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Spirituality - Awakening the Energies of Love,
Liberating Humanness and Transforming Culture
Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides,
and gravity; we shall harness for God1 the energies of Love,
and then, for a second time in the history of the world,
humanity will have discovered Fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
With these words Teilhard gave voice to a vision, heralding a transformation that would be life changing for all that comprises the earth community.
As Anne Hillman2 explains:
Our ancestors' longing - their passion for fire - led to an act that drove evolution. They harnessed fire and language blossomed." Out of the confluence of fire and language emerged an immense creativity, one that evolved into thought, reflection, story, and an ongoing search for meaning. It was a radical transformation of the human mind.
Transformation is born at the great hinges of Time - one like ours in which everything about us is fundamentally changing. Those who carried fire home in their hands lived at a Time in the great cosmic unfolding when the combined forces of nature and psyche invited them to act in a new way. Propelled by a yearning that ran counter to their bodies' counsel and to the time-tested wisdom of their clan, they took an enormous risk: Instead of running away from fire, they engaged it. Our ancient progenitors were following something other than what they knew. Call it a vision or a dream; something led them to step off the threshold of the known into the darkness of the unknown.
We, too, stand at an evolutionary juncture, led by an unspoken yearning we've felt in our bones since childhood: a longing to be somehow more than we are. This deep human desire whether to love more completely, to be more whole, to live in peace, or to come face to face with the divine-propels us on an inward path toward an unknown. Long proclaimed by philosophers and religious traditions of east and west, this unknown marks the conscious emergence of a Love that is qualitatively different from the one that we think we know. To engage its energies is a collision, a radical break in continuity with the familiar. Such a Love conflicts with old structures of mind, old beliefs, and old behaviours; it entails a new orientation, new ways of seeing and hearing, and an entirely different way of relating-to everything.
The earth community is facing enormous challenges that threaten life and wellbeing. Since the Enlightenment human capacity to exercise power over the earth has increased massively through the industrial and technological revolutions. Fuelled by developments in science and technology this has resulted in unprecedented human power to dominate and control, exploit and oppress people and the earth.
In the word of Richard Moss3
…. our early ancestors tamed fire, marking the beginning of mankind's unconsciously grandiose project to control the planet for its own ends. Now that original survival project has created such material abundance that it threatens the health of the natural world and thus, our future survival. We are at the threshold of another evolutionary step, this time not achieved through physical fire (or its modern equivalents in the form of the latest weapons, medicines and technologies), but instead in the form of a transcendental fire, a spiritual awakening of love that burns away our ego-centeredness and opens our hearts to our essential unity.
Some of the challenges now threatening the earth community include:
1 Like Teilhard I choose to use ‘God’ to describe the ‘Ground of Being’ or ‘Mystery’ that enfolds and permeates the universe. This will have little meaning for some for whom the terms don’t square with their understanding of life. I deeply respect these concerns.
2 Awakening the Energies of Love, Anne Hillman
3 From the Forward of Awakening the Energies of Love, Anne Hillman
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 A global ‘competitive’ economy that is unsustainable, unequal and unjust, based on commodification and exploitation of people and resources
 Global population increase from 6.7 (2008) to 9 billion (2050)
 Aspirations of developing countries eg. the rise of China & India ‘middle class’
 Rapid extinction of species, threatening biodiversity essential for life on the planet
 Threat of pollution and climate change
 World food, water and energy crises
 Politics of ‘empire’ (dominance & oppression) that has no future
 Religious fundamentalism
 Social and political unrest, terrorism and violence
To address these challenges the global community needs to adopt new ways of seeing and doing things. This requires a renewed understanding of what it means to be human; the liberation of humanness and the transformation of culture. Liberating Humanness - The Humanity of the Spirit Jesus, at his baptism is declared the bearer of the Spirit. The one who embodies the Spirit of creativity and love that enfolds and permeates the universe. As such Jesus is the archetype of the humanity of the Spirit the embrace of which informs and empowers the transformation of people and culture.
The notion of the humanity of the Spirit is highlighted in Jesus conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:1-10). This is indeed a story of profound hope and encouragement for persons, for churches and the world community.
The narrative begins, ‘Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews’, the story presents Nicodemus as a person of privilege … blessed by the best that life can offer … position, status, recognition and power. Yet despite this, Jesus has obviously caught his attention and caused him to wonder if life has something more to offer. So he comes to Jesus by night affirming him as a great teacher whose life and ministry reflects the ways of God.
Jesus, quick to recognise Nicodemus’ search for meaning and purpose, cuts to the chase saying, ‘The truth is this Nicodemus, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born anew. What is born of the flesh is flesh and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised that I say to you, you must be born again of the Spirit.’
What Jesus offers Nicodemus is the possibility of experiencing a new dimension of life, lived from the perspective of God’s life giving Spirit.
