Religion = Madness?
Year Delivered or Published: 2006
Author: Jerry G.A. Rodgers
Author's Faith: Christianity
Date Submitted to Inspiration and Issues: November 18, 2006
Topic: Personal Religion
Citation: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
On November 10, 1919, the headline EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS in the New York Times announced the 20th century's keystone formula for validation of all Truth claims: E=mc2 (Energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light). Until then energy and mass had seemed to be totally distinct entities and quite incomparable, much less equivalent. The truth of Einstein's formula however was presumptively demonstrated by Sir Arthur Eddington's observations of the gravitational effect of the sun on starlight during the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, and inarguably validated on July 16, 1945, at Alamogordo, NM, with the explosion of the first atomic bomb by J. Robert Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project.
On September 24, 2006, the "newspaper of record" which proclaims "all the news that's fit to print," headlined a full-page ad for Sam Harris's latest book "Letter to a Christian Nation" with what may be the 21st century's keystone formula for evaluating Truth: RELIGION = MADNESS?
The question mark is significant. It indicates there is some uncertainty about the truth of this equation. E=mc2 ended with a period in 1919, and in 1945 with an exclamation point. But how are we to verify the truth of RELIGION = MADNESS? Can we even define them with any degree of accuracy? Sam Harris thinks he can. He may be on to something. But what?
Actually, the equation of religion with madness has a much longer history than the equation of mass with energy. More than 300 years before Christ, Plato expounded his idea of "divine madness" through the mouth of his teacher Socrates in his dialogue with Phaedrus: "[These things] might be so if madness were simply an evil. But there is also a madness which is a divine gift and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men." He was speaking of the oracle at Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, the center of Greek worship, who was venerated for delivering oracles in a trance, purportedly possessed by the god Apollo whose temple was located there.
Christ himself was accused of being "raving mad" by many of his contemporaries (John 10:19-21). And Festus accused Paul of being "out of his mind" and "insane" (Acts 26:22-24). Paul described himself as "a fool for Christ," who spoke of a wisdom "not of this world" but a "secret and hidden wisdom of God" (1 Cor. 1:18-25; 2:1-16; 3:18-20; 4:9-13). Centuries later, "God's fool," St. Francis of Assisi, earned his cognomen by renouncing his patrimony in this world and dedicating himself totally to the otherworldly kingdom of his heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ. And in our own time, Sam Harris is not the first to equate religion with madness or delusional thinking. There is quite a long bibliography of predecessors in this vocation.
One of the most fruitful treatments of this subject from the standpoint of professional psychology as well as personal experience and genuine faith (light years ahead of Sam Harris' polemic) is Anton Boisen's "Exploration of the Inner World" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971)--a book commended by O. Hobart Mowrer, Research Professor of Psychology and father of integrity therapy, as more important than William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience." With the acute perception exhibited by Socrates in Plato's "Phaedrus", Boisen distinguishes between two kinds of "madness", one evil and the other good:
"[I proceed] from the hypothesis that there is an important relationship between acute mental illness of the functional type and those sudden transformations of character so prominent in the history of the Christian church since the days of Saul of Tarsus.... Religious experience as well as mental disorder may involve severe emotional upheaval, and mental disorder as well as religious experience may represent the operation of the healing forces of nature [or of nature's God]. ... Certain types of mental disorder as well as certain types of religious experience are alike attempts at reorganization [of the psyche or soul at its most fundamental, existential level]. The difference lies in the outcome [by their fruits you will know them, Matt. 7:16]. Where the attempt is successful and some degree of victory is won, it is commonly recognized as religious experience. Where it is unsuccessful or indeterminate, it is commonly spoken of as insanity....
"I approach the problem not merely as a specialist in both the psychology and sociology of religion but also in psychopathology. What is more, I come to it as one who has personally explored the little-known country with which it deals." (Boisen is speaking here of his personal experience of mental illness and the healing power of his Christian faith.)
--from his Foreword to the first edition of "The Exploration of the Inner World" (1936).
The unique combination of Boisen's psychological and professional experience, intellectual acumen, and spiritual insight produced abundant fruit in his contributions to both science and religion theoretically and practically. The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education is his enduring legacy. http://www.acpe.edu/
My own experience of "divine madness", recently published as "The Gospel According to Jerry: Confessions of a Fool for Christ," www.afoolforChrist.com, has been for me a corroboration of Boisen's work as convincing as Eddington's and Oppenheimer's experimental and practical demonstrations of Einstein's E=mc2.
