Nobody starts off stupid. You have only to watch babies and infants, and think seriously about what all of them learn and do, to see that, except for some who face natural limitations, they show a style of life, and a desire and ability to learn that in a more mature person we might call genius. Hardly an adult in a thousand, or ten thousand, could in any three years of one’s life learn as much, grow as much in one’s understanding of the World around one, as every infant learns and grows in one’s first three years. When people are expected to behave in specific ways or are told that they are stupid or bright or ugly or lovable, they often begin to act in these ways. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy. These expectations may come from parents and other authority figures, but they can also come from peers. In childhood, and especially in adolescence, peer pressure and peer evaluation become very important. It would be better to take words like “stupid” and “dumb” out of the vocabulary you use with any child. In our culture, which places a premium on intelligence, a person who is called stupid often enough is very unlikely to take risks or do anything challenging. (“Why try? I am so dumb I cannot do it.”) Often students who do not speak out in class fear that what they have to say may sound uneducated, and the instructor and other students may laugh at or ridicule them. So these students sit, mute, in class after class. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Persons in the grip of neurotic hopelessness manage to “carry on” in one way or another. If their capacity to be creative has not been too greatly damaged by their neurosis, they may be able fairly consciously to resign themselves to the state of their personal lives and concentrate on a field in which they can be productive. They may submerge themselves in a social or religious movement or in the work of an organization. Their work may be useful; the fact that they lack zest can be outweighed by their having no personal ax to grind. Others, in adapting themselves to their particular frame of life, may cease to question it but yet not attach much meaning to it, trying merely to fulfill their obligations. It is, I believe, the state of a defect condition, in contrast to neurosis. I interpret it, however, as the outcome of neurotic processes. They may, on the other hand, give up all serious or promising pursuits and turn to the periphery of life, trying to snatch from it some bit of enjoyment, finding their interest in a hobby or in incidental pleasures like good eating, interior design, or gardening. Or they may drift and deteriorate, let themselves go to pieces. Unable to do any consistent work, they take to drink, gambling, whoring. The kind of alcoholism described by Charles Jackson in The Lost Week-End, where a binge drinker mostly of rye, fancies himself as a writer. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

And in his state of neurosis, he lapses into foreign phrase and quotes Shakespeare even while attempting to steal a woman’s purse, trying to pawn a typewriter for drinking money. This represents and end stage of such a condition. In this connection it might be interesting to examine whether an unconscious determination to go to pieces may not supply a powerful psychic contribution to such chronic diseases as tuberculosis and cancer. Finally, persons without hope may turn destructive, but at the same time make an attempt at restitution by living vicariously. This, in my opinion, is the meaning of sadistic trends. Because Dr. Freud regarded sadistic trends as instinctual, psychoanalytical interest has been largely focused on the so-called sadistic perversions. Sadistic patterns in everyday relationships, though not ignored, have not been strictly defined. Any kind of assertive or aggressive behaviour is conceived of as a modification or sublimation of instinctual sadistic trends. Dr. Freud, for instance, regarded a striving for power as such a sublimation. It is true that a striving for power can be sadistic; but in a person who sees life as a battle of all against all, it can merely represent a struggle for survival. Actually, it need not be neurotic at all. The result of this lack of discrimination is that we have neither a comprehensive picture of the forms sadistic attitudes may take nor any criteria as to precisely what is sadistic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

It is left pretty much to individual intuition to determine what may rightly be called sadism and what may not—a situation hardly conductive to sound observation. The mere act of hurting others is in itself no indication of a sadistic tendency. A person may be engaged in a struggle of a personal or general nature in the course of which one had to hurt not only one’s adversaries but one’s associates as well. Hostility toward others may also be merely reactive. A person can feel hurt or frightened and want to hit back with a force that, while disproportionate to the objective provocation, is subjectively quite in keeping with it. It is easy, however, to deceive oneself on this score: all too often a justifiable reaction is claimed when actually a sadistic tendency was in operation. However, the difficulty in distinguishing one from the other does not mean that reactive hostility is nonexistent. Finally, there are all those offense tactics of the aggressive type who feels one is fighting for survival. I should not call any of these aggressions sadistic; others may get hurt in the process, but the hurting or damaging is an inevitable by-product rather than a prime intention. To put it simply, we could say that although the kinds of action we refer to here are aggressive or even hostile, they are not perpetrated in a mean spirit. There is no conscious or unconscious satisfaction derived from the very fact of hurting. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

