Sources of Collective Inferiority: Religion

4. Chapter - Sources of Collective Inferiority: Religion

            Different times adopt different religions. With each change of mind we ignore former certainties as well as inconsistencies within the new understandings. We believe in cause and effect, in beginnings and ends, and in Gods without beginning or cause. We say clocks imply clockmakers and universes imply universe makers, but we do not know how universe makers begin. Tomorrow is unknown, but religions describe eternity and we take their words for it.
            Jews believe in the Old Testament which means they believe their God, Jehovah, revealed himself to Abraham, but the Midrash, a rabbinical commentary, suggests Freudian possibilities. According to the Midrash, Abraham's father, Terah, made idols for his living. Abraham began life an idol worshiper, but after seeing the light, his father's idols became anathema. One day Abraham destroyed every one of his father's idol but one. When his infuriated father asked what happened, Abraham replied the idols waged a battle for supremacy which the survivor won.
            Jews see this tale of filial disobedience as proof of God's existence, but an oedipal explanation is more persuasive. A father is challenged by a son intent on ideological murder. To complete the father's defeat, the son's God becomes everything the father's idols are not. The father worships several Gods of comparative equality. The son postulates a supreme being. The father's Gods are finite and visible. The son's is infinite and invisible. The father's Gods are available to all who would believe. The son's God belongs to the son and his descendants.
            Jews benefit from that theological monopoly to this day. As God's chosen, they surpass those God did not choose. A gentile English scientist who should know better, said Jewish contributions to humanity are disproportionate to Jewish numbers, a fact that proves Jews a unique and superior genetic pool. A Jewish friend used that argument to oppose intermarriage which dilutes Jewish genetic excellence, but Jewish accomplishment can have a psychological explanation. As a child I was reminded that life, a contest between Jew and gentile, is won by intelligence. In our house, as in every Jewish house I knew, intellectual pursuits were valued above athletics. I was told gentiles womanize and brawl, activities wise Jews avoid. Until the modern state of Israel, Jews were victims and their outrage at gentile atrocity was the outrage of the weak abused by the strong. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon and activities in the occupied territories prove that Jews with guns are the same as gentiles with guns.
            The Jewish God is a sophisticated concept. One cannot imagine a more powerful deity, but with religious faith waning, we grapple with notions of imperfection.2 A limited God did not attract gentiles when Greek and Roman mythology no longer satisfied, but Abraham saw to it the mighty Jewish God was unavailable to outsiders. Gentiles thank fate for a son who provided access to the father. One would think so close a theological relationship guaranteed brotherhood, but interaction between Christian and Jew has been unremittingly hostile. Anti-semitism and its Jewish corollary, anti-gentilism, are collective equivalents of sibling rivalry, with each collective child seeking approval from a malevolent father. Christians, whose numeric superiority controls political systems, use pogrom and holocaust to prove to Jews God no longer cares.
            There is also the question of the relationship between God and Jesus. Christians believe them equal, but a hierarchy of senior and junior is likely, especially when this father is the all powerful creator of the universe. Christians blame Jews for the death of Jesus, but it is as unfair to blame today's Jews for that long ago event, as it is for Christians to expect Jews to recognize Christ as the messiah. In a post-messianic world Jews will not be chosen, a demotion few Jews will welcome. For our purposes we need not resolve the question of who God prefers, nor need we decide the status of Jesus in the heavenly hierarchy. If God selected Jews for some unrevealed purpose, his choice is an objective fact and should be irrelevant to Christian behavior because nothing can undo it. It is, therefore, difficult to understand why Christians abuse Jews.
            It is equally difficult to understand why God permits atrocity. We excuse divine lapse by saying the Lord works in mysterious ways, as well he might. God knows what happens after death, and that knowledge releases him from earthly restraint. If victims go to greater glory, tragedy is no longer tragic. That we grieve at funerals proves only that we do not practice what we preach.
