Christianity & the Shadow Side of Existence

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Pastoral Psychology [pspy] PH006-291743 January 6, 2001 12:0 Style file version Nov. 19th, 1999

Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2001

Christianity and the Shadow Sideof Human Experience

Kirk A. Bingaman 1

In Jungian theory, every human being, including the Christian believer, has ashadow side to his or her personality. The shadow, then, like it or not, is a partof our common human lot, a part of the human being’s fabric. The best any ofus can do is to mitigate the effects of the shadow, by taking back into the self,integratively, those aspects of the shadow that we have projected onto others. AsJung believed, it is sheer fantasy to think we can eradicate the shadow from theself, or that, through religious devotion, suppress it into submission. Yet even ifwe could, by our own power and/or the power of God, straitjacket the shadow,would we want to live without that which not only at times brings us pain andsorrow, but at other times adds richness and depth to our living? This paper willtake the position that it is in the best interests of the Christian believer to answerthis question with a definitive, “No!”

KEY WORDS: Christianity; Carl Jung; shadow.

INTRODUCTION

Down through the centuries, Christianity has not looked favorably upon hu-man nature and human creatureliness. Martin Luther, for example, suggested thatthe root of our sin “lies not in our works but in our nature” (Luther, quoted inAlthaus, 1966, p. 153). John Calvin was more graphic, when he explained thathuman nature is “a veritable world of miseries” and “a teeming horde of infamies”(Calvin, 1960, p. 36). Yet according to C.G. Jung, disparaging our very own nature,even if it does have historical and theological justification, will do the modern manor woman little good. Modern human beings, Jung believed, had heard myriad

1Kirk A. Bingaman holds a Ph.D. in psychology and religion from the Graduate Theological Union,Berkeley, and is a pastoral counseling associate at the Lloyd Center Pastoral Counseling Service,San Anselmo. Address correspondence to Kirk A. Bingaman, 11 Glen Dr., Fairfax, California 94930;e-mail: [email protected].

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sermonic pleas to triumph over human nature, or the so-called shadow side ofhuman existence, to subdue the flesh and tame instinctual appetites, but to littleor no avail. Even after 2,000 years of theological and homiletical exhortation, theshadow side of human existence is still very much alive. Thus, for Jung, it was timefor Christianity to try a new approach, a new strategy, one that does not persuadehuman beings to distance themselves from their fundamental nature or creature-liness, but rather helps them make peace with it. As Jung pointed out so manytimes, the modern human being has heard more than enough about sin and guilt:“He [sic] is sorely beset by his own bad conscience, and wants rather to know howhe is to reconcile himself with his own nature—how he is to love the enemy in hisown heart and call the wolf his brother” (Jung, 1958, p. 341).

The purpose of this paper is to examine C.G. Jung’s analysis of Christianity’sresponse to the shadow side of human existence. In reviewing Jung’s shadowconcept, we will discover that it is an indispensable aspect of psychical life, indis-pensable if one’s goal is the integration of personality. However, Jung feared thatChristianity’s aim was to keep the shadow side of human existence at arm’s length,hopelessly relegated to the periphery of religious faith. Jung, though, will issuesomething of a warning to Christian theology: Do not be too hasty in condemningor ignoring humankind’s biological inheritance. Indeed, Christian believers woulddo better to remember that they are bound to this earth and world, that they are firstand foremost bodies, and that they are fundamentally related to the animal world.Jung, in keeping before us the shadow side of human existence, was in many waysexpressing his displeasure with Christianity’s tendency to depreciate our basic,God-given humanity.

THE JUNGIAN SHADOW AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

“The Jungian concept of the shadow,” argues Henri Ellenberger, “should notbe confused with the Freudian concept of the repressed:” the shadow is related todieUnbewusstheit, or “the phenomenon of unawareness,” instead ofdas Unbewusste,or the phenomenon of unconsciousness (1970, p. 707). For example, I might be veryeffective (maybe this is wishful thinking) when it comes to marriage and familycounseling, and yet I can still go home at the end of the workday and not alwaysbe the most loving husband and father. As a result, I begin to psychically gravitatetowards the former, my persona as a pastoral counselor, as that which is mostindicative of my fundamental identity. My polished social persona becomes thereal me, in toto, while the other side of me, the shadow, is conveniently ignored. Andit gets easier and easier to ignore my shadow, since it only seems to manifest itself inthe hidden confines of my home, away from the public eye. Thus, in an increasingstate of unawareness, I can incessantly embrace the “good side” of my personality,while overlooking my shadow side. Even worse, I canproject my shadow ontothe other members of my immediate family, seeing them as the provocateurs, the