It has been repeatedly argued that equality undermines liberty. Some would say that a society in which principles like my radical egalitarian principles were adopted, or even the liberal egalitarian principles of Rawls or Dworkin were adopted, would not be a free society. My arguments have been just the reverse. I have argued that it is only in an egalitarian society that full and extensive liberty is possible. Perhaps the egalitarian and the anti-egalitarian are arguing at cross purposes? What we need to recognize, it has been argued, is that we have two kinds of rights both of which are important to freedom but to rather different freedoms and which are freedoms which not infrequently conflict. We have rights to fair terms of cooperation but we also have rights to non-interference. If a right of either kind is overridden our freedom is diminished. The reason why it might be thought that the egalitarian and the anti-egalitarian may be arguing at cross purposes is that the egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to fair terms of cooperation and their associated liberties require equality while the anti-egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to fair terms of cooperation and their associated liberties require equality while the anti-egalitarian is pointing to the fact that rights to noninterference and their associated liberties conflict with equality. They focus on different liberties. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

What I have said above may not be crystal clear, so let me explain. People have a right to fair terms of cooperation. In political terms this comes to the equal right of all to effective participation in government and, in more broadly social terms, and for a society of economic wealth, it means people having a right to a roughly equal distribution of the benefits and burdens of the basic social arrangements that affect their lives and for them to stand in such relations to each other such that no one has the power to dominate the life of another. By contrast, rights to non-interference come to the equal right of all to be left alone by the government and more broadly to live in a society in which people have a right peacefully to pursue their interests without interference. The conflict between equality and liberty comes down to, very essentially, the conflicts we get in modern societies between rights to fair terms of cooperation and rights to noninterference. As Joseph Schumpeter saw and J.S. Mill before him, one could have a thoroughly democratic society (at least in conventional terms) in which rights to noninterference might still be extensively violated. A central anti-egalitarian claim is that we cannot have an egalitarian society in which they very precious liberties that go with the rights to non-interference would be violated. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Love, power, and justice are united in God and they are united in the new creation of God in the World. Humans are estranged from the ground of their being, from themselves, and from their World. However, they are still humans. One cannot completely cut the tie with their creative ground, one is still a centred person and in this sense united with oneself. One still participates in one’s World. In other words: The reuniting love, the power of resisting non-being, and the creative justice are still active in one. Life is not unambiguously good. Then it would not be life but only the possibility of life. And life is not unambiguously evil. Then non-being would have conquered being. However, life is ambiguous in all its expressions. It is ambiguous also with respect to love, power, and justice. We have touched on this fact in many places in our previous discussions. We must now consider it in the light of the new creation within the World of estrangement, which I suggest calling the holy community. In an anticipating summary I would say: in the holy community the agape quality of love cuts into the libido, eros, and philia qualities of love and elevates them beyond the ambiguities of their self-centeredness. In the holy community the spiritual power, by surrendering compulsion, elevates power beyond the ambiguities of its dynamic realization. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

In the holy community justification by grace elevates justice beyond the ambiguities of its abstract and calculating nature. This means that in the holy community love, power, and justice in their ontological structure are affirmed but that their estranged and ambiguous reality is transformed into a manifestation of their unity within the divine life. Let us first consider the ambiguities of love and the work of love as agape in the holy community. Libido is good in itself! We have defended it against Dr. Freud’s depreciation of what he described as the infinite libidinous drive with its ensuing dissatisfaction and death instinct. We have accepted this as the description in estrangement, but not of libido in its creative meaning. Without libido life would not move beyond itself. The Bible knows this as well as recent depth psychology, and we should be grateful that our new insights into the deeper levels of human nature have rediscovered the Biblical realism which was covered by several strata of idealistic and moralistic self-deception about humans. Biblical realism knows both that libido belongs to human’s created goodness and that it is distorted and ambiguous in the state of human’s estrangement. Libido has become unlimited and has fallen under the tyranny of the pleasure principle. It uses the other being not as an object of reunion but as a tool for gaining pleasure out of one. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Desire for pleasures of the flesh is not evil as the breaking of conventional laws, but the desires for the pleasures of the flesh in autonomy in pleasures of the flesh are evil if they bypass the center of the other person—in other words, if they are not united with the two other qualities of love, and if they are not under the ultimate criterion of the agape quality of love. Agape seems the other one in one’s center. Agape sees one as God sees one. Agape elevates libido into the divine unity of love, power, and justice. The same is true of eros. We have, following Plato, defined eros as the driving force in all cultural creativity and in all mysticism. As such eros has the greatness of divine-human power. It participates in creation in the natural goodness of everything created. However, it also participates in the ambiguities of life. The eros quality of love can be confused with the libido quality and be drawn into its ambiguities. Witness for this is the fact that the New Testament could not use the word eros any more because of its predominantly sexual connotations. And even the mystical eros can express itself in symbols which are not only taken from the life involving pleasures of the flesh but which draw the love to God to an openly ascetic, hiddenly passionate level in pleasures of the flesh. However, more is involved when we speak of the ambiguity of the eros quality of love. It is the aesthetic detachment which can take hold of our relation to culture and makes eros ambiguous. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

