I<\/em>), the id (the wild and \u201cwanting\u201d self of our unruly desires), and the superego (that aspect that judges the other parts with moral evaluation). He doesn\u2019t accept Freud\u2019s theories on their own literal terms, necessarily, but suggests that\u2014whatever their deficiencies\u2014they are a mythology, one with lots of problems but that does tell a story that\u2019s at least partly true.<\/p>\nEdmondson simplifies Freud\u2019s framework by saying the superego\u2019s moral code, left on its own, is \u201cthe code a tyrannical father might inflict on a dependent child\u201d getting unrelenting punishment. On the other hand, our ego, he argues, is made \u201cout of love, out of being loved.\u201d When that judging faculty in a person is implacable, \u201cthe ego becomes anxious and depressed; it loses confidence.\u201d Such a person is weighed down by guilt, anxiety, and self-hatred, and so is fighting a battle all the time just to survive.<\/p>\n
Sometimes a person \u201cprojects\u201d that judgment onto some other person or group\u2014just to get some relief. Other people\u2014like the fundamentalist student with whom I talked\u2014try to shut the \u201cjudging\u201d faculty off altogether. Giving up, they surrender themselves to the unleashing of their id\u2014often in cruelty or chaos.<\/p>\n
Edmundson argues that, like many other things, the superego is a kind of \u201ccorrupted ghost\u201d of something that was seen as necessary in a previous\u2014more religious\u2014age. Without some form of cultural or religious authority, we lose stability. \u201cWhen legitimate forms of authority disappear, the way is open for rogue authority to assert itself,\u201d he writes. \u201cWhen there is nothing reliable outside you to help you organize your life, internal forces enter the empty space, and those forces may be anything but benevolent. In the outside world, on comes the dictator; on comes the religious huckster.\u201d<\/p>\n
And internally, there often comes a kind of authority\u2014a really judgmental inner authority\u2014that tends to \u201cexpand and expand and never be cultivated or displaced.\u201d Sometimes this inner self-judgmentalism, which, no matter how many times projected, always boomerangs, leads a person to try to shut it off with alcohol or opioids.<\/p>\n
In a culture such as ours, Edmundson concludes, the internet has become our collective superego. We then end up with hate\u2014either of the \u201chot\u201d kind or the \u201ccold\u201d kind. Both are frequently self-hatred turned outward.<\/p>\n
Often, Edmundson notes, the idea between online mobs is to join the collective superego with institutional power in order to fire, discipline, or humiliate whoever is the target. If the boss or the HR department won\u2019t do that, he writes, the fury is directed toward them. This doesn\u2019t assuage the anger; it just moves on elsewhere.<\/p>\n
By no means do I agree with all of Edmundson\u2019s diagnoses or recommendations, but his metaphor of the superego is onto something true. If we don\u2019t pay attention to this as Christians, we have no way to bear witness to the gospel. What Edmundson means by the superego metaphor is a moralism without mercy, a law without gospel, a judgment seat without a John 3:16.<\/p>\n
This is significant because for so long, so many have assumed that sin and guilt are outdated categories, suited for a medieval era but not for this one. The prophets and apostles, though, told us that sin and guilt\u2014along with the search for a meaning to life, the fear of death, and an answer to shame\u2014might be culturally amplified realities, but they are not culturally created.<\/p>\n
Guilt and shame are fallen human conditions, not ancient or premodern or modern or postmodern ones. The question is not whether <\/em>the world around is grappling with guilty consciences but how<\/em>.<\/p>\nWe could also caricature the Old Testament Scriptures as \u201csuperego\u201d\u2014the intimidating judgment-filled God of Sinai over and against the merciful God of Jesus\u2014but we could only maintain that with a willful ignorance of both Testaments.<\/p>\n
Even in the giving of the Law itself, with God on the mountain with Moses, there is the communication that the Law itself is not enough. The tablets from Sinai were not all that God delivered to the prophet. Most of the rest of Exodus includes the details of God\u2019s showing Moses the specifications for constructing a tent in which God would meet with his people over the mercy seat (Ex. 25:22).<\/p>\n
The people could see the priests as they went behind the veil to the Most Holy Place, to atone for their own sins and for the sins of the people. They could then hear the word of forgiveness; they could start over again. The Book of Hebrews argues that the blueprint of the tabernacle itself and the directions for the sacrifices make clear that this movable tent was temporary\u2014pointing to the sacrificial offering of the one High Priest who need not be replaced because he\u2019s human like us. But unlike the priests of Levi, the resurrected Jesus wasn\u2019t a sinner and he won\u2019t die.<\/p>\n
The Israelites listened to the bells of their priests moving into the mysterious place behind the veil, approaching the ark of the covenant before the face of a holy God, hoping that they wouldn\u2019t be struck dead, that their sacrifice would be accepted. They also knew that this could never totally purify the conscience, because they would have to be here, again, doing the same thing all over again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf,\u201d the writer of Hebrews tells us (6:19\u201320). The mixed metaphors here are mind-bending if we actually pay attention to them.<\/p>\n
The imagery is of a pioneer\u2014a \u201cforerunner\u201d\u2014going before us to where we will follow him\u2014and it\u2019s to the place we could never before approach: behind that curtain. The imagery is also, though, of an anchor. This \u201cnew and living way\u201d (Heb. 10:20) into mercy and forgiveness and the cleansing of conscience is stable and steadfast, unmoving and immoveable.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why we often\u2014when confronted with our own sin\u2014do the exact opposite of what we should. We get ashamed and withdraw from God. Prayer gets harder. We assume that we should get our failures under control and then come into the presence of God. We want to rely on the superego to fix us until we\u2019re good enough to face the God who loves us.<\/p>\n
The presence of God with us in Christ, though, isn\u2019t a reward for good performance; it\u2019s the way that we are transformed.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t give up, then. We don\u2019t wallow in self-loathing or project that loathing onto other people. You might not feel okay. You might not be <\/em>okay. But behind the veil of what you can see, the anchor holds.<\/p>\nThat frees us to pursue righteousness and holiness in the only way that can actually give it, not by achieving it for fear of God rejecting us but by receiving it\u2014because we know that, no matter what our conscience tells us, there\u2019s an offering of blood. There\u2019s a mercy seat. There\u2019s a God who is actively moving toward us, not with condemnation but with mercy.<\/p>\n
In a time of diminished expectations\u2014and of an eclipsed gospel witness\u2014what would really make the church countercultural is if the people around us were to have a very different conversation. One might say, \u201cThese are people of moral integrity, even though they think that God is merciful to them for their sin.\u201d And another might say, \u201cYes, but they say their morality isn\u2019t in spite of the mercy; it\u2019s because of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
If this is, in fact, \u201cthe age of guilt,\u201d if it\u2019s true that the collective superego and the collective id are destroying what it means for us to live as people, then surely there ought to be a people who remember what it is to be amazed by grace.<\/p>\n
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today<\/span> and leads its Public Theology Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n