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ones to blame for my unlovingness. But until I can withdraw the projection ofmy shadow, there will be for me no individuation. As Peter Homans reminds us,individuation, Jung’s word for the process of human growth and developmentleading to wholeness and integration, onlybeginswhen the shadow has beenconfronted. In other words, “confrontation with [the shadow] denoted [for Jung]a kind of ‘prologue’ to the individuation process” (Homans, 1979, p. 104).

Quite frankly, the shadow side of human personalitydoescontain certain infe-riorities and dark aspects that we would often like to forget, or, to use Ellenberger’sterminology, like to block out of awareness. “The shadow is made up of all the rep-rehensible qualities that the individual wishes to deny, including animal tendenciesthat we have inherited from our infrahuman ancestors, as well as the modes andqualities that the individual has simply not developed” (Wulff, 1991, p. 424). These“reprehensible qualities” and “animal tendencies” are undoubtedly what Lutherand Calvin had in mind when they expressed their displeasure with human nature.Indeed, what Christian wants to be reminded of his or her shadow, when, afterall, he or she is making every effort to be a “new creation” in Jesus Christ? Oneonly has to remember the words of the apostle Paul: Anyone who truly belongs toChrist is a new creation; “the old (presumably the shadow, or what Paul called the“flesh”) is gone, the new has come” (II Corinthians 5:17, NIV). Maybe Paul knowsfrom experience that when one confronts, head-on, the shadow archetype, nothing,including one’s religious faith, will ever be the same again. Let me put this plainly:one’s religious faith will not and cannot emerge intact after it has confronted theshadow. Make no mistake about it, confronting the shadow is risky business. Whyelse would Christian theology put so much emphasis on putting to death the flesh,on treating human nature as the enemy, as some sort of intruder or invader?

While it is all well and good for Christians to think of ourselves as “newcreations” in Jesus Christ, they would still do well to juxtapose this particulartheological construct with Jungian psychology, as a way of giving themselves areality check. As Jung never let us forget, it is sheer unreality and fantasy to believethat conversion to Christianity can eradicate the shadow from human personality,that our miseries and infamies can be miraculously corralled simply through faithin Jesus Christ. This, for Jung, to put it mildly, was wishful thinking. It perpetuatesthe fiction that only thepersona, the surface layer of human personality, needsour work and careful attention. Christian believers can work at polishing theirpersonas, while leaving the task of eradicating the shadow or the flesh to God.However, assuming God has the capacity to remove the shadow from the humanpsyche, we must ask ourselves this question: Do wewantGod to remove it? ForJung, the answer was a resounding “No!” The shadow, as Jung elucidated, “doesnot consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a numberof good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights,creative impulses, etc.” (Jung, 1959, p. 266). Therefore, even if God does possessthe power to turn us into shadowless creatures, is this what we want to put at thetop of our wish list? Would we want to live without the fundamental dynamism,



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the energic vitality, which not only at times brings us pain, grief, and sorrow, but atother times adds richness and depth and substance to our living? The shadow sideof human personality, then, in Jungian thought, is a more neutral entity. Contrary totraditional Christian theology, the shadow, our instinctual inheritance, is not alwaysan enemy, but is sometimes a friend, “exactly like any human being with whomone has to get along, sometimes by giving in, sometimes by resisting, sometimesby giving love—whatever the situation requires” (Jung, 1964, p. 183).