In other words, just as Nicodemus and his way of looking at life has been shaped by influences of family, culture and religion (‘flesh gives birth to flesh’) he is now encouraged to look beyond the familiar and awaken to the resonance of human spirit with God’s Spirit (‘Spirit gives birth to spirit’) in order to see and live life from the perspective of God’s way of life and wellbeing for the world.
It’s an amazing story; one that offers profound hope and encouragement … a story that challenges persons, churches and the world community to look to new ways of being beyond those familiar ways that currently shape us.
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It means rediscovering the importance of spirituality… to engage the resonance of God’s Spirit with the human spirit to shape and inform the ways we value and respect life and participate in God’s ways of life and well-being for the world. To allow the resonance of God’s Spirit with the human spirit to stimulate the imagination, to awaken new and creative ways of living together as people and society; be it in matters of religion, industrial relations, politics, economic justice and wealth distribution; responses to climate change & the environment; the poor and marginalised; the ways we use power, moving beyond despair to hope, deal with conflict and enable peace in the earth.
Jesus encourages us as he did Nicodemus to be attentive to the resonance of the human spirit with God’s Spirit to awaken new possibilities for life and wellbeing in these critical days of the earth’s history.
Changing the way we see and do POWER
This shift in mindset has implications for the way we see and do POWER as people and society. It evokes a shift in consciousness from power over (domination and control, exploitation and oppression) to power with so that empowerment of all life and wellbeing becomes the norm.
Such a shift in consciousness is seen in the life of Moses; an event which recounts a significant transition in his life (Exodus 2:11-3.15). Consumed by rage associated with feelings of helpless in the face of injustice he murdered an Egyptian slave driver and fled in fear for his life to Midian. Some years late when tending sheep he came to Mt Horeb and ‘there the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ Then the LORD said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land …. So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’ Moses first response was to exercise ‘power over’ (flesh gives birth to flesh). His second response, standing on holy ground was one of ‘empowerment’ (Spirit gives birth to spirit). The “all-consuming” rage that resulted in murder in the first instance no longer consumes but energises leadership and a movement for justice, liberation and freedom is initiated In the words of Richard Moss4
We are all constantly tested in the tension between these two fundamental necessities: survival and transcendence. Our bodies demand survival; our souls yearn for transcendence. What reconciles these seemingly opposing needs is the fire of transcendent love. Without being tested in this love, our fears for our
4 From the Forward of Awakening the Energies of Love, Anne Hillman
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own survival forever lead us into the illusory pursuit of control, and thus, into endless competition and conflict with others. And without being tempered in the fire of love, transcendence can become merely a form of flight from the pain and paradox of daily life. This kind of flight cannot make us strong enough to resist fear, let alone, instil a passion that insists upon the moral vision and behavioural changes necessary to heal ourselves and our world.
The resonance of the human spirit with God’s Spirit that gives rise to the Humanity of the Spirit5 lies at the heart of a renewed understanding of spirituality in the Judaeo – Christian tradition; what it means to be fully human, “made in the image and likeness of God”.
FORMATION OF HUMANITY IN THE SPIRIT
The Resonance of the Human Spirit with God’s Spirit
Human Spirit God’s Spirit New Humanity of the Spirit
Who we are? Who God is? Embodied & portrayed
in Jesus
What we’re on about? What God’s on about?
The formation process involves exercises (e.g. biblical reflection, meditation, and journaling) that raise awareness of the God’s Spirit (Who God is, What God is about) and the Human Spirit (Who we are, What we’re about as individuals, groups and society).
It is the action of the Spirit at kairos moments that integrates these raised levels of awareness to work in individuals, groups or society the Humanity of the Spirit that is embodied and portrayed in Jesus.
Made in the image of God6 is recognised in human longings for connectedness and creativity; people’s passions for life and wellbeing.
Connectedness (solidarity) with God, self and all that constitutes the earth community
Creativity - to be creative of good and wholesome order (God’s culture/shalom); the desire to be midwives of justice, wholeness, reconciliation and peace in the earth
The ‘image of God’ finding expression in the human longings for Connectedness & Creativity arises from the resonance of God’s Spirit with the human spirit and is the wellspring of humanity (John 4: 14), the source of its God given goodness and the foundation on which to build wholeness and esteem.
Considerable grief and pain occurs when family, church and society fail to name and nurture these God given longings for Connectedness & Creativity. The subsequent loss and shame leaves people (children & adults) feeling broken and powerless, with little or no hope in life.
Such a deprivation of life, something that happens to all of us to a greater or a lesser degree, impairs our freedom and capacity to be fully human and results in defensive patterns of behaviour 'ways of coping with life'; (Genesis 2:25 and 3:7, 20). Ways which not only shield us from the unresolved pain and grief, but also diminish and distort our God-given capacity for Connectedness & Creativity.
