The therapeutic triumphs again
Saturday January 12, 2008
Categories: Culture
Reader William B. sends word that Joy Behar, sage of "The View" and the Upper West Side, has discerned the reason for the lack of holy figures among us in these latter days: Saints were psychotic and advances in modern...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Actually, someone I heard talking about this pointed out there might be a point here: people take so much medication that they weaken their spiritual instinct. Just in general, people tend to dull their emotions to the point of total blandness; and, in a more supernatural case, if God really _does_ start talking to someone today, the person probably _would_ just get on Thorazine until the drugs dull the prophecy away.
I know nothing about Joy Behar---literally---nor have I heard her comments, so it's hard to say if was just poking fun at her own faith or if she was denigrating the idea of saints and such. Either way, though, I can't help but wonder how long any Christians will still be watching "The View..."
God bless.
To steal a phrase by the pseudonymous "Spengler"'s beloved Rosenzweig, our "therapeutic culture" reacts towards the numinous (and the harrowing certitude of death) like a child possessed by a tantrum: simply covering its ears and screaming "I can't hear you!"
I have some mental illness in my family, and have taken a class with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) to become a better caregiver for an afflicted younger brother whose only local family soon will be me. Some (I hope nobody from NAMI is lurking, since the party line is "all") mental illnesses are clearly disorders of the brain, so I do not disdain efficacious psychotropic medications. Those for depression can be wonderful; those for bipolar, pretty good; those for schizophrenia, currently, pretty wretched and loaded with side-effects.
But I also can't help but note in myself some tendencies that make me especially suitable for my niche in life but which, writ large in my brother, are debilitating. And I do fear that we resort too quickly to psychotropic medications to control rambunctious boys in the classroom, for instance; I might well have been medicated into torpor had I been born two decades later.
It's not hard to read the stories of those Saints called "Fools for Christ" and wonder to what extent they had a little or a lot of what today would get medicated (or locked) away.
What I'm saying, I guess, is that there's an indistinct line running between the Brave New World and Bedlam - and that Joey is onto something. Long live Harrison Bergeron!
This gets into the whole debate over whether Mother Teresa had undiagnosed depression, of course. (I think everyone on CC, knowing my activism in the field, knows what side I come down on.)
But Rod, it doesn't have to be as reductionistic in either direction as EITHER Joy or you would make it. It's entirely possible, for example, that Blessed Mother Teresa was one of the most holy women who ever lived -- AND that she suffered unnecessarily because she did not accept medical treatment for her deep depression.
I know BN takes a dim view of speking ill of people. But Joy Behar is a dim dope.
I certainly don't think holiness requires suffering through depression. I have enough people close to me who are on antidepressants for conditions resulting from brain chemistry to know that it's a serious error to think you should have to bear that particular kind of pain instead of getting it treated. What Behar was talking about was something different, it seems to me. Francisco, quoting Rosenzweig, has it right, I think: we moderns think experiences of the numinous are evidence of mental illness -- as they would have to be in a wholly materialistic world.
It is extremely difficult to discern whether a numinous experience is valid, and from God; is valid, and from evil spirit; or is purely hallucinatory. I think it critical to withhold immediate judgment, one way or another, and submit the experience to discernment. This is why I am allergic to people who say, "God told me to do ____." How do you know it was the voice of God, and not of the Devil -- or your own will?
All of what you say is true, Rod. But I think it's worth pointing out that being a saint and having extraordinary "numinous" experiences are two entirely different things.
There are great saints who have had no such experiences, and there are people who have had such experiences (real ones) but who may not have been particularly holy at all.
It is extremely difficult to discern whether a numinous experience is valid, and from God; is valid, and from evil spirit; or is purely hallucinatory.
Indeed. You're right on target here, Rod.
I would recommend everyone interested in this topic to read Teresa of Avila, especially Interior Castle.
Teresa recognizes that some who have alleged mystical experiences are mentally ill (she calls it "melancholia"). She also recognizes that some are just plain lying.
She is also vividly aware that even having genuine mystical experiences, from God, is no guarantee whatever of personal holiness (a persistent and widespread misunderstanding). After all, as she sensibly observes, the Pharisees conversed at length with Jesus and were mostly none better for the experience. Simon rightly makes the same point. The temptation is to view mystical experiences as some sort of reward for holiness, whereas in fact they are no such thing. In some cases, as Teresa recognizes, they are meant as aids for the spiritually retarded, sort of like Special Education. It's anything but a complement in most cases, and of course there's no guarantee that the student will take advantage of the opportunities presented.
But Teresa also recognizes what our society tends to deny, that indeed some of these experiences are genuinely supernatural, and from God. (Not all supernatural experiences are healthy, as you rightly point out, Rod, of course, since not all the supernatural powers mean us well.) Teresa gives a series of very sensible ways to discern all this.
Ok, just when I was about to give Ms.Behar a little credit for being one of only two commentators I heard this week who understood what was happening with Hillary votes in NH, she comes up with another wacky bigoted 'far far away' leftist comment.
