Christian education has done all that is humanly possible, but it has not been enough. Too few people have experienced the divine image as the inner-most possession of their own souls. Christ only meets them from without, never from within the soul; that is why dark paganism still reigns there, a paganism which, now in a form so blatant that it can no longer be denied and now in all too threadbare disguise, is swamping the world of so-called Christian culture.
As Frieda Fordham observed, “Man needs to experience the god-image within himself and to feel its correspondence with the forms that his religion gives to it.”
Something that I have repeatedly observed, and I am not passing judgments on Jung or Fordham, is that non-Christians seem to have an excellent grasp (or at least in their own minds) of what is to be expected of Christians. Jung, and his disciple Fordham, nonetheless have a valid complaint.
The apostle Paul knew the feeling all too well, “the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do” (Romans 7:19). Jesus himself had issued the warning to his disciples, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me” (John 15:4). My Christian walk cannot be just me.
We place these sometimes convenient chapter and verse divisions into our thinking of the Scripture passages. Looking at John 15 we assume that this is a distinct and separate section. John 14:31 helps affirm that appearance by concluding, “Arise, let us go hence.” But chapter 15’s setting also has a similar bookend, marker of change but that does not start until 18:1, “When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook Cedron.” Chapter 17 was a prayer, “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven,” where he made yet another famous prayer. Chapter 16 is a continuation of the teaching in chapter 15. Are we to make the picture that Jesus taught in chapter 14 as they all lounged about but that the teaching of chapters 15 and 16 had to be some time or place different, added later as some insist, simply because Jesus told his people to stand at the end of chapter 14? In Matthew 13, Jesus “sat by the sea side” (v. 1) and the crowd gathered to hear him, “and the whole multitude stood on the shore” (v. 2). When Jesus fed the crowds in Matthew 14 and 15, why did have to do this: “he commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground” if they were already seated?
Jesus taught us a great deal in John 15–16, and his prayer is an excellent example in John 18, but it is all tied to John 14. Jesus began a teaching that started by a connection.
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (14:1–3)
There is God, there is Jesus, and there are you, those who follow Jesus. Jesus has the place and relationship to make room for you in God the Father’s house, “that where I am, there ye may be also.” It is not necessarily an easy thing to grasp. One of the disciples present at that original moment had to be told again in verses 9–11 that Jesus and God the Father had this close, family connection. The subsequent verses 12–14 extends this connection to the disciples. It is not just the disciples present with Jesus at that Passover meeting (see John 13), it is also true of those of us who believe Jesus today.
Jesus made still another God to man connection in John 14,
And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. (v. 16–17)
The “world cannot receive” and the reason is connected to the explanatory phrase, “because it seeth him not.” In that expression who is “it” and who is “him”? The “it” is a person because there is the question of sight. The “him” cannot be Jesus without Jesus making a very odd and uncharacteristic reference to himself. The “Comforter” was not described as we translate, “that it may abide with you for ever” but “he may abide.” Jesus made clear that while he spoke of a person, he did not speak of a human with a separate human body (which Moslems attribute to Muhammad), “for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.”
Jesus continued to describe a person, “which is the Holy Ghost” (v. 26), and then they arose from their lounging after a meal. The teaching of chapters 15 and 16 we of his almost parabolic style recorded in other Gospel examples. There is a formality that is unlike that just among friends in chapter 14. The military typifies what happened in this Scripture passage. An officer comes among a group of soldiers, they jump to a rigid standing posture called “attention.” The officer then opts for one of three situations: “as you were”, to continue in the rigid “attention” posture and attitude, or more formally line up and assume a slightly more relaxed “parade rest” form. People would sit or recline to eat and converse, but standing in respect to hear the words of someone important saying something important is a concept that our casual society sometimes does not grasp.
What was so important that Jesus wanted the disciples to stand and hear? He spoke of a relationship in important and comparatively precise terms. Jesus is in God. If his disciples abide in Jesus, then they will also abide in the presence of God. The world, the people who do not know or have this understanding cannot share in this relationship. Jesus was sending his disciples to make disciples of the world, but that the world would aggressively fight against them. It was an essentially simple task, but with enormous consequences, and costs.
Whether Jung knew Jesus, the matter is not clear. But Jung was clear on one thing, the Christianity he typically saw was not the Christianity typified by Paul in Acts of Christians that “have turned the world upside down” (17:6). What is missing? Jung knew. It was the image of God in our hearts.
Jesus not only spoke of the coming Holy Spirit in John 14 and following. Luke 24:49 gives hint to it, “behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Even the cryptic “Lo, I am with you always” of Matthew 28:20 suggests it. The Acts 1:4–5 passage tells it:
And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.
In Acts 2 is where it first happened, that was where “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (v. 4). People were changed. Blundering Peter spoke eloquently. The church that Jung had seen was not that body of three thousand on Pentecost Sunday almost two thousand years ago. They had that image of God not merely stamped inside them, but living in and with them.
I grew up in an Assembly of God tradition in two churches in the areas where I lived. As an adult I was member and church worker although I had never “spoken in tongues.” Struggling through some problems in my young adulthood, I had a desire to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, but like all the other times of decision before, I really did not want to bother with tongues. Meaningless babbling is not what I needed.
One evening I heard the same Pentecostal message, but this matter of closeness and communication with God was almost as if spoken twice as loud and echoed in my soul. Reluctantly I went down to the bench that was our altar of prayer when the invitation came for those who wanted to receive the Holy Spirit baptism. I tried very hard not to laugh as I literally experienced someone on one side saying “hold on!” while someone on the other side said “let go!” Tired of my lack of success, people started to drift off to pray with others. Simply tired from my troubles, I drifted off as in a dream to a bright room where I just looked at the floor and talked to Jesus. It was as if in a distant part of the church that I heard people giving those pleased sounds as if someone else had started speaking in tongues. I returned to my conversation and while I do not remember words there were moments as if a nod or a comforting hug affirmed my words and feelings. I leaned back, took a deep breath and it seemed like it was over. Yet I felt rested. I felt comforted. There was a moment of disappointment about not speaking in tongues, but for the first time in months I was something close to feeling happy. As I left, there were about three people that slapped me on the back and said things like “You sure got it tonight” and “you just started talking in tongues and talking and talking, it was something.”
I would love to be able to say that everything worked out rosy and I was the model of sainthood afterwards, but that wasn’t the case. Still, there were no more doubts and reservations about God. On many times before I had prayed and felt like God had heard me, or even that at times I had heard from God. But this time, and several times since, I had been with God.
As Jung noted, “Christian education has done all that is humanly possible.” Still, the difference, as our Scripture makes clear, is when God lives in us. Pentecost is much more than a debate on speaking in tongues. It is living in God.
Fordham, Frieda. An Introduction to Jung’s Psychology. http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=852&Itemid=41#Contents4 at The Jung Page: Reflections on Psychology, Culture, and Life: http://www.cgjungpage.org/index.php (accessed May 1, 2009).
Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychology and Alchemy. Collected Works, vol. 12. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