5 Figure 1 – Formation of Humanity in the Spirit
6 Figure 2 - Growing Humanity in God's Image
Figure 1
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These 'ways of coping' have implications for child, adolescent and adult development and result in:
Denial in the form of suppression, repression and attachment. This latter aspect of denial according to Gerald May,7 is the basis of compulsive, addictive and phobic behaviours seen in all of us
Anger & Anxiety associated with feelings of vulnerability, powerless and a loss of capacity for life
Abuse of power – people resorting to ‘power over’ rather than empowerment’
Eg. Moses rage first lead to murder rather than empowering just & liberating action
Withdrawal into fantasy, depression, 'poor me' (the martyr), messianic behaviour
FORMATION OF HUMANITY IN THE SPIRIT
Growing Humanity in God's Image
Human Longings for Unrecognised Grief & Loss Ways of Coping
Connectedness Anger, Helplessness,
Creativity Not nurtured Fear, Mistrust, Despair
Grace based ego Way of the Cross Defence based ego
Name & Nurture Name & Make Whole Name & Let Go
Liberating humanness - the movement from despair to hope8 (Figure 3) offers the earth community a constructive way forward:
Enabling people to move from ‘ways of coping with life' (the defence based ego motivated by fear, mistrust and despair; St Paul's 'Life of the flesh") to an embrace of 'life in all its fullness' (the grace based ego motivated by love, trust and hope; St Paul's 'Life in the Spirit').
Enabling the healing of past pain and unresolved grief (resulting from the failed nurture of ‘the human longing for connectedness and creativity’’) and the liberation of the 'humanity of the Spirit." making possible a new freedom to participate in life as mid wives of God’s new creation.
The disposition of the heart toward grace makes it possible for people to (Figure 2):
Name, Affirm & Nurture the God given longings for Connectedness and Creativity
Name and Let Go their learned ‘Ways of Coping’
Name and Stand open to the healing of past pain (unresolved grief and shame).
The result is healing and liberation. People set free from 'ways of coping with life" to live 'life in all its fullness' (John 10: I 0), (Romans 5: I -5; 8:1-30).
7 Addiction and Grace
8 Figure 3
Figure 2
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LIBERATING HUMANITY
The Movement from Despair to Hope
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“My God, My God “Father into your
why have you hands I commit
forsaken me?” my spirit”
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Fear, Mistrust, Despair Love, Trust, Hope
Denial of Human Frailty Acceptance of Human Frailty
Source of Human Insensitivity Source of Human Sensitivity
Defence based ego Grace based ego Alienation from God Solidarity with God
1. Humanity in the Image of God (Genesis 1:26-28) reflected in the human longings for connectedness and creativity
2. Jesus embodies the universal cry of human despair
3. The Cross as sign of God’s compassion; God embrace of human alienation, brokenness and sin with forgiveness and love working in humanity the movement from despair to hope (repentance).
4. Jesus embodies the humble cry of faith (a determination to stand on holy ground)
5/6. The human longings for connectedness and creativity produces very different outcomes in people and culture depending on whether a) alienated from God these longings are driven by fear, mistrust and despair or b) in solidarity with God these longings are motivated by love, trust and hope.
5.Corruption of Life & Power producing
Greed, Injustice, Oppression
Conflict & Disorder
6. The Fruitful Life of the Spirit
Compassion, Generosity, Respect
producing
Wholeness, Justice & Peace
Connectedness & Creativity
Connectedness & Creativity
Figure 3
Living in the Way of the Cross;
Risking the way of Jesus by embracing brokenness
in the power of the Spirit
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Living in the Way of the Cross
People attuned to the Spirit, sense there is another way but often feel disempowered by the structures (ecclesiastical, political and economic) in which power is expressed as domination, exploitation and control; ‘power over’ people and the planet.
Some argue that this is how human behaviour has developed (and will always be) through the human journey of domestication, classic civilisation and the modern project of the industrial period. The unprecedented power now aided by science and technology that threaten the very existence of people and the planet.
Jesus represents the alternative to domination, exploitation and control which is a defence against human vulnerability and despair – Figure 3. Indeed Jesus confronted ‘domination’ practiced by people, church and state in his life and teaching and in his death on the cross embraced it in the power of God’s love; an action that opened up a new way of living in the world. A way of life which both church and society still fail to embrace as they continue to be enmeshed by a culture of domination rather than empowerment.
The principle of life-through-death, of self-sacrifice in the interests of a larger good is at variance with the principle of self-preservation (defence based ego).
John Vincent Taylor9 explains:
How, indeed, could the law of the jungle alone lead men out of the jungle? How could an inherent ruthlessness lift men into sensitivity? The immanent Creator must have been of another temper. And in the humility of Jesus, his pureness of heart, his forgiveness, his courage and sacrifice, his infinite concern for all people persisting even in the throes of death, we meet that eternal, persuasive love which through the countless eons has been striving, suffering, going under, yet ever rising to new life, within the fabric of his universe.
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn, His cross is every tree.