            The most devout must have moments of uncertainty. Tragedy tests faith, even the faith of those who believe God's purposes are beyond human understanding. Muslims cry to Allah with the incredulity of Christians or Jews complaining to Christ or Jehovah. Each, ironically, invokes a different incarnation of the same God, but it matters not which incarnation exists because each have common characteristics. Gods are more powerful than humans. Their strength demeans us.
            We believe we were created, but we cannot allow our Creator to shape the collective image. We are what we are. That we are not creators of the universe should not shame us anymore than people with blue eyes debase people with brown eyes. Self-image psychology tells us to accept ourselves without regret and change behavior we dislike. Alien species may build larger space ships or unravel more essential riddles, but they are no better then we. They die and have no more idea where they go after death then we do.
            Religions damage individual and collective self esteem; coerce us towards one definition of the straight and narrow. Good books with angels recording human deeds are everywhere, but widespread religious belief does not make the urge to devotion genetic. Jewish infants raised as Catholics believe what Catholics believe and we send missionaries to convert heathens, something we would not do if heathens were locked in the error into which they were born.
            Religions purport to describe objective reality. Whatever God is, he is real with an independent existence. Because religions deal in eternity, Gods must be larger than human life if their promises are to be kept. Since eternity is the highest imaginable stake, we need constant proof we made the right theological choice. We conquer the unconverted on the theory we would not succeed if our God were less powerful than theirs, but as in most religious matters, the outcome of our test does not matter. When we lose, we assume God rejected our efforts. The same faith explains both victory and defeat.
            Religions exploit gratifications implicit in collective thinking. The more believers the more certain we are of our place in the infinite scheme. We count on our side, the past generations that believed what we believe. Keeping faith demonstrates respect due elders, and adds their dead weight to present understandings. That pre-Christian Romans, through no fault of their own, spend eternity in places other than heaven does not concern us, nor does it matter that our protection from error, the collective belief we are right, is the same as theirs.
            Science creates problems for the faithful. It becomes more reasonable to see creation as an explosion of compressed matter rather than a gleam in God's eye and the dichotomy between intellectual and spiritual understandings will intensify as scientific observations become more precise. If science does not destroy religious faith, life's random tragedies are enough to make one wonder if anyone is in charge. Rather than be offended by God's incompetence, we see uncertainty as a test of faith, preparation for crossing over into that great beyond. Religion turns a cruel reality into God's plan, his way of separating worthies from dilettantes. The book of Job describes a vain, foolish God we can neither appease nor understand, but we are, nonetheless, obliged to mollify a being as inconstant as ourselves. Our vision of an insecure, other-directed God, a God reassured by human observances, diminishes any self-respecting deity. Our greatest sin is that we make God so petty.
            Our collective relationship with God resembles my individual relationship with my father. My father performed no miracles, but he was stern and critical. He wanted a rough and tumble boy who played hard games with neighborhood kids. He never understood how he sired the likes of me. When he died my brother said, "It was a monkey off his back"and I agreed. That his sons saw him as a burden violates the commandment to honor fathers, but he did us no honor either. His disappointment at our inability to meet his expectations eliminated all possibility of friendship. My guilt at my unworthiness crippled me until I learned my choice was to see myself through his eyes or define myself. God, the collective father, knows we will never amount to much and our collective choice is the same as my individual choice. We can see ourselves through God's eyes and be ashamed, or we can follow self definition to more hopeful conclusions.
            I suspect my Jewish religious experience resembles every religious experience. My parents began as Orthodox Jews with a kosher house. As a child I remember taking care to use correct silverware when setting the table. After my father climbed a few rungs on the economic ladder, he rented a cottage at Lordship Beach. We took the Passover dishes with us to use every day, a break with ritual that marked the family's retreat from orthodoxy. A few years later our house was no longer kosher, but commingling meat and milk did not change my parents' Jewish values. When I was young I inhabited a world divided into Christians and Jews. Since Jews were outnumbered by what I was told was a hostile majority, my world was unfriendly. Then I learned our Catholic maid did not attend the same church as our Protestant neighbors. It was my first inkling things are not necessarily what they seem.