I suppose if there WERE no living God, then people WOULD be delusional if they heard the promptings of the Holy Spirit. But since YES Ms.Behar there is a God and the Holy Spirit does act in and through believers and Yes even Saints, then your premise would be completely false - As is your conclusion.
BTW, on a positive note when she was on the View talking about Hillary's moment on Monday, she said reporters were missing it. paraphrase 'It had nothing to do with blubbering. It had to do with connecting to voters and reminding them of their Click point back in the 1970's. As in 'Click' . . . Hey get your OWN beer!' Or as I mentioned earlier in last Sunday/Monday's Click 'Iron your own Shirt!' and 'We're slipping back.'
The other commentator who saw that Hillary touched on women's sense of being treated unfairly? Or having known someone who was passed over for a promotion or harassed at work for being a woman? And feeling the need to stand with Hillary on this? That was Mr. Shields from PBS. Smart man. Been around a long long time. Worth listening to.
Also don't know where to put this. But I wanted to send it to you Rod.
I know it's now officially a Huckabee blog.:)
But Mike Barnicle really captured the vitality of McCain that I saw on the campaign trail. This is the McCain I saw. http://www.newsweek.com/id/83855
Go Pats!
Suddenly it's all about the presidential race of 2008 again? What a bore.
Ok. Back to the subject of contemporary saints. I believe they are still among us in different forms that we do not recognize. Saints belong to their time. They are not ahistorical. It's less acceptable today to say you saw a vision, heard a voice, or have certainty about anything. That means that saints communicate their vision to us in different ways so we can receive it. I believe that there is an abundance of super natural communications from God to people even today. We just don't have much social space for it like people in the middle ages.
I think many people still undergo some types of experience, we just call it different names today. "Psychic experience or phenomena" is a good one.
Some of the great saints did undergo somethings normally unexplicable. In the Catholic experience things like bilocation, the reading of souls and other things are rare but have happened.
It is probably unhealthy to chase after these things or to chase after the people who experience such things. If they come, deal with them as a proper measured gift.
first, the Behar quote just isn't funny...
but it's more about so-called "prophets" than about "saints"...
and it's about those so-called "mystical experiences"...
and there is no way to verify that any experience is "from God"...
and there is no good reason to think that any voices-in-the-head are from God...
that's ancient superstition that seems to fail under examination...
as an example...
take Deuteronomy-Joshua-Judges...
it's totally unreasonable to think that there is any truth to the claims in those violent books of communications from God...
since those "voices" can reasonably be accounted for as coming from the imaginations of brutal ancient superstitious men...
there's no good reason to invent Revelation from God as the source of any voices-in-the-head...
Revelation is an ancient concept with no verifiable basis in Reality...
so...
Voices from God are just as unreliable today as they were in ancient times...
modern meds don't change a thing...
communication from God was ancient Myth...
communication from God is now modern Myth...
faith hope love joy peace to all...
"But I also can't help but note in myself some tendencies that make me especially suitable for my niche in life but which, writ large in my brother, are debilitating. "
Leave religion out of it for a moment.
I wonder whether schizophrenia is a bit like sickle-cell anaemia; the full show is debilitating, but a little protects against malaria, or gives imagination. When a friend's son was diagnosed with schizophrenia, I certainly saw my younger self in him, and felt wistful for the dullness that has come over my inner life with middle age, but, all the same, I'm glad I didn't go down his road.
I hope everyone who reads this blog has someone in their life who is a potential candidate for canonization (in whatever form that would take for him or her). Here's a link to a eulogy for mine:
http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=20837
Ruth did not have visions -- she was the most practically minded idealist I have met. And that was a good thing, because her family was as poor as the proverbial churchmice for most of her lifetime. Her ability to be thrifty and practical served them well.
What is offensive about Joy Behar's comment is its two assumptions: that sainthood requires otherworldly visions, and that such visions are of their nature false. If she was joking, it was a bad joke and reflects poorly on her education.
Sort of related, here's a provoctive thesis in the NYT magazine:
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?ex=1357880400&en=37ff00b8cd55be91&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
rombald:
Your peculiar logic reminds me of how, with my own disease, bipolar disorder, there is a correlation with (not causation, correlation) higher intelligence. Indeed, as Kay Redfield Jamison has noted in her books, some of the world's most accomplished leaders and artists have had bipolar disorder. And my own IQ would indicate, despite what some CCers would think, I'm not a dummy ;-P
Anyway, the Nazis kept this in mind too when Joseph Mengele, et al. were trying to decide who to preserve and who to exterminate (Jews, Gypsies, political opponents, etc.). It was determined that, as a principle -- although thousands of the mentally ill were killed in the death camps anyway, of course -- those with bipolar disorder were to be kept alive, as their genes were considered necessary for the evolution/breeding of the Ubermensch.
Be careful where you go with these arguments ... and, yes, be VERY glad you didn't go down that road.
The Protestant version (told as a joke) is that it's interesting that the Lillys made a fortune on Prozac and now the Lilly foundation funds Protestant projects. And if Martin Luther had had Prozac, there might not be any Protestants.
No one who reads the hagiographies of various saints would ever accuse them of sanity. We're better off without them.
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