If the shadow is, as Jung suggests, an important and ineradicable componentof psychical life, then the Christian believer, just like any other human being, mustfind a way for the conscious ego and the shadow to peacefully coexist. “Everyone,”wrote Jung, “carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s life,the blacker and denser it is” (Jung, 1938, p. 93). Jung would have been furtherahead if he had revised that last clause to read, “thedarker and denser it is.”With the unfortunate decision to at times associate the shadow with blackness,instead of consistently using the image of darkness, Jung’s writings on the subjectcould be construed as implicitly racist. Demaris Wehr points out that while theJungian “shadow is relatively free of sexist overtones, it is not free of racist ones”(1987, p. 63). Jung’s theory of the shadow, according to Wehr, was unfortunately“whitecentric,” especially when he traded the imagery of darkness for that ofblackness. The implication, of course, in terms of the latter, is that the shadow sideof human nature is subtly likened to a black-skinned person. “Obviously,” Wehrobserves, “this description (of the shadow) would not work for a black personsince the shadow is the opposite of the conscious personality” (1987, p. 63). Saidanother way, Jung’s concept of the shadow, especially if it is imaged as the “blackside” of human existence, cannot inclusively engage all human beings, cannot beapplicable to every group of people. The problem, Naomi Goldenberg insists, isthat Jung had a tendency to judge other peoples and cultures “only in terms ofhis own.” There are times when “blacks in Africa and in America play the role ofprimitives for Jung, who obviously sees white European culture as much superior”(Goldenberg, 1979, p. 55).

Still, I would argue that while the Jungian shadow does have its flaws, it isnonetheless a relevant concept, and can help the Christian of the Western worldto reimage a more realistic human nature. For if we bring Jung and the neutralshadow into the theological discussion, then we cannot automatically assume, likeLuther and Calvin, that human nature is vile and contaminated. In the seminar onNietzsche’sZarathustra, Jung suggested that if the human individual is integratedand whole, or at least on the road to becoming whole, then that particular person’sshadow side will be visible. Jung believed that if the shadow was not visible, thena person was incomplete, “as if painted flat upon the wall:”

People who have only two dimensions are identical with a sort of persona or mask whichthey carry in front of themselves and behind which they hide. The persona in itself casts noshadow. It is a perfectly clear picture of a personality that is aboveboard, no blame, no spot




anywhere; but when you notice that there is no shadow, you know it is a mask and the realperson is behind the screen (Jung, 1998, pp. 61–62).

In Jungian thought, we must, as Christians, and even more fundamentally, ashuman beings, recognize that in addition to the more exalted ego of consciousness,the shadow is also part of the basic human fabric. History shows us that failure todo so can mean disaster. For example, if Christians deny their shadow side, thentheir shadow instincts and tendencies get projected onto a devil who is “out there,”or worse, get projected onto other human beings. We need only recall the history ofWestern civilization, and the various crusades of inquisition and racial purification,in order to see the pernicious effects of projecting the shadow “out there,” ontoother human beings. More recently, in the halls of Capitol Hill and various statelegislatures, we have heard of a war on illegal (and in some cases, legal) immigrants.This “war,” so we are told by our political leaders and legislators, is simply a matterof economics. Yet one intuitively gets the distinct feeling that this is not the wholetruth. Noting Jung’s point about our reluctance to see the shadow as residingwithin ourselves, I would venture to say that our government leaders, in manyways, have been projecting their shadows onto the immigrants. At a surface level,all of this is simply crafty politiciansconsciouslyusing antiimmigrant rhetoricfor political gain. On a deeper level, though, what we see is something moreinsidious andunconscious, namely the projection of shadow content onto otherhuman beings. Immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Latin America, become,in the nonintegrated minds of politicians and legislators, intruders and trespassers,the spreaders of disease and economic chaos, a threat to the social fabric.

We have come to the essence of the “moral problem” for the modern humanbeing: acceptance of oneself. Jung was particularly inspired by the Oracle at Delphi,so much so that he inscribed above his doorway in Kusnacht the Delphic verse,vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit—Summoned or not summoned, God willbe there. Another Delphic proverb that meant a great deal to Jung, which justhappened to be particularly relevant to the modern problem of accepting the totalityof oneself, was the familiar, “Know Thyself.” “Acceptance of oneself,” wrote Jung,“is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook onlife.” On the surface it sounds simple, but then again, “simple things are always themost difficult” (Jung, 1958, p. 339). Accepting the totality of ourselves, especiallythe shadow side of our nature, will be, for those of us living in the Western world,nothing short of a Herculean task. Said another way, consciously withdrawing theshadow content one projects onto others, and consciously integrating that contentmore fully into one’s personality, will be easier said than done. After all, do wewant to be reminded that we are instinctually related to the rest of the animal world,that our shadow side could even be, in the words of Jung, “indistinguishable fromthe instinctuality of an animal” (1959, pp. 233–234)? However, because the shadowcontains material not just from thecollectiveunconscious, but also from one’s own



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personalunconscious, there is some hope for bringing it more fully into consciousawareness. If at any time we are tempted to believe that the shadow is forever cutoff from conscious awareness, Jung, with biting wit, encourages us to go to church,where our “memory can easily be refreshed by a Sunday sermon” (1959, p. 17).

