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Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit


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Victory through Surrender

At the heart of the Christian Ashram experience is a deeper surrender to Jesus our Lord.
“The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self–all your wishes and precautions–to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves.'”-C.S. Lewis

Many of our books include references to and stories about E. Stanley Jones.
To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.
To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.


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CS Lewis: Waking up to the Father’s Love

 

Previously published in the Feb 2020 Light Magazine article

By Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

 

Have you or your parents ever treated education as more important than family? CS (Jack) Lewis and his father Albert were like ships passing in the night, not knowing how to connect.  Being very close to his calm, cheerful mother, her sudden death from cancer left ten-year old Lewis feeling like the mythical Atlantis was sinking.  Jack’s mother Flora Hamilton, who tutored him in Latin and French, was brilliant, earning an honors degree in mathematics at Queens University in Belfast.  Her father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been Anglican (Church of Ireland) clergy, the latter being a bishop. As a child, Jack shared his mother’s strong faith.  It was like God had died with his mother’s tragic death.

Jack’s secure Irish childhood dissolved into a nightmare of six years of painful residential school living in England.  He later commented that English accents at the boarding school sounded to his childhood ears like some strange demonic chatter. Both Jack and his older brother Warren were traumatized by a brutal schoolmaster at their first boarding school Wynard in Watford. Jack called Wynard “Belsen” after the Nazi concentration camp.  A few months before Jack’s death in 1963, he stated that after fifty years of struggling, he had finally forgiven the headmaster Capron who had so damaged his earliest boyhood. In a letter to a young person, Lewis wrote “I was in three schools (all boarding schools) of which two were very horrid.  I never hated anything so much, not even the front-line trenches in World War I.  Indeed, the story is far too horrid to tell anyone of your age.”  Jack’s second residential school Malvern was rife with bullying and sexual abuse. After Jack threatened to shoot himself, his dad relocated him to Great Bookham, Surrey, to be taught by a private tutor William Kirkpatrick who had trained for the ordained ministry in Ireland. Kirkpatrick, as an ardent atheist, was portrayed in Lewis’ novel That Hideous Strength as MacPhee, a humourless, freethinking Ulsterman.

Fact check: 1942 C.S. Lewis 'so many souls' quote is fakeHis father Albert was so swallowed in grief and self-pity that he pushed his two sons away physically and emotionally. Being afraid of his father as a child, CS Lewis described his dad as a man with “a bad temper, very sensible, nice when not in a bad temper.” His father’s emotional ups and downs taught Jack a distrust of emotions that would stay with him throughout his life.  He called his father’s family “true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, rhetorical” people who moved quickly from laughter to wrath to tenderness, but with no gift for steady contentment.  His father, who dreamed of becoming an MP, instead served as a prosecuting solicitor in the Belfast police court.  Swallowed by his work, Jack’s father was sometimes cold, remote, distracted, and morose.  He had a tendency to cross-examine his sons as if they were on trial.  Jack learned to pretend, avoid and lie to his dad to keep him happy.  His father, said Jack, “could never empty, or silence, his own mind to make room for an alien thought.” His dad’s life was so orderly one could set a clock by his schedule.  When away from his job, he became fidgety and bored, eager to return to his legal responsibilities. Jack was so alienated from his father that he missed how much he was like his dad.  With swift imaginative minds and resounding voices, they both could persuasively make intricate arguments.  Jack and his dad shared a delightful sense of humour.  Albert’s sons claimed that their dad was the best storyteller in the world as he loved to act out the character parts.

His father was very strong on regular church attendance as the right thing to do, but never explained to his sons why.  Religion was very private. On Sunday Dec 6th 1914, Jack a confirmed atheist was confirmed in the Church of Ireland in order to avoid a fight with his dad, “one of the worse acts of his life”.  Jack later commented, “Cowardice drove me into hypocrisy and hypocrisy into blasphemy.” At age seventeen, C.S. Lewis explained bluntly to a Christian friend he’d known since childhood, “I believe in no religion.  There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint, Christianity is not even the best.” One of his prep school friends described Jack as a “riotously amusing atheist.” As a teenager, he resented God for not existing, and for creating such a flawed world.  Just after World War I, Lewis, a wounded veteran, boasted that during his time in the trenches, he “never sank so low as to pray.” To a friend about the same time, he said “You take too many things for granted.  You can’t start with God. I don’t accept God!”

After ending up in hospital on April 15th 1918 from WWI shrapnel injuries, Lewis wrote his father Albert, saying “I know that you will come and see me…(I was) “never before so eager to cling to every bit of our old home life and see you…Please God, I shall do better in the future.  Come and see me.” His dad however stayed in Ireland, refusing to change his busy work schedule.  In October 1918, after successive requests for his father to visit him in hospital, CS Lewis wrote his dad saying “It is four months now since I returned from France, and my friends laughingly say that ‘my father in Ireland’ is a mythical creation.” The father wound and resulting emotional cutoff became ever deeper.

While teaching at Oxford, Jack kept running into Christians, like JRR Tolkien, who persuaded him that Christianity is a true myth, a real story grounded in history.  Jack’s atheist background helped him reach out to spiritual seekers through books and BBC radio. His voice became the most widely recognized in Britain after that of Winston Churchill. His books, which still sell six million copies a year, led him to become one of the most influential voices in contemporary Christianity.  The late Chuck Colson, converted by Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, contended that Lewis is ‘a true prophet for our post-modern age.’ As one of the few Christians read extensively by non-christians, he became known as the Apostle to the skeptics.

Was it a mere coincidence that CS Lewis turned to God in the very summer of his father’s death?  In August 1929, Lewis went to Belfast to visit his seriously ill father, bringing significant family reconciliation.  Lewis said that his dad was taking his cancer surgery ‘like a hero.’ After his dad’s death, Lewis commented, “As times goes on, the thing that emerges is that, whatever else he was, he was a terrific personality…how he filled a room.  How hard it was to realize that physically he was not a big man.” Lewis deeply regretted how insensitively he had treated his dad.  How might CS Lewis’ restoration to his father’s love inspire us to deeper family reconciliation in 2020?

Rev. Dr. Ed and Janice Hird

P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

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-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a personally signed copy of any of our books within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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G.K. Chesterton and St. Francis

By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

The late G.K. Chesterton is one of the most significant writers in the past hundred years.[1]  His ‘friendly enemy’ George Bernard Shaw called him a colossal genius.[2] Chesterton wrote many biographies, including those of Robert Louis Stevenson, William Chaucer, St Benedict and St Francis of Assisi.  Chesterton’s biography on St Francis told us as much about Chesterton as about St. Francis. They had remarkable things in common.  Both Chesterton and Francis had a grateful appreciation of the gift of God’s creation.  Rather than exploit nature, they both cared for it as faithful stewards.  Who can forget the classic 1972 movie ‘Brother Sun Sister Moon’, with its message of peace so loved by the hippies of San Francisco (Spanish for Saint Francis)?[3]  As Chesterton noted, “St Francis was so fiery and even fidgety that the church officials, before he appeared quite suddenly, thought he was a madman.”[4] To renounce his wealthy father’s materialism did not make any initial sense to most people in his home town of Assisi.  Both Francis and Chesterton were radically spontaneously generous to the poor and hurting.  Everything they did for others was out of gratitude for Jesus’ sacrificial love on the cross.

There was a playful laughter with both Francis and Chesterton that won the hearts of millions. Both used humorous drama to awaken the world from its cynical slumber.[5] Chesterton was called the Angelic Jester.[6] There is in both Chesterton and Francis an endearing childlikeness and innocence that draws people to Christ. Joseph Pearce, a Chesterton biographer, noted that “…the paradox of innocent wisdom was a fertile ground for Chesterton’s imagination.”[7] The famous Oxford atheist CS Lewis came to faith after reading Chesterton’s book The Everlasting Man. It has been said that Chesterton, as one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed, made up for being deep by being witty.[8] Both Chesterton and Francis not only made you think but also made you laugh.[9] In a very Franciscan way, Chesterton taught that the secret of life lies in laughter and humility.[10] Only grateful people are humble enough to laugh at themselves.

Both Chesterton and Francis were romantic troubadours of hope calling people away from fashionable despair and cynicism.[11] As self-described jugglers and jesters of God, they passionately romanced our hearts.[12]  At the heart of this romance was the key idea of taking things with gratitude and not taking things for granted.[13]  Without gratitude, said Chesterton, all we are left with is the emptiness of ‘bread and circuses’.[14] Gratitude to God enables us, with Francis and Chesterton, to enjoy the gifts that are all around us.  Chesterton commented about the joy of seeing a dandelion after temporary blindness, and how true pessimists can’t even notice the sunset.[15]

My prayer for those reading this article is that we like Chesterton and Francis will notice the dandelions and sunsets with new gratitude.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-an article previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier and the Light Magazine

[1] Joseph Pearce, Wisdom and Innocence: A Life of GK Chesterton“, (Hodder & Stoughton, London, UK, 1996), vii ‘…one of the giants of 20th Century literature’

[2]  “Orthodoxologist”, Time, 11 October 1943, (Accessed August 4, 2016); Pearce, vii “His wit was a match for that of Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and a host of others.”

[3]  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069824/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG5jVcYA1aM

[4] G.K. Chesterton, Thomas Aquinas (Catholic Book Club, London, UK, 1933), 14-15

[5] J. D. Douglas (24 May 1974). “G.K. Chesterton, the Eccentric Prince of Paradox”. Christianity Today. (accessed August 4th 2016)

[6] Fr John O’Connor, Father Brown on Chesterton (Frederick Muller Ltd, London, 1937), 157.

[7] Pearce, 92.

[8] Maisie Ward, Return to Chesterton (London, 1952), 526.

[9] Dale Ahlquist, “Who is this Guy and Why Haven’t I Heard of Him?”, The American Chesterton Society, 2014, http://www.chesterton.org/who-is-this-guy (Chesteron) “doesn’t merely astonish you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond that. He makes you laugh.”

[10] G.K. Chesterton, Heretics (Wilder Publication, London, UK, 1909), 131.

[11] Pearce, 161 “…cynicism pollutes and destroys wisdom as much as it pollutes and destroys innocence.”

[12] The Times Literary Supplement, October 3rd 1933, “As the nineteenth century clutched at the Franciscan romance, precisely because it had neglected romance…”; Pearce, 297; Chesterton, Francis of Assisi, 74-77. “The jongleur (of God) was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler.”

