183
CHAPTER XV
HEARTS OF FLESH
Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish. - Luke 13: 3
If human freedom cannot be consistently denied, and if its exercise entails the distinction between good and evil, then no man is without some conception of sin. If both the moralistic view and the view of sin as intrinsic to human nature are fatal to freedom, then they must be discarded. Conversely, if the biblical understanding of sin as idolatry is rooted in an appreciation of freedom, and if all men do in fact orient their lives toward some god or other, then the central question of human existence is: Which of all the rival claimants is the true God? If the mark of a false god is the betrayal of its worshipers into bondage and hardheartedness, then the true God is One who could be counted upon to set them free by empowering them to love.
All this, of course, is pure theory. The most it can do is to induce a man to ask the right questions. Once he does, he is astonished to discover that they are precisely the questions to which the unsophisticated Bible has all along been speaking. Crediting him with enough wisdom to ask them, it dispenses with the preliminaries and speaks directly of a God who has historically made and kept his promises to men. There is consequently no better description of its message than the traditional understatement, “good news.” It purports to record the events in which such a God “proclaimed liberty to the captives” by imparting to them the gift of agape.
There is, however, a prerequisite to becoming a beneficiary of these mighty acts: repentance. The mention of this word precipitates a debate with a discipline which thus far has provided scientific support for many stages of the argument: psychotherapy. It is worthwhile rehearsing the many ways in which the analyst’s clinical data have been of inestimable value in the recovery of the biblical conception of human nature. They have confirmed, for example, that in certain areas a man’s reason is the servant of his will and that the results of rational inquiry will vary with the orientation of the heart. Many analysts, notably the school of Harry Stack Sullivan, have reached the wholly biblical conclusion that one’s mental and emotional health depends upon his human environment and that the
184 Hardness of Heart
absence of love induces neurosis. Psychiatry has also provided valuable ammunition for the refutation of the two pagan versions of sin. It has rendered obsolete the assumption, based upon a jaundiced view of human nature, that self-assertion per se is sinful and self-denial virtuous. It has shown that, on the contrary, pride and self-contempt, though logical opposites, are inseparable twins which mutually aggravate each other. As against moralism, psychiatrists have exposed the self-righteousness and hidden vindictiveness of the moral vigilante, as well as the destructive effects of any ethical rule when it becomes a superego. Finally, they detect the emotional hypocrisy by which the legalist hides his secret inclinations from himself and the world. Fritz Kunkel observes that Christendom has often tended to regard character difficulties as something to be shunned, never to be discussed or investigated. “Sin is bad, and the good man turns away in horror. This emotional attitude is one of the gross fallacies of theology.”1
Most important for present purposes, the psychiatrist discovers more than enough evidence for hardness of heart, and all the concrete acts of hostility that go with it, to confirm the biblical doctrine of the universality of sin. According to one psychiatrist, those who have undergone the psychotherapeutic process recognize that weakness and inner torment are “the common property of all and that no one can point the finger of scorn at his fellow.”2 This substantiates St. Paul’s declaration, “Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doeth the same things” (Romans 2:1) .
Karl Menninger is more specific in his analysis of the subtlety with which sin disarms its victim by operating within the explicit “rules of the game,” or even by masquerading as virtue:
More painful to the man are those innumerable attacks upon his masculinity which the frustrated wife inflicts in the course of the daily routine of life, the things that are discussed in every column of advice to the lovelorn - neglecting, reproaching, distrusting, criticizing, ridiculing, interfering with pet hobbies and habits, playing the martyr and giving the impression of being the victim of the husband’s suspicion or cruelty, disappointing him in major or minor expectations, improvidence, tardiness, and so on. It seems invidious to make such a list, which must necessarily be not only incomplete but equally applicable to husbands.
1Fritz Kunkel, In Search of Maturity (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), p. 34.
2Beatrice M. Hinkle, “An Introduction to Analytic Psychology,” in An Outline of Psychoanalysis, J. S. Van Teslaar, ed. (New York: Modern Library, 1925), p. 252.
Hearts of Flesh 185
Aggression is not the monopoly of either sex. The object of aggression is to hurt, to make unhappy, to destroy; and all the techniques available to a woman who is unconsciously hostile toward her husband she will use against him.3
With unlimited evidence of this kind at his disposal, one would expect the psychiatrist to be receptive to the biblical categories of guilt and repentance. Yet this is precisely the point of his sharpest attack upon Judaism and Christianity. Feelings of guilt, he argues, are demonstrably the worst impediments to the healthy expression of the personality. By discovering their hidden causes, the analyst helps the patient to dispel them. One consulting psychologist declares, for example, that, consciously or otherwise, parents use their children as whipping boys,4 and one of the commonest kinds of abuse is to burden them with a mountainous sense of guilt. When the victim finally realizes that his unfounded guilt feelings were originally planted by the contradictory demands of a domineering parent, they lose their strangle hold on his creative capacities. The therapist has seen so much similar mental suffering caused by fulminations and threats from the pulpit that the whole conception of sin is anathema to him. When he dispels such misplaced guilt, he undoubtedly functions as an angel of mercy.