Jung is obviously being facetious, with his comment on the usefulness of aSunday sermon. While a sermon on Christian theology can jog our memory, canhelp us recall orrecognizethe darker contents of our nature, it cannot, as Jungpointed out, help usintegratethose contents more fully into the totality of humanpersonality. Much of the problem is that Christian theology, in its present shapeand form, makes it virtually impossible for believers to even discuss the possibilityof integrating the shadow more fully into their lives and into their religious faith.As Jung argued:

The moral categories are a heavy, even a dangerous inheritance, because they are the in-struments by which we make it impossible to integrate the shadow. We condemn it andtherefore we suppress it (1998, p. 355).

Moreover, not only do we suppress the shadow within ourselves, we also project itonto others, enemy and friend. “When this happens,” writes Murray Stein, “there isusually strong moral indignation and the groundwork is lain for a moral crusade”(1995, p. 17).

In case we have doubts about the moral categories being a dangerous inher-itance, we can always turn our attention to the representatives of the ChristianRight, whether they belong to the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and soforth. Here we see a squeaky-clean morality that repressively leaves no room forany trace of shadow content. Where, then, does this content go, if Christians refuseto integrate it into their theology and into their personalities? It gets projected “outthere,” onto the vilified “them” of American society, the homosexuals, feminists,unwed mothers, and political opponents. Christians, then, whether they be con-servative, moderate, or liberal, who distance themselves from the shadow side ofhuman existence, run the risk of developing, in clinical language, a split person-ality. At the very least, they are in possession of a one-sided personality, whichanytime it is filled with indignation, tends to crusade for moral purity. “Moralgiants,” we may conclude, are not necessarily the most integrated human beings.

To be sure, we have invested for quite some time now, in the Western world,a great deal of energy trying to sever ourselves from our animality, from ourinstinctual drives and energy. Whether it has been the dualism of Christianity,Docetism, or Cartesianism, we have been waging an all-out battle against ourbasic humanness, to little or no avail (unless one believes that weshouldbe guidedby a dualistic framework). Yet the fundamental dynamism of the human race,the energic vitality to survive and procreate, to create and evolve, resides in theshadow side of our nature. In other words, the instinctual dynamism that has attimes brought the human race so much pain and misery is the very same force thathas inspired us to evolve, to be infinitely more than we have ever been before. Thus,




back again to the same question: Evenif the shadow could be eradicated (Christiantheology’s unfinished attempt, even after 2,000 years, to subdue the shadow of thereligious believer is a stark reminder that this is a very, very big “if”), would weas a species, even as a community of religious believers,wantto cut ourselves offfrom this vital force of strength and energy? This is a rhetorical question.

According to Jung, these 2,000 years of Christian history tell the story of theprogressive development of Western consciousness. Before human consciousnesscould become more sophisticated, there first had to be a period or aeon of differen-tiation, of conscious judgment about good and evil categories. Indeed, Christianityhas played a crucial role in this development of consciousness, and specifically thedevelopment ofmoral consciousness. It seems to have laid the foundation for theunion of opposites—good and evil, spirit and body, persona and shadow—which,as Jung believed, will be the central issue of the next aeon of Western history. Jung,I would argue, had a tendency to make the issues even more complicated than theywere before. While he certainly had the capacity to take in and juxtapose myriadaspects of the big human picture—evolution, religion, history, psychology, and soforth—he also had a tendency to make the waters of analysis very muddy. Insteadof, like Freud, addressing the issues with brevity and precision, Jung always had adesire to analyze his way into virgin territory, which did add tremendous breadthto his writings, but also left a multitude of loose ends.