The saga of cosmic evolution is now seen to resemble the old hippodrome where the chariots raced down one length, swung in a sudden, perilous turn before beginning the run home to the starting point. Self-interest was the drive which carried all forms of life on to the end of the first lap. We speak of turning points in history, but the living and dying of Jesus has, in fact, been the only one. Up to that point history ran straight on. But the man-for-others reversed the old law of 'each for himself', and revealed the deeper principle which from the beginning was always at work in the midst: that in order to continue to be, one must be a gift, an offering. If men are to remain human and go on to those higher levels of sensitivity towards which the Creator Spirit is inexorably drawing them they must learn to 'range themselves with God in his suffering’, as Bonhoeffer put it.
The Humanity of the Spirit - Transforming People and Culture
Living in the way of the Cross, embracing human vulnerability in the power of Love attunes humanity to the resonance of the human spirit with God’s Spirit and forming in us the Humanity of the Spirit awakens the energies of Love; compassion, justice, generosity and respect for people and the earth community.
9 THE GO-BETWEEN GOD – The Holy Spirit & the Christian Mission, John Vincent Taylor, SCM Press
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In the words of Anne Hillman:
The desire to love is not just a personal consecration but one sourced in the depths of life itself.
This longing and the need of the earth and its peoples are one and the same.
Our longing - our yearning - is part and parcel of the song of the soul, and it has always beckoned us toward a future that is not ours alone. We may choose to follow it by ourselves, but that we follow it matters to generations; for just as the embers of the first fire ignited the power of language, those of the second will ignite the power in our hearts.
Transformation of Life and Culture
Liberating the Humanity of the Spirit, awakening the energies of Love enables the transformation of people and culture. Jesus embodied this Love and prophets energised by it enact cultural change.
A process that involves:
Clarifying the narrative of the dominant culture; exposing false claims and denouncing the oppressive and unjust exercise of power and authority and the unmasking of overt and covert ‘despair as pervasive aliment” 10
Giving public expression (naming) to pathos; enabling public lament and the people to grieve the suffering resulting from oppression, exploitation, injustice and inequity
Energising hope to envision and announce the new reality:
 re-imagining new ways of seeing and doing things
 creating a just, compassionate and respectful culture for the entire earth community
 generating counter cultural movements that shift the cultural mindset from
o an economics of affluence to and economics of social justice and environmental sustainability
o the politics of oppression and exploitation to the politics of justice and empowerment
o from institutionalised religion to spirituality empowering life
The emergence of the Humanity of the Spirit brings with it the call to awaken to the energies of Love that enfolds and permeates the Universe, to seek beyond our reliance on thought in order to become wise in love11 making possible the freedom to see and do things differently; to move from despair to hope and enable the transformation of life and culture.
Creating cultural change requires a shift from captive to liberating mindset12 (Figure 4) resulting in new ways of seeing (mindset) and doing (strategic process) things and enabling the movement from cultural maintenance to cultural creation.
The shift in mindset13 effects the way we see people14, economy15, environment and power16
It shifts the mindset from the globally imposed dominate culture (power over) to locally enacted counter cultural movements17(power with).
10 See Appendix 1: Extracts from Hope for the World, Walter Brueggemann Editor Westminster John Knox Press 2001
11 Awakening the Energies of Love, Anne Hillman
12 Figure 4
13 Figure 5
14 Figure 7
15 Figure 8 and 9
16 Figure 10 and 11
17 Figure 12
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Creating a new culture also involves new ways of doing things18 (Strategic Process19, horizontal axis).
Figure 14 represents a model that integrates Liberating Humanity of the Spirit (Mindset) with Engagement, Empowerment and Celebration (Strategic Process)
Transforming Life and Culture
New Ways of Seeing and Doing Things
(Slides from a PowerPoint Presentation)
18 Figure 13
19 Figure 4
Figure 4
Captive & Liberating mindsets
effects the ways we see:
 People
 Economy
 Environment
 Power
Figure 5
Figure 6
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Compare the current and alternate view of Economics and Environment
The current ‘global’ system
 people & resources are ‘commodities’, exploited for short term ‘advantage’ & profits
 ‘class focused’; favouring an affluent minority
 promotes ‘private’ over ‘public’ interests
 creates inequality
 political and environmental instability and unrest
An alternative economy would promote
 long term, environmentally sustainable outcomes
 the good of all; liberating both people and environment
 equality & hope
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
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Figure 10
Figure 11
12
Figure 12
Figure 13
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Figure 15 Outlines qualitative research finding into attitudes within the UCA (1994) and provides a specific example of the need for a shift in mindset from Christendom (captive) to Missional (liberated) mindset.
Figure 14
Figure 15
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APPENDIX 1
Extracts from: Hope for the World (seminar), Walter Brueggemann, Editor Westminster John Knox Press 2001
Global despair (Page 70-71) has already shaken the foundations of hope in two well-documented and horrific world wars. The major difference of the current crisis of hope is that it rears its head at a time when the world is experiencing its optimal political, economic, technological and cultural moment in history …..
The Renaissance turned the human being into “the measure of all things” and placed it under European leadership … under which rationality became the instrument of domination. This led to colonial seizure of power over “poorer peoples of the land” who lived on the so-called new worlds “discovered” by the Europeans (leading to large-scale political dehumanisation of “the other”), a technological seizure of power over the environment (leading to cosmic ecological destruction), and a continued march of economic domination over all the excluded peoples.