            I began Hebrew school at the age of seven. I learned the sounds of hebrew letters, but did not understand the words. I hoped God accepted prayers from someone who knew not what he said, but the quibble did not keep me from believing all of it. It was important God hear me because I had discovered death, the frightening certainty someone would someday carve my name on a tombstone. I lay in bed paralyzed with fear, with no relief except ancient prayers and the knowledge others travel the same road. Perhaps it was dread of dying, a fondness for the rabbi, or tender years, but at the age of eleven I became a true believer. It was inevitable, given the intensity of that early faith, that I demand our family return to kosher ways. Having literally grasped religion for dear life, I announced I could no longer eat non-kosher food, thinking my parents would change their ways rather than see me starve. My father, unmoved by the prospect of my early demise, said if I did not like the food at home, I could eat elsewhere. With no kosher refuge available, my rebellion ended.
            At Antioch College my faith was no match for an enlightened student body. Belief in God was unfashionable, and I let it go, only to have it return in my late twenties. By then I had been a lawyer long enough to know I would not set the juridical world on fire. I was unprepared for mediocrity because when I was eighteen Madam Salma, a palm reader, predicted I would be a lawyer, a writer, and a politician, three occupations I wanted badly. I asked her if I would be famous, I wanted that too, and she said fame was in my future. Her predictions had fallen woefully short of the mark and I hoped fate would take a kinder turn if I set my theological house in order. I made bargains with God, bargains predicated on the belief he wanted penance from me. If he did something I wanted, I would perform an inconvenient devotion, something I assumed he wanted. After developing a theory of collective behavior, I decided belief in God is a symptom of collective inferiority. I began this book, it being a tenet of my new faith that my dreams are up to me. I no longer attend services or pray. I believe this latest decision is final.
            My erratic individual religious experience resembles centuries of collective devotion. We have worshiped the sun and the moon. We have seen spirits in the wind and chariots racing across the sky. We have examined the entrails of chickens, fasted or feasted to propitiate any number of Gods. Our most recent God, the eternal, invisible, omnipotent God of the Israelites, presumably watched our pagan rituals with amusement. Only he knows why he tolerated our ignorance of his existence, just as only he knows why he chose that moment in time to reveal himself to Abraham.
            Unlike early believers, we have no hope of seeing God, a condition that diminishes faith to a point where atheism is respectable. We are so jaded it is difficult to imagine any miracle capable of altering the climate of disbelief. Were the evening news to broadcast pictures of a man walking across the Great South Bay, we would wonder how he did it, the way we wonder how magicians saw women in half. It would not occur to us it was God out rekindling faith. For many God no longer exists and the means for reestablishing himself are beyond his mighty powers. The faithful resemble my son, who when he was six, thought me the strongest man in the world. He believed bullets bounced off my chest and is now nonplused his perceptions were so far from the mark. He did not know that weak, dependent children want to see parents as strong. They reject a more ominous reality. Children are not alone in their quest for security. Inferiority persuades adults to join forces with those they perceive as strong. They work for large corporations, and follow orders, in the belief leaders will keep the wolf from the door. When reality overtakes them, they are as surprised as my son.
            The Judeo-Christian God, our protector, is, by any standard, a capricious parent. Eve purloins an apple and women who never saw the Garden of Eden labor in childbirth and endure the inconvenience of menstruation. Born in sin, we ask forgiveness for crimes we did not commit, but God, the demanding parent, rejects our pleas. When I was twenty-four and in psychoanalysis one year, I mustered the courage to tell my parents how I spent three hours each week. For my father it was another disappointment. I continued because his opinion was irrelevant. Until I persuaded myself my father's perceptions did not matter, my failure to meet his expectations dragged me down. Collectively we face the same choice. If we wait for God to think kindly of us, we will never change our negative collective image. Sacrilegious it may be, but we cannot let God define us.
