What's Wrong With Pat Robertson?

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless.” ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel (God in Search of Man)

My father recently joined a Facebook group called: “Dear God: If you really exist please tell Pat Robertson to SHUT THE F**K UP!” Now, my father, like me, is a very mild mannered person who rarely swears. It usually takes something fairly extreme before either of us are moved to utter a curse word. So it was quite startling to see him associated with these particular words. Before this, the most unexpected thing I’d seen him do was actually joining Facebook.

So, what was it that Pat Robertson said that had my Dad resorting to asterisks and expletives? Just this pearl of wisdom and compassion:

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.’ True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

When Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote the passage quoted above, I doubt he had Pat Robertson in mind. But to his list of religion’s failings—“irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid”—we might now add ‘heartless and cruel.’ Heschel’s critique of religion is not a condemnation, but a call to action. It is a powerful critique because it is made by a deeply religious man—a rabbi raised in a family of Hasidic Jews, a mystic, and a theologian. Heschel’s point is not that religion is wrong, but the uses to which it is put by human beings are too often wrong. God caused water to flow from a rock, but the vessels of religion that we have constructed to capture that stream harden into authoritarian doctrine and the living fountain of faith is stopped up.

I have seen the video where Robertson makes these reprehensible remarks, and I have to say, I think that he truly believes that he is being compassionate. He is not filled with righteousness or hatred. He is not preaching fire and brimstone. In fact, he expresses concern and hope for the people of Haiti. This does not make his words any less troubling, however. He still said what he said. He believes Haiti is being punished by God for making a pact with the devil. But, if he is not intending to be cruel, that still leaves this question unanswered: “What’s wrong with Pat Robertson?”

I’m sure several people reading this can answer that question easily, but I want to suggest something else, as well. I think that the problem with Pat Robertson, and those like him, is that they have constructed their religion in such a way that it becomes a defense against truly experiencing the full impact, the full horror and catastrophe of events like the earthquake in Haiti. To declare such a disaster as God’s punishment is to make an escape from the reality of human suffering. It means you don’t really have to feel the pain, the grief, the fear and the horror, which are inescapable realities for the Haitian people.

For Heschel, religion and love of God meant compassion and action. It meant being affected by the suffering of those around us and doing something about it. He was active in the Civil Rights movement and marched with Martin Luther King. Heschel believed that we should not defend ourselves from the human predicament:

“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can hope against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”

In the Christian tradition, the portrait of Jesus is one of a man who did not remain distant or aloof from human misery. We see a man who weeps in the face of death, who reaches out his healing touch to the sick and needy, who responds to those who seek him out honestly with love and compassion. He saves his condemnation for the scribes and Pharisees, those religious leaders who rigidly hold to the form of religion, but have lost its spirit. To others, the so-called sinners, as in the story of the adulterous woman, he speaks with tolerance, forgiveness, and acceptance.

How different is this portrait than the one painted by Pat Robertson! I suppose that if you conceive of an event like the earthquake in Haiti as God’s punishment, then you can’t feel too sorry the victims because that would be to question God, to doubt both his mercy and his justice. But to experience doubt about God in the face of such a tragedy is an honest response. And maybe it’s against that kind of doubt that Robertson’s version of religion is ultimately defended against. It is uncomfortable to consider where a loving God is in all of this and how he could let such devastation occur to a poor and defenseless people. It is hard not to feel that the Haitians have been abandoned by God. And if them, then all of us.

I believe a truly religious attitude must be willing to undergo the painful feelings of doubt and abandonment. To allow such a feeling is to share in an experience that has been sanctified, in the Christian tradition, by Jesus’ own encounter with suffering. In the unspeakable torment of his crucifixion, he confronts the terrifying possibility that he has been abandoned by God, and cries out the opening words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It is by allowing thoughts like these, as Jesus did, that we prevent ourselves from offering facile and merciless explanations for occasions of suffering, such as that offered by Pat Robertson for Haiti. The word compassion means ‘to suffer with.’ We cannot defend ourselves against the suffering of others if we are to be able to respond with caring and compassion. And when we consider the outpouring of concern, the expressions of compassion, the relief efforts, the generous contributions of time, money and assistance; when we consider the spontaneous generosity of ordinary human beings, isn’t this where we find the presence of the divine that we had thought to be so absent from the scene? I believe that if we can learn to sit with suffering, if we can allow ourselves to experience doubt and grief, then we truly stay open to the living fountain of divine reality, which reveals itself in the astonishing resilience of the human spirit.