[13] G.K. Chesterton, Autobiography, (Hutchinson, London, UK, 1936) 330.

[14] G.K’s Weekly, December 13th 1934. “The vulgar school of panem et circenses only gives people circuses; it does not even tell them how to enjoy circuses.”

[15] Ward, 10.; Pearce, 70.

P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you. 

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a personally signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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. . . And a Happy New Year!!

 By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird 

Every January we get to grapple with the implications of the second half of that familiar Christmas Greeting: “…and a Happy New Year!”  Alexander Pope said in 1733: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Pope suffered from childhood tuberculosis that left him hunched over, reaching a height of only 4 feet 6 inches. But he never let this steal his hopefulness and his joyfulness.

“Happy” comes from the old Norse word “Happ”, which means chance, luck, or lot.  Happiness is just that which happens to you by chance occurrence.  Many people are desperately trying to be happy.  But happiness, by definition, is haphazard, arbitrary, and temporary.  As a teenager, I tried to be happy, and to make my personal happiness the purpose of my life.  What I discovered is that chasing after the elusive goal of happiness is guaranteed to make one unhappier than ever.

Rather than aiming for temporary happiness, I have learned to value the more lasting quality of joy.  Joy has such depth that I have found that I can be joyful when unpleasant unhappy things happen haphazardly to me. Simon Peter taught that it is possible to be joyful with an unspeakable joy.  Joy is described in the Concise Oxford Dictionary as a “vivid emotion of pleasure, gladness, thing that causes delight”.  What causes gladness and delight in your life? The birth of a baby? Graduating from High School or University?  Attending your son or daughter’s wedding?

I have found that joy is a choice.  I can choose to rejoice always, even in the midst of great suffering and setbacks. James, Jesus’ brother, said that we should count it all joy when we face challenges. It is not easy to be joyful in all circumstances.  The good book teaches that joy is a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit.  When the Christmas angels turned up at the Bethlehem manger, they proclaimed glad tidings of great joy for all people.  Jesus, right before his crucifixion, said that he wanted His joy to be inside of us, and our joy to be full.   In other words, he wants us to be inwardly joyful: full of joy, overflowing with joy.  Without the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, this is impossible.  Joy needs to be like an artesian well springing up from within.  It can’t be artificially produced or induced.

All of us need more joy in our lives. Joy is the secret of a genuinely happy New Year.  Joy keeps the stresses and pressures of life from burying us before we are dead.  Thirty-nine years ago in January 1972, at age 17, I encountered a joy that changed me from the inside out.  This joy was so joyful that it made me full of joy! Without trying, I developed a smile that wouldn’t go away.  I really became a different person, so much so that my friends at High School noticed the difference.  Some even wanted in on the action.

My parents initially were a bit worried.  Having a joyful, peaceful teenager in their family took a little getting used to.  But eventually they too saw a permanent change in their son that made them joyful too.  There is something about an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ that connects us deeply to the gift of joy.  No wonder that C.S. Lewis, the atheist turned believer, entitled his autobiography “Surprised by Joy”. My New Year’s prayer for those reading this article is that joy may spill into all of our lives in surprising and life-changing ways.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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Always Winter and Never Christmas

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

This Christmas season, you will not want to miss watching online the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ movie ‘Voyage of the Dawntreader.  Since C. S. Lewis wrote it in 1950, tens of millions of copies of the book in over thirty languages have been sold.

At the heart of Narnia’s first book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the abolition of Christmas by the White Witch where it is always winter and never Christmas.  C.S. Lewis’ alternate title for his book was ‘The Hundred Year Winter’.  Not once in the past hundred years of Narnia was Christmas ever celebrated.

 The White Witch, whose real name is Jadis, punished anyone who wanted the restoration of Christmas, by turning them into stone.  The White Witch’s most memorable feature was her skin, as white as chalk, or paper, or snow. CS Lewis explains in the Narnia book The Magician’s Nephew that the White Witch’s skin was made that way by eating an apple from the Emperor’s Garden at the beginning of Narnia.

 In the midst of this bone-chilling winter, we are told about an ancient prophecy stating that when two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve filled the four thrones as Kings and Queens of Narnia, the tyranny of the White Witch and her hundred-year winter would end.  We are also told that one day the great Lion Aslan will triumphantly return to Narnia: “Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”   CS Lewis called Aslan a ‘supposal’ of what might have happened if Christ had come to a world of talking animals and become one of them.

 With the remarkable success of the  Passion of the Christ Movie and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings Trilogy,  many have become more open to spiritually-oriented movies like Voyage of the Dawntreader.  Many Lord of the Rings and Narnia buffs may not be aware that it was JRR Tolkien who helped lead his atheist friend CS Lewis to faith in the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5).

While teaching at Oxford College, Lewis formed a lasting friendship with JRR Tolkien. Lewis said to Tolkien that tales or myths are ‘lies and therefore worthless, even  though breathed through silver’.  ‘No’, said Tolkien, ‘they are not  lies’. Tolkien went on to explain to Lewis that in Jesus Christ, the ancient stories or myths of a dying and rising God entered history and  became fact.

Twelve days later, Lewis wrote to another friend Arthur  Greeves: “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely  believing in Christ – in Christianity. I will try to explain this  another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal  to do with it”. CS Lewis recalls going by motorcycle with his brother  Warren to Whipsnade Zoo, about thirty miles east of Oxford. “When we set  out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we  reached the zoo, I did”. In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis  commented: “In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God  was God…perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.

This Christmas season, as you have your family and friends see the Voyage of the Dawntreader on the internet, I invite you to discover with CS Lewis that Aslan is the Reason for the Season.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

for better for worse-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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I’m On Aslan’s Side

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

There is a renewed attention these days to CS Lewis’  fascinating Aslan character.  What is it about Aslan the Lion that even outdrew the mighty King Kong at the box office?  Why is Aslan so effective in breaking through our adult pessimism and negativity?

One of the most interesting Narnia creatures is the Marshwiggle, a symbol of negativity, pessimism, and reliable gloom.  In the Narnia Chronicles’ ‘Silver Chair’, the Green Witch says to the Narnians: “Put away these childish tricks.  I have work for you in the real world. There is no Narnia, no overworld, no sky, no sun, no Aslan.”  The Marshwiggle remarkably responds by affirming: “I ‘m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it.  I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can, even if there isn’t any Narnia.”

It is easy to be cynical and bitter.  It took courage for the Marshwiggle to look past his natural negativity and cling to the promises of Aslan.  The Narnia Chronicles have been teaching me once again that only the childlike can enter the Kingdom of Narnia.  Even the Lion of Judah once said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)

There is a major difference between being childish and childlike.  The Narnia Chronicles comments that “even in this world, of course, it is the stupidest children who are the most childish and the stupidest grownups who are the most grown-up.” The famous ‘love chapter’ of 1 Corinthians 13 encourages us ‘to put away childish things’ As the Pevensie children journeyed throughout their Narnia adventures, they became less childish and more mature both in outward appearance and inner character.  Yet simultaneously they became more childlike in their willingness to trust and admit their need for others, especially their need for Aslan.  In the Narnia blockbuster ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe’, the children cry out ‘Aslan, I need your help’, to which Aslan responds “I know, but the future of Narnia depends on your courage.”  Only the truly childlike can be truly courageous.  If we depend on our own strength alone, life tends to sap us of our inner fortitude.

It takes real courage to admit how tough and sad life can sometimes be.  Only the truly childlike know how important it is to weep and grieve from time to time.  At the death of the Narnian King Caspian, “all three stood and wept. Even (Aslan) the Lion wept: great lion tears, each tear more precious than the earth would be if it was a single diamond.”  Childlike tears can be deeply healing. That is why Jesus said: “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” That is why the shortest sentence in the entire bible is ‘Jesus wept’.  The Good Book poignantly says that Aslan puts every one of our tears in a bottle.

Perhaps most importantly, only the childlike can truly hear Aslan’s voice.  Aslan said to Polly regarding Uncle Andrew in The Magician and His Nephew: “He has made himself unable to hear my voice. If I spoke to him, he would only hear growlings and roarings.  Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good.”  Aslan says to each of us: “Come farther in. Come farther up.  Come to the real land of Narnia, the land you have been looking for all your life.” Let Aslan give you ‘the wild kisses of a Lion’.  Let Aslan bring you to life as you walk with childlike faith through the Wardrobe.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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In search of Aslan

By the Rev. Dr.  Ed Hird

With CS Lewis’ Voyage of the Dawntreader having come out, Aslan Fever again swept the globe.

Who is Aslan anyways, and why are so many children of all ages so fascinated with him?  Having thoroughly enjoyed watching Disney’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, I was motivated to go back and re-read the Narnia Chronicles series. My family, when they were younger, eagerly watched the cartoon version of The Narnia Chronicles, and gained much from it.  But with the breakthrough in CGI technology, Aslan has taken on a new visual depth.

When the four Pevensie children in Narnia first hear Aslan’s name, they immediately feel powerful sensations that they cannot comprehend.  Peter, Susan, and Lucy experience an unfathomable joy. Edmund the double-crosser was strangely dismayed.  Either way Aslan evoked a strong response.

In the Narnia Chronicles: The Horse and His Boy, Aslan reveals himself as the one who keeps us from going over the edge, the one who stays with us day and night.  The young prince Shasta looked back after entering Narnia: “I must have gone through the pass in the night.  What luck that I hit it!  At least it wasn’t luck at all really, it was Him (Aslan). And Now I’m in Narnia.”  “Who are you?” asked Shasta.  “Myself”, said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook; and again “Myself”, loud and clear and gay; and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.”  Aslan was Himself, no more, no less.

In Narnia Chronicles: The Magician’s Nephew, we learn that Aslan sang creation into existence at the beginning of time: “The Voice rose and rose, till the air was shaking with it. And just as it swelled into the mightiest and most glorious sound it had yet produced, the sun arose…The Lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song…And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool…Soon there were other things besides grass…’Trees,’ Digory exclaimed.”

CS Lewis ‘created’ a world of endless snow in the Narnia Chronicles.  Only when Aslan was slain for others by the White Witch did the snow start melting.  CS Lewis described his own spiritual breakthrough the same way: “I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back – drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle.  I rather disliked the feeling.”

Many people don’t realize that CS Lewis, a confirmed old bachelor, ended up becoming married because of Aslan.  Joy Davidman, a self-declared atheistic communist of Jewish heritage, loved to read the Narnia Chronicles to her sons.   In the process, she came to faith in Aslan, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5).  Looking back, Joy Davidman commented: “My first published poem was called “Resurrection” — a sort of private argument with Jesus, attempting to convince him (and myself) that he had never risen. I wrote it at Easter, of all possible seasons, and never guessed why.”

