A Simple Question - sci.med.cardiology

Message from discussion A Simple Question

Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD

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More options Jun 6 2006, 9:18 pm

Newsgroups: alt.christnet.christianlife, sci.med.cardiology, alt.atheism, alt.christnet.evangelical

From: "Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD" <and...@heartmdphd.com>

Date: 6 Jun 2006 18:18:15 -0700

Local: Tues, Jun 6 2006 9:18 pm

Subject: Re: A Simple Question

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Mark T wrote:
> "Andrew B. Chung, MD/PhD" <nosp...@heartmdphd.com> wrote:

> > The answer can be found by reading the Book of Job with a discerning
> > heart.

> Er ... no.

Actually "yes" ... if you had a discerning heart.

> One has to use one's God-given brain. That's why God gave it to you!

Each person's brain is different and so each person's use of their
respective minds as given by GOD will be different.

Bottomline:

The brain is no substitute for a discerning heart.

> God's answer to Job is basically "I'm bigger than you. Shut up."

Not for the discerning.

> That is not a satisfactory answer.

Correct. This is one reason to want a discerning heart. It is the
reason for my prayerfully asking for a discerning heart many years ago
just as King Solomon had asked and received.

All thanks, praises, and glory to LORD GOD Almighty now and forever.

Amen !

> Have you read Carl Jung's "Answer To Job"?

No.

> Have you ever studied philosophy
> (which used to be the handmaiden to theology)?

Yes.

> You don't seem to be able to engage anyone at any serious level but here's
> hoping .....
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> The Problem of Evil, which for so many people simply denuminizes religion,
> and which Schopenhauer used to reject the value of the world, became a
> challenge for Jung in the psychoanalysis of God. The God of the Bible is
> indeed a personality, and seemingly not always the same one. God as a
> morally evolving personality is the extraordinary conception of Answer to
> Job. What Otto saw as the evolution of human moral consciousness, Jung turns
> right around on the basis of the principle that the human unconscious,
> expressed spontaneously in religious practice and literature, transcends
> mere human subjectivity. But the transcendent reality in the unconscious is
> different in kind from consciousness. As Jung said in Memories, Dreams,
> Reflections again:

> If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious
> creatures;

LORD GOD Almighty does not need us. HE chose to create us out of HIS
infinite will. The LORD chose to generously give us our respective
free wills. Again, this is out of HIS infinite will.

> nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of
> creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless
> species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention.

HIS method of creation is actually very direct.

Nothing in this universe has either happened or will happen by chance
(Proverbs 16:33).

> Natural
> history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over
> hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured.

No such thing as Nature, capitalized in the manner as presented by
Charles Darwin in his book, "The Origin of Species."

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is dead because it was founded on the
false assumption that things in this universe happened by chance
(random selection by random forces of randomly arising traits
phenotypically arising from random mutations).

As it is written, a house built on sand will not stand.

> The
> biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the
> same thing.

Aside from the Holy Bible and the Holy Quran, written works of man have
fallen short of being truthful.

> But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the
> miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes -- the second cosmogony [ed.
> note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the "noosphere," the
> layer of "mind"]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one
> cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere
> within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that
> the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of
> warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain -- found as if
> by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and
> groped for out of some dark urge. [p. 339]

No such thing as chance (Proverbs 16:33).

The "element of meaning" is the essence of life (aka soul)

> In other words, a "meaningful coincidence." Jung also says,

No such thing as coincidence (Proverbs 16:33).

> As far as we can discern,

Not very far without a discerning heart.

> the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle
> a light in the darkness of mere being.

Incorrect.

Our purpose is to glorify LORD GOD Almighty.

> It may even be assumed that just as
> the unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the
> unconscious. [p. 326]
> However, Jung has missed something there. If consciousness is "the light in
> the darkness of mere being," consciousness alone cannot be the "sole purpose
> of human existence," since consciousness as such could appear as just a
> place of "mere being" and so would easily become an empty, absurd, and
> meaningless Existentialist existence. Instead, consciousness allows for the
> meaningful instantiation of existence, both through Jung's process of
> Individuation, by which the Archetypes are given unique expression in a
> specific human life, and from the historic process that Jung examines in
> Answer to Job, by which interaction with the unconscious alters in turn the
> Archetypes that come to be instantiated. While Otto could understand Job's
> reaction to God, as the incomprehensible Numen, Jung thinks of God's
> reaction to Job, as an innocent and righteous man jerked around by God's
> unconsciousness. Jung's idea that the Incarnation then is the means by which
> God redeems Himself from His morally false position in Job is an
> extraordinary reversal (I hesitate to say "deconstruction") of the
> consciously expressed dogma that the Incarnation is to redeem humanity.

> from http://www.friesian.com/jung.htm

Without the LORD, our existence would indeed be meaningless
(Ecclesiastes).

> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> The Book of Job: An authentic account of human suffering

Actually, the Book of Job is not an account of human suffering but
rather an explanation for why there is evil in this world.

> Human suffering takes many forms - from commonplace disappointments,
> frustrations, illnesses - through loss, loneliness, identity crisis,
> emotional turmoil - to human response in the face of tragedy, disaster,
> death, pointless and meaningless acts of violence, war, genocide. It is
> Viktor Frankl (1987[1946]) who points out that, because human suffering
> seems so pointless and meaningless, it is the ultimate challenge in human
> growth. And, in the preface to Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning,
> Gordon Allport says:-

> " . . to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the
> suffering - if there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in
> suffering and dying - but no-one can tell another what that purpose is."

Actually rebelling out of free will against GOD's infinite will leads
to suffering.