Suppose, however, that there were a residue of genuine guilt, consisting of destructive attitudes and actions for which one were truly responsible. What could be done to remove it? One thing only: forgiveness. But this is not at the psychiatrist’s disposal. The fact of real guilt, as opposed to misplaced guilt, would consequently confront him with a problem he could not solve within the limits of scientific techniques. Instead of inquiring disinterestedly whether in fact there be any such objective guilt, he often sets out to reduce it all to mere feelings which can be explained away. This entails the denial of human responsibility for evil and the consequent suspension of moral judgment. The self-contradictory nature of any such attempt, as analyzed in Chapter II, is illustrated in this instance by Karen Horney’s perplexity over what to do with moral rules. Having declared that “should’s,” as she calls them, only serve to inhibit the natural flow of man’s vital forces, she is confronted by the awkward implication that they should be abolished. The only way out of this diffi-
3Karl Menninger, Love Against Hate (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Go., 1942), pp. 116f.
4See Dorothy Baruch, New Ways in Discipline (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1949), p. 260.
186 Hardness of Heart
culty is to decide on reconsideration that some “should’s” are right after all - a position which is undoubtedly true, but which she has left herself no means of establishing.5
The attempt by some psychiatrists to suspend value judgments is nicely illustrated by their substitute for forgiveness, the depressingly neutral word “acceptance.” To “accept” is what the scientist does with laboratory data. He acknowledges the facts without evaluating them. Acceptance does have a provisional place within a Christian context, in so far as it stands against a censorious attitude toward one’s neighbor. “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” for “vengeance is mine, saith the Lord” (Matthew 7:1, Romans 12:19). It also stands for facing facts squarely, including the facts of sin. Moreover, it can serve as a reminder that agape requires love for the total person, rather than for selected parts. If made ultimate, however, acceptance reduces man to the level of a laboratory specimen, without freedom or responsibility. It thereby provides another illustration of the humanist’s dilemma. Originally invoked by the humanitarian concern to prevent cruel moral condemnation, its ultimate effect is the degradation of man. The humanist’s determination not to point the guilty finger results in a patronizing attitude which is quite as inhumane. This is nicely illustrated by Erich Fromm’s attempt to give meaning to moral judgments after he has denied freedom:
In making value judgments one judges facts and does not feel one is godlike, superior, and entitled to condemn or forgive. A judgment that a person is destructive, greedy, jealous, envious is not different from a physician’s statement about a dysfunction of the heart or the lungs .... We can even assume that we would have become like him had we lived under the same circumstances; but while such considerations prevent us from assuming a godlike role, they do not prevent us from moral judgment. The problem of understanding versus judging character is not different from the understanding and judging of any other human performance. If I have to judge the value of a pair of shoes or that of a painting, . . . I may have sympathy or pity for the shoemaker or the painter, . . . but I can not say that I can not judge his work because I understand why it is so poor.6
Despite his humane intentions, the psychiatrist who puts character on the same level as shoemaking is really addressing the moral delinquent in the same words which children use to hurt an unco-operative playmate: “Leave him alone - he can’t help it.” Even granting, for the
5See Karen Homey, op. cit., pp. 364, 374, et passim.
6Erich Fromm, op. cit., pp. 236f. My italics.
Hearts of Flesh 187
sake of argument, that this could be done without an attitude of “holier than thou,” it suggests a cool smugness which is quite as intolerable. The aloof condescension of the expert toward the “morally inferior” is hardly less godlike than the sanctimoniousness which he deplores. It assigns every man to a moral pigeonhole. To the extent that it denies him the dignity of freedom and responsibility, acceptance turns out to be a disguised form of rejection!
The alternative to this unintended belittling of man, and to the self-contradictions which it entails, is to grant the reality of freedom, responsibility, and guilt. Karl Menninger actually does this. “This guilt lifting,” he says, “is an equivocal blessing. I, for one, think that some guilt feelings are better not removed - they belong.”7 To take this step is to acknowledge the urgency of repentance and forgiveness.
A psychiatry which does this, far from replacing Christianity, makes it more relevant than ever. It raises questions and discovers problems which nothing besides Christianity and Judaism has ever claimed to answer - questions which require an answer beyond the limits of psychiatric techniques. The most immediate is, “How can we retain value judgments without fastening upon each other’s conscience a paralyzing burden of guilt?” To put it differently, if we acknowledge human freedom, and with it the facts of responsibility and guilt, are we not obliged to cry, with the prophet, “Woe is me, for I am undone. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”?
The question reflects the incredulity of men generally toward the good news of Christianity. If freedom exists, they reason, then guilt is a reality; far better to take away freedom than to admit the insoluble problem of unforgiven guilt. They cannot bring themselves to grant the possibility of a God who forgives, much less to allow him the opportunity to do it. This was foreseen by the ancient prophecy:
Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you (Acts 13:41).
The wisdom of the world reckons without a God who comes “not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).
Christianity stands or falls with the claim that this God has acted
7Karl Menninger, “What the Girls Told,” in The Saturday Review, October 26, 1953, p. 30.
188 Hardness of Heart
within history to fulfill his promises: to forgive sins and incorporate men in a redemptive community, here and now. The indwelling presence of God enables the members of this community, despite their manifest imperfections, to bind up and renew agape as often as it is cast down and broken. Living in the midst of a brutal society, this Church, in the New Testament sense, can absorb and neutralize the world’s malevolence. It grows by drawing the sting from the worst that men can inflict.
The redemption which the Church offers to all men is deliverance from bondage to the idols which have blinded and enslaved them. It liberates by conferring upon them the one thing which they can scarcely acquire by effort, agape. It thereby hastens the day when it will be fully what it already is in part: the fulfillment of God’s ancient promise,
I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26) .
This gift of a transformed heart frees men at last to come into their own; to inherit the high destiny originally prepared for them; to exult with a joyous company in the glorious liberty of the sons of God.