21 levels of Self-Deception: THIRD EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

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other hand, these things seem often to be regarded as purely symbolic. Physicality is largely if not totally rejected. The perfection of human life, to which we are encouraged to aspire, is one of a disembodied spirit or soul, just as the nature of God is seen as ‘pure’ spirit. Heaven, in these terms, is therefore only reachable by death. It is in this sense that religion very much reinforces the general culture’s obsession with and denial of death. The same ambivalence is played out in the way religion is presented. On the one hand it would claim to be life-affirming. However, its chief image — the cross — is of an instrument of torture and death. People are always ‘under’ Heaven and ‘under’ God, so we are locked into always having to aspire.

Desire is likewise misunderstood and thwarted. As will be explored later, it is in relationship with others that desire has the greatest potential to be realised. However, whilst this could be offered and embraced by religion, instead we are offered a substitute satisfaction for desire in the form of a ‘relationship’ with a Being who is conceived as totally ‘other’ — pure Spirit. The only way to reach this satisfaction of desire is to die and become pure spirit ourselves. In a traditional religious context there is an abstract notion of salvation. Creation spirituality writer Matthew Fox contrasts the sin/salvation approach of much of Western Christendom with the idea of atonement or ‘at-one-ment’. God is with us instead of always above us, so there is a horizontal rather than a vertical relationship.

A belief in mystery — ‘mysterianism’ — has the advantage of a bit of humility in the face of life’s

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