Still, the above critique notwithstanding, I would argue that Jung does provideus with a useful conceptual framework in which Christianity can be interpretedvis-a-vis the bigger picture of human evolution. Christianity, as Jung saw it, hasbeen the Western world’s guide through the past 2,000 years, but there is no guar-antee that it will be our primary guide throughout the coming millennia. Since,as Jung believed, the future aeon of Western history will be about the union ofopposites—e.g., mind and body, spirit and shadow, good and evil, masculine andfeminine—Christianity will necessarily have to undergo something of a transfor-mation, from a religion with a dualistic orientation to a religion of integration andunification. As human beings continue to evolve these next few centuries, individu-ally and collectively, it would seem that integration and unification will be the nec-essary prerequisites to the survival of the species. But can Christianity, as it has donethroughout the previous aeon of Western history, lead us into the coming age of po-tential integration and unification? According to Murray Stein, Jung had his doubts:

Jung regarded our times as the turbulent trough between two vast religious and cultural eras.Modernity, he felt, was a transitional space between two great epochs that stretched out overfour millennia. And even from his vantage point, he saw the religious and cultural sceneof his time as both the receptacle of the wreckage of a passing aeon and the perceptiblyswelling surface of a new. The dominant religious tradition of the past era, which for nearly20 centuries had been evolving through stages of growth and change side by side withdevelopments in Western culture, had now flattened out. . . . (1985, p. 179).

The problem, as Jung saw it, was that the symbols and images of Christiantheology and ritual had less capacity to hold and contain the varied experience



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of modern human beings, to help them make sense of this complicated “turbu-lent trough,” these in-between times. Nor, he argued, will the traditionally andhistorically one-sided “imitation of Christ” be of much help, to modern men andwomen who feel that “the integrated shadow offers substance to the conscious per-sonality” (Wehr, 1987, p. 60). Too often, the Christ-symbol only represents, boththeologicallyandpsychologically, one side of human existence, the good and morespiritual side. Without any shadow content, the Christ-symbol loses its flesh andblood, its root connection to the concrete experience of human beings. The writerof the epistle to the Hebrews does suggest that “because [Christ] himself suffered,when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews2:18, NIV). This verse of scripture, of course, has brought comfort and assuranceto generations of Christian believers. But stop and think for a moment: Can thefigure of Christ, beatifically imaged, bringmodernbelievers any lasting comfortand relief, men and women whose cardinal temptation is to deny their shadow andproject it onto others? Unless the Christ-symbol acquires some shadow content, itis rather doubtful that this fundamental symbol of Western religion will be a defini-tive guide for modern men and women, who struggle with some very unique andspecific temptations. Thus, if religious faith revolves around the traditionally one-sided imitation of Christ, rather than a reimaged, more fully-embodiedimitatio,then the modern Christian believer is in danger of becoming detached from his orher own humanity. Naomi Goldenberg explains:

Many Christians. . . treat Jesus’s life as their only archetype. They grant most attention tothe parts of their lives that can be seen as conforming to his. The parts of their lives thatdo not reflect Jesus’s life do not receive such attention and are treated as ungodlike andmundane. Sexuality becomes highly problematic because there is so little of it in what weknow of Jesus’s life. Likewise, the lives of women seem inferior because they differ soenormously in both form and focus from the life of Christ (1979, p. 63).

If Christian theology, either intentionally or unintentionally, pushes us furtherand further away from the shadow, then it will be part of the problem, rather thanpart of the solution to the modern predicament. Whether the shadow is sanitized, asin the case of the Christian who tries to imitate a shadowless Christ, or demonized,as in the case of theology’s attack on basic human nature, the result is alwaysthe same: no wholeness or integration for the religious believer, no opportunityto symbolically reconcile the opposite sides of his or her nature. If Christiansof the Western world have in their possession a symbol that can only unify theirtheological, but not their psychological experience, then they are living, as Jungfeared, in precarious and even perilous times. Anytime the shadow side of humannature is suppressed, ignored, or not treated with proper respect, it becomes morepowerful and dangerous. Edward Edinger makes the same point, only more starklyand chillingly:

Darkness is most likely to get a “hold” when you are safely settled in the good and righ-teous position, where nothing can assail you. When you are absolutely right is the mostdangerous position of all, because, most probably, the devil has already got you by the throat(1996, p. 57).




To those who might be tempted to treat the shadow without due respect, who aretempted to suppress it or ignore it, Jung issues his own eloquent warning: “Whatis small by day is big at night. . .besides the small by day there always looms thebig by night, even when it is invisible” (1959, p. 30). An important rule of thumbto always keep in mind is that the brighter the persona of consciousness, the darkerand more dangerous the shadow of unconsciousness or unawareness.

