My Study Group is currently reading Not In His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief, by John Lamb Lash. The book begins with a description of the violent rise of Christianity and its campaign of genocide against the ancient Pagan peoples. The consequent development of patriarchy and the cultural adaptation to the dominance paradigm has taken humanity off course. Patriarchy is evolutionarily maladaptive. Lash believes that the Gnostic Myth of Sophia, woven together with contemporary deep ecology, provides a course of correction for the evolution of our species.
Lash describes history in terms of abuse bonding, what he calls the “victim-perpetrator syndrome.” A bond forms between abusers and those they abuse, between perpetrator and victim, and some of the abused become abusers in return. Even if they don’t become perpetrators, the victim tends to stay faithful to their abuser.
Lash argues that the ideology of Christian salvation is a pathological concept that serves as a cover-up for the victim-perpetrator syndrome repeated over generations - the genocide of the Pagans, the destruction of the Ancient Mysteries, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the conquering of the Americas. He does not blame all violence on Christian ideology. But he says, “Humans are capable of violence and oppression. When that tendency becomes legitimated by a grand religious belief system, then the violence takes on a superhuman dimension, going totally out of scale.”
A historical example is when the Europeans discovered America. They systematically perpetrated genocide on the Native Americans who they said were “savages” and required “saving.” They were “saving the natives” for redemption in heaven. Why did they do that when they could have made alliances with those people? Lash believes it is because the Europeans who came to the Americas in the 15th century had already been victims of genocide and violence through the imposition of Christianity. They were the abused who turned into abusers. Their ancestors were the Native Europeans, the Pagan Peoples, victims of genocide or forced conversion at the hands of Christians.
Lash believes that the path of deep ecology is a way back to what we had before the rise of salvationist patriarchal ideology. This is the path taking us back to Sophia, the goddess of wisdom, and to the Pagan Mysteries that were massacred by the rise of Christianity.
Next time: A Story to Guide the Species.
