I Don't Mean to Cause Offence
The "Don't Make Me Come Down There!" concept of God
One of the things that we find ourselves saying at Reflector Project, in the non-profit with which I work, is that left-wing fundamentalism is not a healthy response to right-wing fundamentalism.
One of the favourite targets of right wing political and religious culture, in recent days and years has been to speak against what they call "cancel culture”. It might well be true that the left has a problem in its readiness to dehumanize or give up on people who don’t think what they supposedly should. However, in my experience, cancel culture has been and remains a greater problem on the right than on the left.
I bring all of this up because I read recently, in a Harper’s article about OCD, that there is now a manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder that is being called “Cancel Culture OCD”. According to the article, this is a “new form of the illness whereby people fixate with terror on the prospect of their own cancellation.”
The article goes on to describe the case of an OCD patient who, “recorded every moment of their waking life with their phone, then watched to see if they’d done anything objectionable.”
To me, this is one of those things that shows how our society has in some ways become much more religious and rules oriented, not less.
You might remember the old father figure trope, from the “wait until your father gets home” concept of parenting. This was the idea that Dad was there mostly in reaction to what you had done wrong. Dad will make you pay the price. This is punishment as social and spiritual direction.
The Ignatian practice of desolation/consolation and self-examination is healthy as self-examination, but not as self-focus or fixation. Using a phone to record yourself and then considering if you might have caused offense means that an old, unhealthy view of God has been replaced by a new god that is as bad or worse, than the one that has been left behind.
The incarnation should never be turned into “Don’t make me come down there!” Such a view of God identifying with humanity is not Christian. The incarnation is not a reluctant Plan B.
In the article on OCD there is consideration on how we got to where we are. It is mentioned that as a developmental concept, OCD may have formed because it in some cases fosters a constant or consistent checking on self, or loved ones. It can be an unfortunate distortion of a tendency that at some point may have been healthy. In the consideration of origins the place of religion comes up a few times. How do OCD and Puritanism relate? Preacher Cotton Mather, from a sermon in Boston in 1693 is quoted, “Your sin has been uncleanness, impudent uncleanness, repeated uncleanness, murderous uncleanness!”
Another famous religious leader is also mentioned:
“Martin Luther, who some historians suspect had OCD, was hijacked by thoughts of cursing Jesus and mental images of Satan’s ass, which moved him to take confession with such frequency that he alienated his fellow priests.”
Have I caused you any offence?
We owe one another better than being so afraid all of the time that we fixate on self. We certainly owe one another better than being ready to pounce, attack or dehumanize whenever we feel offence ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong. I can’t believe sometimes how terrible people can be.
Just last night I was on a ferry headed back to Vancouver. In the sitting area multiple people, of different ages were using their phones to scroll social media, or watch shows, or listen to music - all with the external speaker of the phone, loudly playing the audio. Can you even imagine?
My judgmental self thought, repeatedly until I simply walked to a different part of the boat, “Shouldn’t someone in charge stop this kind of behaviour?”
That example to say, what I felt then, what apparently many of us can feel a lot is just how other people ought to be corrected. While this might be true, this tendency should not be turned into a way of living and it certainly should not be confused with faith.