Repenting, seeking out, and choosing to be within GOD's infinite will
alleviates all suffering.

"MY yoke is light." -- LORD Jesus Christ

> ....

> After he had finished Answer to Job he felt well again. In Memories, Dreams,
> Reflections, (Jung, 1961), he remarks:

> "The inner root of [Answer to Job] is to be found in Aion. There I had
> dealt with the psychology of Christianity, and Job is a kind of
> prefiguration of Christ. The link between them is the idea of suffering.
> Christ is the suffering servant of God, and so was Job . . . The ambivalent
> God-image plays a crucial part in the Book of Job . Job expects that God
> will, in a sense stand by him against God; in this we have a picture of
> God's tragic contradictoriness. This was the main theme of Answer to Job"
> (p. 243).

Actually, what the world (and those who are of this world) expected was
that GOD would stand by Job against the evil wiles of satan.

Instead, GOD allowed satan to test Job even though GOD foreknew what
the outcome would be: that Job would not curse GOD to HIS face even
when GOD withdrew all HIS blessings and protection. We know GOD
foreknew this by how HE describes Job as righteous like no other in the
world. This also reveals that though GOD is omniscient, satan is not,
because ultimately satan is shown to be wrong in his assumptions.

Even more interesting is the description of satan wandering about the
world "to and fro."

Not only is satan not omniscient, he is not omnipresent either.
Indeed, the evils that satan inflicted upon Job were sequential and not
simultaneous.

This reminds me of the sequential nature of the events that occurred
for the WTC towers on 9/11/2001.

Moreover, satan does not have the power to harm anyone in this world
unless GOD permits it.

So yes, the events of 9/11/2001 occurred according to GOD's infinite
will.

> Jung goes on to point out that:

> "The many questions from the public and from patients had made me feel
> that I must express myself more clearly about the religious problems of
> modern man. For years I hesitated to do so, because I was fully aware of the
> storm I would be unleashing. But at last I could not help being gripped by
> the problem, in all its urgency and difficulty, and I found myself compelled
> to give an answer. I did so in a form in which the problem had presented
> itself to me, that is, as an experience charged with emotion" (p. 243).

> It should be noted that Answer to Job was the one work with which he was
> completely satisfied. In his old age, Jung once remarked that " . . now that
> he knew more he would like to rewrite all of his books except Answer to Job,
> but he would leave that one just as it stands" (von Franz, 1975, p. 161).
> Edward Edinger (1992) suggests that Answer to Job is possibly the most
> complete statement of Jung's essential message, but it is a message that has
> shocked many people, including theologians, other psychologists and even
> some of his close friends (see Adler, 1976).

> Jung makes it clear that he is writing in the way that:

> "a modern man with a Christian education and background comes to terms
> with the divine darkness which is unveiled in the Book of Job , and what
> effect it has on him" (Jung, C.W. 9, par. 561).

It was Jung's choice to judge GOD.

It remains my choice to refrain from judging others especially GOD per
the kind and thoughtful suggestions of my LORD and Savior (Matthew 7).

"I am the way, the truth, and the life..." -- LORD Jesus Christ

Indeed, most assuredly, I know GOD to be kind, just, and right.

> Jung is concerned with what he calls a psychic truth, and he proposes that
> the Book of Job can serve as a paradigm for a certain experience of God, and
> that this has a special significance for our situation in today's world
> (Jung, C.W. 9, par. 562). In the story of Job, the portrayal of Yahweh is as
> both a persecutor and a helper in the same image, and both aspects are as
> real as each other. Yahweh is not split but is a totality of inner
> opposites, and this Jung identifies as the coincidentia oppositorium, the
> conjunction of opposites (Jung, C.W. 9, par. 664). The importance of this
> conjunction must not be underestimated, and we will return to this matter
> later. Jung proposes that this terrible, tormenting image of Yahweh
> constitutes his moral defeat at the hands of Job, and consequently Job
> should be seen as standing morally higher than Yahweh (Jung, C.W. 9, par.
> 640).

> What is striking about Answer to Job, is that the story of Job is only a
> starting point for Jung's sweeping survey of many of the books from the Old
> and New Testament which share a very similar theme. It turns out that Jung
> hardly mentions Job in the second half of his book, and also, more
> problematically, nothing is really resolved. Jung's Answer to Job is a very
> angry book, and as such it probably suffers from the projections and
> distortions that inevitably accompany human anger.

> However, the main point to be made is that Jung presents his work as "an
> experience charged with emotion". Clearly Jung's answer is an authentic
> answer, and needs to be approached in precisely that way. Answer to Job is
> the culmination of Jung's own heuristic inquiry (see Moustakas, 1990; Hiles
> 1999), i.e. his own life-long inquiry into the exploration of the meaning of
> human suffering, and the tragic spiritual conflicts this must entail.
> Marie-Louise von Franz reports that when Jung was asked how he could live
> with the knowledge he had recorded in Answer to Job, he replied "I live in
> my deepest hell, and from there I cannot fall any further" (von Franz, 1975,
> p. 174).

> http://psychematters.com/papers/hiles.htm

> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Those who choose to judge GOD will be rendered incapable of loving GOD.

Those who are unable to love GOD, will never come to know HIM.

For these reasons, Jung never knew GOD and indeed that is evident by
his writing:

"I live in my deepest hell, and from there I cannot fall any farther."

> > http://tinyurl.com/hsada

> It doesn't go to any website.

It goes to the Google archives.

Still praying for you, dear Mark.

Prayerfully in Christ's amazing love,

Andrew B. Chung
Cardiologist, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
http://tinyurl.com/hsada

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