As Joy Davidman wrote in ‘The Longest Way Round’, God “had been stalking me for a very long time, waiting for his moment; he crept nearer so silently that I never knew he was there. Then, all at once, he sprang.  For the first time in my life I felt helpless; for the first time my pride was forced to admit that I was not, after all, ‘the master of my fate’. All my defenses — the walls of arrogance and cocksureness and self-love behind which I  had hid from God — went down momentarily. And God came in.  Since childhood, I had been pouring half my energy into the task of keeping him out.  When it was over I found myself on my knees, praying. I think I must have been the world’s most astonished atheist.”

After coming to faith in Aslan the Lion of Judah, Joy escaped to England from her alcoholic, adulterous, wife-beating husband.  As told in the ‘Shadowlands’ movie, it was there that Joy met her Narnia hero, CS Lewis.  As a favour to a good friend, CS Lewis married Joy Davidman to keep her from being thrown out of the country because of her former communist background. As Joy began to battle terminal cancer, CS Lewis then fell in love with Joy for real and married her a second time in a Church wedding,.  Romantically CS Lewis adopted Joy Davidman’s children, one of whom, Douglas Gresham, is co-producer of the Narnia Chronicles movie blockbuster.

So who is this Aslan who transformed Joy Davidman’s life?  CS Lewis wrote to some Maryland fifth

graders in 1954: “I did not say to myself ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’; I said, ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.'”.  In the letter, sent to a child fan in 1961, Lewis writes: “The whole Narnian story is about Christ.” CS Lewis commented: “Since Narnia is a world of talking beasts, I thought he would become a talking beast there as he became a man here. I pictured him becoming a lion there because a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; b) Christ is called ‘the lion of Judah’ in the Bible.”

My prayer for those reading this article  is that each of us, like CS Lewis and Joy Davidman, may open our hearts to the mysterious Aslan.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien: Friends on a Quest

By the Rev.  Dr. Ed Hird


At age 10, Lewis saw his mother dying of cancer.  “With my mother’s death”, said Lewis, “all that was tranquil and  reliable, disappeared from my life.” Tolkien experienced the double loss  of both his father at age 3 and his mother at age 12. Tolkien’s strong  desire for friendship/fellowship, as with Frodo, Sam, Merry & Pippin,  came from Tolkien’s loss of his three best friends in the trenches.  Referring to trench warfare, CS Lewis commented: “Through the winter,  weariness and water were our chief enemies. I have gone to sleep  marching and woken again and found myself marching still.” Lewis vividly  remembered “the frights, the cold,…the horribly smashed men still  moving like half-crushed beetles, the sitting or standing corpses, the  landscape of sheer earth without a blade of grass, the boots worn day  and night until they seemed to grow to your feet…”
Anthony Hopkins portrayed CS (Jack) Lewis, the author of the hugely  popular Narnia Tales, in the thoughtful movie ‘Shadowlands’. Since  Lewis’ death in 1963, sales of his books have risen to over 2 million a  year. For much of his life, Lewis, the son of a solicitor and of an  Anglican clergyman’s daughter, was a convinced atheist. While teaching  at Oxford College, Lewis formed a lasting friendship with JRR Tolkien.  Both Lewis and Tolkien had much in common, as both had been traumatized  by the premature death of their mothers and by the horrors of trench  warfare in World War I.

Both CS Lewis and Tolkien loved the history of the English language,  especially as expressed in the ancient tales like Beowulf. CS Lewis  commented: “When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two  other friends, both Christians (those queer people seemed to pop up on  every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last  stile/steps. They were HVD Dyson and JRR Tolkien. Friendship with the  latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices…” Lewis said to  Tolkien that tales or myths are ‘lies and therefore worthless, even  though breathed through silver’. ‘No’, said Tolkien, ‘they are not  lies’. Tolkien went on to explain to Lewis that in Jesus Christ, the  ancient stories or myths of a dying and rising God entered history and  became fact. Twelve days later, Lewis wrote to another friend Arthur  Greeves: “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely  believing in Christ – in Christianity. I will try to explain this  another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal  to do with it”.

CS Lewis recalls going by motorcycle with his brother  Warren to Whipsnade Zoo, about thirty miles east of Oxford. “When we set  out, I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we  reached the zoo, I did”. In his autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis  commented: “In the Trinity term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God  was God…perhaps the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England”.

When CS Lewis turned to Christ, he was surprised to find the skies bluer  and the grass greener.* “Today”, Lewis wrote, “I got such a sudden  intense feeling of delight that it sort of stopped me in my walk and  spun me round. Indeed the sweetness was so great, and seemed so to  affect the whole body as well as the mind, that it gave me pause.” Lewis  commented: “I really seem to have had youth given back to me lately.”

Lewis and Tolkien formed an ‘Inklings’ group at Oxford in which they  read out and critiqued each other’s manuscripts like ‘Narnia Tales’ and  ‘Lord of the Rings’. Lewis’ brother Warren said that at the Inklings,  “the fun would be riotous with Jack at the top of his form and enjoying  every minute…an outpouring of wit, nonsense, whimsy, dialectical  swordplay, and pungent judgement such as I have rarely heard equaled…”  The Inklings group was a clear example of that ancient Proverb “As iron  sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”.

 Charles Williams, another  author and member of the Inklings group, commented that “much was  possible to a man in solitude, but some things were possible only to a  man in companionship, and of these, the most important was balance. No  mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter it and  equal it and to save it from conceit and bigotry and folly.” In October  1933, Tolkien wrote in his diary that friendship with Lewis ‘besides  giving constant pleasure and comfort, has done me much good from the  contact with a man at once honest, brave, intellectual – a scholar, a  poet, and a philosopher – and a lover, at least after a long pilgrimage,  of our Lord’.

 

The internationally respected Vancouver author, Dr. JI Packer, says that  ‘the combination within CS Lewis of insight with vitality, wisdom with  wit, and imaginative power with analytical precision made him a  sparkling communicator of the everlasting gospel.’ At bottom, says Dr.  Packer, Lewis was a mythmaker. As Austin Farrer commented of Lewis’  writings, “we think we are listening to an argument; in fact, we are  presented with a vision; and it is the vision that carries conviction.”  Myth, says Dr. Packer, is perhaps best defined as a story that projects a vision of life of actual or potential communal significance by reason of the identity  and attitudes that it invites us to adopt.  

When Tolkien first shared his ‘Lord of the Rings’ manuscript at the  Inklings group, CS Lewis said: ‘This book is a lightning from a clear  sky. Not content to create his own story, he creates with an almost  insolent prodigality the whole world in which it is to move; with its  own theology, myths, geography, history, paleography, languages and  order of beings.’ Recent polls have consistently declared that Tolkien  is the most influential author of the last 100 years and that the Lord  of the Rings is the book of this recent century. Without the Inklings fellowship  of Tolkien and Lewis, neither the Narnia Tales nor the Lord of the Rings  might have ever seen the light of day. I thank God for the faithful  Christian friendship of two pilgrims on a Quest.

*For more information on C.S. Lewis’ Joy, just click.

The Rev. Dr.  Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

  •  

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

To receive a signed copy within North America, just etransfer at ed_hird@telus.net, giving your address. Cheques are also acceptable.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca 

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

-Click to purchase the Companion Bible Study by Jan Cox (for the Battle of the Soul of Canada) in both paperback and Kindle on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca

To purchase any of our six books in paperback or ebook on Amazon, just click on this link.


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Good news according to frodo

By the Rev. Dr. Ed Hird

 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.  “So do I,” said Gandalf, “ and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All that we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  Hearing this insight from Frodo and Gandalf in the recent Lord of the Rings movies really touched my heart.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the first movie Fellowship of the Rings as it seemed too violent and traumatic for my liking.  So I planned to quietly avoid the second Lord of the Rings movie ‘The Two Towers’ but ended up going along reluctantly in order to spend time with one of my sons.  Though I had tried reading the book back in the 1970’s, I couldn’t get into it.  The endless details and strange names threw me off.  My classic excuse for not reading material like Lord of the Rings was that life has enough fantasy and fiction in it to suit me already.

 

Amazingly, in watching the second movie Two Towers, the penny dropped and the message behind the message began to break through.  It was like being in an AA 12-step meeting where they always say at the end: ‘Keep coming back, it works’.  Eventually the penny will drop.

 

When watching the Two Towers, I, like Frodo, had been going through a rather challenging year that ‘I wish…need not have happened in my time’.  Like Gandalf, I had to learn that ‘all we can decide is what to do with the time that is given us.’  I have discovered afresh that I am not alone on the journey of Life, and there are resources available to me that I might have never imagined back in the comfort of my ‘shire’.

 

The Shire in The Lord of the Rings is a symbol of tranquility and safety free from harm and stress.  To many of us locally, Deep Cove represents that kind of Shire.  Have you ever wondered who the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings really are?  JRR Tolkien once said that ‘the hobbits are just rustic English people, made small in size because it reflects the generally small reach of their imagination –not the small reach of their courage or latent power.’   Tolkien also said the hobbits were ‘just what I could have liked to have been, but never was.” Tolkien was deeply traumatized by the loss of both his father at age 3 and his mother at age 12.  So he never knew the safety and security taken for granted by so many other rural English children.

 

Where are the courageous leaders in our highly ambivalent third millennium?  Elrond said of the hobbits, “This is the hour of the Shire-folk, when they arise from their quiet fields, to shake the towers and counsels of the Great.  Who of all the Wise could have foreseen it?”  Many of us shy away from facing conflict.  But the experts tell us that conflict-avoidance only makes it worse and more widespread.  It takes courage to stare evil right in the face.

 

The Lord of the Rings book reminds us that ‘there is a seed of courage hidden (often deeply, it is true) in the heart of the fattest and most timid hobbit, waiting for some final and desperate danger to make it grow.’  As the journey became more difficult, Gandalf said to Frodo: ‘Courage will now be your best defence against the storm that is at hand—that and such hope as I bring’.

 

JRR Tolkien warned against allegorizing the Lord of the Rings but believed in ‘applicability’.  As I read Frodo’s danger-filled quest, I was reminded of the applicability of Psalm 23: ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou are with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me’.  King Theoden of Rohan said to his men: ‘Fear no darkness’.  Elrond said, ‘There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it.  But you do not stand alone.’

