Everyone Believes in Gods (Spirits) – Except (misguided) Psychologists
Everyone Believes in Gods (Spirits) – Except (misguided) Psychologists
Jim Harries, July 2022. [email protected]
My pointing to the universality of belief in gods (spirits) (I consider the terms gods and spirits to be synonyms) constitutes an effort at aiding intercultural understanding between Africa, whose people are often taken to ‘believe in gods (spirits)’, and Westerners who are taken as not so believing.
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God and Grammar
A widespread tradition capitalises God when referring to ‘one God’, whereas god as one of many gods, is not capitalised.[1] Capitalisation as a means of identifying a monotheistic God can be confusing: 1. Capital letters are not expressed in oral discourse. 2. Grammar also sometimes requires capitals, for example if a word begins a sentence, or is part of a title (as in the title to this article). Often gods being referred to as ‘spirits’ adds to confusion.[2]
The use of the same term for one God as one of many gods is not confined to English. The languages I am familiar with all do the same.[3] ?Presumably this is because realisation of monotheism has been relatively recent in history, and because the nature of God in many ways resembles that of gods. This means that confusion between God and gods is likely to be widespread. It is essential, in my view, despite many apparent parallels between the two categories, to maintain a clear distinction between God and gods.[4] God created the heavens and the earth. He singularly reveals himself through the ancient Hebrew tradition, in Judaism, Christianity, and in a transmuted form, Islam. Gods, on the other hand, are manifestations of people.
?(Note that although gods can be good or bad, positive or negative, it is the bad/negative ones that are usually of concern.[5] Non-human entities can be rendered gods by anthropomorphism, resulting in perceiving them as pseudo-people.)
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Gods in Modernity, and Psychology
Contemporary Western language usage expects ‘spirits’ and gods to be supernatural. This can result in discounting them on existential grounds. When there is no supernatural, gods / spirits are considered to ‘not exist’. Secularism has taken advantage of this proposed non-existence to create a category of feelings/emotions, that is unrelated to gods. The assumed existence of such emotions / feelings devoid of godliness has become important to the development of psychology. That is to say, according to understandings arising from psychology, contrary to much historical belief and ongoing assumptions in much of Africa today, feelings and emotions are not gods, and do not arise from gods.
The below that are in traditional Africa considered to be gods, are not so considered in the post-Christian West:
1.????Your dad, what he once said.
2.????(Authors of) books you have read.
3.????Your wife, who did not smile at you this morning.
4.????Your grandad who died in disgrace.
5.????A woman you once fornicated with.
Etc.
Psychology’s denial of gods was facilitated by ways in which widespread faith in God had already resulted in them largely being expelled from European communities. Hence psychology is of necessity post-Christian. Psychology could not have arisen in a community not already cleansed by Christian belief.
-????????Activities associated with psychology such as counselling and psychiatry presuppose God’s singular power already to have removed gods.
-????????Psychology enhances prior divine cleansing without recourse to exorcism.
When psychology discredits God’s role by considering God to be supernatural psychology and its sub disciplines[6] come to be at odds with belief in God.
The above mentioned ‘promotion’ of God into an irrelevant supernatural realm, is an outcome particularly of cartesian dualism. Human counsellors displace God in various ways. For example, keeping confidentiality, something learned from the Roman Catholic practice of confession,[7] renders gossip into counselling. This removes many of the harmful impacts of gossip. (Confidential counselling is these days enabled by urban living, high population levels, and an increasing tendency for people to live distantly from family. These recent ways of life were originally facilitated by faith in God.[8]) The need for vengeance is acquiesced in part by legal systems. Legal systems substitute formal punishments for revenge by those offended.[9]
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God’s Role Articulated
The means to counter gods has traditionally been known by terms often translated into English as cleansing or healing (terms linguistically and in other ways related to ‘salvation’). Cleansing removes gods or demotes their impacts on people. The major means of cleansing advocated in the Bible is faith in God.[10]
Outside of faith in God, people pitch gods against one another. Vengeance and gossip are means of doing this. The negative ramifications of these offensive practices render gods powerful and destructive. ‘Telling God’ of one’s issues rather than gossiping about them with others, and realising that ‘vengeance is His’,[11] are means to escape such negative ramifications. Thus murderous[12] gods are disarmed.
Exorcism has developed into counselling as a psychological practice. Exorcists enable a victim of possession to receive the attention otherwise sought through vengeance or gossip, without overt accusation. As mentioned above, psychology is effective when cleansing, such as that through exorcism, is already achieved.
Prior to faith in God, gods were considered causative of all misfortune, and healing was enacted through killing / bloodshed designed to bring cleansing. It was profound belief in God that originally facilitated realisation of causation other than by gods. Hence the faith in God that psychology rejects is at the same time foundational to the development of psychology.
