I am staring at a painting of Christ. The colors are bright and composed primarily of yellows, browns, and reds. The painting has the feeling of a renaissance work, but is also reminiscent of an Eastern Orthodox icon. Christ is portrayed sitting on the ground with long brown hair flowing down the front of his white shirt decorated with a darker undershirt or sash. As I watch, the image transitions into the Virgin Mary who stands with a halo above her head. Her entire body is bathed in a light shining from an unseen source from above. Though completely still, she is alive, and unlike the previous image, is staring directly at me aware of my presence.
“You killed my son,” she says.
Of course I didn’t kill your son, I think. I want to ask her what she means by her accusation. Instead, I play along.
“I did,” I answer, “What is to be done about it?”
There is no verbal response, but the scene changes once more, and I am now watching a street in broad daylight in which blurred and black shadow figures stand. They too are completely still, yet are vibrant with a living energy.
These past several months have been a time of religious turmoil for me as I have grown distinctly less conservative and wonder how much of my child-like faith remains. I have had several dreams and meditation experiences which have dealt with this conflict, and most have had a strong element of letting go or moving on. In an earlier dream, I was a mother who knew that her son was going to drown in a river at night, and though I repeatedly saved him, in the end, he was swept away by a flash flood. While attempting to rescue my child, I met a character who represented Christ, but he was ambivalent to my distress.
In this meditation experience, I was faced with Christ yet again, and though he was calm and beautiful, he was inanimate and somehow distant from me. I gazed at him without emotion for several seconds before the image transitioned and I was staring at the Virgin Mary who unlike her son was clearly living and aware of my presence. As she glared at me, her face radiated anger.
“You killed my son,” she stated. It wasn’t a question but a clear accusation. I had no idea what she meant, and was quite convinced that I hadn’t killed anyone. My first instinct was to set her straight and proclaim my innocence. However, I decided to take her seriously. I was partly aware that this was a dream or vision and I wanted it to continue and learn what she had to say.
“I did,” I answered, “What is to be done about it?” I knew that accepting her claim was the right way to continue our conversation and find out what she wanted me to do. I could figure out the details of what she meant by my having killed her son later.
The third image formed and took the place of the former one, and I understood this to be Mary’s response to my question. During the experience, I did not know what the street or the shadow figures represented, but I had the distinct feeling that they were lost and in spiritual darkness.
One simple interpretation is that Mary represents my own mother and what I assume her emotions and judgements toward me would be if she knew what I believe. If that is correct, the image she shows me might be the fate that is supposedly waiting for me of I reject my faith in Christ: becoming a mere shadow of my former self and living an insignificant life filled with darkness.
But that interpretation, though consistent, does not resonate with me. Instead, I think that Christ represents either himself or my faith. If Christ represents himself, then the interpretation is straightforward and theological: I am responsible for the death of Christ through my sin, and to make up for this, I am to go and save the people who though living in broad daylight remain in shadow and darkness. On the other hand, if Christ represents my faith, then the interpretation is more psychological: though I may have lost some of my simplistic and my child-like faith, I am still to bring light to those living in darkness in whatever way I can.
There is truth in all three interpretations, but there is no necessity to point out one as being singularly correct. The fact that I could come up with all three interpretations fairly quickly means that each likely contributed to the meditation experience in some way. And even if that were not the case, I will never be able to figure out with certainty which one was correct. It is better to take whatever insights we can from our experiences without feeling the need to determine the ones which were intended for us. Sometimes the answer to that question will be obvious, but generally these interpretations will be complex and will not fit under a single umbrella of explanation.
This experience didn’t answer my questions and doubts, but the three interpretations that stood out the most to me did help bring to the surface some things that I need to focus on. And it did indicate that though something valuable in the past may be lost, I have a future in which I can be of some help to others. And that is after all something that I value highly.
I had enough awareness during this experience to know that Mary was only a character within my psyche and that this wasn’t a normal conversation. Though I didn’t understand what her accusation meant and wanted to deny it, I understood the significance of it psychologically. I knew that she represented a part of myself and had a message for me that needed to be understood. I decided then to treat her with all seriousness as if she were a real person. I accepted her accusation so that the conversation could continue in the hopes that she would provide an explanation. Had I not read Jung, particularly his Red Book in which he discusses the significance which he attributed to his own dialog with inner characters, I would almost certainly not have responded in the way that I did. I would most likely have gone with my initial instinct to deny Mary’s accusation which I suspect would have led to the ending of the vision without any further relay of information.