 

One of the most gripping moments in the Lord of the Rings was when Frodo had fully counted the cost and still courageously said: ‘I will take the ring, though I do not know the way.’  Frodo at that moment was choosing to face Mordor’s wasteland, vicious Orcs, giant spiders, and betrayal by Gollum.  The greatest danger that Frodo faced was the ever-present temptation to grasp the Ring for himself, and make use of its vast power for his own benefit.  After destroying the ring in the Crack of Doom, Frodo was deeply hurt by his self-sacrifice but reminded his friend Sam that ‘when things are in danger, some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.’  Frodo’s selfless actions remind me of the words of Jesus: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it’.

 

Many people who love the Lord of the Rings don’t realize that JRR Tolkien was a deeply committed Christian whose values permeated his unforgettable trilogy.  Tolkien knew the power of Story in touching hardened hearts like that of his friend CS Lewis who, through Tolkien’s influence, moved from hard-core atheism to passionate faith in Jesus Christ.  My prayer for those reading this article is that we too may discover the message behind the message in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously published in the North Shore News/Deep Cove Crier

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

P. S. Click this Amazon link to view for free the first two chapters of our new novel Blue Sky.

“I’m afraid there’s been an accident…”

12bdf6ff-3021-4e73-bccd-bc919398d1a0-7068-0000031133e7b4d9Sandy Brown and her family have just moved to Spokane, Washington where her husband, Scott, is pastoring a new church. With a fresh start, Sandy is determined to devote more time to her four children. But, within weeks of settling in their new life, the Brown family is plunged into turmoil.

Sandy receives shocking news that her children aren’t safe, which brings back haunting memories of the trauma she experienced as a girl. Then, the unthinkable happens…

A brutal attack puts Sandy on the brink of losing everything she’s loved. Her faith in God and the family she cherishes are pushed to the ultimate limit.

Is healing possible when so many loved ones are hurt? Are miracles really possible through the power of prayer? Can life return to the way it was before?

Blue Sky reveals how a mother’s most basic instinct isn’t for survival… but for family.

If you’re a fan of Karen Kingsbury, then you’ll love Blue Sky. Get your copy today on paperback or  kindle.

-Click to check out our marriage book For Better For Worse: discovering the keys to a lasting relationship on Amazon. You can even read the first two chapters for free to see if the book speaks to you.

  •  

-The sequel book Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit is available online with Amazon.com in both paperback and ebook form.  Dr. JI Packer wrote the foreword, saying “I heartily commend what he has written.” The book focuses on strengthening a new generation of healthy leaders. Drawing on examples from Titus’ healthy leadership in the pirate island of Crete, it shows how we can embrace a holistically healthy life.

In Canada, Amazon.ca has the book available in paperback and ebook. It is also posted on Amazon UK (paperback and ebook), Amazon France (paperback and ebook), and Amazon Germany (paperback and ebook).

Restoring Health is also available online on Barnes and Noble in both paperback and Nook/ebook form.  Nook gives a sample of the book to read online.

Indigo also offers the paperback and the Kobo ebook version.  You can also obtain it through ITunes as an IBook.

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Carl Jung and the Gnostic Reconciliation of Gender Opposites

By the Rev. Dr.  Ed Hird

Have you noticed that some are teaching, even in our school systems in North America, that being male and female are just interchangeable social constructs? Does undergoing genital surgery and taking hormones really change one’s gender, as many are suggesting? Can a man ever become a woman, or a woman become a man? Is not one’s XY DNA as a male and XX DNA as a female essentially unchangeable? No one should be bullied over their perceived gender identity. Likewise no one should be bullied and coercively silenced if they raise thoughtful questions about what it means to be male or female, particularly from a historic Judeo-Christian perspective.

What if I told you that the current gender confusion particularly in the younger generation goes back to Dr. Carl Jung’s mixing up of gender opposites? Leanne Payne wrote an unforgettable book in 1995 entitled ‘Crisis in Masculinity’. We live in an age where equality is equated with sameness, where men and women are deeply confused about their gender identity, about what really is authentic male and authentic female. I believe that this gnostic Reconciliation of gender opposites, this gender-blending about authentic maleness and femaleness, is the direct result of our culture’s unconsciously embracing of the Jungian agenda.

A good friend’s mother said that she cried at her daughter’s birth.  This caused my friend to dislike her mother and try to act like a boy, in order to be accepted. After being sexually abused as a teenager, she had even more difficulty in accepting and celebrating her gender identity. Through reading Leanne Payne’s books and going to her School of Pastoral Care, her mother repented to her in tears, resulting in reconciliation between my friend and her mother. As a result, my friend has been able to accept and celebrate her gender identity as a woman, even ministering to others who have felt the same gender rejection from their parents.

I, like many North Americans, used to be very naïve about the impact of Carl Jung on our culture.  In 1991, I had the wonderful privilege of attending the Episcopal Renewal Ministries(ERM) Leadership Training Institute (LTI) in Evergreen, Colorado. Following that, I encouraged Anglican Renewal Ministries Canada to endorse the LTI approach, including the use of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator). However, as I later listened to tapes by Leanne Payne and Dr. Jeffrey Satinover[1], I rethought the Jungian nature of the MBTI, writing a report entitled Carl Jung, Neo-gnosticism, and the MBTI. After much prayer and reflection, ARM Canada decided unanimously in November 1997 to no longer use the MBTI in the Clergy and Lay Leadership Training Institutes.

Over two and a half million people are ‘initiated’ each year into the MBTI process. [2] It is now the most extensively used personality instrument in history. [3] There is even an MBTI version for children, called the MMTIC (Murphy-Meisgeier Type Indicator for Children)[4], and a simplified adult MBTI-like tool for the general public, known as the Keirsey-Bates Indicator. Rev. Robert Innes, of St. John’s College, Durham identifies “the two indicators most widely used by Christian groups – Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.”[5] One of the key questions is whether the MBTI is an integral part of Jungian neo-gnosticism or alternately a detachable benevolent portion of Jung’s philosophy in an otherwise questionable context. To use a visual picture, is the MBTI the ‘marijuana’, the low-level entry drug that potentially opens the door to the more hard-core Jungian involvement, or is it just a harmless sugar tablet?

Researching the roots of the MBTI showed me Jung’s far-reaching influence in our culture, particularly in the area of gender confusion. In 1946, Jung said: “Biographies should show people in their undershirts…This way of looking at people is better than false hero worship!”[6] In this essay, we are looking at Carl Jung in his undershirt. Stripped down, we see aspects of Jung and his work which some good church people refuse to acknowledge. You could call this article my search for the historical Jung, looking past the Jung Myth for the real Jungian undershirt. Carl Jung is described by Merill Berger, a Jungian psychologist, as “the psychologist of the 21st century”.[7] Dr. Satinover says “The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”[8] Leaders of the 1960’s hippie movement like Timothy Leary were heavily influenced by Jungian teaching[9]. One could say without overstatement that Carl Jung is the Father of Neo-Gnosticism & the New Age Movement. That is why Satinover comments that “One of the most powerful modern forms of Gnosticism is without question Jungian psychology, both within or without the Church”.[10] Dr. Satinover notes that “the ultimate aim…of all Gnostic systems is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”[11]

Gnosticism, which is the exalting of esoteric knowledge and experience, is rooted in monism[12]. Monism, the claim that all is one, is the major competing worldview to Judeo-Christian Monotheism. Monotheism of course holds that there is one God. Carl Jung advocated monism, a philosophy that treats all differences as ‘maya’, as illusion.[13] The monistic worldview in Hinduism and the New Age sees the earth and ourselves as the Lord God Almighty. It holds that all is God, including light and darkness, good and evil, right and wrong. Jung’s monism was the core of his advocacy of the reconciliation of opposites, including gender opposites of male and female.

Jung held that our ‘central problem was of course the coniunctio’, the alchemical symbol for the union of opposites.[14] Dr. Satinover notes that Jung “devoted most of his adult life to a study of alchemy…”[15] Alchemy is the search for the Philosopher’s Stone that transmutes lead into gold, a search which Jung resymbolized as psychic and psychological transmutation and wholeness.[16]

In 1929, Jung wrote a commentary on the Secret of the Golden Flower, which he said was “not only a Taoist text concerned with Chinese Yoga, but is also an alchemical treatise.”[17] He comments that “…it was the text of the Golden Flower that first put me on the right track. For in medieval alchemy we have the long-sought connecting link between Gnosis (i.e. of the Gnostics) and the processes of the collective unconscious that can be observed in modern man…”[18] Jung comments: “…a large part of my life work has revolved around the problem of opposites and especially their alchemical symbolism…”[19] Tracy Cuotto comments that “Alchemy involves the uniting of opposites…the fusion of male and female, good and evil, life and death — whose union eventually creates the perfected and completed, ideal personality called Self.”[20]

Many people are not aware that Jung collected one of the largest amassing of spiritualistic writings found on the European continent. Jung wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism and the first western commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.[21]Dr. Richard Noll comments that “the divinatory methods of the I Ching, used often by Jung in the 1920s and 1930s, were a part of the initial training program of the C.G. Jung Institute of Zurich in 1948, and its use is widely advocated today in Jungian Analytic-Training Institutes throughout the world.”[22] Jung was also a strong promoter of the occultic mandala, a circular picture with a sun or star usually at the centre. Sun worship, as personified in the mandala, is perhaps the key to fully understanding Jung.[23] Jung taught that the mandala [Sanskrit for ‘circle’] was “the simplest model of a concept of wholeness, and one which spontaneously arises in the mind as a representation of the struggle and reconciliation of opposites.”[24]

During the hippie movement of the 1960’s, the Rock Opera Hair boldly proclaimed the alleged dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Once again Carl Jung foreshadowed this emphasis in a 1940 letter to his former assistant, Godwin Baynes: “1940 is the year when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius. It is the premonitory earthquake of the New Age.”[25] In a letter written by Jung to Sigmund Freud, he said: “My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I made horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth…I dare say that we shall one day discover in astrology a good deal of knowledge which has been intuitively projected into the heavens.”[26] In the 1950’s, Jung began to use Tarot reading as part of his astrological psychologizing. [27] Jung was known among his intimate colleagues as the ‘Warlock” (Hexenmeister) of Zurich.[28]