In some ways, Jung’s analysis of the shadow side of human nature anticipatesfeminist thought, particularly feminism’s emphasis on the harmful and corrosiveeffects of Western dualism. Men and women in the West, as feminists rightly pointout, have difficulty feeling at home in their own bodies. In keeping desire, pas-sion, pleasure, and sexuality—i.e., shadow content—at arm’s length, we becomealienated from ourselves. We do not, as Jung put it, feel at home in our own bodilyhouses, and, consequently, we are not held fast to “our own personal and corpo-real life” (1998, p. 348). Jung urges us to begin reimaging the Christian mandateto love “the least of these,” for in so doing, we will stay better connected to ourown personal life. He asks: “But when it happens that the least of the brethren[sic] whom you meet on the road of life is yourself, what then” (1998, p. 353)? In-deed, what if the Christian community broadened the particular mandate to includethose typically vilified, split-off aspects of human personality, the shadow contentof human nature upon which Christian theology has typically frowned? This, un-doubtedly, will alarm those who deplore the psychologizing of Western culture,particularly the psychologizing of Christian religion. Self-denial, especially denialof the shadow side of ourselves, has long been one of the fundamental virtues ofChristian religion. Therefore, resistance in the Christian community to reimagingthe “least” of these as within, and not merely outside the believer, will be under-standable. Nevertheless, until Christianity can reimage a more realistic theologyof human nature, the words of Jung must be taken seriously:

Oneshouldlove oneself, oneshouldaccept the least of one’s brethren [sic] in oneself, thatone endure to be with oneself and not go roving about. And how can we endure anythingif we cannot endure ourselves? If the whole of mankind should run away from itself, lifewould consist on principle of running away all the time. Now that is not meant; God’screation is not meant to run away from itself (1998, p. 353).

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdomof God would come. It seems they were looking for a prediction, a precise andliteral day and time. Jesus, however, did not give them any sort of prediction,but rather shifted the discussion from the celestial to the existential plane. “Thekingdom of God,” he replied, “does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Hereit is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20b-21, NIV). And it is probably safe to assume that Jesus, a Jew who likely neverventured beyond the bounds of first-century Palestine, was not speaking of the



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kingdom being “within” in any Platonic sense, lodged within the purified soulof the individual. Instead, Jesus, in keeping with his Jewish theology, was reallysaying that the kingdom of God is within each of us who belongs to the communityof faith. The kingdom, then, is “within you,” within the group as a whole and withineach religious believer. Jesus, who was teaching from a Jewish standpoint not yetmodified by the radical dualism of Greek thought, could only have meant, in termsof the individual believer, that the kingdom of God is withinall of you, withinevery fiber of your being. Since the monism of Jewish theology had not yet givenway to the dualism of Judeo-Christian theology, one can surmise,exegetically, thatthe kingdom for Jesus is firmly lodged within the entire being of every religiousbeliever, spiritandbody.

Now if we keep thisexegesis of Luke 17 in mind, it soon becomes evidentthat the profaning of ourselves, the depreciation of our basic human nature, istheologically unwarranted. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus teaches,and from a Jewish point of view he meansall of you andall of me. To profane thebody and the instincts, to profane the shadow side of our existence, is to profane anaspect of ourselves that is just as basic to our existence (maybe more) as the morepolished, conscious, and spiritualized ego. Certainly, the question for Christianityis, Does religious faith, as it did for Jesus, apply to every fiber of our being, or isreligious faith merely a matter of polishing the surface layer of human personality(the persona, in Jungian terms)? The kingdom of God, Jesus makes abundantlyclear, is not in some distant, future heaven, but is rather in you and me, in our souls,spirits,andbodies. Moreover, locating the kingdom of God in our bodies means,quite frankly, that the Spirit of God is more in our humanity, and even animality,than in some future celestial sphere. The implication here, of course, is that theshadow side of our existence is as representative of the kingdom of God as themore polished ego.

As I pointed out earlier, we begin the process of psychological individuationby confronting the shadow. For those who prefer spiritual language, I would rec-ommend substituting the wordwholenessfor individuation: Christians begin theprocess toward wholeness after they have first confronted, in a way that is moreneutral and realistic, the shadow side of their existence. As Jung reminded us,it is only confrontation with the shadow, that deposit of animality, instinctuality,and energic dynamism, that gets us moving in the right direction, towards psy-chological and spiritual wholeness. “So it is a sort of redemption of the body,”he wrote, commenting on Nietzsche’sZarathustra, “something which has beenlacking in Christianity, where the body, the here-and-now, has always been de-preciated” (1998, p. 193). If we did not know any better, we might be tempted toconclude that we were reading words taken from a page of feminist theory.

