the god that failed: an exploration of images of the imagination by: Andrew R Taylor

I view some kinds of atheism as a cleansing of the mind far preferable to worshipping idols of the imagination. You know the famous Reformed theologian Karl Barth wrote strongly on false belief and false worship,- he said "religion is a place to hide from God".

And just as religion can become a totalistic, limiting philosophy closed to the variety and immensity of mystery / reality, in the same way political movements can propose a totalistic limiting philosophy that rejects openness and pluralism. Everything I write on politics & religion has this problem of dimished vision in mind .

And when your religion or your party fails to fill your ontological incompleteness -- then you are in crisis: it turns out you have served "The God That Failed" whether it was a political or religious idol, and the panic is on.

It is that then a terrible darkness can come over the Mind and will and imagination: John of the Cross, the Carmelite Mystic, talks about "the Dark Night of the soul" when all sensible apprehension of the divine vanishes. It is difficult to accept the instruction to stay still when one's deity has dissapeared.

En passant I have just mentioned a book title by former-Communists edited by Arthur Koestler: "The God That Failed". There are in-good-faith and bad-faith reasons for leaving a cadre party I suppose, and I do not judge any of the contributors to this important anthology. The diverse group of contributors to the book shared one act in common -- they had handed over their liberty and conscience to a less-than-ultimate structure, and discovering that the Party was not ultimate and all-knowing, they lost their way. The authors describe their entrance into the darkness of unknowing; their depression, their rage and griefs.

So I propose that no matter how good a Communist we might be, however good a Catholic or Conservative, a Buddhist, Jew or Muslim, or any other sect, we regularly make the exercise of remembering that the visible fellowship is an imperfect band of brothers and sisters reaching outward for the common good, following a great historically mediated tradition that can help open our eyes to truth and bless the world or blinker them and create living hells.

I do not believe we humans are strong enough or wise enough to entrust ourselves absolutely to anything but the absolute -- however we conceive that. We suffer if we forget that lesson.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
-W.H. Auden,
excerpt from "As I Walked Out One Evening"

And the world has already staged enough political/theological trials, burned enough witches.