DESPAIR AS PERVASIVE AILMENT
Douglas John Hall (pages 84-93)
The Question
The Roman Catholic thinker Raimon Panikkar, in a recent article proposed:
The crisis today is not that of one country, one model, one regime; it is a crisis of humanity.... Three quarters of the world's population live under inhuman conditions. Humanity is in such great distress and insecurity that its leaders believe they must keep 30 million men in arms! The church cannot be a stranger to such distress, to such institutionalized injustice. It cannot remain deaf to the cries of the people, especially of the humble and the poor.
Another recent article brings the discussion nearer home:
Our hopes are a measure of our greatness. When they shrink, we ourselves are diminished. The story of American hope over the past two centuries is one of increasing narrowing ... the horizon of hope has shrunk to "the scale of self-pampering.”
Innumerable other testimonies to the loss of hope could be cited some religious, some secular. We may count, therefore, on a great deal of backing when we make this approach our own. But words are important, and the question that I want to address in this paper is whether despair is an appropriate category into which to translate the diminishment or distortion of hope that we sense. I alluded earlier to two of the three "dominant forms of anxiety" identified by Paul Tillich as characteristic of human existence under the conditions of the Fall. Tillich believed that all three types ("fate and death," dominant in the classical period; "guilt and condemnation," dominant in the medieval period; and "meaninglessness and despair") are always present but that historical epochs manifest the predominance of one type. Overwhelmingly, he insisted, the dominant anxiety of our present age is the third type. Along with many others, I have pursued that same analysis in my own work. For the most part, however, Christians in the West are still drawing upon the medieval and Reformation assumption that the human predicament is one of "guilt and condemnation." The prevailing soteriologies of Western Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant, continue to rely heavily on Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement, which is addressed precisely to that anxiety. That this is so relates to the earlier observation that religion frequently represses the disturbing consciousness of present reality by concentrating on the reality of the past-which in any case is always easier to deal with! Failure to address the anxiety of “meaninglessness and despair” is also, and more deeply, due to the fact that of all the forms of
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human anxiety it is the most excruciating to contemplate and the most difficult to engage from the side of gospel.
There is still another reason why, in "developed" societies especially, the judgment that the human condition is one of "meaninglessness and despair" is difficult to entertain. Successful peoples are likely to find such language exaggerated. They may be willing to have it applied to individuals or to specific groupings ("the urban poor," "racial minorities," "the young"), but as a characterization of the spiritual condition of their culture at large (as in the Volf quotation) such bleak language seems inappropriate, if not ridiculous.
If, therefore, we intend such a reading of our planetary context to be heard also (perhaps even especially) in such societies, we shall have to parse the term despair in a very careful and sensitive manner. To suggest gloom would be to invite ridicule. There are happy and cheerful persons everywhere, and only a confirmed pessimist could fail to admit the reality of ordinary human expectancy that shines through in the public arena, despite the horrors and negativities held up to us hourly by the news industry. Our discussion of the global context in terms of "despair" will be credible only if we can delve more deeply into its reality as a spiritual condition informing planetary existence in ways not easily discerned or immediately visible.
Overt and Covert Despair
The word despair means literally the negation of hope (de + sperare, fr. spes [hope]). Because life itself depends upon the will to face the future with some degree of sustained expectancy, the medieval categorization of sin made hope's annulment, despair, one of the "deadly" sins literally, a sin driving toward death, whether spiritual death or actual suicide. Of all the cardinal sins, despair has been considered by the hamartiological tradition the most fearful; thus in Inferno Dante saw written over the portals of hell, "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." Hell in most Christian literature is eternal separation from God, ergo a sphere of unrelieved despair.
Examining the statistics of mental health, substance abuse, violence, crime, suicide, and the like pertaining even (and perhaps especially) in affluent contemporary societies, one could be tempted to resort directly to the language of despair, but that would be a mistake and a gross simplification of this profound category of Christian hamartiological tradition. Despair may inform destructive behaviour, but it is not to be equated with the behaviour as such, for it is a posture of the psyche (soul, mind), a spiritual condition. Destructive behaviour is, in fact, usually a way of avoiding the truth of the soul. Very few indeed are the human beings who, despairing, have the courage, will, and imagination to face it openly, let alone give voice to it. The messages that suicidal persons leave for their relatives usually fail to name the depths of their dereliction and frequently constitute the ultimate denial of their despair by blaming their problems on others. Albert Camus, who in the twentieth century came closest, perhaps, to articulating despair, and who regarded suicide as the only truly serious philosophical question, probably did not act on his conclusions: his death was likely accidental.
But despair need not be total to be real, nor does it have to be overt. Even household dictionaries recognize this truth: "Despair: utter loss of hope, complete domination by feelings of hopelessness, futility or defeat, wildly and bitterly expressed or quietly and pervasively dominant"
Apart from particular instances, I would argue, if despair is said to be the spiritual condition of the twenty-first century, it is the latter and not the former variety that must be stressed. It is covert and not overt despair with which we must concern ourselves.