The aesthetic stage of humans spiritual development is not a stage but a Universal quality of love exposed to dangers. The ambiguity of cultural eros is its detachment from the realities which it expresses and consequently the disappearing of existential participation and ultimate responsibility. The wings of eros becomes wings of escape. Culture is irresponsibly enjoyed. It has not received the justice which it can demand. Agape cuts into the detached safety of a merely aesthetic eros. It does not deny the longing toward the good and the true and its divine source, but it prevents it from becoming an aesthetic enjoyment without ultimate seriousness. Agape makes the cultural eros responsible and the mystical eros personal. The ambiguities of the philia quality of love appeared already in its first description as person-to-person love between equals. However large the group of equals may be, the philia quality of love establishes preferential love. Some are preferred, the majority are excluded. This is obvious not only in intimate relations as family and friendship, but also in the innumerable forms of sympathetic person-to-person encounters. The implicit or explicit rejection of all those who are not admitted to such a preferential relation is negative compulsion and can be as cruel as any compulsion. However, such a rejection of others is tragically unavoidable. Nobody can escape the necessity to exercise it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

There are special forms of love with philia quality which are called a symbiotic relation and which make this tragic necessity rather clear. If the one partner of the philia-relation is used by the other one either for the sake of masochistic dependence or of sadistic domination or of both in interdependence, something which seemed to be friendship of highest quality is in reality compulsion without justice. Again, agape does not deny the preferential love of the philia quality, but it purifies it from a subpersonal bondage, and it elevates the preferential love into universal love. The preferences of friendship are not negated, but they do not exclude, in a kind of aristocratic self-separation, all the others. Not everybody is a friend, but everybody is affirmed as a person. Agape cuts through the separation of equals and unequals, of sympathy and antipathy, of friendship and indifference, of desire and disgust. It needs no sympathy in order to love; it loves what it has to reject in terms of philia. Agape loves in everybody and through everybody love itself. What agape does to the ambiguities of love, Spiritual power does to the ambiguities of natural power. The ambiguities of power are rooted in the dynamic character and the compulsory implications of power. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

Spiritual power is not the conquest of these ambiguities by resignation of power, because this would mean resignation of being. I would be the attempt to annihilate oneself in order to escape guilt. Spiritual power is not the denial of power dynamics. In many stories about the working of the Spiritual power bodily effects are mentioned, like elevation, removal from one place to the other, shock, and horror. There are always psychological effects visible. Spirit is power, grasping and moving out of the dimension of the ultimate. It is not identical with the realm of ideas or meanings. It is dynamic power, overcoming resistance. Hen what is its difference from the other forms of power? The Spiritual power works neither through bodily nor through psychological compulsion. It works through a human’s total personality, and this means, through one as finite freedom. It does not remove one’s freedom, but it makes one’s freedom free from the compulsory elements which limit it. The Spiritual power gives a center to the whole personality, a center which transcends the whole personality and, consequently, is independent of any elements. And this is ultimately the only way of uniting the personality with itself. If this happens human’s natural or social power of being becomes irrelevant. One may keep them, one may resign some of them or even all of them. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

