Dear Theophilus, 

In your last letter, you had mentioned some difficulties that you were experiencing with your life. You seem to have entered a stage where you don't see much point to life, you see the rapid passage of years, the passing of certain things that you valued. Well, what you are experiencing is not that unusual and most people go through this. Maybe I can help you understand better by taking a closer look at what composes a human being.

We can easily identify four main components to any human being, using language that is not derived from theology but secular terms. They are: self-hood(or ego or self), environment, the void, and the possibility of new being. The self-hood is sometimes referred to as the ego, the self-conscious part of our selves which centers us as conscious beings. The self has certain characteristics, among which an important one is self-reflection, that is, an awareness of oneself. Another important characteristic of the self is that it can relate to other selves. The environment is the different "worlds" that we live in such as the world of our family, the world of our work, and so on. Normally, we are very aware of these two parts of our being and are unaware of the others. The fact that we are not aware of them, however, does not mean that they have no influence on us.

There is a doctrine referred to in Latin of "creatio ex nihilo" which says that all that is was made from nothing. The world did not come into existence by God manipulating matter that was already there but He created the world from nothing. You could say - so what, this is only quibbling over some fine abstract points which have no bearing on me. This is not true, as you are learning for yourself because what you are experiencing is closely tied to this doctrine.

Deep within ourselves, within our subconscious is the realization that we have come from nothing and therefore there is the chance that we will return to that nothing and this haunts us our whole life. This nothing, which we will call the void and which is expressed through terms such as loneliness, absence, death, loss is in everyone. In our early part of our lives, usually, we mask its presence through our preoccupation with all kinds of activities, but, we cannot escape it because it is inside of us and we always carry it around with us. We try to "void" the void but it still intrudes on us through the death of friends, through other losses. Sometimes people get overwhelmed by this void and commit suicide. One of the most common ways to avoid the void is through becoming overly involved with activities to a frenetic degree. This leads to other complications in that we get to the point of not being able to accept love unless it is earned and this causes problems in our personal relationships. In a sense, the void is demonic because it seeks to reverse what God did and does. God makes something out of nothing; the demonic seeks to return the something into nothing.

So how do we deal with this problem? Psychology helps us in this area, but only partially. Psychology strives to enable us to adapt to this void. Religion goes deeper by trying to transform this void and to give us the opportunity to experience a new being. The fourth component of our existence is the Holy. This Holy can bring us salvation, healing from the void, but often, at a price of pain because it will obliterate and destroy many of our defence mechanisms set up by us to protect us from the pain of the void. Because of this pain of losing our defences, we sometimes resist, sometimes for a lifetime, but eventually it dawns on us that we cannot change things but they have to be totally redone and with assistance from outside ourselves. This is what is meant, in part, by the call for us to be crucified. We are asked to enter that void, that nothingness over which we hang, through trust in One who has gone there and transformed it. The Holy shows the void to be the Source and ground of the void's transformation. Thus, in the New Testament it is said that it was necessary for Christ to be crucified and from this flows our salvation. Our old and inadequate hopes are broken down. Our hopes for survival and satisfaction to which we cling to are shown to be essentially destructive and must be dropped to encompass a wider gift which we are being offered. The Apostles hoped for Israel's political independence and power to be reinstated by Christ. They hoped for too little because they were offered something even more - their total transformation and a gift of eternal life. They clung to Christ because he was tangible but, as long as they clung to him, he was localized - his presence was limited. By letting go, they permitted Him now to become universally present and thereby present for them in a deeper and more encompassing manner. It is ironic that in the account of the encounter of the disciples with Christ on the road to Emmaus that, when their eyes were opened, he vanished. Again this points to the universality of Christ - He now becomes the lens through which they see the world and the main role of the lens is to be invisible or it cannot function with the intended role. When we say that Christ made the supreme sacrifice we sometimes forget what the word sacrifice means. We think of sacrifice as something being given up, often associated with blood and pain. But the real meaning of sacrifice is making sacred. Christ makes the void sacred in that we encounter God there and we are reassured that loneliness and separateness and death are now totally and completely and eternally transfigured.

I know that I have gone into theological language which you speak of as poetic and somehow you find it difficult to accept and to understand. You are suspicious of nice phrases and cliched statements. I respect you for this and I think your point is valid because it is honest. We need to be honest and open with each other. All that I am saying, in reply to your question, is that the writings in the New Testament are not simply historical recounts of occurrences that took place two thousand years ago and have no direct influence on your life now. By experiencing the pain that you are going through now I hope that you see it discussed in some of the events of the New Testament. Your psychological experiences are enabling you to relive in your own life what the Gospels are talking about. What you are finding out is that the ego is an insufficient ground to face death. The first half of your life you have been very active and successful, you have gone about what is commonly referred to as the real business of life: ego survival and satisfaction. But you are now being challenged and forced to look inside yourself. What you have been good at, others are now better at it. Some of your friends have died and this has caused you to stop and ask: is that all there is? Your psyche, your subconscious is calling on you to go more internally and see the deeper aspects of life and you are afraid to go there because of the void that you sense. From the psychology of the developmental stages that we go through as children, we see that loss is an influential factor as the child loses the safe haven of the womb, as the child loses the presence of the parents in that they are not always there and this causes anxiety about the parents going away permanently and so on. One way that the ego compensates for this pain is through control which challenges our ability to love. We cling to others and try to control them because of two main fears: of being absorbed by them or of being rejected by them (both, by the way, signs of the void). Love is when another takes your I into him/herself and permits that I be itself. But this is what the Holy does - It permits you to be yourself as completely as possible without any chance of this Holy abandoning you. As Kierkegaard states it, the self is not an entity in itself but results from a relationship. Once you have experienced the relationship with the Holy you are secure and you are transformed, you can then face all the vagaries of life with equanimity.

Bar-Abbas

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