The New Testament offers this assessment of religion: “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” (James 1:26-27).

Today Haiti has more widows and orphans than it did a week ago. They need the care and generosity that is the true spirit of humanity; they need the compassion that is the hallmark of true religion.

If Pat Robertson cannot open himself to this vision of the human spirit, so beautifully exemplified in the life of Jesus and in the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, then he should just shut the fuck up.

The Thing You Fight The Most

“The Holy One directed his steps to that blessed Bodhitree beneath whose shade he was to accomplish his search. As he walked, the earth shook and a brilliant light transfigured the world. When he sat down the heavens resounded with joy and all living beings were filled with good cheer. Mara alone, lord of the five desires, bringer of death and enemy of truth, was grieved and rejoiced not. … Mara uttered fear-inspiring threats and raised a whirlwind so that the skies were darkened and the ocean roared and trembled. …

The three daughters of Mara tempted the Bodhisattva, but he paid no attention to them, and when Mara saw that he could kindle no desire in the heart of the victorious samana, he ordered all the evil spirits at his command to attack him and overawe the great muni. But the Blessed One watched them as one would watch the harmless games of children.”

~ from Buddha, The Gospel by Paul Carus

Jungians love parallels. We love myths and stories that seem to have strong parallels in the stories of a different, or several different, traditions. When there are clear similarities between different stories, we think, “Here is something true.” For Jungians, such a parallel is a validation of the psychological truth of a story. This way of thinking is similar (though, not identical) to the search for replication in the scientific method. The results of a scientific experiment are considered valid if they can be replicated in further experiments. In the study of myths and stories, when distinct traditions show a strong correspondence of image and theme, it suggests that these stories describe an important universal truth about the human experience.

It’s not that individual differences between religious and mythological traditions and the stories they tell are not important. Far from it. It’s just that when there is a striking similarity between stories, it’s a signal to pay attention, a signal that says here is a truth about human experience that has such an intensity to it that very different peoples of very different backgrounds and beliefs have felt it necessary to make a record of it. As Jungians we think, “Wow. Human beings all seem to tell stories of a god or gods (for instance). God is clearly a central concern of human existence.”

The story quoted above is an account of the moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment and his subsequent temptation by Mara, “lord of the five desires.” There is a parallel to this Buddhist story in the Christian tradition. Jesus, having just been baptized by John, having just seen the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descending upon him like a dove, and having just heard the voice of God declaring, “This is my beloved Son,” is driven by the spirit out into the wilderness where he is subjected to a series of temptations by Satan.

In both of these stories there is an event in which the transcendent or divine order breaks through into the ordinary realm. “A brilliant light transfigured the world” or “the heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended.” Both stories tell that the divine realm responds approvingly. In the Buddhist tale we read, “the heavens resounded with joy.” In the Christian tale, God himself declares that he is “well pleased.” And in both of these stories, this transformative and transcendent event is followed by a kind of negative movement. The devil—Mara or Satan—tries to undo what has just happened.

These stories describe the defining, transcendent moments in the lives of Buddha and Jesus, but they also present an image, albeit on a cosmic scale, of both the gifts and the perils of the spiritual path. It is hard to imagine that these accounts with their heaven-rending imagery could have anything to do with the lives of ordinary human beings. Let’s face it, very few of us will ever attain the status of a World Redeemer. Ordinary, everyday enlightenment is tough enough and will probably elude most of us on this go around. Jesus and Buddha both seem to brush off the devil without much effort, but if even these transcendent figures must face temptation, how much more will this be the case for those of us struggling on The Way.