The Spiritual power works through them or it works through the surrender of them. One may exercise Spiritual power through words or thought, through what one is and what one does, or through the surrender of them or through the sacrifice of oneself. In all these forms one can change reality by attaining levels of being which are ordinarily hidden. This is the power which elevates the holy community above the ambiguities of power. I do not need to say much about the relation of grace and justice. The act of forgiving has been mentioned in connexion with the encounter of person and person. If based on reuniting love, in justification by grace, mutual forgiveness is justice. Only God can forgive, because in Him along love and justice are completely united. The ethics of forgiveness are rooted in the message of divine forgiveness. Otherwise they are delivered to the ambiguities of justice, oscillating between legalism and sentimentality. In the holy community this ambiguity is conquered. Agape conquers the ambiguities of love, Spiritual power conquers the ambiguities of power, grace conquers the ambiguities of justice. This is true not only of the encounters of humans with humans, but also in the encounter of humans with oneself. Humans can love oneself in terms of self-acceptance only if one is certain that one is accepted. Otherwise one’s self-acceptance is self-complacency and arbitrariness. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Only in the light and in the power of the “love from above” can one love oneself. This implies the answer to the question of human’s justice toward oneself. One can be just towards oneself only in so far as ultimate justice is done to one, namely the condemning, forgiving, and giving judgement of “justification.” The condemning element in justification makes self-complacency impossible, the forgiving element saves from self-condemnation and despair, the giving element provides for a Spiritual center which unites the elements of our personal self and makes power over oneself possible. Justice, power, and love towards oneself is rooted in the justice, power, and love which we receive from that which transcends us and affirms us. The relation to ourselves is a function of our relation to God. We have a question about the reunion of humankind in terms of love, power, and justice. It is not easy to find an answer that can be given on the level of political organization. Is there an answer out of the relation to the ultimate? It is the merit of pacifism that, in spite of its theological shortcomings, it has kept this question alive in modern Christianity. Without it the Churches probably would have forgotten the torturing seriousness of any religious affirmation of war. On the other hand, pacifism has usually restricted a much larger problem of human existence to the question of war. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

However, there are other questions of equal seriousness in the same sphere. One of them is the question of armed conflicts within a power group, always going on potentially in the use of police and armed forces for the preservation of order, sometimes coming into the open in revolutionary wars. If successful, they are later on called “glorious revolutions.” Does the union of humankind mean that not only national but also revolutionary wars are excluded? And if so, has the dynamics of life come to an end: and des this mean that life itself has come to an end? One can ask the same question with respect to the dynamics of the economic life. Even in a static society such as that of the Middle Ages, the economic dynamics were important and had tremendous historical consequences. One should remain aware of the fact that often more destruction and suffering is produced by economic than by military battles. Should the economic dynamics be stopped and a static World system of production and consumption be introduced? If this were so the whole technical process would also have to be stopped, life in most realms would have to be organized in ever repeated processes. Every disturbance would have to be avoided. Again the dynamics of life and with life itself would have come to an end. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

Let us assume for a moment that this were possible. Under an unchangeable central authority all encounters of power with power are regulated. Nothing is risked, everything decided. Life has ceased to transcend itself. Creativity has come to an end. The history of humans would be finished, post-history would have started. Humankind would be a flock of blessed animals without dissatisfaction, without drive into the future. The horrors and sufferings of the historical period would be remembered as the dark ages of humankind. And then it might happen that one or the other of these blessed humans would feel a longing for these past ages, their misery and their greatness, and would force a new beginning of history upon the rest. This image will show that a World without the dynamics of power and the tragedy of life and history is not the Kingdom of God, is not the fulfilment of humans in their World. Fulfilment is bound to eternity and no imagination can reach the eternal. However, fragmentary anticipations are possible. The Church itself is such a fragmentary anticipation. And there are groups and movements, which although they do not belong to the manifest Church, represents something we may call a “latent Church.” However, neither the manifest nor the latent Church is the Kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

Many problems connected with the all-embracing subject of this essay have not been mentioned at all. Others have been touched on only briefly, and others have been treated rather inadequately. However, I hope that I have proved one thing: that the problems of love, power, and justice categorically demand an ontological foundation and a theological view in order to be saved from the vague talk, idealism, and cynicism with which they are usually treated. If they do not see them in the light of their own being and of being-itself, humans cannot solve any of their great problems. Many Christians have never thought through the meaning and importance of worship. It is not an overstatement to say that our pleasure-centered culture has produced many who work at their play and play at their worship. Why this confusion and tragic failure regarding worship? The answer lies in another question: Why do we worship—is it for God or for humans? The unspoken but increasingly common assumption of today’s Christendom is that worship is primarily of us—to meet our needs. Such worship services are entertainment-focused, and the worshipers are uncommitted spectators who are silently grading the performance. From this perspective preaching becomes a homiletics of consensus—preaching to felt needs—human’s conscious agenda instead of God’s. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

Such preaching is always topical and never textual. Biblical information is minimized, and the sermons are short and full of stories. Anything and everything is judged by how it affects humans. This terribly corrupts one’s theology. The telltale sign of this kind of thinking is the common post-worship question, What did you think of the service today? The real questions ought to be, What did God think of it and of those who worshipped? and What did I give to God? It is so easy to forget that in going to worship our main concern should be to “worship in spirit and in truth,” as reported in John 4.24—not to receive a lift for ourselves. Therefore, it is important that we understand, in distinction to the popular view that worship is for us, that worship begins not with humans as its focus, but God. Worship must be orchestrated and conducted with the vision before us of an august, awesome, holy, transcendent God who is to be pleased and, above all, glorified by our worship. Everything in our corporate worship should flow from this understanding. What about our needs then? When we worship and adore God in our singing and prayer and listening to the Word, His shalom will well in our souls so that we will leave with a glad sense of personal blessings—a great lift. However, this is a byproduct, not a goal, a further evidence of the generous grace of God. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

