian Philosophy and Theology professor and former Catholic Monk Dr. Sean J. McGrath examines how to practice contemplative Christianity in the secular age.
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Jakob Lusensky: Something that you
reminded me of is that when we speak
about evil it's not a star wars,
it's not good against evil only.
Isn't there something with antichrist,
that sometimes God sends the
devil, as Luther some would say.
Many people come to Christ, through
being lead to the ultimate despair.
Things are pushed to this edge
in order for people to wake up.
Sean McGrath: I think
you're absolutely right.
And that's right out of the scripture.
If you read the book of
revelation, that's his role.
The antichrist is sent by God in order
to sort the Christians out in order
to bring the ultimate test, which
will, you know, you could spin it in
a negative way and say, oh, it's, he's
just coming to damn people, but that's a
misunderstanding of the doctrine of divine
election, the point of the antichrist,
he's the test that will produce the
genuine Christian who will be impelled
into resistance by this pseudo Christ.
So I think that's
exactly the point, right?
This is not star wars.
But the thing that strikes me
about the social media approach to
the consumption is that it really
underscores the point that at the heart
of consumer desire is imagination.
Now, this is what this
variation of yourself is about.
You imagine yourself
in different contexts.
You want to be able to
create yourself endlessly.
You don't want to be bound
by materiality or reality.
Instead you want a fantasy.
And this fantasy is the
secret of consumerism.
Consumer desire is endless
because it's not fed by reality.
It's fed by imagination and there
is no limits to imagination.
For this reason, it doesn't
bottom out in boredom.
It just keeps going and it keeps
going because it has us all convinced
that illusion is better than reality.
So the selling of illusion,
how do you counteract that?
Well, clearly by resisting and the
resistance will take the form of
preferring reality to imagination.
Even the reality that's ugly, even
the reality, that's unpleasant
physical death and illness
and limitations and fragility.
The reality human existence on this earth,
or even the reality of our degradative
planet, the reality of a planet in which
wilderness is shrinking or disappearing,
so that it really only exists in small
little pockets of national parks or
whatever, the reality of our ugly cities,
the reality of all that when we've
sacrificed to Automobility for example.
The reality of, of how we've sacrificed
the bird community to our pets.
We prefer to have domesticated
cats, then all the great
variety of birds in the world.
So where there's a resistance to this
offer of infinite imagination and
illusion over reality, where there's
a decision for the real over the
illusion, we see signs of the secular
Christ, particularly in so far as that
resistance constallates a community.
Jakob Lusensky: That makes
a lot of sense to me.
I also feel that it links back to when
we discussed the role of psychoanalysis.
I very much like Freud, you know, in,
in the work of analysis that it's about
the reality principle, I mean also
re- establishing a reality principle.
To turn neurotic, sort of imaginary
suffering into maybe real life
misery, sounds very pessimistic,
but it seems to be the cure.
I mean, it seems to be a part of it.
I should say.
To see reality as it is.
I was also thinking when we are looking
for secular Christ, looking for the church
today, we are seeking, we are searching
and in a way we don't have to go far.
I mean myself working from home to my
practice, everyday I walk by, by the
church where outside, on Thursdays,
, they give off a food for people.
I just feel like you don't have
to go far every day I have at
least three or four people coming
up to me asking me for money.
I don't have to go far
to see secular Christ.
I don't have to go far to be
revealed the reality of things.
It seems like that a conversation
with, with the reality
of others is, is the cure.
Sean McGrath: It's certainly
their in form of the Christ.
And so when we spoke about various figure
to, or speaking about Christ, We spoke
about Peterson and Zizek and we found
some things that are interesting there.
But we haven't really given very many
positive examples of figures in our era
who have totally embraced this form.
We'll find them if we look.
One who has recently caught
my attention is Simone Weil.
Who died in the second world war of
starvation because of her identification
with the soldiers on the front.
She refused to eat anything
more than they were eating.
She was a brilliant young woman,
she died in her thirties and
she checked copious notebooks.
She never identified with the church.
She never entered the church.
She was raised in an atheist culture,
she was initially a Marxist, but had
certain experiences, we could call
the mystical, in which she discovered
that God was not in the world.
He was beyond the on the world.
But the way to come into union with the
God who is beyond the world is by becoming
entirely resigned and surrendered to
the darkest, most painful necessities of
this world, which he called affliction.
Affliction, which is more than suffering.
Affliction is the experience
of one who has been crushed.
It's the experience of the bug under
the boot when there is no nowhere to go.
Now, one can always prefer
one's imagination to the
ugly necessities of life.