Covert despair-repressed hopelessness-is, however, by far the more insidious of the two types. It is well able to masquerade under a guise of well-being so persuasive as to deceive the wearers of the masks themselves. It can readily sublimate itself through the pursuit of activities that seem to emanate from highly positive attitudes toward life and the future. Human beings cannot live with a conscious, unrelieved sense of the "vanity" (Koheleth) of their lives and endeavours. If their gods die, if their optimism is dashed by events, if the
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habit of hope languishes in them, they will likely construct bogus hopes out of thin air and sheer determination. "If the world's a wilderness, go, build houses in it!"
At one level, all thoughtful people should be very grateful for such persistent if repressive determination; without it, the world would dissolve into nihilism and chaos. Ernest Becker rightly claimed that repression is to the human what instinct is to other animals.'? The human spirit knows, at a level deeper than conscious thought that survival depends upon hope; therefore, incipient despair is nipped in the bud before it reaches the level of consciousness. Life must go on, and so a sustained awareness of negation must be subverted. Christians may even want to consider such repression a form of "common grace"!
There is, however, a fine line between "necessary," life-preserving repression and the kind of repressive posture that must lie to itself so consistently that it ends in destructive behaviour more devastating than the negating realities that it fears to acknowledge. Such behaviour is not necessarily or ostensibly destructive of the repressing self, more frequently, its victims are those round about: spouses, children, friends, co-workers, and others, whose very existence must be lashed out against because it is too transparent of the delusions the despairing subject has determined to maintain. This psychic phenomenon is famously illustrated in the lives of prominent historical figures (Nero, Caligula, Richard III, for example), and it is never very far away from the deathbeds of individuals denying the possibility of their own demise (see in particular Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Illych).
The Social Applications of Covert Despair
Covert despair, the despair that relieves itself at the expense of those in its environs, is not just a condition of individuals; it pertains also to entire societies and even whole civilizations. As many, perhaps beginning with Augustine, have shown, Rome in its decline was far more destructive than it was in its ascendancy. The ravages of its rise to imperial status were inspired by a genuine (if, from a biblical point of view, demonic) expectancy: the early Caesars believed themselves to be building a humane, ordered, and civil ecumenical society. In its decay, however, Rome's idealism gave way to cynicism in the intelligentsia, and heroics to brute force and militarism. Now Rome was attempting to sustain its illusions of greatness by embracing an assumed eternality (the "divinity" of the emperor was not emphasized earlier). It strove to account for its failures by locating their cause in "the enemy," especially allegedly internal enemies. The periods of serious Christian persecution, to mention only one such "enemy," correspond with the increase of repressed anxiety-the anxiety that can be viewed still today in the sculpted faces of the patrician classes of the period. One must at least ask (and many commentators on the decline of "the West" and its successive empires have asked) whether this phenomenon inheres in the logic of empire.
Covert Despair as the Absence of Operative Systems of Meaning
The anatomy of despair, particularly as it applies to societies, must seek the sources of this anxiety, not so much in positive and obvious evils and wickedness (such as terrorism, warfare, financial catastrophe) as in the absence of that which gives meaning to experience, including very negative experiences. It is in the absence of the good rather than the presence of evil that despair has its genesis. Tillich insightfully named this third anxiety "meaninglessness and despair," for it is through the loss of meaning that humankind finds itself driven to despair. Even systems of meaning that, from a Christian perspective, must be regarded as questionable can be recognized as effectual in sustaining the esprit de corps of a people as long as they are credible to rnany or most citizens. This could be illustrated even by the early histories of Nazi Germany or Lenin's Russia. Pervasive hopelessness sets in - whether "wildly" or "quietly"- only when a system of meaning becomes threadbare and, finally, incredible.
Just at that point, however, a new danger emerges: the forcible maintenance of "the system" (as in both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia) or, more subtly, the elevation to prominence of the bureaucratic, economic, and technical accoutrements of the disappearing worldview or ideology.
It is in the latter sense, I think, that we should understand the demise of modernity. The modern vision, with its roots in the seventeenth century, its elaboration in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and its activation in
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nineteenth-century industrialism, visibly began to wind down in the latter part of the nineteenth century; its "death," many believe, was announced by the guns of August in 1914. But it is too easy to speak as if modernity is over and done with, let alone hail the postmodern epoch as its clear successor. In history, significant change takes time: the mechanism of the clock may stop, but the pendulum may continue to swing of its own momentum for a very long time!
Although the utopian dreams of modernity have failed, some of them conspicuously, the accoutrements of those dreams have by no means disappeared. They have risen, rather, to the surface, filling the vacuum left by the effective demise of the system of meaning that spawned them. By accoutrements I mean such factors as these: (1) a technicalized rationalism, rationality deprived of depth and lacking its critical dimension; (2) unchecked capitalism, capitalism minus the "invisible hand" and shorn of the philanthropic obligations felt by earlier capitalists; (3) crass and ever crasser forms of consumerism; and (4) unlimited exploitation of the natural order. Of all these, as of other tendencies that could be named, one can say that they are means no longer answerable to operative ends. The ends to which they were in some real way accountable have quietly disappeared with the system of meaning of which they were constituents.
