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

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complexities and contradictions. Many philosophers and theologians consider it impossible to have knowledge of God — amongst them Karl Barth. Nicholas of Cusa likewise said that the search for knowledge should be given up — if pure knowledge is a circle, then it would be best to be content with a polygon! But this could be countered by saying that the sacred is made by us. This happens through ritual, place, the care and honouring of nature and benevolence towards other people. This need not be a religious practice. It could instead be the place where the sacred and the secular meet. I suggest that this might be a practical spirituality — a faith that we could all share.

Grace Jantzen, whose work was referenced in a previous chapter, speaks of a religion that is too focused on personal spiritual journeys. She says:

‘Religion can come adrift by becoming personal piety that gives observance and devotion so large a place that attention is deflected from the face of the other.

“Watch out for the peace of private worship! … the artificial peace of synagogues and churches!” It can come adrift in a focus on what might now be thought of as ‘mysticism’ or private religious experience, detached from justice: as Derrida recognises, such private ecstasy easily connives with every form of historical oppression.’

Indeed, the ‘pious’ — as John Gray (Straw Dogs) suggests, may actually be seeking to block out consciousness rather than to raise it to new

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