The Shadow and the Beatitudes

At the very start of his earthly ministry, Jesus proclaims “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” (Matthew 4.17). I’ve long maintained that repentance is more than just about acknowledging our sins (though this is unquestionably an essential part of it), but is really about taking on a whole new way of seeing and understanding the world and our place in it. As we saw in my ‘Back to Basics’ series this past Fall, that ‘new way’ is revealed in the Sermon on the Mount, and most especially in the Beatitudes. These teachings, based in the expansive grace of the kingdom of God are incomprehensible to those whose hearts and minds are embedded in this world and its ways of violence and domination. But they are the heart of traditional Christian ethics, the commandments our Lord and Master, our King’s decrees. I’ve written a lot about them of late (most recently, this past Sunday), so today I’d like to take a different approach to them, and look at them through the lens of the shadow and Jung’s thought more broadly.

As we saw earlier in this series, for Jung, Christ was most valuable as a symbol, a new and transformational archetype of individuation, or personal wholeness. As described by Edward Edinger:

He is both God and man. As Jesus he is a human being living a particular, limited, historical existence in space and time. As Christ, he is the ‘anointed one,’ the king, the Logos that has existed from the beginning beyond space and time, the eternal deity itself. Understood psychologically, this means that Christ is simultaneously a symbol for both the Self and the ideal ego. (Ego and Archetype 131f)*

What he’s saying is that the man Jesus represents for us both the perfect original design for what humanity ought to look like and the perfect manifestation of that design on earth — he is both the perfect blueprint and perfect house built from it. This means that Christ tells us just as much about what it means to be human as he does what it means to be divine. Either way, we look to him as the ideal example of how life is to be done. This is why his teachings take on so much meaning for us as Christians.

In Jung’s thought, one of the major ways our psychology can go off track is in the “inflated ego.” If we are either not used to failure, or have been taught by word or experience that failure is shameful, we can get a puffed up sense of ourself, and our abilities, and become blind to our weaknesses, entitled, and arrogant. The Beatitudes would no doubt agree with Jung on this point, as their whole ethos is the “praise of the emptied or non-inflated ego” (Edinger 138). They bless:

• • The poor in spirit: The thesis statement for the whole Beatitudes and entire Sermon, really, this recognizes that those who are aware of their spiritual poverty, their limitations, and dependence on others (and especially God!) are the fortunate ones, for this sensibility opens them up to the possibility of achieving spiritual wealth or wholeness
  • Those who mourn: There is nothing like the experience of loss to break the power of our illusions and projections. Paradoxically, the realization that we are truly on our own in accordance with ‘the ways of this world’, empowers us to grow and find the strength for which we relied on others within ourselves.
  • The meek: As Edinger put it, these people are blessed because they are “teachable and open to new considerations which can lead to a rich inheritance” (137). This is the humility that leads us to curiosity and a ‘beginner’s mindset’.
  • Those who hunger and thirst after righteousness [or justice]: This is the Christian corollary to the Buddhist ‘hungry ghosts’ teaching — it is being in right relationship with God and promoting on just relationships with others, not selfish acquisition, that fills us up.
  • The merciful: This works on both a literal level — the Scriptures teach that God’s economy is based on a pay-it-forward principle in which we demonstrate that we have understood and received the mercy of God (among other divine gifts) by offering it others — but also on a psychological one: “the unconscious takes the same attitude toward the ego as the ego takes toward the unconscious …. If the ego is merciful, it will receive mercy from within” (Edinger 137)
  • The peacemakers: Just as trained mediators bridge the distance between opponents in the interests of harmonious and healthy relationships, so too is it the ego’s job to mediate between and reconcile our internal conflicts, for the sake of integration and wholeness.
  • The persecuted: There is nothing unhealthy egos hate more than a healthy one standing on its own two feet, so the healthy ego will likely have to endure pain and suffering as it pursues wholeness.

The Beatitudes, therefore, read as a textbook against ego inflation. This is in keeping with the whole kenotic (’emptying’) ethos of the New Testament. This is best expressed in the Philippians 2 hymn and its preamble:

If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that is in Christ Jesus:

who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.1-8)

In the incarnation, Jesus voluntarily ‘emptied’ himself of the trappings and attributes of divinity in order to fully experience humanity. This becomes the pattern for Christian ethics, in which we learn to relinquish our original self-centredness and identification with our immediate desires and come to understand an ever-increasing number of perspectives as our understanding of the complex world grows and matures. In this regard, many of us are still spiritual infants, who like the ‘rich young ruler’ turn from the way of Christ because of our “many possessions” (Matthew 19.16-22); others are focused on our immediate family, like the man who insisted on waiting until the death of his parents to follow Jesus (Matthew 8.21); and many of us still struggle with understanding “Who is [the] neighbour” Jesus calls us to love (Luke 10:29-37). It takes a lot to come to the fully mature Christian place where we can live out Jesus’ words to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5.43-38). This is the height of the kenotic ethic of the Scriptures.

So the Beatitudes are a powerful teaching against ego inflation, cutting off our projections and false attachments at the root. But, as we’ve seen throughout this series, the brighter the light, the greater the shadow. And so we must also acknowledge the ways this teaching can go wrong. The most obvious is that, in excess, this teaching can promote instead of a healthy self-transcendence, an unhealthy rejection of the self — so that one’s own needs are seen as unimportant or unworthy of attention. This has historically been true especially for women, against whom the ethic of the Beatitudes has often been weaponized. I think the best way of preventing this kind of abuse of the teaching is to zoom out a bit and look at the whole life of Christ. If we “let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus,” that includes taking time out to rest and pray away from the needs of those around us (Matthew 14.22-23) and setting firm boundaries against other’s projections and assumptions that may interfere with our life’s purpose (Matthew 16:23).

But it remains that in a healthy context, the Beatitudes remain not only the heart of our Lord’s teachings and therefore imperative for those of us who call ourselves Christians, but also a powerful tool to fight against an unhealthily inflated ego.

* Please see the series bibliography for full information.