Jung’s family had occult linkage on both sides, from his paternal grandfather’s Freemasonry[29] involvement as Grandmaster of the Swiss Lodge[30], and his maternal family’s long-term involvement with séances and ghosts. Jung was heavily involved for many years with his mother and two female cousins in hypnotically induced séances.[31] They ‘used a primitive, homemade Ouija board and a glass that moved over the letters to spell out answers to questions.”[32] Jung eventually wrote up the séances as his 1902 medical dissertation entitled “On the Psychology and Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena”.[33] His Preiswerk relatives were outraged that they were ‘shamefully’ included, and blamed Carl Jung for the inability of several of his cousins to find husbands.[34] James A Herrick notes that Jung’s mother ‘introduced him as a child to Hindu gods, for which he maintained a life-long fascination.’[35] After the death of three babies in a row before Carl Jung’s birth, his mother “Emilie withdrew, taking refuge in the private interior visions of the spirits.”[36] Emilie often had to be hospitalized, leaving Carl Jung with the feeling of the feminine as ‘natural unreliability, one can never rely on it’ and the term ‘father’ as ‘reliability and powerlessness.’[37]

Jung’s maternal Grandfather Samuel Preiswerk, a Basel pastor, had weekly séances attempting to contact his deceased first wife in the presence of his second wife, (Jung’s grandmother) and his daughter (Jung’s mother).[38] Jung acquired a spirit guide and guru named ‘Philemon’ [who was described by Jung as ‘an old man with the horns of a bull…and the wings of a fisher’]. Before being Philemon, this creature appeared to Jung as ‘Elijah’, and then finally mutated to ‘Ka’, an Egyptian earth-soul that ‘came from below’.[39] It may be worth reflecting upon why Jung designated his Bollingen Tower as the Shrine of Philemon.[40] Carl Jung commented: “Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. . . . Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru.”[41]

Jung’s fascination with the occult (the hidden) was at the root of his painful break in 1913 with his mentor Sigmund Freud.[42] Freud saw everything through the lens of sexual obsessions, and described the occult as ‘a sea of black mud’ which he feared would compromise the respectability of psychoanalysis.[43]

Jung’s “family was steeped in religion – he had eight uncles in the clergy as well as his maternal grandfather and his earliest playgrounds were churches and graveyards.”[44] The famous Ulysses author James Joyce disparagingly referred to Carl Jung as the Reverend Dr. Jung[45], hinting that Jungianism was really a religion. Carl Jung’s pastor-father loved theological school reflections, but deeply disliked rural congregational life and was losing his faith.[46] The famous Liberal German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher had converted and baptized Carl Jung’s grandfather. Carl Jung was deeply aware of and damaged by his father’s spiritual emptiness, saying “What he said sounded stale and hollow, like a tale told by someone who knows it only by hearsay and cannot quite believe it himself.”[47] Carl Jung’s first and only time of taking Holy Communion was a devastating experience for him: “Slowly I came to understand that this communion had been a fatal experience for me. It had proved hollow; more than that, it had proved to be a total loss. I knew that I would never again be able to participate in this ceremony. ‘Why, that is not religion at all,’ I thought. ‘It is the absence of God; the church is a place I should not go to. It is not life which is there, but death.’”[48]

When younger, Carl Jung had a life-changing dream of a subterranean phallic god which reappeared “whenever anyone spoke too emphatically about Lord Jesus.”[49] Jung commented that “…the ‘man-eater’ in general was symbolized by the phallus, so that the dark Lord Jesus, the Jesuit and the phallus were identical.”[50] This “initiation into the realm of darkness”[51] radically shaped Jung’s approach to Jesus: “Lord Jesus never became quite real for me, never quite acceptable, never quite lovable, for again and again I would think of his underground counterpart…Lord Jesus seemed to me in some ways a god of death…Secretly, his love and kindness, which I always heard praised, appeared doubtful to me…”[52] Jung later confessed to Sigmund Freud that as a boy he had been ‘the victim of a sexual assault.’[53] To what degree, I wonder, was Jung’s ‘revelation’ of the phallus god a fruit of childhood sexual abuse? The next major ‘spiritual breakthrough’ in his life was what Jung described as a “blasphemous vision”[54] of God dropping his dung on the local Cathedral. This vision, said Jung, gave him an intense “experience of divine grace”.[55] These early experiences birthed what many see as a new religion, clothed in a psychological undershirt. Dr Richard Noll notes that “in his December 1913 vision, Jung assumed the stance of the crucified Christ and then was transformed into the lion-headed god.”[56]

How serious, you may wonder, is the Jungian Reconciliation of Good and Evil? Leanne Payne says of Dr. Jeffrey Satinover that “like (C.S.) Lewis, he knows that this synthesis or reconciliation is the greatest threat facing not only Christendom but all mankind today.”[57] “For Jung”, says Satinover, “good and evil evolved into two equal, balanced, cosmic principles that belong together in one overarching synthesis.”[58]

Jung believed that the “dark side” of human nature needed to be “integrated” into a single, overarching “wholeness” in order to form a less strict and difficult definition of goodness.[59] Jung significantly said: “I would rather be whole than good.”[60] Wholeness for Jung is really the gnostic reconciliation of opposites.

“If Christ means anything to me,” said Jung, “it is only as a symbol…I do not find the historical Jesus edifying at all, merely interesting because controversial.”[61] Jung believed that “the Christ-symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things…”[62] For Jung, it was regrettable that Christ in his goodness lacked a shadow side, and God the Father, who is the Light, lacked darkness.[63] Jung sought a solution to this dilemma in the Holy Spirit who allegedly united the split in the moral opposites symbolized by Christ and Satan.[64] “Looked at from a quaternary standpoint”, writes Jung, “the Holy Ghost is a reconciliation of opposites and hence the answer to the suffering in the Godhead which Christ personifies.”[65] Jung believed that Satan and Jesus, as spiritual opposites, were gnostically reconciled through the Holy Spirit. “It is possible”, said Jung, “for a man to attain totality, to become whole, only with the co-operation of the spirit of darkness…”[66]

After experiencing Goethe’s Faust, Jung came to believe in the ‘universal power’ of evil and “its mysterious role it played in delivering man from darkness and suffering.”[67] “Most of all”, said Jung, “(Faust) awakened in me the problem of opposites, of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness.”[68]

In post-modern culture, the Judeo-Christian worldview is often dismissed as too narrow-minded and dogmatic. Jung saw the reconciliation of opposites as a sign of great cultural sophistication: “(Chinese philosophy) never failed to acknowledge the polarity and paradoxity (sic) of all life. The opposites always balanced one another – a sign of high culture. One-sidedness, though it lends momentum, is a sign of barbarism.”[69] It would not be too far off to describe Jung as a gnostic Taoist. “The book on types (PT)”, says Jung, “yielded the view that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by his personality type and that every point of view is necessarily relative. This raised the question of the unity which must compensate this diversity, and it led me directly to the Chinese concept of Tao.”[70] Being influenced by the Yin-Yang of Taoism, Jung believed that “Everything requires for its existence its opposite, or it fades into nothingness.”[71] The Batman movie ‘Dark Knight’ has a very Jungian moment where the Joker says to Batman: “I don’t want to kill you! What would I do without you? Go back to ripping off mob dealers? No, no, NO! No. You… you… complete me.”[72] George Lucas’ ‘dark side of the Force’ in the Star Wars series is another epic Jungian moment that conditions post-moderns to see spirituality as a reconciliation of light and darkness.

In the book Psychological Types, Jung comments that “Yoga is a method by which the libido is systematically ‘drawn in’ and thereby released from the bondage of opposites.”[73] Jung entitled an entire section in PT: “Concerning the Brahmanic Conception of the Reconciling Symbol”. Jung notes: “Brahman therefore must signify the irrational union of the opposites – hence their final overcoming…These quotations show that Brahman is the reconciliation and dissolution of the opposites – hence standing beyond them as an irrational factor.”[74]

While in India in 1938, Jung says that he “was principally concerned with the question of the psychological nature of evil.”[75] He was “impressed again and again by the fact that these people were able to integrate so-called ‘evil’ without ‘losing face’…To the oriental, good and evil are meaningfully contained in nature, and are merely varying degrees of the same thing. I saw that Indian spirituality contains as much of evil as of good…one does not really believe in evil, and one does not really believe in good.”[76]

In a comment reminiscent of our post-modern relativistic culture, Jung said of Hindu thought: “Good or evil are then regarded at most as my good or my evil, as whatever seems to me good or evil”.[77] “We must beware”, said Jung, “of thinking of good and evil as absolute opposites…The criterion of ethical action can no longer consist in the simple view that good has the force of a categorical imperative, while so -called evil can resolutely be shunned. Recognition of the reality of evil necessarily relativizes the good, and the evil likewise, converting both into halves of a paradoxical whole.”

“This work Psychological Types (1921), said Jung, “sprung originally from my need to define the way in which my outlook differs from Freud’s and Adler’s. In attempting to answer this question, I came across the problem of types, for it is one’s psychological type which from the outset determines and limits a person’s judgment.”[78] Freud called Jung’s Psychological Types book ‘the work of a snob and a mystic’.[79] Jung was deeply traumatized by his split with Freud, and used the Psychological Types book to rationalize the Jung/Freud split. Jung saw himself as the so-called introvert, focusing on thinking, in contrast to Freud who was allegedly the extrovert, focused on feeling.[80] Many are unaware that the terms ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ were invented by Carl Jung, and mean far more conceptually than simply being outgoing or shy.[81]

Dr. Gordon Lawrence, a strong Jungian/MBTI supporter, teaches that “In Jung’s theory, the two kinds of perception – sensing and intuition – are polar opposites of each other. Similarly, thinking judgment and feeling judgment are polar opposites.”[82] It seems to me that the setting up of the psychological polar opposites in PT functions as a useful prelude for gnostic reconciliation of all opposites. The MBTI helps condition our minds into thinking about the existence of polar opposites, and their alleged barriers to perfect wholeness. To accept the eight polarities within the MBTI predisposes one to embrace Jung’s teaching that the psyche “cannot set up any absolute truths, for its own polarity determines the relativity of its statements.”[83]

