The human condition is unavoidably filled with brokenness, pain, and grief says psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Jennifer Kunst. In her book Wisdom from the Couch she says further that we also innately feel that "suffering was never meant to be. The toil, pain, and profound sense of alienation that we experience are all a big mistake. The world wasn't supposed to be broken. It didn't have to be this way..." We long for something more. She continues: "Whether we are searching for the fountain of youth, unconditional love, or transcendental mountaintop experience, we human beings seem to have an innate longing to return to a lost ideal, a protected, blissful state. Some call it the Garden of Eden. Others call it Nirvana. Psychoanalysts call it the womb. In any case it seems clear that we have a picture of a perfect place that we once inhabited, and then lost, and now we're trying to find again."
Kunst goes on to share that these longings and stories about our origins get one thing exactly right: Our world is a very broken world. But the additional part that says, 'it wasn't always like this or it wasn't meant to be like this' is actually a fantasy. The brokenness of the world is no ones fault. It is just broken. The reason we feel this way is the subconscious effects that come from being forcefully evicted from our safe, sheltered, and continuously nourished state within the womb. We subconsciously want to return to that untroubled paradise. Feeling deep down that there is something more, something we lost, we tell stories that makes sense of it -stories like the Garden of Eden.
Kunst writes about psychoanalytic theory from within the Christian tradition. Despite the limitations she perceives, her background and faith clearly seem to inform her picture of a healthy life and psychology. There are parts of her faith she proudly commends, but others she finds hard to digest. I deeply appreciate the honesty and the beautiful way in which she attempts to synthesize both these sources of wisdom to cast a vision for a truly healthy life. But what should we make of this contention? Is brokenness just what it means to be human? Is it a fantasy to hope and long for a world without brokenness? Is the brokenness of the world really no ones fault?
I'm sure you know my answers to those questions. But I want to commend to Dr. Kunst the scope over which these questions hang. These are not peripheral questions that Christianity is relatively neutral on. These questions stand at the very core of the Christian faith. And it is not because the core of Christianity has a particular view about the intricacies of the afterlife or about the literalness of the first three chapters of Genesis. It is because the core of Christianity says something about Jesus. And that Jesus has strikingly set in motion an unprecedented path for human reconciliation, redemption, and healing. Things that psychologists care a lot about. As St. Paul says, death and corruption have been swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54). How? Because the sting of death is sin he says, and in the most unlikely of ways Jesus has defeated (though not yet eliminated) sin. The cosmic defeat of the poison of sin is the centerpiece of Jesus' healing project. For St. Paul, Jesus cuts out the very root and source of corruption and death. Another way of saying it is, for the Christian faith the roots of brokenness, conflict, and death are not "value neutral aspects of life." The roots of brokenness have to do with sin. And sin is never "value neutral." (Note: I am not saying corruption and brokenness in one's life is because of specific sin in the same person, like some sort of karmic equation. But I am saying in the big story of the Christian faith, brokenness and corruption did parasitically enter the world by sin; the same sin that has a grip on all of us). And the guilt, shame, and fear that comes from it does destroy us, as Dr. Kunst observes. But these are put to rest not by dismissing our fault and not by obscuring our role in the brokenness around us. It is put to rest by rejoicing in the core Christian conviction of a victory that undercuts the power of fear, shame, and erases our guilt.
Dr. Kunst talks about the self-imposed limits and boundaries of her faith commitments that also give her freedom to search and explore important truth within her field. I'm not entirely sure where her limits begin and where they end. But I would commend to her that a world where human brokenness has no source and ultimate redemption is a fantasy is a world that misses the very core of the Christian faith.
Kunst writes about psychoanalytic theory from within the Christian tradition. Despite the limitations she perceives, her background and faith clearly seem to inform her picture of a healthy life and psychology. There are parts of her faith she proudly commends, but others she finds hard to digest. I deeply appreciate the honesty and the beautiful way in which she attempts to synthesize both these sources of wisdom to cast a vision for a truly healthy life. But what should we make of this contention? Is brokenness just what it means to be human? Is it a fantasy to hope and long for a world without brokenness? Is the brokenness of the world really no ones fault?
I'm sure you know my answers to those questions. But I want to commend to Dr. Kunst the scope over which these questions hang. These are not peripheral questions that Christianity is relatively neutral on. These questions stand at the very core of the Christian faith. And it is not because the core of Christianity has a particular view about the intricacies of the afterlife or about the literalness of the first three chapters of Genesis. It is because the core of Christianity says something about Jesus. And that Jesus has strikingly set in motion an unprecedented path for human reconciliation, redemption, and healing. Things that psychologists care a lot about. As St. Paul says, death and corruption have been swallowed up in victory (1 Cor 15:54). How? Because the sting of death is sin he says, and in the most unlikely of ways Jesus has defeated (though not yet eliminated) sin. The cosmic defeat of the poison of sin is the centerpiece of Jesus' healing project. For St. Paul, Jesus cuts out the very root and source of corruption and death. Another way of saying it is, for the Christian faith the roots of brokenness, conflict, and death are not "value neutral aspects of life." The roots of brokenness have to do with sin. And sin is never "value neutral." (Note: I am not saying corruption and brokenness in one's life is because of specific sin in the same person, like some sort of karmic equation. But I am saying in the big story of the Christian faith, brokenness and corruption did parasitically enter the world by sin; the same sin that has a grip on all of us). And the guilt, shame, and fear that comes from it does destroy us, as Dr. Kunst observes. But these are put to rest not by dismissing our fault and not by obscuring our role in the brokenness around us. It is put to rest by rejoicing in the core Christian conviction of a victory that undercuts the power of fear, shame, and erases our guilt.
Dr. Kunst talks about the self-imposed limits and boundaries of her faith commitments that also give her freedom to search and explore important truth within her field. I'm not entirely sure where her limits begin and where they end. But I would commend to her that a world where human brokenness has no source and ultimate redemption is a fantasy is a world that misses the very core of the Christian faith.
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