This is a great essay from Dr Kania, perhaps too short as there is much more to be explored under this topic. He originally entitled his essay "The Abyss". What he's exploring are the complexities of having the courage to ask difficult questions or support unpopular causes and how we discern when to stand up for our beliefs and principles. Being Christian is not simply about trying to demonstrate how "different" we are to everyone else in society. The "mark" of Christ is not our unpopularity. It is our capacity to discern the moral good in the complex dilemmas of life and, when necessary, to stand up for that good not because it brings approbrium on ourselves but because that good is worth standing up for sometimes at great cost. This is a highly relevant issue today in, for example, the ways in which we discern to stand up for various principles in public life such as ethical issues like abortion, or capital punishment, or social justice issues.

A conversation in a psychiatric ward…

A young and apprehensive nurse is being led on an orientation tour by the Sister-in-Charge of a Psychiatric Hospital. The Sister opens a door to a room in which two men are lying in their beds; one man, who seems quite oblivious to the presence of the other, has his right hand thrust inside his pyjama shirt. The young nurse asks the man if he is cold, and whether that is the reason why he has his hand inside the shirt. The patient replies: "Mademoiselle, I am not cold! I am Napoleon Bonaparte!" With a wry smile the Sister-in-Charge asks the patient: "Who told you that you are Napoleon Bonaparte?" The patient responds emphatically: "God did!" As if stung out of a stupor, the patient across the room sits up erect, and in a voice hinting of Divine retribution, shouts: "I never told you that you were Napoleon Bonaparte!"

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." … Friedrich Nietzsche

In the 19th century the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), issued a warning to his readers in Beyond Good and Evil, that "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." A number of years later, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and his daughter, Anna (1895-1982), developed the notion of 'self-projection', best defined by Sigmund Freud's biographer, Peter Gay (1988, p. 281), in Freud: A Life for Our Time, as: "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another."

The theory of self-projection…

During the 20th Century, the theory of self-projection became further characterized as that state of mind where an individual blames a third party for the weaknesses or inadequacies inherent in themselves. The more virtuous or talented the third party, the greater will be the defense mechanism by which the threatened individual seeks to project his or her personality on them. Hence, for example, a promiscuous person on seeing another in whom chastity is an important and concrete reality, may slander that individual for being promiscuous. By doing so they revile that person for the lack of virtue that they themselves find it difficult to attain. This hatred makes the 'hater' feel perversely better, and in their revulsion for the innocent party's 'promiscuity' they reclaim for themselves a hint of virtue: "At least I am not like them!" Psychiatrists also describe how those who self-project wittingly or unwittingly create in their minds a battle in which they believe the object of their hatred, thinks as they do, and like them, personally wishes to destroy them.

In a world where Christian morality has become more and more counter-cultural, Christians have found themselves as victims of self-projection with increasing frequency. The media ridicules not only Church institutions, but also ordinary people who daily seek to live out the Gospels in their everyday simple lives. Bombarded by much of the media that chastity or purity of heart is 'old-fashioned', and that God is a mere 'opiate' of a servile mind, it is little wonder that individuals under such pressure, can and do begin to doubt the certitude of their values.

Yet Christ during his ministry also pointed toward the existence of self-projection. Choosing not to associate himself with the Pharisees He soon became the target for their 'self-projection'; He bore the labels of the faults of his enemies — He bore the lashes for the sins they had perpetrated, and harboured in their hearts. Before his crucifixion, Christ summarized to those who chose to be His enemies the very root reason as to why they hated him:

"But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.' For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." (Matthew 11: 16 – 19, NRSV)

In short, the life and the teachings of Christ, in all their goodness, triggered in those hearts blackened by sin and hate a self-projection that led to the death of the best man ever to walk this planet. It can thus be concluded that those who seek to live lives of goodness will always attract the unjust arrows of hatred, and for this reason, Christ comforted his followers by teaching:

"Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets". (Luke 6: 22-23, NRSV)

Herod did not execute St John the Baptist, because the Baptist was ill-informed about the content of Herod's character, but that the Baptist was too well-informed.

What lesson can we learn as Christians?

So what lesson can we learn as Christians? Although we must be self-critical, similarly we must not take so much to heart what others say about us without first examining their motivations for so doing, otherwise we may be listening to the voice of jealousy, envy, lust, hatred or even lunacy, and guide our lives by such instruction. As Christians we are obliged to be meek, but not subservient to evil, nor lacking such confidence of self that we cannot make a stand for our principles.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), was far from the universally acclaimed great President of the United States which we now read of in the history books. With an expensive war effort, both in terms of lives lost and dollars expended, Lincoln bore the brunt of criticism throughout the major newspapers of his divided nation. Whereas today, his birthday is honoured with a public holiday, in 1864 there was no shortage of people willing to label him 'gorrilla' and 'evil' for his seeking to emancipate the slaves, and 'civilize' a nation. The New York Herald in 1864 commented that Lincoln was "an egregious failure" who ought "to retire from the position to which, in an evil hour, he was exalted". (Donald, 1995, 524)

Yet Lincoln with a simple and rustic assuredness in the fundamental principles of the Scriptures on which he based his life, carried through his plan, against all odds, against all those who would have slavery perpetuated and a nation divided, against all those who saw in him everything they hated about themselves. As David Donald his biographer notes:

"Lincoln did not read the manifesto. He had no desire to get involved in a controversy with its authors, he told Welles. The attack saddened him, and he admitted to Noah Brooks, "To be wounded in the house of one's friends is perhaps the most grievous affliction that can befall a man." But he refused to brood about it. "It is not worth fretting about", he joked; "it reminds me of an old acquaintance, who, having a son of a scientific turn, bought him a microscope. The boy went around, experimenting with his glass upon everything … One day, at the dinner table, his father took up a piece of cheese. 'Don't eat that father,' said the boy; 'it is full of wrigglers.' 'My son,' replied the old gentleman, taking a huge bite, 'let 'em wriggle; I can stand it if they can.'" (Donald, 1995, pp. 524-525)

For in the end if we do our conscience well, there will be no abyss for us to be frightened by, nor anything for us to hate ourselves for, and thus nothing for us to self-project on another.

Image Credits:
The Crucifixion image used in the header and footer to this page is sculpted by Bernhard Heiliger, at St.-Annen-Church in Berlin-Dahlem and available on Wikipedia Commons. Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

[Andrew Kania's Archive]