One can fantasize ones self
out of the afflicted experience
or one can embrace it.
Like the Christ did.
Allow himself to be crucified to it.
And what Weil argued is that in
this preferring of the real, to the
imaginary, in moments of affliction,
we, in fact, experience the redemption.
We experience the Christ in a
visceral vital and undeniable way,
and she herself experienced it.
So she's one dramatic example.
We could also talk about Dietrich
Bohnhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who
was pretty safe in England doing his
theological work in exile from Nazi
Germany, but chose to go back to
Germany in the midst of the war, in
order to lend support to the shrinking
Christian churches, the authentic
Christian communities who were resisting
the Nazi suffocation of Christian.
He was executed in prison.
It was from prison that he wrote some
of the most powerful theology, including
his thesis of religion Christianity.
So if we have now entered into an
age when religion is no longer a
compelling form of existence, for
most of the developed world, we
need to except this and move into a
religionless list phase of Christianity.
We need to be Christians without religion.
Clearly his point is that the Christ
is, as I've said, not only at home in a
mature secular age, but thriving there.
And we simply need to look more
carefully at places where he might be.
So where we have the preference for
reality, over imagination, over fantasy
on the one hand and where this sanctity
constellates community because wherever
two or three are gathered there.
Which I think means he's not so visible
without the community, the common life.
So now I think of things like the
countless ecological communities
arising around the world, communities
of resistance, communities that have
broken with consumerism that are
refusing consumerism, communities
of people who are choosing to live.
Otherwise, I don't simply mean the
off grid eco community, but certainly
some of those, but there are other
things going on too that get no press.
So if you Google for example,
"new monasticism", you'll find
fascinating, , accounts of organizations
in American cities of individuals
who have decided to group together.
In order to have a common life in order
to care for the least among them, in
order to practice a sharing of goods
that would allow them to disengage from
consumption and to be quiet points of
resistance to the logic of the world.
Jakob Lusensky: What about those more
well-known figures, like Greta Thunberg.
Do you see Secular Christ also in there.
Friday's just for future.
Sean McGrath: Greta Thunberg has become a
superstar of the climate change movement.
So one has to be wary of a kind
of co-opting of that very genuine
young woman's intention when
she started fridays for future,
like protesting, going to school.
I wonder if she still is who she was.
I don't want to be critical
whatsoever, but we have to be careful
cause I had to crisis very sneaky.
Right?
So he'll take whatever it is that
attracts us to the good to the real.
And you'll turn it into its opposite.
It'll turn it into a seduction
into the imaginary and the unreal.
I'm very critical of signs that say, save
the planet, all the saving the planet.
So this nonsense planet's fine.
It's going to be just fine.
The planet is compatible, with all
kinds of atmosphere, conditions
that are not conducive to.
life We've had much more intense
carbon oxide in the air, 60
million years ago than we do now.
So the planet is not an issue its
our civilization that's an issue.
And I, I say this to my students
when I'm teaching environmental
issues stop talking about the planet,
start talking about civilization.
Do you love your civilization?
Are there parts of it that you
would prefer not to carry forward?
Are you trying to preserve
consumerism forever.
What could be more horrible than
300 more years of consumerism?
What would that even look like?
We get to watch out that we don't
get taken off subject by antichrist.
Jakob Lusensky: One thing that I find
that telling, but also somehow important,
it seems to me it's the children or
the young ones that has to own the
reality principle while us adults are
running round living the illusion.
At least if we look at let's say put
Greta Thunberg against Trump, for example,
or against anyone word leader actually.
Imagining we can imagine ourselves out of
this so we can build this so we can find
new solutions, on another not a planet.
What do I know?
How children has to be the ones
who carry the reality principle.
Sean McGrath: Well, it's interesting
because we associate children with, as you
say, fantasy and imagination, but we don't
understand the psychology of the child.
Children have a nose for the truth.
You can trick them once, but
they will not persist in lie.
They have an instinct for reality, which
I think is something we need to recognize.
And so Christ told us that we
should be calm as children.
We should pray as children.
So this kind of substitution of
imagination for reality is not
something childlike it's actually
much more nefarious adult it's it's
the perversion of the narcissist
who would prefer his avatars to real
people because he can manipulate them.
There's something let's
say satanic about it.
Satan rules over this
structure, not Christ.
You make me think of another point, talk
about the children bearing the burden,
but there's a, there's another issue here
too, which is the poor who will suffer
the worst results of climate change.
We talk about the reality of our moment as
we moved towards cop 26, It's fairly clear
that we're going to miss the targets.
And it's also fairly clear what it means
to miss the targets of 1.5 degrees.
