Mankind at Fault: By contrast, Mary Baker Eddy (Eddy, 1994), the founder of Christian Science, an American church that was to emerge soon after the Civil War, found a way to resolve the issue. How can a cruel, numinous experience such as war be present in a universe created by an all-powerful, omniscient, and benevolent God. This issue was resolved by assigning the blame to human beings rather than God. This was Lilly’s simulation of we humans existing inside God. It is the human “error” of believing that a world filled with illness and violence really exists.
The Christian Science “reality” is that God has created a perfect world. It is the human being who has imagined an imperfect world. Must as Eli’s father is quick to blame human sin for the numinous experience of warfare. Mary Baker Eddy and her Church of Christ Science followers can blame human “erroneous” beliefs. For Eddy, “God has always met and will also meet every human need.” It is up to we humans to accept God’s grace. We are in error when we don’t accept this grace and create a world of conflict, disease and death.
Carl Jung, James Gerry and Mary Baker Eddy seem to be saying that we build a tension when interacting with God regarding an “awe-full” numinous-laden experience such as warfare. We can assign blame to God. This allows us to avoid or escape from the “awe-ful” nature of a profound event such as warfare. However, we then must confront the presence of an even more awe-ful “reality” of a God who can at times being uncaring or perhaps not all powerful. Alternative, we can hold on to the assumption (belief) that God is all powerful and benevolent; it is we humans who are sinful or ignorant of God’s perfect university.
Freedom
It is not just the power and awe-full-ness of God that seems to emerge from nothingness. The experience of Freedom often also emerges from nothingness – or at least from a state, as Kris Kristopher writes, when there is nothing left to lose. Much as we create barriers when confronted with the awe-fulness of God or create complex beliefs that enable us to live with a seemingly uncaring God, we construct barriers when we are confronted with the challenge of freedom.
The Choices and Responsibilities of Freedom: We are forced to move from the passivity inherent in a world of deterministic non-freedom, to the activism of a world filled with the difficult choices of freedom. We find it disconcerting to assume responsibility for the actions required in response to the opportunity of freedom.