Years ago, I was the supervisor of an after-school daycare program. Anyone who has spent any time with large groups of children knows how hard it is to maintain order and, even more, to maintain one’s cool. I would often get disturbed at how often I would lose my temper and act in ways that continue to embarrass me almost twenty years later. Many times I would promise myself that today I would be “totally zen.” I was not going to let little things bother me and I would remain calm and collected. Without fail, it was on those days that the kids would be particularly bad—screaming, hitting, fighting. It was as if they knew I was trying to stay cool and decided to put me to the test. It was a test I rarely passed. Usually, before the day was out, I’d be shouting, too, yelling crazy things like, “If you don’t pick up that Lego you’ll never be allowed to play with any of the toys ever again!”

Today, I am very conscious that there is, too often, a discrepancy between who I imagine I am during times of prayer and meditation and who I am at other times. The phone rings, but I refuse to answer it because I don’t want anyone disturbing the “spiritual” state that I have just achieved in my meditation. Or, I am sitting in prayer, asking to be a force of love in the world and my daughter calls me, demanding a drink of milk, and I growl at her, “I’ll be there in a minute!” Hardly the voice of love. Or, I will be tempted away from meditation and prayer altogether by the TV, the internet, or some compelling new app on my so-called smartphone, eventually crawling into bed with a vague feeling of emptiness and disappointment. These things are relatively minor, it’s true, and there are other, more serious things I do that I am not proud of, but I’ll spare you a lengthy confession.

Alan Watts once said that a person must be very careful about making New Year’s resolutions because the devil would be sure to find out about it and put a stop to it. It seems that our best impulses are always in danger of being cancelled out by our worst impulses. The early Desert Fathers of Christianity used the image of a war with one's own heart. Some schools of Buddhism have pictured a whole universe of demons that must be overcome on the spiritual path.

In Jungian psychology, it has been observed that the first “layer” of the psyche that must be worked through is usually the personal unconscious, that aspect of the psyche that Jung termed “the shadow.” The shadow includes all those aspects of someone’s personality that are not compatible with the image that they have of themselves. For those whose interests tend toward the spiritual, this is often some form of aggression or anger that does not fit in with the conscious idea a person might have of being a peaceful or loving person. Jung once famously said that enlightenment is not achieved by imagining figures of light, but of making the darkness conscious.

And maybe this is the important point in the stories of the temptations of Buddha and Jesus. They tell us that temptation is a constant presence on the path to enlightenment and the greater the light we may attain, the greater the shadow will be. Even the great World Redeemers are not free from temptation. If we do not stay conscious of our darkness, we may never experience our light. How many times must we see a “family values” advocate, like Mark Sanford, admit to an extra-marital affair, or a corruption crusader, like Eliot Spitzer, become corrupted, before it becomes clear that the things we fight against in others might best be addressed in the privacy of our own hearts?

“You always become the thing you fight the most,” says Jung.

It’s not that I believe that we should all feel ashamed about our human failings, but simply that we should admit and accept that we have them. I believe it is important to try to be good, but dangerous to believe too much in our own goodness. Acceptance of our own darkness makes us more compassionate to the darkness in others. And in my own life, I know that when I let go of my airy self-righteousness and get back down to the solid ground of compassion, I feel I am getting closer to the light.

I figure it was not for nothing that when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he made sure that they included the phrase, “lead us not into temptation.”

Gethsemane

“They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I pray.’ He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,’ he said to them. ‘Stay here and keep watch.’ Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. ‘Abba, Father,’ he said, ‘everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.’” (Mark 14:32-42)


Easter Sunday is the day on the Christian calendar that celebrates the joy and mystery Christ’s resurrection. That is preceded, however, by a week-long remembrance of Jesus’ suffering and death, known as Holy Week. Before the promise of new life as pictured in the resurrection, and ritually commemorated by many—mostly unconsciously—with Easter egg hunts and bunnies and baby chicks, there is an extended meditation on the fact of suffering and death in human life. This juxtaposition is essential. One cannot fully experience the meaning of the resurrection until they have experienced the full impact of sorrow and loss.

