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The Biology of Guilt
I absolutely love the conversation that developed around my most recent post on crime and sin. Corky points out the Lutheran view of sin:
I was raised as a Lutheran, and was taught that sin isn’t so much a matter of rule-breaking as it is a willful separation from God.
After Adam and Eve ate the apple, God comes looking for them in the garden but they’ve hidden themselves from Him. How could an omniscient God not know where they were? They weren’t fooling anyone but themselves! And as long as they go on sinning, they imagine themselves hidden and thus separated from Him.
So the problem with sin isn’t simply that it breaks some rule that God has arbitrarly decreed, it’s what it does to our state of being. It’s a matter of spiritual health. Just as you can abuse your body by eating junk food or never exercising, you can abuse your soul by indulging in sin. In both cases, you’ll suffer the natural consequences. The “rules” are just a way of warning you what’s probably going to happen if you keep going the way you’re going.
And later on, Joe Chip points out that this is quite close to how (Eastern) Orthodox Christians view sin as well, on a more mystical level. And yet at the same time, he adds that this more mystical and “pretty” understanding of sin doesn’t mean that those people who abide in it are any happier or healthier, and he exposes the root cause behind this:
I’ve observed that the emphasis on following rules to avoid sin, and the consequent feeling of guilt when those rules are inevitably broken, is no less a problem among Orthodox than among any other group of Christians. I think this is because the problem does not lie in the framing of the concept of sin, but the fact that it requires us to suppress basic animal impulses that it is vital to the overall health of the organism for it to expose and understand. The insoluble cognitive dissonance between feeling an impulse on the instinctual level and believing it to be wrong on a rational/moral level makes the human bio-machine (to use an ugly and clumsy metaphor) feel like it’s under attack. This basic anxiety/stress, the feeling that you, yourself, are not all right just being what you are, is, IMO, what we experience as guilt. [bolds mine]
Awesome analysis of the state of affairs if I’ve ever seen one. We’re simultaneously encouraged to “fulfill our heart’s desire” and at the same time subtly (and not so subtly) made to feel stress about the true nature of our desire. Thus taboos are erected to channel those true biological desires into socially acceptable avenues of expression. And it may be that our social institutions are only held together by this extreme tension of induced fear and desire. The conflict between the two is simply too great for our rational/conscious mind to handle. It acts on a principle where “there can be only one” answer to any given question. Thus paradoxes are shunted off into the non-linear, non-linguistic side of the mind which deals in symbols, images, and subtle cues that our linguistic minds totally miss. So it would seem that part of the solution of overcoming these things is to learn how to resurrect the paradoxes that underly our lives into the light of conscious awareness and untie ourselves from the knots which keep us inside of restriction social institutions.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
tim i think you would like this book
September 11th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Unless I am misreading this, I think this understanding of sin and guilt is way too simplistic and one-sided. The concepts here take the all-too-common negative approach, thus perpetuating the whole spiral of guilt and shame which characterizes much of western monotheism. I admit this exists, but it’s a tip of the iceberg, and unneccessary for such “enlightened” discussion, unless framing a context.
What exactly are the “hearts’ desires” and animalistic impulses are we talking about here? (sex? erection taboos?) How is it an “insoluble cognitive dissonance” to reconcile an apparent spiritual/physical paradox? And is it only religious judeo-christian mores we are examining, or couldn’t we broaden the arguement and ascribe the equivalent concerns to the mundane concept of “law,” and law-abiding?
Perhaps first it’s those social institutions which we need to set aside, and seek out where the concept originates. I guess it’s god.
The judaic 10 commandments are commonly & incorrectly seen as the “thou shalt nots” but really there are some please do’s in there. All meaning to preserve and build relationships from the Most High level, down to the family and society.
Jesus’s 2 positve commandments, simply to Love, is the revolutionary ideal. Never understood in such away prior, Love still has a hard time getting anywhere today. Even despite Hallmark’s bets intentions ….
If the solution to sin can be seen in its positive light, (which I attempted to descibe in my previous post on the subject) instead of leaving one feeling “I failed,” it could be rather “it’s okay, I can pick myself up, learn and move ahead.” Underlying this is having the freedom to choose and accepting a loving heavenly helping hand, removed from license or legal constriction.
If that doen’t make sense, then quibble away.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I really like the exploration of sin in CS Lewis’ Perelandra:
[quote]It is possible to refuse something offered for the sake of something expected. [/quote]
http://lorenrosson.blogspot.com/2006/01/perelandra-i-ransom-and-lady.html
We might expect some future and make our decisions now based on that expectation, but this already makes the presumption that we are adequately prepared to make projections about the future to any reasonable degree at all. I take it as a principle (hard to enact!) that we cannot predict the future to a useful degree, which seems to correpsond to this conception of sin. We reject what is continually presented to us by Nature and attempt to turn her towards whatever other thing we envision.
This characterization is not incompatible with neoplatonic conceptions of sin, either, which are more ‘mystic’ or naturalistic, the wandering self becomes lost and diffused in the maze of sense.
There is a clear analogy to ‘post apocalypse’ scenario-eering, too, the question of whether it is ok to sacrifice lives now to save more in the future is an example of this same pattern of thinking. We (including experts) simply cannot be trusted to make that assessment.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
So why do we need a guilt-laden notion like “sin” to get to the “It’s okay, I’ll pick up the pieces” mentality? We can get to the same point with, for instance, the Buddhist idea of suffering. A helpful comparison might be sin and karma. With sin (in the Christian conception at least), when you do a misdeed, it is a finite wrong committed against an infinite God, and your infinite guilt therefore merits infinite punishment. With karma, a misdeed comes rebounding back to you in due proportion and you can rest easy knowing that it as least possible to even the score and settle the cosmic debt. There’s no such possibility in the traditional notion of sin, as near as I can tell.
You can have ethics without morals, IMO. In my understanding of those terms, a morality is a system of laws, imposed from without, to govern behavior; the individual reacts to those laws reflexively and often with tons of negative emotion. Ethics, on the other hand, to me means a philosophical perspective on values, and therefore offers the possibility of engaging creatively with those values and holding them under scrutiny. It seems like a much more mindful way to work with values in that it allows the possibility of negotiating a compromise (or not) between one’s core values and the values of the world.
September 13th, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I should add that I know that not everyone uses “ethics” and “morals” that way; I’m just offering my own way of looking at it. Also, I think there is room for Jesus’ commandments of love without the concept of sin. Am I missing something?