In a seminar once, someone asked C. G. Jung about the meaning of life. “Isn’t love the meaning of life?” he was asked.
“No!” he replied emphatically. “The meaning of life is life!”
In other words, vitality, exuberance, existence, power. Success! (i.e., Moloch, Priapus)
Not sacrifice, compassion, caring, surrender. Failure! (i.e. the Cross)
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| C. G. Jung |
Before my conversion, I read everything Carl Jung ever wrote. Twenty or more volumes. This one answer sums up the gigantic mistake that was behind his philosophy and that is behind everything that is ultimately anti-Christian. There was much good in Jung – a rejection of Freud’s atheistic materialism, a regard for the whole person, an appreciation for the spiritual realm, the courage to take religion seriously – but there was a poison, a poison that was particularly bad for me, and for anyone who was using Jung’s false faith as a substitute for true Faith, as I was.
And that poison is the simple but deadly error – to assert that the meaning of life is life, not love. For if the meaning of life is “life”, that simply means that those in power get more of what they find lively, while those out of power get nothing. And of course “life” means what gives you your kicks – it doesn’t literally mean more life: for more life can only come through love. Sex is always deliberately sterile for those who want more “life”; sex produces more life only for those who follow love.
Jung believed in the lie of “conventional morality” – that all human behavior is simply based on an arbitrary social construct. He believed, as do all those devotees of Moloch, the god of Power, that the elite could do what they wanted; the rules did not apply to us (the elites) only to them (the proles). And if I were to love them – well, power would go out of me, wouldn’t it?
The irony, of course, is that any devotion to “life as life” ultimately leads to barrenness and death, to isolation and self-parody. Only that ridiculous thing “love” that degrades us and that wallows in the dirt with those who suffer truly brings life.
The world will never get this – but we who follow the Cross do. The world will never understand that the only thing that matters is love. When all is said and done, when we’ve had our fill of self-indulgence, of sin, of taking advantage of one another, of using one another, of eating one another up, of sex and drugs and rock and roll, of the carnival joy ride and the cheap thrills we call “life” – when all that burns away or folds up like a child’s drawing on tissue paper; when He comes again and we see Him in His glory, we will simply see the simple Truth.
Only love matters. Only love.
Kevin,
I, too, in my pre-Christian days, read Jung with enthusiasm. I did not, after becoming Christian, dismiss his work with disdain, just saw it more objectively, as part of a larger picture. You’re a bit rough on the good doctor. He experienced love, as much as anyone else–he just didn’t make it his god.
I think his rupture with Freud was not so much a rejection of atheistic materialism as it was a rejection of Freud’s theories about sex underlying all human motivation–which is quite ironic, since his rebellion against his mentor was such a blatant Oedipal actualization.
He made valuable contributions to our understanding of human nature. His response to the “meaning of life” question reminds one of Picasso’s response: Some questions demand not an answer, but a lie, especially something like “What is the meaning of life?” That’s like, “What is the meaning of meaning?” I rather think his intent might have been to ridicule the question.
By the way, I’ve always thought that Jung’s own unconscious pubescent rebellion, personified in his rejection of mentor Freud, was actually against his own father, a Protestant minister–I’ve forgotten which brand of protestantism, but it was one of Calvinist varieties.
At the end of his life, surveying it all, his past and present, his comment was, “Bidden or not, God is present.” Verily.