shed his old doctrinal and ecclesial identification and restraints. Even if he found relief from the final year’s ministry of sweaty and speechless sermons in which his wife had to assist by reading the sermons for him, we are still left to doubt that he ever realized any benefit or virtue of his new self-awareness, or ever found lasting peace with himself. It appears that his rigorous self-censure to retain self-integrity supplied very little if any sense of wholeness or unity with all others, probably because he could not rationally be more inclusive. He had even cut himself off from the limited community he had, eventually even alienating himself from his own family. Of course, that reminds us of the previous chapter. His admission of his loss of faith demanded by his self-integrity as a religious leader fell for the most part on deaf ears. But even his self-integrity was a casualty as well when he was unable to understand that mutual trust rather than a dogmatic creed is the humanizing element, and the humanizing element could well be the primary if not only point of truth of the religious consciousness.
In any case, each survivor of his family faced similar challenges from different starting points, challenges to find themselves, whether with or without any trappings from any religious institutions. Some led somewhat egocentric and tragically self-destructive lives at times, but there were also significant moments of self-realization, which opened new paths for them. Some experimented for years, looking for their true selves, while others seemed to know early on who they were. But ultimately to find that self-awareness, they all had one or more crucial persons in their lives to whom they sooner or later entrusted themselves and found the risk rewarding them by supplying new horizons of meaningfulness. In this finite life it is difficult to hope for more. But why did the well-intentioned Reverend have to create such an “earthquake” of negative effects whose shaking would not only destroy him but adversely affect so many others? Is it not that supposed Absolute, which Jacoby described in that beginning quotation, the Absolute behind “a religion that issues orders about the most trivial as well as the most important activities of daily life”? The presupposed, learned Absolute that one does not question.
Self-integrity and Mutual Trust vs. Religious Conceptual Rigidity
The self-integrity that is experienced within a life of mutual trust with others is the self-integrity of which even the alleged “Jesus”21 spoke of the possibility of the “loss of self.” In the parable of the rich farmer, he accentuated the necessity of finding our true selves or lives. He encouraged his disciples to dissolve materialism’s hold on their minds and be willing to follow him even if it required relinquishing certain pleasures and advantages so typically sought by humans. In his story, this wealthy farmer was so imprisoned by materialism and so captivated by selfish greed that he could think of nothing to do with his surplus wealth but to build larger personal storage capacities for it. But, Jesus asks, what if he died that night? Somebody else will end up with all that wealth, somebody else that he went to such lengths to keep it from, to keep it to himself. What futility! Did he lose just his existence or had he already destroyed his true “self” by his ego-centeredness and failure to relate to others?
In another story, Jesus asks a rhetorical question about those who refuse to leave any comforts and security behind in order to follow him: “What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?” He promises, on the other hand, could they deny themselves and be willing to give up themselves even to the point of giving up their lives, they would in the process “find” their true selves or “save” their lives. That sounds like paradox if not a personal demand. That the “life” promised is not some mere quantity of years, even if limitless, is obvious. For it is no fair exchange to gain the whole world if it involves losing one’s true self.
But this “true self,” this integrated self, this “authentic” Dasein is not found in isolation—does not and cannot exist by itself. Rather, that is precisely where it is not found. Even Heidegger saw Dasein as being shaped primarily by Sorge or “caring,”22 which involves the others, so is ethics, not simply self-absorption. Most religions were not originally preoccupied with simply creating isolated and asocial self-sufficiency in which only the individual obtains some form of relief, wholeness, or salvation, independently of all human relationships. The monastic orders that were spawned in several religions became problematic as they directly contradicted the social nature and teaching of the common people modeled by the very founders of those religions.23
But merely belonging to a group does not provide one’s true or integrated self either. Jesus did not spend time trying to convince people that they should find their true selves within any religion, not even within Judaism. To the contrary, he viewed religious leaders as full of hypocrisy, legalism, and on a quest for power by their using religion as a form of show or self-advertising. He did not suggest that a sense of belonging could compensate for a loss of one’s self when the belonging caused one to be divisive or exclusive or to neglect others’ needs or rights, or to feel better than others.
Self-integrity or avoiding the loss of self is a matter of the “inner person,” not the particular trappings or happenstance elements in his or her life.24 If one discovers the loss of self when in isolation from others, one can also experience the same when one has a very social life or is an active member of a large religious group. The message of many contemporary megachurches and other gurus and their apparent “success” in terms of numerical growth does not assure one of self-integrity. This size and apparent growth, however, may only attest to the fact that the higher the promised jackpot, the more people find their way through the front door. A collection of “donated” Rolls Royces does not prove the religious teacher is either moral or legal.25 In fact, self-integrity may, ironically, be left behind at the front door as people think only of themselves just as their isolation from others can be a restriction by which they experience a loss of self.
As I noted in chapter 2, Dorothee Soelle not only argued that the famous New Testament scholar, Rudolf Bultmann’s, interpretation of Christianity resulted in a gross individualism but also insisted that in choosing the status quo in the sense of political and economic structures of exploitation, thus “objective cynicism,” people may ultimately be choosing death rather than life.26 But those very structures of thinking about self and others within the megachurch are as destructive as one experiences them in any material or social isolation, as the loss of ego within one’s egocentrism. In a very real sense, the “Absolute” traditionally found in a religion, may take on primarily the characteristics of a particular culture’s ideals such as success or power, leaving behind even some of the ethical restraints in the religious Absolute’s traditional description, and this transference of qualities can take place subconsciously.
What I am proposing is that despite what people feel they as individuals are being promised in religion, regardless of how disproportionate such promised rewards or benefits might be, they find their religion meaningful not because they really experience all these benefits but because of a mutual self-realization within the specific religious group to which they belong. Therein may lie religion’s real value, which would not be attached to any metaphysics or mythology or even claims about past history or incursions into history by some god. William James said that the answer for the “more” life the religious people seek does not require some deity, but anybody that can help the person take the “next step.” Sometimes that next step is very hard to take, however, and there are cases such as Reverend Wilmot, in which the person who of all people should not have needed help to take that step, not only did not take it but found no one to assist him to do so. But that was a rather extreme and unusual case. As a rule, the religious community is quite supportive in sharing its members’ joys and problems, their celebrations and tragedies. To use Nietzsche’s metaphor of the “camel” stage of maturing or realizing one’s responsible autonomy, which was mentioned at the beginning of this study, Reverend Wilmot needed to go to the “desert” and dump that “burden” in order to preserve self and others, in order to live in true trust rather than blind faith in some Absolute.
This self-realization must