The story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane is, for me, one of the most poignant and moving of the whole of the gospel. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.” It tells the story of a man who not only suffered physically, but was in emotional agony as well. Jesus prays in words every human being has spoken or thought at some point: “Please, don’t make me have to go through this. Spare me from this.” If there is truth in the Christian message, it is here in this story that teaches that God gets it. God knows the suffering and the sorrows that are a part of every human existence because he has felt them deeply himself.

My four year old daughter recently learned the Easter story and has begun to ask about dying. “But nobody in our family is ever going to die!,” she pleaded with me through tears. “Father, take this cup from me.” Every day as I watch my children grow up, my heart breaks a little. Every time they learn something new, some sweet, earlier version of them is gone forever. I glory in their growth, but I’m sad at the loss of little things, like the mispronunciation of a word—‘waboo’ becomes ‘water’ and all of sudden my little girl is no longer a baby. When my daughter asked about death, I felt I'd never be able to put my heart back together again.

I cannot save my daughter from the reality of death, as much as I wish I could. All I can do is hold her close, tell her I love her, and pray that my love is a reality that will outlast my body, that will cling close to her and to all the people that I love, long after I am gone. And I cannot save myself from the reality of death. Too soon (it’s always too soon), people that I love will die. It is a thought that is, at times, more than I can bear. “Abba, Father, take this cup from me.”

When things are more than I can bear, I turn to poems and stories. The stories that the Great Religions tell I have found to be helpful, like the one of Jesus in Gethsemane. Here is a poem by Mary Oliver that, I believe, gets it exactly right:


In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

What's On Your Mind?

“We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.”
(from The Dhammapada: The Sayings of the Buddha)


I would be embarrassed to admit to a majority of the things that I am aware of passing through my mind. Little petty thoughts, jealousies and judgments, far too much trivia. The thoughts I like are fleeting and hard to hold and, by far, the greater portion of what goes on in my mind runs automatically, without any real awareness on my part at all. If, as the Buddha teaches, “we are what we think,” then a large percentage of the time I am a reflection of my baser nature.

I think this saying of the Buddha reflects a fundamental principle of religious understanding--that our subjective reality within us matters as much as the objective reality around us. But more than that, I think it presents a challenge to the idea, championed by Freud, that religion is an infantile wish fulfillment of a longing for protection by a strong and benevolent father. Religion, this line of thinking goes, is a way of taking refuge in a comforting illusion, never growing up, staying a kind of dependent child.

But, far from suggesting dependence, the Buddha’s words are an encouragement to independence and responsibility. “With our thoughts we make the world.” We are, in large part, responsible for the kind of world in which we find ourselves. The religious attitude is not one of resting in the comfort of an illusion. Rather, it is the difficult work of seeking truth by examining the way that we see and understand the world.

I don’t believe that “with our thoughts we make the world,” means that we are responsible for things like disease or natural disasters. I think it means that we are responsible for how we respond to the events of our lives. Do we deepen and grow, becoming more compassionate with others and ourselves? Or do we shrink and atrophy through bitterness and resentment, refusing to give up the role of victim? Personally, I know that my own victimhood is never far from my consciousness.

For me the saying, “we are what we think” is a call to vigilance. When I read this line I feel a heavy weight of responsibility. To me it is a saying that demands our attention to and participation with the world. The way that we see the world is a major factor in determining the quality of the world in which we live.

A similar thought is expressed by Jesus when he says: “For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (Matt. 13:12) At first glance, this seems a harsh thing to say. Why should the person with more get more and the person with less get less? It seems more like a parody of present-day economic disparity than deep, spiritual wisdom.

But the point is that what we bring to our encounter with life is important. The quality of our consciousness matters. It is the abundance or scarcity in our own hearts that is the essential thing. In my own experience, I remember things like the awe I’ve felt at the beauty of a simple sunset, or the amazement of feeling truly seen as I gazed silently into a loved one’s eyes. And I have known, in those moments, that I am rich beyond measure. This is the part of me in which abundance and gratitude are active. But there is another part of me in which a kind of narcissistic entitlement reigns. At these moments everything I do have counts as nothing because I am always hungry for more, usually for something like love and attention, admiration and praise.

I know in which of these two worlds I’d rather live. If I could just hold on to that thought.