The fact that there have been higher beings who have gone beyond the mass in goodness and insight, in serenity and radiant self-mastery, can be taken as a hint of re-embodiment’s purpose. One speaks or writes as one who is perfectly at home in these higher levels of consciousness. If an illuminated teacher or an illuminating book cannot lead anyone into the Kingdom of Heaven and keep one there, they can at least give everyone a clue which, if followed up, may lead there. “And now I, Nephi, cannot write all the things which were taught among my people; neither am I mighty in writing, like unto speaking; for when a human speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of humans. However, behold, there are many that harden their hearts against the Holy Spirit, that it hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught. However I, Nephi, have written what I have written, and I esteem it as of great worth, and especially unto my people. For I pray continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them; and I cry unto my God in faith, and I know that he will hear my cry. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“And I know that the Lord God will consecrate my prayers for the gain of my people. And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them; for it persuadeth them to do good; it maketh known unto them of their fathers; and it speaketh of Jesus, and persuadeth them to believe in him, and to endure to the end, which is life eternal. And it speaketh harshly against sin, according to the plainness of the truth; wherefore, no human will be angry at the words which I have written save he shall be of the spirit of the devil. I glory in plainness; I glory in truth; I glory in my Jesus, for he hath redeemed my soul from hell. I have charity for my people, and great faith in Christ that I shall meet many souls spotless at his judgment-sent. I have charity for the Jew—I say Jew, because I mean them from whence I came. I also have charity for the Gentiles. However, behold, for none of these can I hope expect they shall be reconciled unto Christ, and enter into the narrow gate, and walk in the strait path which leads to life, and continue in the path until the end of the day of probation. And now, my beloved brethren, and also Jew, and all ye ends of the Earth, hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all people that they should do good. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

“And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day; and you and I shall stand face to face before his bar; and ye shall know that I have been commanded of hm to write these things, notwithstanding my weakness. And I pray the Father in the name of Christ that many of us, if not all, may be saved in his kingdom at that great and last day. And now, my beloved brethren, all those who are of the house of Israel, and all ye ends of the Earth, I speak unto you as the voice of one crying from the dust: Farewell until that great day shall come. And you hat will not partake of the goodness of God, and respect the words of the Jews, and also my words, and the words which shall proceed forth out of the mouth of the Lamb God, behold, I bid you an everlasting farewell, for these words shall condemn you at the last day. For what I seal on earth, shall be brought against you at the judgment bar; for thus hath the Lord commanded me, and I must obey. Amen,” reports 2 Nephi 33.1-15. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy mercy to sanctify these gifts, and having received the offering of the spiritual sacrifice, to make us a perpetual oblation unto Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Please look mercifully, O Lord, on these present offerings, that they may avail both for our devotion and our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22

My God, I bless Thee that Thou hast given me the eye of faith, to see Thee as Father, to know Thee as a covenant God, to experience Thy love planted in me; for faith is the grace of union by which I spell out my entitlement to Thee: Faith casts my anchor upwards where I trust in Thee and engage Thee to by my Lord. Be pleased to live and move within me, breathing in my prayers, inhabiting my praises, speaking in my words, moving in my actions, living in my life, causing me to grow in grace. Thy bounteous goodness has helped me believe, but my faith is weak and wavering, its light dim, its steps tottering, its increase slow, its backsliding frequent; it should scale the Heavens, but lies groveling in the dust. Lord, fan this divine spark into glowing flame. When faith sleeps, my heart becomes an unclean thing, the fount of every loathsome desire, the cage of unclean lusts all fluttering to escape, the noxious tree of deadly fruit, the open wayside of Earthly tares. Lord, awake faith to put forth its strength until all Heaven fills my soul and all impurity is cast out. Remember, O Lord, Thy servants and handmaids here present, whose faith and devotion are discerned and known by Thee. Please let me enjoy the Earth. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Please have mercy, O Lord, upon Thy children for whom I offer this sacrifice of praise to Thy Majesty; that they may be able to lead a good life in this World, and happily to attain eternal blessedness.
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