Jung was accused of anti-Semitism because the Zentralblatt für Psychotherapie journal, which Jung edited, endorsed Mein Kampf as required reading for all psychoanalysts.[84] His defense was that he was trying to save psychoanalysis from being obliterated by the Nazis as a ‘Jewish science.[85] In 1936, Jung said of Hitler: “[Hitler] is a medium, German policy is not made; it is revealed through Hitler. He is the mouthpiece of the Gods of old… He is the Sybil, the Delphic oracle.”[86] The influence of Germanic anti-Semitism on Jungianism can now be seen in a secret quota clause designed to limit Jewish membership to 10% in the Analytical Psychology Club of Zurich. Jung’s secret Jewish quota was in effect from 1916 to 1950, and only came to public light in 1989.[87] While it would be a mistake to paint Jung as an outright Nazi sympathizer, there was much confusion, almost a gnostic reconciliation of good and evil, in how Jung responded to Hitler’s Germany.[88] The Rev Charles Raven, Director of SPREAD, comments that “Jung’s confused response to Nazi Germany and anti-Semitism contrasts sharply with the clear-sightedness of Karl Barth and the Confessing Church expressed in the Barmen Declaration in 1933. This helps to underline the way that Jungian psychology saps the ability to recognise and resist evil.”[89]

Two of Jung’s ‘most influential archetypes’ are the anima & animus, described by Jung as “psychological bisexuality”.[90] Jung teaches in PT that every man has a female soul (anima) and every woman has a male soul (animus).[91] Noll comments that “Jung’s first encounter with the feminine entity he later called the anima seems to have begun with his use of mediumistic techniques…”[92] Based on the recently discovered personal diary of Sabina Spielrein, John Kerr claims that Jung’s so-called anima “the woman within” which he spoke to, was none other than his idealized image of his former mistress, patient, and fellow therapist, Sabina Spielrein.[93] After breaking with both Spielrein and Freud, Jung felt his own soul vanish as if it had flown away to the land of the dead. Shortly after, while his children were plagued by nightmares and the house was seemingly haunted, Jung heard a chorus of spirits cry out demanding: ‘We have come back from Jerusalem where we have not found what we sought.’[94]

Jung’s next mistress Toni Wolff also started as Jung’s patient and became a Jungian analyst. Toni Wolff was hugely influential in the forming of Jungian Psychology. Jungian Analyst Dr. C.A. Maier holds that ‘when it comes to psychological types, (Toni Wolff) played a very important role there.’[95] “In this unfamiliar, terrifying underground of the collective unconscious, (Toni Wolff) was Jung’s guide to such an extent that she lived with him…She reflected his anima in a way that Mrs Jung didn’t.”[96] Baroness Vera von der Heydt comments that “It was (Toni Wolff) who introduced him to all the Eastern things, Eastern spirituality, Eastern philosophy and so on.”[97]

Part of the gender-bending and gender-blending of our post-modern culture is rooted in Jung’s androgynous teaching about the so-called anima and animus.[98] In the Jungian ‘Matter of the Heart’ video series, Dr Joseph (Jane) Wheelwright comments: “This is built into the heart of Jung’s whole psychology that one should develop one’s contrasexual components, as Margaret Mead so quaintly phrases it. Jung prefers to talk about the anima and the animus…All of us who are really committed and involved in the Jungian world are very busy trying to develop our animuses or our animas….This androgynous, or almost androgynous, state of being, is the way that one hopes to be before they throw the switch.”[99] Dr Richard Noll comments about Jung’s pansexual practices: “Emma Jung did not choose polygamy freely. The situation was presented to her by her husband. At best, she freely chose to adapt to it”[100] In a letter to Freud dated January 30, 1910, Jung wrote: “The prerequisite for a good marriage, it seems to me, is the license to be unfaithful.”[101]

Jung’s sexual views were profoundly influenced by the German physician and psychoanalyst Otto Gross (1877-1920). Otto Gross advocated the “life-enhancing value of eroticism which is so great that it must remain free from extraneous considerations in laws, and above all, from any integration into everyday life…. Husbands and wives should not begrudge each other whatever erotic stimuli may present themselves. Jealousy is something mean. Just as one has several people for friends, one can also have sexual union with several people at any given period and be ‘faithful’ to each one…. Free love will save the world.”[102] As a child of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, I cannot read Otto Gross without thinking of Haight-Ashbury. Is it merely a co-incidence that Timothy Leary was psychoanalyzed by Joseph Henderson, a California Jungian analyst, before he birthed the hippie/drug movement?[103]

Otto Gross and Jung sometimes psychoanalyzed each other for up to twelve hours non-stop. Speaking of Gross’ sexual/religious orgies, Jung commented: “The existence of a phallic or orgiastic cult does not indicate a particularly lascivious life any more than the ascetic symbolism of Christianity means an especially moral life.”[104] Jung’s patient/mistress Sabina Spielrein comments: “I sat there waiting in great depression. Now he [Jung] arrives, beaming with great pleasure, and tells me with strong emotion about Gross, about the great insight he had just received [i.e. about polygamy]; he no longer wants to suppress his feelings about me…”[105] Gross’ motto was ‘Nichts verdraengen!’ (repress nothing!)[106]

After being haunted by ghosts, Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead book in 1917. In these seven messages, Jung ‘reveals’, in agreement with the 2nd century Gnostic writer Basilides, that the True and Ultimate God is Abraxas, who combines Jesus and Satan, good and evil all in one.[107] This is why Jung held that “Light is followed by shadow, the other side of the Creator.”[108] Richard and Linda Nathan, long-term ex-Jungians, commented that “In true Gnostic fashion, Jung shared the Seven Sermons to the Dead book with close friends but hid it from the public.[109]

You may be asking yourself: “How much influence does Jungianism actually have on the Church and postmodern culture? The answer is that there is an enormous and sometimes subtle influence. “Jung’s direct and indirect impact on mainstream Christianity – and thus on Western culture,” says Dr. Satinover, “has been incalculable. It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy – have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology.”[110]

There are key individuals promoting the Jungian gospel to the Church, such as Morton Kelsey, John Sanford (not John & Paula Sandford), Thomas Moore, Joseph Campbell, and Bishop John Spong. Thomas Moore, a former Roman Catholic monk, became widely popular through his best-seller: Care of the Soul. John Sanford, the son of the late Agnes Sanford, is an Episcopal Priest and Jungian analyst, with several books promoting the Jungian way. Morton Kelsey is another Episcopal Priest who has subtly woven the Jungian gospel through virtually every one of his books, especially those aimed for the Charismatic renewal constituency. Satinover describes Kelsey as having “made a career of such compromise”, noting that Kelsey has now proceeded in his latest book Sacrament of Sexuality to approve of the normalization of homosexuality.[111]

Joseph Campbell, cited by Satinover as a disciple of Jung, is famous for his public TV series on “The Power of Myth”.[112] Bishop John Spong, who has written two books (Resurrection: Myth or Reality & The Easter Moment) denying the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, gives Joseph Campbell credit for shaping his views on Jesus’ resurrection. “I was touched by Campbell’s ability to seek the truth of myths while refusing to literalize the rational explanation of those myths…Campbell allowed me to appreciate such timeless themes as virgin births, incarnations, physical resurrections, and cosmic ascensions…Slowly, ever so slowly, but equally ever so surely, a separation began to occur for me between the experience captured for us Christians in the word Easter and the interpretation of that experience found in both the Christian Scriptures and the developing Christian traditions…”[113] Few people have realized that Bishop Spong’s spiritual grandfather is none other than Carl Jung.

While in theological school, I became aware of the strong influence of Dr. Paul Tillich on many modern clergy. In recently reading C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich [written by John Dourley, a Jungian analyst & Roman priest from Ottawa], I came to realize that Tillich and Jung are ‘theological twins’. In a tribute given at a Memorial for Jung’s death, Tillich gave to Jung’s thought the status of an ontology because its depth and universality constituted a ‘doctrine of being’.[114] It turns out that Tillich is heavily in debt in Jung for his view of God as the supposed “Ground of Being”. As well, both Tillich and Jung, says Dourley, “understand the self to be that centering force within the psyche which brings together the opposites or polarities, whose dynamic interplay makes up life itself.”[115] As a Jungian popularizer, Tillich saw life as “made up of the flow of energy between opposing poles or opposites.”[116]

So many current theological emphases in today’s church can be traced directly back to Carl Jung. For example, with the loss of confidence in the Missionary imperative, many mainline church administrators today sound remarkably like Jung when he said: “What we from our point of view call colonization, missions to the heathen, spread of civilization, etc, has another face – the face of a bird of prey seeking with cruel intentness for distant quarry – a face worthy of a race of pirates and highwaymen.”[117] In speaking of Buddhism and Christianity, Jung taught the now familiar inter-faith dialogue line, that “Both paths are right.”[118] Jung spoke of Jesus, Mani, Buddha, and Lao-Tse as ‘pillars of the spirit’, saying “I could give none preference over the other.”[119] The English Theologian Don Cupitt says that Jung pioneered the multi-faith approach now widespread in the Church.[120]

In light of the current controversies around “Mother Goddess” hymnbooks, it is interesting to read in the MBTI source book Psychological Types about the “Gnostic prototype, viz, Sophia, an immensely significant symbol for the Gnosis.”[121] You are probably well aware that in the best-selling book The Shack, God the Father is portrayed as an Aunt Jemima/Oprah Winfrey blend named Elouisa, and the Holy Spirit becomes Sarayu, an eclectic woman of Asian descent. While I personally enjoyed reading much of the popular Shack novel, I have unresolved concerns about how The Shack may be used, even unintentionally, to deconstruct people’s classical understandings of the Trinity and replace it with mother/father god/dess worship.[122] Postmodern thinking, even among evangelicals, is remarkably subjectivist and fluid, easily leading to a gnostic reconciliation of gender opposites even in the Godhead.[123]

I have another friend who watched her mother being raped in the back seat of their car. This so traumatized her that she rejected her female gender identity, deciding to become the gentleman that the male rapist should have been.  Just before her scheduled gender reassignment surgery, my friend had a powerful encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ that enabled her to cancel her surgery and accept her female gender identity, that she was fearfully and wonderfully made as a woman.  She has gone on to help hundreds of other people struggling with sexual and gender confusion.

My challenge to those reading this is to seek the Lord about where God may be calling you to renounce any false gods, any secret idolatry, any gnostic reconciliation of opposites, particularly in the area of Jungianism and the New Age. May we never forget the warning of the prophet Isaiah, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:29)[124].

You may not like your DNA gender. You may have sadly been bullied over your gender ambivalence. Some of you reading this may have even been sexually abused. What if you chose to radically embrace rather than reject your God-given gender? What if God did not make a mistake in the XX male or XY female DNA that he gave you? What would it take for you to thank God for how he has made you?