There's far too much accurate modeling
of what a four degree world looks like,
which is where we're heading for the end
of this century, not very far away, so
all of this is available for us to, to
consider, and it's not an imagination.
It's a projection of what reality shall
be if we don't turn from our path
and we are not turning from her path.
So the, the news I heard yesterday
and moving up to cop 2016, we have
to cut her carbon consumption in
half, if we're to meet the targets.
And in the last year we've doubled it.
So we're doing exactly
what we shouldn't do.
So how does this work?
Well, I think it works by virtue of people
choosing imagination over reality, but
also maybe even more insidiously making a
calculation that I'm not going to suffer.
This is not going to
be in me and my family.
Yeah, maybe if it Florida's
swamp land, I'll move to Oregon.
And if that becomes desert, I'll
move up to British Columbia.
I've got the resources . Me
and my gang, we'll be fine.
What happens in Bangladesh?
What happens in Africa?
What happens in, even in, you
know, the certain parts of America
which are going to become desert?
Well, that's not my concern.
The poor will carry this one.
And so I think that if you want to go to
the front lines of climate change and have
that sober experience , of the reality
of a four degree world, we should spend a
little time in some of these communities,
of people who have no resources and cannot
leave places of environmental degradation.
I'm talking about the trash pickers.
I'm talking about, the people
who are trying to raise crops and
rapidly diversifying, lands where
agriculture is no longer tenable
or they have nowhere else to go.
Condemned to starvation
and death by our actions.
And somehow on some level we know
that, or at least we ought to know it.
And, you know, Thomas Aquinas said
that the logic of sin is not to
look at the thing you shouldn't
do and go ahead and do it.
That's not what we do.
Rather, the logic of sin is to not
look at the thing we shouldn't do.
In other words: Turn your eyes
away, turn your eyes away.
And we do not, do not allow
yourself to think this through.
Sweep it under the table so you
can get what you want and continue
on the path that you're on without
interference from your conscience.
Because the force of the good is too much.
If we looked up the good directly,
we would be compelled to change.
And so don't look, don't look.
Jakob Lusensky: I also want you to say
something about what you said about of
the planet versus civilization, because
I think that's a very important point
that touches upon something , where
my skepticism on my cynicism around
fridays for future or this moment.
It seems to me at the times, that
there is almost like putting the
planet against people like this to me
or kids today, or young adults today,
they have a love for nature or for
the animals or for the planet but, but
then they don't trust humans anymore.
Or that despite, or they don't like
this , the children are losing the
hope there in the, in the human . And
putting their hope to saving nature.
What about that?
Sean McGrath: That's the
move of antichrist, isn't it?
So you take this, authentically gesture
of concern for the environmental
conditions of our time and you turn
it into a hatred of humanity or it
could be better antichrist laughs.
The other thing of course is that while
the environmental movement is committed
to saving the world without us, it
has no chance of becoming politics,
why would the political will of the
world unanimously gather around an
agenda actually offers it, nothing.
They're not going to, it's just going
to remain some fringe politics on
the left while this issue remains a
politicized issue, we're doomed, it
has to become something that every
side of the political spectrum can own.
Including the right.
It's very dark, but that was what
we were told was going to happen.
So we weren't promised a
life without struggling.
And what we were told is that the best
would become co-opted by the worst.
And that's , the virtues introduced
into the world by the Christ,
freedom, for example, personal
development, , futural existence,
the subjectivity of Christianity,
faithful, hopeful anticipatory that
this extraordinary, form of human
being would become co-opted, would turn
into a deaf dealing consumer machine.
That was what we were
told was going to happen.
So, despair is not an option
that's not on the agenda.
Neither is optimism, as a Christian
lives in hope of an outcome that
will exceed his or her wildest
expectations, even as it exceeds his
or her capacity to bring it about.
That's why Christian hope is not utopian,
but neither do become passive and simply
sit around waiting for, God to come.
No, you've got to give yourself entirely
to the cause you want to become a means
towards the production of justice.
And I think we are seeing to
some degree in these new forms of
community life, micro-communities of
resistance, of anonymous Christianity.
We could say invoking Carl honor's rather
unpopular term, anonymous Christian
communities, that is communities
that are actually enacting the form
of the Christ without naming him as
such by resisting the antichrist.
We have to be careful that when each one
of these places of positivity is beset
by the energy of the antichrist and
can turn into its opposite so quickly.
So it's these forms of life that are most
at risk, you could say, and one has to be
careful as one embraces them when asked
to be on the guard, ever watching for the
thing, becoming the opposite of itself.