Jung’s redemption of the human body, and the here-and-now of earthly reality,is nothing short of an affirmation of the totality of human existence, an overt andunequivocalyesto human life. In certain ways, this sounds very much like theDeuteronomic mandate to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). However, Christian




believers may not be in much of a hurry to redeem bodily and earthly reality,particularly if they continue to assume that God is made happy by the subjugationof their basic humanity. The danger, then, is that they and their theology of humannature will become dull, flat, and colorless.

Christianity, anytime it distances itself from the shadow side of human nature,is bound to become, in many ways, a religion of one-sidedness and fragmentation,rather than a religion of wholeness and redemption. Part of the problem, for Jung,has to do with the ideal of perfection. Some Christian groups, down through thecenturies, have claimed that the “perfection” spoken of by Jesus in his Sermonon the Mount (see Matthew 5:48) is a real and tangible possibility for the presentlife, while other groups have decided, primarily due to the “dark cloud” of humannature, that perfection is a future hope to be realized in the afterlife. In either case,the goal is essentially the same: salvation from human nature, from the “world ofmiseries” and the “horde of infamies” lurking within. One can see, without toomuch difficulty, why Jung would be especially critical of this religious ideal:

(Jung) believed that this ideal was both impossible to attain and responsible for the harshrepressiveness with which we treat ourselves and others. Christian perfectionism is a mainfactor in the creation of our individual shadows. Having been brought up to deny anger,greed, envy, sexual desires, and the like, where do these feelings go? Into the shadow, claimsJung (Wehr, 1987, p. 60).

Thus, the shadow becomes bigger and more bloated. It no longer is just therepository of primitive instincts and energy; now it expands to include all the sup-pressed desires, moods, and affects. We saw previously that this shadow contentdoes not stay where it is, within the individual’s psyche, but gets projected “outthere,” onto other individuals, groups, and nations. This is precisely what makesthe shadow the fundamental moral problem for each and every human being,non-ChristianandChristian. Like it or not—it really makes little difference—theshadow is a part of our common human lot, a part of the human fabric. Realistically,the best any of us can do is to mitigate the effects of the shadow. It is, as Jung madevery clear, sheer fantasy to think that we can, even with divine intervention, eradi-cate the shadow content or beat it into submission. But again, back to the recurringquestion: Even if we could, in the pursuit of spiritual perfection, straitjacket theshadow, would wewant to live without that which not only brings us trouble anddistress, but also adds richness and color and drama to human living? “In Jungianterms,” writes David Wulff, “without the opposition of the shadow, there wouldbe no psychic development and no actualization of the self” (1991, p. 424). Thishas major implications for Christian faith: without the opposition of the shadow,the Christian may very well reach a state of one-sided, spiritual perfection, butthis will not necessarily be an indication that he or she has experienced what Jesuscalled abundant living or the fullness of life.

The Christian pursuit of perfection, according to Jung, leads us down a blindalley, towards psychological and spiritual one-sidedness and underdevelopment.Perfection, he argued, can never bring the human individual, not even the most



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devoted Christian, any sort of lasting fulfillment. What, then, is the alternative?The modern individual, Jung pointed out, after striving in vain for the goal offinal perfection, is “obliged to lower his [sic] pretensions a little, and instead ofstriving after the ideal of perfection to content himself with the more accessiblegoal of approximate completeness” (1963, p. 428). We have reached the crux ofthe matter, the bedrock of Jungian thought, where we discover Jung’s teleologicalgoal. It is certainly safe to assume, by now, that thetelos for Jung isnot a stateof final perfection. Instead, what matters most to Jung is human completenessor wholeness,approximatewholeness, that is,not absolutewholeness. Absolutewholeness would connote, much like final perfection, a state of static being, in-stead of a dynamic state of becoming. Like the great process thinkers—e.g., A.N.Whitehead—Jung believed that reality has been, is, and always will be a pro-cess. In fact, this “evolution of reality” depends upon the interplay of spiritual andshadow forces, and where this evolution of reality is ultimately headed is and willbe “beyond our knowledge” (Jung, 1995, pp. 17 & 20–21).