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To restate the above in other words: Victimising others in general was once the basis for healing. Focusing one’s anger onto one particular sacrificial victim later enabled a new kind of peace in interhuman relations. This was perfected through Christ’s death on the cross.[13] Christ’s role as absolute victim whose once-for-all sacrifice created a state of constant cleansing, i.e., constantly-being-clean by faith,[14] has enabled a search for misfortune beyond the realm of gods, that eventually developed into today’s burgeoning science and technology.[15] Ongoing spread and use of science and technology facilitates some continuing escape from actions of gods.[16]
Ways in which advances in science empower certain people result in a risk of major disaster should today’s dualisms, that have birthed secularism, atheism and so on, travel too far from faith in the living God. Human beings are not easily satisfied. Faith in Christ removing the need for countering gods to achieve satisfaction (libations to ancestors, a constant search for sacrificial victims, and so on) can leave a gap that, enabled by technological advance, if recombined with anger and other emotions (a resurgence of the power of gods) following a lapse in faith in God, be expressed with gigantic destructive force.[17] Active faith in God is required to maintain a cleansed-state.?
Sacrifice constitutes a substitutionary-vengeance, the victim of sacrifice providing cleansing through removal of the ire[18] associated with the god. The faith to believe that God’s vengeance is full of grace and sufficient brings about Biblical cleansing. This is facilitated by the expounding of God’s Word through preaching, teaching, singing, listening to songs, i.e., certain kinds of (worship) music, and other practices under the rubric of worship. For Christians this requires faith in the divinity of Christ and his self-giving as ultimate sacrifice.
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Conclusion
Ongoing oppression of the potentially extremely destructive behaviour of gods requires cleansing that is uniquely effective when it comes from God and his revelation, especially guided by the book known as the Bible. Ongoing deference to God alleviates people’s orientation to drawing on destructive gods for relief.
Non-belief in gods in the contemporary west is not a product of gods not being there. It is a product of the ongoing impact of their having been side-lined by Christianity, and people not recognising them for who they are.
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[1] The derivation of God from gods suggests that discovery of God has been relatively recent in human history.
[2] Contrary to the biblical terms it translates from Greek or Hebrew, the English term spirit is generally not considered to refer to ‘wind’ or ‘air’. This distorts understanding, resulting in spirits and gods being given specific identities, that presumably contributed to their eventually being considered ‘supernatural’ creatures.
[3] E.g., Swahili Mungu (God), Miungu (gods). Dholuo Nyasaye (God), nyiseche (gods). German Gott (God), goette (gods). New Testament Greek theo (God), theown (gods).
[4] Shown in the Christian Scriptures: Acts 14:11+15.
[5] It is difficult to translate ‘positive influence’ as known in a European language such as English, into many indigenous languages, in which ‘influencing’ is generally negative. An example in Swahili, athiri. The total absence of a term to translate influence in some languages reflects indigenous use in which influence is a god. See also: https://www.academia.edu/attachments/64277297/download_file?s=portfolio
[6] These include: Brain science and cognitive psychology, climate and environmental psychology, clinical psychology and the following, counseling, developmental, experimental, forensic and public service, health, human factors and engineering, industrial and organizational, psychology of teaching and learning, quantitative, rehabilitation, social, sport, and performance psychology.??https://www.apa.org/education-career/guide/subfields
[8] Faith in God by Christians has done away with the need for human sacrifice that previously limited human populations through the need for sacrificial human or domestic-animal victims.
[9] Girard, Rene, 2005, (1977) Violence and the Sacred. Trans. By Patrick Gregory. London: Continuum, 18.
[10] Faith in God is frequently considered instrumental in bringing healing.
[11] Romans 12:19.
[12] Gods possessing human sentiments such as desire for revenge, envy, and anger renders them murderous when empowered. https://www.academia.edu/attachments/81744399/download_file?s=portfolio
[13] John 14:27. Choice of a particular victim (scapegoat) to be sacrificed brought relief to situations rife with suspicions that multiple people were guilty for one’s misfortune. Sufficient faith in Christ’s self-giving on the cross can enable a Christian to entirely escape from the need to search for contemporary victims to satisfy their need for revenge.
[14] Reformed theology considers the death of Christ on the cross to be a once-for-ever cleansing (salvation) for those who truly believe.
[15] That consistently arose entirely from Christian communities. (Lynn White Jr., Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1978), 22.)
[16] For example, the scientific discovery of antibiotics enables escape from gods’ attacks through certain kinds of illness. Modern transport takes us to realms once considered to be ‘of the gods’, such as the stars, and ‘exotic’ countries of the world.
[17] A contemporary example, the destructiveness of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been amplified by technological advances. The impact of Christianity having reduced fear of spirits can result in dispassionate killing should the fear of God that underlies it go into decline.
[18] My use of English, a language deeply rooted in a very wide spiritual verses physical dualism, makes articulation of my case in this article difficult. My use of the term ‘ire’, and other references to ‘emotions’ and ‘feelings’ are only approximations to what I refer to, that remain shadows due to the removal of ‘god content’ arising from considering ‘god(s)’ to be supernatural, so ‘non-existent’ in materialist worldviews.?