By comparison with the present, modernity's conception of the human (imago hominis) must be regarded as a "high" anthropology. It was certainly anthropocentric and theocentric religion always had a quarrel with it for that reason; yet, partly because of its Judeo-Christian antecedents, the modern vision at its height retained an image of man [sic] that was able, while it was operative, to reject certain conceptions of human life and to limit the expressions of human desire that seemed incompatible with that image. Again, modernity embraced what was for serious Christians an impossibly idealistic conception of the capacity of human reason-almost a deification! Yet the Enlightenment and, in a different way, the romantic movement were both able to hold technique accountable to higher dimensions of human thought. With the demise of the modern vision as a viable system of meaning, however, man was reduced to will, and reason to "technical reason" (Tillich) or "calculative thought [rechnendes Denken] (Heidegger); technique was no longer answerable to anything beyond its own dynamism and the whims of its high priests and beneficiaries. One could not count any longer on reason (represented by the universities, for instance) to call halt to any given project. Modernity's elevation of man, now deprived of romanticism's belief in homo sapiens as nature's child and preserver, was reduced to nature's master and, indeed, its sworn enemy, who would use it without reverence for his own purposes, no questions asked! It is not, finally, the limitations and failures of modernity as such that Christians should lament but the (perhaps inevitable) reduction of the modern vision to truncated versions of its own principal themes. The grave instabilities unleashed by the effective death of the modern system of meaning and the takeover of its accoutrements constitute the daily bread of our despair.
The despair as such, however, is profoundly hidden-especially from those who benefit most from the (temporary') economic and cultural "success" made possible by means no longer answerable to just ends. To confront our despair, in such societies, requires a courage and truth orientation that few discover within themselves. It would in fact require embracing another system of meaning, an alternative vision of the good with which to fill the emptiness that is left by this ending. Only such a new system of meaning could provide the permission that is needed to name and attempt to alter the bogus goals and cheap hopes that are the residue of modern Prometheanism, for, false and unworthy as they are, those goals and hopes are all that is left of the bright visions of the architects of modernity. We fear to lose them and, besides, they are very firmly entrenched. Meaning has departed; the system remains.
The Victims of Covert Despair
Covert despair applies most directly and obviously to the materially successful peoples of our planet, peoples whose collective spiritual poverty is most conspicuous in their attempts to find meaning in materiality (consumerism, the cult of the body, the quest for status and permanence through ownership, etc.). It is, of course, a human response to the vulnerability of creaturehood, when people repress their deepest fears, and as such it may be found everywhere-among the have-not as well as the have peoples. But as a broad pattern of social behaviour, such unacknowledged anxiety typifies the possessing more immediately than it does the dispossessed. Possession itself, including the power that attends it, cushions the shock of the abyss of
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meaning over which it is built. North Americans' present comforts and diversions shield them from the need to come to terms with the future that is begged by their assumed nonchalance.
It is not so with the dispossessed. To be poor, hungry, ill-clad, inadequately sheltered, or in other ways physically deprived; to be at the mercy of gross economic injustice, ethnic violence, or political chaos; to be rejected or marginalized on account of race, gender, class, ethnicity, or sexual orientation-such conditions not only leave little space for the luxury of repression but also represent an actualization here and now of the "shock" that possessing peoples are able to relegate to an indefinite future. The despair that is felt by "the rich" as an unwelcome presence at the back of their minds is for "the poor" an unavoidable reality. Paradoxically, it is perhaps just because the poor cannot avoid confrontation with the pathos of their human condition that remarkable expressions of hope are frequently found among them, thus the biblical dialectic of hope and despair namely, that hope, when it is authentic, arises out of the crucible of hopelessness - that it is always in some sense "hope against hope" (Rom. 4: 18).
We must distinguish, then, between the despair of the possessing peoples, which is characteristically covert, and that of the dispossessed, which is more often overt. But in the reality of planetary life today, the two despairs are complexly interwoven. Although the ultimate cause of all human anxiety must be located by Christians in the mystery that is signified by the word sin, at least in the realm of the penultimate it is necessary to posit a clear causative relation between the covert despair of the possessing peoples and the perennial hopelessness of the dispossessed. In their refusal, or their inability, to confront openly the reality of their hidden despair and the loss of meaning in which it is grounded, the possessing peoples of Earth perpetuate – and in their most powerful institutions foster!-the status quo of the two-thirds world. Despite the altruistic intentions of the have nations, despite the genuine good will and charity of many organizations (including churches) within those nations, and despite the nervous duplicity of many of us who, our rhetoric notwithstanding, participate in the prosperity of those who possess, it is as hard for the rich to achieve solidarity with the poor as it is for them to enter the kingdom of God-which, for all practical purposes, may be the same thing! And the reason for this difficulty should not be located in some vulgar accusation of mere selfishness! To make a real step toward such solidarity, the possessing peoples of the planet would have to engage in a process of self-knowledge that very few of us can manage, and perhaps none of us implement.