What might happen if we stood up and affirmed the authentic male and authentic female in an age of Jungian-inspired gender confusion? Will you join me?

The Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, BSW, MDiv, DMin

-previously presented and published at the Think Tank Conference in San Diego, California

-award-winning author of the book Battle for the Soul of Canada

Footnotes

[1] Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s critique of Jungianism came with unique credibility, given his background as an eminent Jungian scholar, analyst, and past President of the C.G. Jung Foundation.
[2] Isabel Briggs Myers with Peter B. Myers, Gifts Differing, Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Press, Inc., 1980,p. xvii. Many charismatics have a soft spot for this book, because it quotes portions of scripture from Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. The actual link, however, between those bible passages, and the Jung/Myers-Briggs theories is rather questionable.
In an October 29th, 1996 letter from Rev. Fred Goodwin, Rector of National Ministries for ERM, Fred Goodwin commented: “I would suggest that in light of your concerns, you drop the MBTI and use some of the material out on small group ministry and discipling instead—which we find are desperate needs for leadership training in the church.”
[3] Ibid., p.210; also Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. xi; A book Prayer & Temperament written by Msgr. Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey in 1984 has been very effective in winning Roman Catholics and Anglicans to the MBTI. The book claims that the MBTI designations will make you either oriented to Ignatian prayer (if you are SJ), Augustinian prayer (if you are NF), Franciscan prayer(if you are SP), or Thomistic prayer(if you are NT). In the MBTI, the four sets of types are Extravert(E) & Introvert(I), Sensate(S) & Intuitive(N), Thinking(T) & Feeling(F), and Judging(J) & Perceiving(P). None of these 8 innocuous-sounding type names mean what they sound like. Instead each of the 8 type names has unique and mysterious, perhaps even occultic, definitions given by Jung himself in a massive section at the back of Psychological Types.
[4] Dr. Gordon Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Types, 1979, p. 222
[5] Robert Innes, Personality Indicators and The Spiritual Life, Grove Books Ltd., Cambridge, 1996, p.3; The Enneagram is significantly occultic in nature and origin, coming from Sufi, numerology, and Arica New-Age sources. George Gurideff, Oscar Ichazo of Esalen Institute, and Claudio Naranjo are the prominent New Agers who have popularized it, and then introduced it, through Fr. Bob Oschs SJ, into the Christian Church. For more information, I recommend Robert Innes’ booklet and Mitchell Pacwa SJ article’s “Tell Me Who I Am, O Ennegram” Christian Research Journal, Fall 1991, pp. 14ff. My article on ‘George Gurdjieff and the Enigmatic Enneagram’ can be read at http://www3.telus.net/st_simons/arm04.htm
[6] CG Jung, 1946 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[7] Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, C.G. Jung Foundation, New York, NY, Shamballa Publications, Front Cover
[8] Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Baker Book House Co., 1996, p. 238 “Because of his great influence in propagating gnostic philosophy and morals in churches & synagogues, Jung deserves a closer look. The moral relativism that released upon us the sexual revolution is rooted in an outlook of which (Jung) is the most brilliant contemporary expositor.”
[9] Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: a Biography, Harcourt Books, 2006, p. 86; Robert C Fuller, Stairways to Heaven: drugs in religious history, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2000, p. 126, “That is why Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and mystics like Allan Watts or Aldous Huxley were important to the spiritual underground; they were purveyors of the alternate myths and pathways to spiritual experience.”
[10] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 27. Jung has “blended psychological reductionism with gnostic spirituality to produce a modern variant of mystical, pagan polytheism in which the multiple ‘images of the instincts’ (his ‘archetypes’) are worshipped as gods”, Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238: Carl Jung “explicitly identified depth psychology, especially his own, as heir to the apostolic tradition, especially in what he considered its superior handling of the problem of evil.”
[11] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 23 Jung claimed that “In the ancient world, the Gnostics, whose arguments were very much influenced by psychic experience, tackled the problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers.” “Whatever the system, and however the different stages are purportedly marked, the ultimate aim, the innermost circle of all Gnostic systems, is a mystical vision of the union of good and evil.”
[12] Monism: “a view that there is only one kind of ultimate substance b: the view that reality is one unitary organic whole with no independent parts” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monism
[13] Walter Shelburne, Mythos and Logos in the Thought of Carl Jung, 1988, Sunny Press, Albany, New York, p. 18
[14] Bair, Ibid., p. 526
[15] Ibid., p. 27, Ft. 28
[16] Carl Jung & Aniela Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, translated from the German by Richard & Clara Winston, Vintage Books-Random House, 1961/1989, p. 205 “The possibility of a comparison with alchemy, and the uninterrupted intellectual chain back to Gnosticism, gave substance to my psychology.”
[17] Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, London & New York: Ark Paper Back, 1978/1986, p. 3
[18] Ibid., p. 6
[19] MDR, p. 233
[20] “Psychology, Astrology and Carl Jung”, Metamorphosis Newsletter, August 2004, by Tracy Cuotto, http://consciousevolution.com/metamorphosis/0408/jung0408.htm
[21] Jeffrey Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 28 Dr. James Hillman, the former director for the Jungian Institute in Zurich, commented, “(Jung) wrote the first introduction to Zen Buddhism, he…brought in (Greek Mythology), the gods and the goddesses, the myths,…he was interested in astrology…” The Wisdom of the Dreams: Carl Gustav Jung: a Stephen Segaller Video, Vol. 3, “ A World of Dreams”. Jung also wrote the first western commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.( Psychology & the East, p. 60)
[22] Dr. Richard Noll, The Jung Cult.: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 333
[23] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 137
[24] MDR, p. 335
[25] Merill Berger & Stephen Segaller, The Wisdom of the Dreams, p. 162; Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 340; In Jung’s book Aion, he holds that “…the appearance of Christ coincided with the beginning of a new aeon, the age of the Fishes. A sychronicity exists between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces.” p. 221
[26] Richard Webster, Why Freud Was Wrong: Sin, Science, & Psychoanalysis, Basic Books: Harper Collins, 1995, p. 385. Jung comments: “For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words, libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment…”
[27] Bair, ibid., p. 549 “Both Hanni and Gret used several different sets of cards when they taught (Jung) how to consult the Tarot, before they settled on the Grimaud cards of Antoine Court de Gebelin, the Ancien Tarot de Marseilles. Jung thought it was the only deck that possessed the properties and fulfilled the requirements of metaphor that he gleaned from within the alchemical texts.”
[28] The Gnostic Jung and The Seven Sermons to the Dead By Stephan A. Hoeller, A Quest book, The Theosophical Publishing House , 1982. p. xiii
http://books.google.ca/books?id=XDSSXDezdBMC&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=Hexenmeister+of+Zurich&source=web&ots=aXYRkrGcqp&sig=z1rtge0YGGQdgYNNEoxQFugI2i8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result ; Carl G. Jung: Man of Science or Modern Shaman?, By Richard and Linda Nathan http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/nathan/jung.htm
[29] Dr George Puritch, a Prayer Ministry leader, commented recently to me: “I have felt for a long time that many of the false beliefs within the church had their foundations in the occultism of Free Masonry. Your research that Jung’s grandfather was a Grand Master of the Lodge reveals the roots of his deep occultism, not to mention his occultic roots on his mother’s side.” All the occultic practices of Masonry as described by Ankerberg and Weldon (1990. The Secret Teachings of the Masonic. A Christian Perspective. Moody Press Chicago) are revealed in Jung’s philosophies, the relativism of good and evil, the denial of the deity of Jesus, universalism, worship of the dead, deification of man, etc.”
[30] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.232
[31] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method: the Story of Jung, Freud, & Sabina Spielrein, New York, Alfred Knopf Books, 1993, p. 50 & 54
[32] Deirdre Bair, Jung: a Biography, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, p. 46
[33] John Kerr, ibid., p. 50 & 54; The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, by John Michael, Llewellyn Worldwide Publisher, p. 250
[34] Bair, ibid., p. 64 “Later generations held Jung’s dissertation directly responsible for the fact that many of the younger Preiswerk daughters in Helly’s generation did not marry.”
[35] James A Herrick, The Making of a New Spirituality, Intervarsity Press, 204, p. 191; Campbell, Portable Jung, p. viii; Deirdre Bair, Jung: a Biography, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 2003, p. 18
http://books.google.ca/books?id=KzbobUhvpf4C&pg=PA191&lpg=PA191&dq=Carl+Jung+Occult&source=bl&ots=JVx6vwaVug&sig=OCZs_AGb9shRQJyjzSzL2ojQ2AU&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
[36] Bair, ibid., p. 18
[37] Bair, ibid., p. 21
[38] “Session 11: Jung and Pagan Psychology”, Temple of the Sacred Spiral, http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/187/session11.html
[39] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 37; The spirit guide Philemon/Elijah later mutated into Salome, who addressed Jung in a self-directed trance vision as Christ. Jung ‘saw’ himself assume the posture of a victim of crucifixion, with a snake coiled around him, and his face transformed into that of a lion from the Mithraic mystery religion.(C.G. Jung, Analytical Psychology :Princeton University Press, 1989:, p. 96, 98)
[40] Jung & Jaffe, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p.223. “Shrine of Philemon: Repentance of Faust” was the inscription carved in stone by Jung over the entrance of the Bollingen Tower, where he lived and wrote.
[41] MDR, p. 183
[42] The final straw was when Jung published Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (translated as Psychology of the Unconscious.) http://everything2.com/title/Carl%20Jung
[43] Alex Owen, The Place of Enchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern, University of Chicago Press, 2004, p. 143
[44] “Session 11: Jung and Pagan Psychology”, Temple of the Sacred Spiral, http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/palette/187/session11.html
[45] Bair, ibid., p. 407
[46] Joel Ryce-Menuhin, Jung and the Monotheisms, Routledge Publisher, p. 183
[47] MDR, p. 42-43
[48] Ibid, p. 55
[49] Ibid., p. 12
[50] Ibid., p. 12
[51] Ibid., p. 15
[52] Ibid., p. 13
[53] Bair, ibid, p. 70
[54] MDR, Ibid., p. 58. Jung concluded from this ‘Cathedral’ experience that “God Himself can…condemn a person to blasphemy” Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 74