            God, to dissuade us from evil, enforces his commandments with threats of eternal damnation. "Do this and be damned," we are told, and those who dread damnation act accordingly. Wars were fought even when the wages of sin were more widely feared, but the pious pronouncements of clergymen brought our ancestors no more relief than politicians' platitudes bring us. Ostensibly we believe in God and in retribution, but no age has murdered more than ours. We blame atrocity on loss of faith, but atrocity is an old adversary. The impulse that inspired yeoman to practice archery, now drives technicians to master consoles of missle systems. As the doomsday clock ticks on, it is time we realized we have been left to our own devices.
            Just as individuals must reject negative judgments about themselves, we, to improve our collective image, must reject concepts that diminish humanity. God should not begrudge us collective self-esteem if it cools planetary passions. Behavior, not belief, is a more reasonable requirement for entrance into heaven, but we remain persuaded a Godless world cannot prosper. Self-image psychology resorts to faith in ourselves, but it is difficult to believe self restraint will succeed where divine edict failed. God's insecurity, his jealousy, his insatiable need for human devotion is another unifying religious thread. In Hebrew school I learned God ordered Abraham to kill his son Isaac as a test. When God was convinced Abraham would kill Isaac, (it was never explained why God who knows everything, ever doubted) God ordered Abraham to sacrifice a lamb instead. Jews no longer sacrifice lambs, but I was not taught why they stopped or whether God appreciates less bloody offerings. Jewish ritual changed when Jews collectively decided blood sacrifice is pagan and cruel. I do not think God can persuade today's Jews to sacrifice animals.
            The agreement to spare Isaac included Abraham's promise to circumcise Jewish male infants. Jews think circumcision an example of Jewish wisdom, healthier than the natural state, just as they think dietary laws which eliminate trichinosis among other diseases are a prophylactic example set by a people who had no reason to know as much as they did. Recent medical research exonerates the uncircumcised, but one cannot help wondering why God created a foreskin which persists no matter how many generations spurn it, just as I wonder why God chose circumcision to distinguish Jew from gentile. I thought circumcision reasonable, until I saw an illustrated ad for french ticklers, condom-like devices reportedly capable of transporting women to heights of passion. My knowledge of french ticklers consists of that one illustration from which I learned the difference between french ticklers and ordinary condoms is a thick rubber ring that replaces a retracted foreskin. It occurred to me that circumcision impairs male sexuality by exposing sensitive nerve endings, increasing the likelihood of premature ejaculation. A more obvious disruption is circumcision's alteration of the way men and women fit.
            When our youngest son was born, I took my misgivings to doctor friends, but their medical opinions were inconclusive. I now believe circumcision damages sexuality, but my reasons are informal and random. Males at all stages of life, compare notes and conversation often turns to sexual subjects. In a Jewish Community Center locker room someone asked an obscene riddle whose answer alluded to the sexual unresponsiveness of Jewish women. A gentile listener, who did not laugh, observed that Jewish wives refer to their husbands as `a prostitute's delight' because they ejaculate quickly. The Jewish men neither protested nor claimed exception from that devastating appraisal. In The Tenants, Bernard Malamud explored tensions between blacks and Jews. One grievance concerned a black man who had himself circumcised to please a Jewish girlfriend. As a result he lost his sexual power. I do not know whether Malamud was telling a story or if he, too, had doubts.
            Interesting possibilities arise when we assume circumcision diminishes sexual performance. It makes Abraham a deranged leader, but much of his vision is deranged. He made humanity the darling of an all powerful God, his religion the faith of unbridled science, industrial pollution, and nuclear waste. Perhaps a conceit generated by association with the mightiest force in the universe is necessary to start a species down the technological road. Beings without an outrageous sense of destiny do not design spaceships or explore the bowels of matter. Abraham's God concededly works in mysterious ways, but making circumcision a religious requirement is especially mysterious. Why create a foreskin, then make its amputation the rite of passage into God's club? Why choose Jews and why were they chosen? Jews believe they were chosen to demonstrate God's way to the rest of the world. They think God wants a somber, guilt ridden planet, but perhaps his intentions were different. If circumcision reduces sexual potential, Jews choose between sexuality and hierarchy and Jewish circumcision becomes a litmus test of human maturity. The day the last Jew chooses sexuality over the fantasy of selection by the most powerful force in the universe, we collectively come of age.