It should be clear by now that for Jung, the pursuit of perfection and the imi-tation of an all-good Christ figure will lead us down a blind alley. While the idealsof final perfection and the imitation of an all-good Christ may have theologicaljustification, may be theologicallytrue in the abstract, they are not necessarilyrepresentative of what is ontologicallyreal. “Know thyself” means more thanfamiliarizing ourselves with our all-good, spiritual side; it means to become con-sciously familiar witheveryaspect of human personality. Each of us, Christian ornot, has a shadow side to his or her personality, and all the sermonic exhortationsto triumph over a human nature contaminated by original sin will do the modernman or woman little good. Jung adds:

The world—as far as it has not completely turned its back on [Christian] tradition—has longago stopped wanting to hear a “message;” it would rather be told what the message means.The words that resound from the pulpit are incomprehensible and cry for an explanation(1959, p. 34).

Christians, then, whether they have been pursuing an obsolete spiritual idealand/or attempting to imitate a beatific Savior, must begin to rethink their theologyof human nature. The shadow side of that nature can no longer be automati-cally dismissed as something anathema to God and religion, no matter how muchthis simplifies our living. Besides, where there is no energic tension, no clash ofopposites—good and evil, mind and body, spiritual and material—there is no cre-ativity, no imagination, no life. Without the willingness to live squarely withinthe tension, ambiguity, and complexity of human life, Christian faith will be aparticularly dull and lifeless enterprise. Certainly, human living, including our re-ligious faith, must have a certain degree of order and structure, but not before therehas been the initial energic tension which comes from the clash of opposites. Areligious faith grounded in the pursuit of perfection can only bring a premature,pseudo order to one’s spiritual life. Order and structure must eventually emerge,




but onlyafterone has encountered the dynamic and creative power of the shadow.Christian theology, though, often tends to reverse the process, insisting from theget-go that there be structure and order. Yet when we try to tap back into that forceof creative energy within ourselves, we wonder where it has gone, why it seemsto have disappeared.

An authentic, rather than a forced, pseudo sense of order can only be found ontheotherside of the confrontation with the shadow,not beforethe shadow is everconfronted. If a rigid order is forcefully applied too early to one’s religious faith,then the fundamental dynamism of human living, the shadow that fuels humanaggression and destructiveness,as well ashuman creativity and imagination, willbe unalterably straitjacketed. Without the clash of opposites, without a certainamount of energic and creative tension, one’s religious faith is bound to die, or atleast become stagnant and inert. As Murray Stein observes:

. . . . Jung would put forward a theory of opposites: psychic reality is made up of orderedpatterns that can be spread out into spectra of polarities and tensions like good-to-evil andmale-to-female. Without the energic tensions between the poles within entities like instinctgroups and archetypes, there would be no movement of energy within the relatively closedsystem of mind/body wholeness. It is the tension within these polarities that yields dynamicmovement, the fluctuations of libido in the psychic system (Stein, 1995, pp. 16–17).

REFERENCES

Edinger, E. (1996).The new God-image. Wilmette, IL: Chiron.Ellenberger, H. (1970).The discovery of the unconscious. New York: Basic.Goldenberg, N. (1979).Changing of the gods. Boston: Beacon.Homans, P. (1979).Jung in context. Chicago: University of Chicago.Jung, C. G. (1938).Psychology and religion. New Haven: Yale.Jung, C. G. (1958). “Psychotherapists or the clergy.” In Vol. 11 (Psychology and religion: West and

East) of Collected works. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. New York: Pantheon.Jung, C. G. (1963).Mysterium coniunctionis. In Vol. 14 ofCollected works. Trans. R.F.C. Hull. London:

Routledge.Jung, C. G. (1964).Man and his symbols. New York: Dell.Jung, C. G. (1998).Jung’s seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Ed. & Abridged by J. L. Jarrett.

Princeton: Princeton University.Jung, C. G. (1995).Jung on evil. Selected with Introduction by M. Stein. Princeton: Princeton University.Stein, M. (1987).Jung’s treatment of Christianity. Wilmette, IL: Chiron.Wehr, D. S. 1987.Jung and feminism. Boston: Beacon.Wulff, D. (1991).The psychology of religion. New York: Wiley.

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Christianity & the Shadow Side of Existence