[55] Ibid., p. 55
[56] Dr Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ, Random House,1997, p.138.
[57] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 3; Dr. Satinover sees the temptation facing our generation that”…on a theological plane, we succumb to the dangerous fantasy that Good and Evil will be reunited in a higher oneness.” Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 238
[58] Satinover, Ibid., p 240. “…This relativization of good and evil by their reconciliation is the heart of the ancient doctrines of gnosticism, which also located spirituality, hence morality, within man himself. Hence ‘the union of opposites’.” Keirsey & Bates, authors of Please Understand Me, and creators of the more popularized Keirsey-Bates adaptation of the MBTI, teach openly in their book on the Jungian “shadow…It’s as if, in being attracted to our opposite, we grope around for that rejected, abandoned, or unlived half of ourselves…(p.68)”
[59] Satinover, Ibid., p. 240
[60]http://www.trans4mind.com/jamesharveystout/jung.htm ; Spirituality and Psychological Health By Richard H. Cox, Betty Ervin-Cox, Louis Hoffman, COSSP Press, p. 199
[61] Bair, ibid., p. 526; Carl G Jung to Adolf Keller, CL-2, March 20th, 1951, p. 10
[62] Jung, Aion, Collected Works, p. 41
[63] John P. Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich: The Psyche as Sacrament, Inner City Books, 1981, p. 63 “(Jung) also feels that it is questionable in that (the Christ symbol) contains no trace of the shadow side of life.” Fr. Dourley, a Jungian analyst, also comments on p. 63 about Jung’s “criticism of the Christian conception of a God in who there is no darkness.”
[64] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 70
[65] Carl Jung, ‘A Psychological Approach to The Trinity’, CW11, para. 260 “Thus for Jung, says John Dourley, the Spirit unites the exclusively spiritual reality of Christ with that which is identified with the devil, including ‘the dark world of nature-bound man’, the chthonic side of nature excluded by Christianity from the Christ image.” para. 263; In a similar vein, Jung saw the alchemical figure of Mercurius as a compensation for the one-sideness of the symbol of Christ. Carl Jung, ‘The Spirit Mercurius’, Alchemical Studies, CW13, para. 295. Jung comments, “As early as 1944, in Psychology and Alchemy, I had been able to demonstrate the parallelism between the Christ figure and the central concept of the alchemists, the lapis or stone.” MDR, p.210
[66] C.G. Jung, ‘The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales, CW9, para. 453
[67] MDR, Ibid., p. 60
[68] MDR, Ibid., p. 235
[69] Jung, Psychology & The East, p. 11
[70] Jung, MDR p. 207; Carl Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 15 “The wise Chinese would say in the words of the I Ching: ‘When Yang has reached its greatest strength, the dark power of yin is born within its depths, for night begins at midday when yang breaks up and begins to change into yin.”
[71] Jung, Psychology & the East, p. 184
[72] Dark Knight movie, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/quotes
[73] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 149-50 “The Indian (Brahman-Atman teaching) conception teaches liberation from the opposites, by which every sort of affective style and emotional hold to the object is understood…”
[74] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 245-46
[75] MDR, p. 275
[76] Ibid., p. 275
[77] Ibid., p. 275
[78] Berger & Segaller, Wisdom of the Dreams; p. 103, MDR, p. 207
[79] Bair, Ibid., p. 286
[80] Bair, ibid., p. 286
[81] The Old Wise Man, By HP-Time.com, Monday, Feb. 14, 1955 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,807036-3,00.html ; “According to Carl Jung, introversion and extraversion refer to the direction of psychic energy. If a person’s energy usually flows outwards, he or she is an extravert, while if this energy normally flows inwards, this person is an introvert.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introvert
[82] Lawrence, People Types & Tiger Stripes, p. 113
[83] MDR, Ibid., p.350
[84]http://www.answers.com/topic/carl-jung#Response_to_Nazism
[85] “Carl Jung”, Crystalinks, http://www.crystalinks.com/jung.html
[86] C.G Jung Speaking, Interviews and Encounters, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 93
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung
[87] Noll, Ibid., p. 259
[88] Dr. Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: the secret life of Carl Jung, Random House, 1997
http://www.amazon.com/Aryan-Christ-Secret-Life-Carl/dp/0679449450
[89] SPREAD, http://www.anglicanspread.org/
[90] Ibid., p. 391; Henri F. Ellenberger makes a strong case that Jung borrowed his matriarchy and anima/animus theories from Bachofen, an academic likened by some to the scientific credibility of Erik Von Daniken of The Chariots of the Gods and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of TM and its Yogic Flying. (Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, Penguin Press, 1970, pp. 218-223); Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13); Richard Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 188-90
[91] Jung, Psychological Types, p. 595
[92] Noll, The Jung Cult, p. 202-203; Philip Davis comments: “Jung’s therapeutic technique of ‘active imagination’ is now revealed as a sanitized version of the sort of trance employed by spiritualistic mediums and Theosophical travelers, with whom Jung was personally familiar.” (Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.14)
[93] John Kerr, A Most Dangerous Method, p. 12; 49;191; 498 “…there (the Russian-born Spielrein) remained (in almost complete obscurity) until the publication of the Freud/Jung correspondence in 1974.”; p. 502;503: After the collapse of the Spielrein affair, John Kerr notes that “Jung’s condition had so deteriorated that his wife allowed Toni Wolff openly to become his mistress, and a sometime member of the household, simply because she was the only person who could calm him down.”; p. 507- Jung’s stone bear carving in his Bollingen Tower specifically symbolized the anima . Curiously the inscription said: “Russia gets the ball rolling”
[94] Kerr, Ibid., p. 503; MDR, p.190
[95] Carl Jung- Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3nKlA-Z-P0
[96] Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, ibid.
[97] Matters of the Heart Video – Part 6, ibid.
[98] Matters of the Heart Video, Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[99] Dr Joseph Wheelwright, San Francisco Jungian Analyst, Matters of the Heart Video, Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJhblm4KUmo
[100] Dr. Richard Noll, The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung, New York: Random House, 1997, p, 96; “The Erring Christ”, by the Richard Kew, Touchstone Magazine, July /August 1998, http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=11-04-052-b
[101] Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung Letters, edited by William McGuire, 1974, p. 289
[102] “The Jung Cult . . .” by Paul Likoudis, The Wanderer Magazine, December 29, 1994, St. Paul, MN http://www.ewtn.org/library/NEWAGE/JUNGCUL1.TXT
[103] Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: a Biography, Harcourt Books, 2006, p. 86
[104] Likoudis, ibid., http://www.ewtn.org/library/NEWAGE/JUNGCUL1.TXT ; Carl Jung, Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Collected Works of CG Jung, Volume 5
http://www.archive.org/stream/psychologyoftheu011802mbp/psychologyoftheu011802mbp_djvu.txt
[105] Seduction of Unreason, by Richard Wolin, Princeton University Press, 2004 p. 79; Wolin notes that ‘Gross met an untimely if foreseeable end on the streets of Berlin where he was discovered starving and homeless in 1920’, p. 78.
[106] Frank, Links wo das Herz ist, p. 49; Bair, ibid., p. 136; Gross’ motto reminds me of the 1960’s slogan ‘if it feels good, do it.’
[107] MDR, p. 378
[108] MDR, p. 328
[109] “Carl G Jung: Man of Science or Modern Shaman?”, by Richard and Linda Nathan, 2008, http://www.crossroad.to/articles2/08/nathan/jung.htm When a famous Jewish theologian, Martin Buber, happened upon it, he accused Jung of being a modern Gnostic. Jung vehemently denied it, claiming the book was only a “youthful frivolity,” but in other places he called it central to all his later work.”
[110] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p.240. Satinover dryly comments that “in the United States, the Episcopal Church has more or less become a branch of Jungian psychology, theologically and liturgically.” (Empty Self ,p. 27, Footnote. 27)
[111] Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, p. 241
[112] Satinover, The Empty Self, p. 9; Joseph Campbell in fact worked personally with Jung and published through the Jungian-controlled Bollingen Foundation , ( Philip Davis, “The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.11)
[113] The Right Reverend John Spong, Resurrection: Reality or Myth, Harper, 1994, p. xi. His parallel book is The Easter Moment.
[114] A Memorial Meeting : New York, Analytical Psychology Club, 1962, p. 31
[115] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 17
[116] Dourley, Ibid., p. 48 The persistent modern emphasis on the so-called ‘inner child’ makes a lot more sense when seen as a spin-off from Jung’s teaching that the symbol of the child is “that final goal that reconciles the opposites.” (Dourley, p. 83)
[117] Ibid., p. 248; www.thejungiansociety.org/Jung%20Society/Conferences/Conference-2004/Colonial-Postcolonial-Context.html
[118] Ibid., p. 279
[119] Dourley, C.G. Jung & Paul Tillich, p. 65
[120] The Wisdom of the Dream, p. 99
[121] Carl Jung, Psychological Types: or the Psychology of Individuation, Princeton University Press, 1921/1971, p. 290. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover memorably comments as a former Jungian that ‘Goddess worship’ is not the cure for misogyny, but it is its precondition, whether overtly or unconsciously. (The Empty Self, p. 9); Marija Bimbutas, the late professor of archeology at UCLA, included Jung and more than a half dozen of his noted disciples in the bibliographies to her books on the alleged matriarchies of the Balkans:The Language of the Goddess(1989)and The Civilization of the Goddess(1991),(Philip Davis,”The Swiss Maharishi”, Touchstone Issue 92, Spring 1996, p.13)
[122] Ed Hird, Battle for the Soul of Canada, 2006, p. 44, “It is not by accident that virtually every new-age fad, including the DaVinci Code deception, sooner or later draws people into mother/father god/dess worship and sexual immorality. I have found that idolatry and immorality are identical twins that always hang out together, especially around god/desses… I know of Anglican Cathedrals in Canada that both endorse the pan-sexual agenda and twist Jesus’ own words to pray “Our Father/Mother in Heaven, Hallowed be Your Name”. As Jesus clearly taught us, God’s name is Father, and He likes His name.”
[123] In the key Montreal Declaration of Anglican Essentials, section 1 says: “The Triune God: There is one God, self-revealed as three persons, “of one substance, power and eternity,” the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the sake of the Gospel, we decline proposals to modify or marginalize these names and we affirm their rightful place in prayer, liturgy, and hymnody.” For those wishing to study further on the mother/father god/dess issue, I commend ‘Speaking the Christian God’ edited by Alvin F. Kimel, Dr. Donald Bloesch ‘The Battle for the Trinity’ and John W Miller’s ‘Biblical Faith and Fathering: why we call God ‘Father'”. http://www.anglicanessentials.ca/pdf/montreal_declaration_aec.pdf
[124] The Apostle Paul cautioned: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.” (Colossians 2:8)

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