I have generally found that it is a good idea to listen to myself and to pay close attention to the seemingly random and insignificant things that surface spontaneously in my mind. A though will enter my head, or a picture will flash through my mind. Sometimes it’s dark and I’ll push it to the side, pretending I never noticed it. Other times it’s lighter and hints at something more beautiful within. Even then, I am all too likely to pass it by and not take it to heart. But these things, however small and fleeting, come from deep within us and show us more about who we are than we might want to admit. When the subject matter that arises is darker, instead of repressing it, we should take time to carefully analyze it so that we can work through and integrate whatever material is brought up. And when this material is about the goodness and beauty within, we also should take the time to meditate on it and allow it to guide us. Too much attention can be given to integrating our shadow side. We must recognize that we also have another aspect of ourselves that needs to be acknowledged and integrated.
I have found this kind of self-analysis to be extremely helpful in understanding myself better and making progress in shaping my character.
As a quick example, I have always tended to drift into internal fantasies where I will be arguing some point with someone who in real life I think would disagree. I will proceed to destroy them in a one-sided debate whose outcome I’ve already decided. I will usually catch myself doing this and will push the thoughts away and intentionally think about something else. At first, I thought that the root cause was pride and arrogance, but more recently, and after spending some time thinking about why I do this, I have come to realize that it’s more an issue of insecurity than superiority. I attempt to defeat a belief in others not because I want to diminish them but because part of myself is struggling over whether to accept or reject that belief. Instead of admitting that the conflict exists within myself, I will project the belief onto another. Having defeated the other person in mock debate, I am for a time satisfied, but the same argument will come up again in another fantasy, showing that I still haven’t resolved the conflict. What I need to do here is accept that this is my conflict and that it must be resolved within myself. Only then will I obtain lasting peace.
By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
John 13:35 (ESV)
Central to the Christian faith, the belief that “Christ died for sin”, quite expectedly means that it was because of sin that Christ had to die. This is an idea that I always wholeheartedly agreed with in the general sense—the sense in which it was Adam’s disobedience long ago that brought sin into the world, corrupted creation and human nature, and necessitated the eventual coming of a savior to put all things to right. That I was fine with, but I was less gung-ho about my personal responsibility in the matter. After all, it was Adam who brought sin into the world, and I surely had nothing to do with that. Though Christ did die for my sins personally, his death was necessitated by Adam and would have happened regardless of my sin. Unfortunately, I don’t think that I can avoid responsibility so quickly for there are several reasons to believe that all of us individually are to take the blame for the death of Mary’s son.
The first argument is tenuous in that while it is held by a sizable number of Christians, mostly Reformed (Calvinist) Protestants, it is based on a mistranslation of Scripture going all the way back to Ambrosiaster in the 4th century A.D. Ambrosiaster when translating Romans 5:12 which states that “death spread to all men because all sinned” mistakenly read the verse as saying, “death spread to all men who in him [Adam] sinned.” This led to the idea that all mankind was present in Adam and shared responsibility for his choice to sin. Several other passages in Scripture, such as Hebrews 7:9 have been used to support this idea. Later when St. Augustine was studying this passage in Romans, he used Ambrosiaster’s translation as his source material, and not knowing the original Greek, he had no way to catch the error and ended up expanding upon it. Modern day Reformed believers, relying heavily on St. Augustine (when not relying on Calvin or Piper of course) picked up this ancient theological error. Though I recognize that this idea originated from invalid assumptions, I still find it convincing for other reasons. Those reasons are a bit complicated, however, and I would like to dedicate another post to them.
Fortunately, there is another and stronger argument for our responsibility in the death of Christ. This argument begins with the fact that though Adam brought sin into the world and corrupted human nature, nowhere is it implied that this causes us to sin. Our bent toward evil makes sin natural and likely—even probabilistically inevitable—but not in any individual case unavoidable. We can always resist and overcome temptation. Further, we all have an inborn sense as to what is right and can thus make informed moral decisions. The conclusion of the argument is that we, having both the ability to reject sin and knowledge of right and wrong, become, in the final view, responsible for our actions. We cannot blame anyone else for our actions entirely. Society and upbringing and the consequences of the Fall play a role, but none of these can completely take away our freedom or understanding in all of the things that we do.
Again, we cannot escape responsibility from the wrongdoing that we knowingly commit. Though I can only speak for myself, I do not believe that it is a stretch to say that all people have at some point acted in a way that they knew at the time was wrong. And for some people, this pattern of behavior can even become an enjoyed part of their identity. Once we realize this, we must accept full responsibility for the death of Christ, understanding that it was for this sin—our sin—that Christ had to die.
But once we have admitted our responsibility in the death of Christ, what are we to do to make amends? We cannot erase past wrongs or make up for the death of Mary’s son, but there is still much we can do. We can be a light to those living in sin and darkness. We can love those who have been put on our path with sincerity and without ulterior motive. We can address the needs of those around us, both physical and spiritual. And we can show them Christ by being for them what God called us to be.
24-bit eggplants 