Internalized Criticism and the Shadow of Christianity
I had a good laugh while I was volunteering at the Synagogue Office. One of the windows was broken by some neighbourhood children (not an anti-semitic incident, just childhood tomfoolery) and as part of their making amends, the kids involved were coming to clean up the parking lot. The date was marked on the Office calendar with a note saying "Child Labour" leading to a discussion of the ethics of the situation.
The Rabbi noted that while the parents had no problem marching their children off to their penance, Jews were conflicted about punishment and about making children work in general. The Rabbi related that his wife complained that the Gentiles had it right and Jews were too soft. The Rabbi concluded that Jews had internalized the criticism of their religion as harsh and unloving and tended to bend over backwards to prove otherwise.
It is a pretty popular criticism. I have even heard my aunt/ step-mother say that the "Old Testament God" is vicious and cruel, as if the "Old Testament god" were a different god from the Christian one entirely. I had to bite my tongue before asking facetiously if she wasn't aware that they were supposed to be one and the same G-d. It really does make me wonder sometimes how Christians of that sort deal with the spiritual schizophrenia of having these two gods in one body (or one book, at any rate). Either they are One, or they aren't. Either the O.T. is wrong, in which case get rid of it, or it is right and accept it as relevant.
It's this schizophrenia and inability to cope with it that causes all the criticisms and more. Had Christianity simply split right off and dropped the O.T. and any connection to Judaism there would never have been so much anger toward Jews. After all, the Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists and Animists aren't the slightest bit concerned about the Jews or the Jewish G-d or the O.T. one. It's not their god and provided that Jews don't mistreat them on account of him, they could care less about his personality.
Christians, on the other hand, having kept the O.T. are forced daily into reckoning with a god who is far removed from the one their theology later built. The "Christian god" is this sort of quasi-Platonic/Aristotelian being....mysterious, aloof, and far-removed from humanity. Perfect; omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. You can see why this god needs an avatar to embody him....who could relate to such a being? And why on earth would such a being care to be bothered with the concerns of lowly humans? But the O.T. G-d routinely throws a spanner into the works. He's just so, so ...messy!
This G-d creates human beings and then regrets it once He sees the trouble they are. So he destroys almost all of them, feels badly and regrets having done that. What, like he couldn't see all that coming? Why this G-d isn't an aloof and pristinely unconcerned Prime Mover....this is a temperamental and passionate diety, who feels; who is surprised, offended and angered, and then sorrowful and forgiving. One who can be said to love, and hate and even to make mistakes. How embarassing!
Jews, of course, are stuck with this G-d and the TaNaKh (Old Testament) and must cope with the difficulties and contradictions of it daily, some way or another. The "Dark Side" of G-d, anger, judgement and punishment, are right up in your face when you are a Jew and there isn't anywhere to hide from it. It's every bit as real and relevant as the "Light Side" that is love, compassion, mercy and forgiveness. The entire of Kabbalah is a mystical attempt to understand and accept these seemingly polarized attributes of G-d, and their echoes in humanity who is created "b'tzelem" (in the image). -Jung, btw, thought Kabbalah and Adam Kadmon were marvelous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kadmon
In a real sense, this refusal to whitewash G-d forces Jews to come to a kind of psychological maturity....the same maturity we reach as we cope with the imperfections of our parents and our childhood heroes and Life, the Universe and everything else imperfect. The Jew must, if they aren't to reject religion and G-d entirely, reach a state in which they can forgive G-d for not being all that we wished Him to be. We have to grow up, and take responsibility....we cannot be simply the dependants of G-d forever, we must enter into a new relationship in which G-d can also depend upon us; one of interdependance.
Humanity may be G-d's child, but Israel is G-d's spouse. Jacob spends his life running from his troubles until G-d corners him at the river and Jacob chooses to "wrestle with G-d" rather than run, and earn his new name of maturity, "Israel". Jews are forced to wrestle with their difficult deity... or spend their life running from it, which quite a few Jews choose. Whether it's Atheism, Secular Humanism, Political Zionism or Buddhism (where not a few Christians run away, as well) Jews internalize the criticism of their G-d and run away from it. About the only place they don't run (except when their was a social benefit to it) is Christianity!
But the Christian has always had a place to run, if they wanted to. They can focus on the "Light" and push away the "Dark Side". They can refuse to own the O.T. god, and they can push him back onto the Jews. He, and they, can become "the Other". The O.T. god becomes the Jungian shadow self of the Christ, and the Jew becomes the shadow of the Christian. The Jew and his cruel god can be everything that the Christian and his god are not. Every disagreeable trait can be projected onto them and hated from a safe distance. Like Portia with Shylock, the Christian can lecture the Jew about "the Quality of Mercy" not being strained without a drop of compassion in their own heart.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)
Judaism can be "legalistic" and Christianity can be "gracious", the Jewish god can be "punishing" and the Christian one "forgiving". Never mind that we pray in synagogue each morning to a G-d we are thanking for "not judging us according to our deeds, but according to Your Chesed (loving-kindness)" otherwise we would be doomed. Sounds fairly merciful to me. And never mind that some Christians can be as nit-picking about rules and regulations as you could wish to see, and that even "faith" can become a cause for constant anxiety about measuring up. Some Christians lie awake at night wondering whether they are or aren't saved and agonizing because they've been taught that if they have the slightest doubt then they aren't saved. At least I am certain whether I did or didn't say the Shema before bed....though I suppose I could drive myself to fits over whether I did or didn't say it with sufficient kavannah (intention/concentration) and somewhere in the world, some Jew is probably having such knipchens, even as I write this.
Of course, we all know from studying Jung what happens to those that cannot own their own shadow and project it onto others....they become the very monster they sought to distance themselves from. The Crusades, the yellow badges, the ghettos, the sumptuary laws, and the Holocaust. Not all of them Christian, of course, but all of them about projecting onto others that which we dislike in ourselves and becoming monsters. Not that some Jews aren't currently having their own bout with that via hating the Muslims, and by extension refusing to accept the existence of "Arab Jews" and Sephardic/Mizrachi culture...
But it is a peculiar thing in Christianity. My Aunt, who can be very nice but also inherited our fabulous maternal line temper, likely had no clue when she lashed out about the "vicious" O.T. god" how very vicious she looked as she said it, with her eyes narrowed in anger and her lips pursed in disgust, with her voice hissing like the serpent in the Garden. It is a wonder to me that she couldn't hear the judgement in her own voice as she condemned that same judgement in the Torah of the Jewish G-d.
Time and time again, from the early history of Christianity, up until the 1920s there have been calls to jettison the O.T. entirely, and given the amount of hatred for the Jewish G-d, Judaism and Jews I'm always surprised that no one ever succeeded. Perhaps somewhere in the backs of their minds, Christians have always known they had to keep this difficult G-d, as unpleasant a prospect as that was. This is Systems Theory at work, in my books. Perhaps the sudden fascination of Christians for Judaism and Jewish ritual is a side affect of this process of dealing with the other half of their G-d that they could never quite leave behind.
Jews have had to live with condemnation of our G-d and ourselves, but perhaps its time to be proud of our strange G-d and all His oddities and contradictions. Perhaps it's time to stop trying to bend over backward to "balance" ourselves in Christian eyes, when it's really certain forms of Christianity that have become unbalanced, and not us. We have our own self-correcting living religious system that seeks balance and Christians have to balance their own...if we are trying to "balance" them by putting ourselves out of balance it's going to get messy, and stay messy. It's the Christians who have to figure out how to deal with a three headed god, not us....we have enough trouble with a G-d with 5 "partzufim" (faces/appearances) and a Torah with 70!
