BP 196
Today as we anticipate Holy week, we’re going to take a brief look at two figures in the history of the world–the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the second Adam, Jesus the Christ.
These two individuals were very alike in that they both had Jewish blood flowing through their veins, but they were very different in so many other ways. Freud spent his life blood convincing people that God was a “phantasy” produced by the infantile need of the human mind to embrace a strong father figure while Jesus, incarnated as the divine sacrifice, poured out His life blood on the cross so that humanity could approach the true living Father God.
Although Freud embraced his Jewish nature, he divorced himself from the word of God and commented that he was “completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well as from every other religion” ~ Totem and Taboo 1930.
I think of Freud when I read Ephesians 2:12. Although this passage is primarily addressed to the Gentiles, Freud sounds like he could fall under the description of those who rejected God: “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.”
Sadly, Freud was separated from Father, Son, and Spirit because of his sin and his rebellion against his Creator. He was alienated, separated, a stranger, without God. What a terrible state to find oneself in! All those words sound frighteningly empty and alone.
Since he did not believe in God or the existence of the supernatural, Freud was primitively limited to a material world view. He saw the universe and the human being through a miniscule keyhole. His atheism is what led him to focus not on the immaterial soul or mind but solely on the biological body with its physical drives for food, water, sex, comfort.
Of course, the tragic truth is that, like Freud, we are all separated from God. We are all born separated and alone in a dark universe trying to make sense of the universe through Freud’s keyhole.
Since we also are born alienated from the Divine, we have no grounds to judge Freud. Instead, we are thankful that God has provided a way for us to not settle for the biological drives as Freud did but to see that there is far more to life, namely, relationship.
While Freud saw other humans and our interactions with them as the means to the end, namely, satisfying the biological drives, believers in Christ have been granted the knowledge that relationships are not the means to the end, but they are the end. They are the goal of existence.
Another passage in Ephesians 2 describes Freud and his materialistic approach to human existence: “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
Like Freud, we would all be condemned to the pursuit of the passions and desires of the flesh and their fleeting pleasures (Hebrews 11: 25) . . . except for one thing—Good Friday and Resurrection Day.
Ephesians 2 gives us yet another passage to announce that there is another way besides being separated, alienated, without God, strangers in the universe, without a relationship with God, being dead in our trespasses and sins. Take a look at verses 4-8:
“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith.”
Amazing grace! If we believe in the name of God’s Son who was sent to us as the Passover lamb, we died with Him on that cruel cross. We died to sin and alienation and separation. But there is more. We were made alive together with Jesus. We rose with Him from the dead. He called us out of that cold sepulcher to live with Him forever!
The word I want to leave you with today is reconciliation. As Romans 5 repeats over and over, Jesus justified us, gave us peace with God, gave us access to the Father, saved us from God’s wrath all because when He gave us His righteousness, He reconciled us to the Father. What does all that mean–especially reconciliation with God? Jesus made the way for us to be in relationship with God. He removed all the immovable barriers that towered up between us and the holy Father.
He made us children of God.
He made us friends with God!
This Holy week, if you don’t know Jesus, run to Him because you will find that He is already running toward you with mercy in His eyes. Don’t settle for empty desires and passions of the body that are exhilarating for a short season but then float on the breeze like dead, flimsy ashes. Desire relationship. Desire Him.
Freud was wrong. God is not a phantasy. He lives. It is not about bodily drives but intimate relationships of the heart.
You can be reconciled to the One who made you. You will never be alone again. For eternity.
God will be your friend.
“For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God . . . “ Ephesians 2:18, 19
“No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” ~ John 15:15
For I, the LORD your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I am the one who helps you” ~ Isaiah 41:13