To be concrete: Bill Rees, a population ecologist at the University of British Columbia, using the best and most objective data available, has concluded that "in order to bring everyone on the planet to the same general level of consumption and well-being as the average Canadian, we would need four or five more Earths-right now!". The only conclusions that can be drawn from such statistics (and the same basic data can be gleaned from many sources) are that either the present imbalance of human consumption will continue or Canadians and other over-consumers will have to lessen drastically their demands upon the planet's resources. I would suggest that this kind of knowledge or pre-knowledge has been in the public consciousness of the affluent nations of the West for a very long time and in the past two or three decades, with the growth of ecological sensitivity, it has been nearly unavoidable. But in order to act upon it in any significant manner, ordinary citizens would have to become extraordinarily willing to examine and critique the very way of life that the entire modern experiment has conditioned them to expect, and governments, responding to such grassroots awareness, would have to be ready-readier than any Western governments have so far been - to stand in opposition to the corporate world that never ceases to entice the citizenry of developed nations to become even more devoted to the lifestyle of consumption and acquisition. One can only conclude, in the light of events and attitudes, that the possessing peoples of the planet are prepared to see the two-thirds world sink into oblivion before they will undertake any serious examination of their own expectations and the unlikely assumptions upon which those expectations are based. Of course, this is a purely temporary posture, as gross acts of repression always are. Sooner or later (sooner, if most ecologists are right), the possessing peoples, too, will be brought up short against the limitations of earth's bounty and the seeming resilience of the natural order. Then, however, it may be too late.
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The Challenge
There is, I think, no easy answer to the problem with which this type of analysis leaves us, for human despair is notoriously hard to counter - especially when it is a despair whose whole energy is concentrated upon denying its own reality! According to Christian faith, it has taken the entire wisdom and generosity of God to begin - even to begin! - transform the soul of restless, alienated humankind. Utopian solutions, even when they are clothed in the language of the sacred, are therefore to be avoided. Hope remains hope, not "sight"(Heb. 11), and Christian hope remains hope "against hope"-against all final solutions.
Given that eschatological caveat, however, it is not so hard to discern at least the kind of challenge to which the foregoing reflections must lead: human despair can be obviated only by a renewal of genuine hope, and repressed human despair can be prepared to hope again only if it is first enabled to admit itself and to face the impossibility of the artifice by which it thinks to survive the consequences of its loss of meaning. Those who despair, if they are not given some cause to think that the admission of their despair could be a means to its overcoming, will resist the confession or it so long as their material and psychic circumstances insulate them from the cold shock of reality. To repeat, only a new system of meaning can provide the permission that repressed despair needs if it is to name and attempt to replace the bogus goals and cheap hopes that are the residue of modern Prometheanism. False and unworthy as they are, those goals and hopes are all that is left of the bright visions of the architects of modernity. We fear to lose them and, besides, they are firmly entrenched. Meaning has departed; the system remains.
The question for serious Christians is this: Can Christian faith, especially in its Protestant mode, sufficiently extricates itself from modernity to enucleate such an alternative system of meaning? Can the Christian movement distinguish itself from Christendom with enough imagination and daring to help humanity find a way into the future beyond the demise of the modern vision and the spent imperialism of the "Christian" West?
GLOBALISATION (Pages 112-114) has become the new means to master a complex world under an overarching system; a narrative that leads to economic absolutism. Globalisation uses the illusion of unity to force all of reality to serve its economic end. Those who cannot be fitted into the system - the powerless and the poor - are marginalised.
Whilst globalisation results in commodification and exclusion, it also has potential to provide a context for dialogue and a means of heightened appreciation of difference among people and the planet for the enrichment of the whole.
The power of globalisation is its ability to focus on the individual in a way that blinds the individual to the detrimental effects of globalisation on the human community and the creation as a whole. It pits the survival of the individual over against the creation. Globalisation fails to see that creation cannot be fitted into a process and that the attempt to do so will in the end kill it.
The commodification of religion requires a subtle smoothing over of the heart of differences. In this manner, difference is made to look like similarity and therefore able to function in the framework of globalisation. It is only in the willingness of religions to work out of their plurality, by taking their differences seriously, that they can create an alternative to that framework. In so doing, they create a space where those silenced by the economic and technological elite can have voice, and as a result religions can keep their own voice in the public arena. Whilst globalisation functions to exclude, it can also generate interconnectedness, which the voices of the excluded can utilise for both networking and expression of solidarity, wherein they may discover signs of hope.
It is unhelpful to demonise globalisation and unwise to give to it a place of false hope as a means of access to utopia. We must discern a critical yet nuanced understanding of how it affects us and how it can be used and must be resisted for the betterment of all creation.