            I do not know about God, but I tried to learn about circumcision. A psychiatrist I know believes every male patient he has treated for sexual dysfunction was circumcised, a fact easily attributable to economic class since only those wealthy enough to afford psychiatry circumcise their young. I wrote Masters and Johnson, the sex clinic, asking what percentage of their patients were circumcised. They replied no evidence links sexuality to circumcision. They did not respond to my second attempt to have them answer the question. I know one man, circumcised as an adult, who experienced circumcised and uncircumcised sexual relations, but he did not answer my unexpected letter. His former wife, who experienced his circumcised and uncircumcised sexual state, reported no change after circumcision.
            My search for proof ended. I remain persuaded a negative correlation between male sexuality and circumcision exists, but if one hundred men circumcised as adults tell me it is irrelevant, I would rethink the intuition. As it is, I see circumcision as mutilation, a terrible price to pay for a connection to a God who most likely does not exist.
            A personal, concerned, watchful God reassures beings aware of two voids, one before and one to come. God relieves loneliness and provides a basis for morality. Cynics say that without God-based absolutes abominations become possible, but we are not murderers. We kill on battlefields with society's enthusiastic approval, but we are not dishonest unless society's cruelty leaves no choice. Polygraph operators assume lying make us uncomfortable. We may be more benign than we think, but when society makes survival difficult, it pays the price of a flailing about by those gasping for air.
            An equality based morality lets us live and let live. We need not live alike nor need we value the same goals. The one thing denied is the right to damage others. Similar diversity is impossible in God-based moralities. One God means one way, with believers who impose their certainties where they can.             God splits our individual-collective personality, separating collective ideal from individual behavior. The result is pathology. Collectively we believe in an invisible, eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God, a God who visits earth, takes human form, and makes himself known to whomever he pleases, but we institutionalize as paranoid, those who claim to literally know God. Many believe God watches every individual move and holds each human accountable. God's watchfulness comforts the faithful, but to those without faith, that malevolent, unsleeping eye represents collective paranoia on a grand scale. Favoritism from a position of power is the essence of inequity, but the Bible is rife with accounts of battles made unfair by God's meddling. God enjoys a good human fight, and we assume God, as ally, aids our cause. Communism's weakness as perceived by western minds is `Godlessness', a deficiency that gave us an immediate, insurmountable advantage. I wonder about a God who includes nuclear war in his infinite scheme, or who puts us through bloody paces for his amusement.
            Religious faith forgives our trespasses, raises us above non-human life, and above humans foolish enough to disbelieve what we believe, but the price of eternal truth is a perception of ourselves as flawed. God is perfect. We are loathsome, a condition we cannot correct without offending God. Our God is a God of the insecure, a God of hierarchy, a God whose majesty is proven not by the wonders of his firmament, but by the rigors of human devotion. Our God, vengeful as the pettiest tyrant, is a busybody who plans each life before it is lived. Our God acts the way we would act were we God. Self-image psychology says we must not be ashamed and if God disagrees, it is God who is wrong. It eliminates the specialness the faithful derive from their ablutions. One faith good as another; one hereafter comfortable as the next. We are what we are and owe no apology. God may exist or he may not. Death may be dreamless sleep or fire and brimstone. All will be revealed soon enough. Our ancestors needed heaven to offset tribulations of more primitive conditions. Being closer to the future, we dimly perceive gleaming cities free from privation. With paradise here, we will not need paradise anon.

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Book chapters

1. Chapter - Theory Overview
2. Chapter - Self Image Psychology
3. Chapter - Collective Image Psychology
4. Chapter - Sources of Collective Inferiority: Religion
5. Chapter - Sources of Collective Inferiority: Sex
6. Chapter - Sources of Collective Inferiority: Parents
7. Chapter - Pollution and Other Terrors of our Times
8. Chapter - More Problems: Representative Democracy
9. Chapter - More Problems: William Toste
10. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Television
11. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Computers
12. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Floating
13. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Scenarios
14. Chapter - Embracing the Future: Utopia