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God-Playing
Condensed from the Kingdom of Self.
by Earl Jabay. (Logos International, New Jersey)
Earl Jabay is an ordained minister with an extensive grounding in modern psychiatry. While working on the staff of the Neuro-Psychiatric Institute at Princeton, he had a personal revelation that, for all of his life, he had been god-playing. He discovered that there is a vast difference between a petition to God for help and the "You take over" prayer that signals our submission to the will of God. In the first, God is asked to be the co-pilot, in the second, the Pilot.
When he began his work as a mental hospital chaplain, Jabay was accustomed to commence the day with a prayer that God would go with him and help him to do his work. In doing so, he was the occupant of the throne in the "Kingdom of Self." Contact with members of Alcoholics Anonymous changed all that. He learned from them how to place God on the throne, to ask God to take charge of his life. Now he understands that when he enters the hospital ward, God is already there. His learning experiences are detailed in his book, and are excerpted or summarized in what follows.
The authority issue--we might call it the "god-problem"--is a core problem in human life. It is almost insultingly simple. It seeks to answer the question: "Who is Number One?" The candidates are only two, God or self. For much of our lives, all humans nominate themselves.
Right from the very beginning, most of the precious time in our lives is devoted to the resolution of the difficult yet fascinating problem of who is in charge. The first thing a baby does when it comes into the world is to seek to establish its kingdom. It is hungry. It cries. A weary mother hears, understands, and responds. At a later time, the baby will feel uncomfortable in its nether regions. Again it will cry. Each time the king cries, it is obeyed. Roughly nine times each day, it cries to be fed or have its diaper changed. Each occasion tests the authority of its kingdom. And after each victory, the king will conclude there is none in the world higher than itself. The king is number one. The king is a god.
Not too far into the future, its authority will be challenged. Mostly the problem is mother. Over matters such as toilet training. The king is furious about lack of consultation. The enemies are recognized. The battle begins. Every parent can testify to the unbelievable strength and persistence of a young child's will. The tragedy is, of course, that when a young child wins the contest of wills, it loses. The battle continues throughout childhood into adulthood, with individuals all the time learning increasingly sophisticated strategies to get their own way. A great deal of time is spent on learning divide and conquer tactics. When firstly parents and later, other authorities, are divided, it is possible to go through the breach. The holy crusade graduates from the home to the schools, the streets, and the community.
Are there instances when an individual relates to authority with a healthy obedience? There are many but they are episodical. The security and peace experienced under authority is short lived. The demands of being king incessantly drive a person back to a conflict with any and all outside authority-- parents, teachers, employers, police, God.
There is a diabolical way to make this maturation period peaceful. Peace will prevail if the authorities default in the use of their authority. A pseudo-tranquility will reign if those authorities, out of their own egoistic needs, never say no, never counter. There appears to be a cruel, retributive justice in this world that ordains that if the appropriate authorities do not do their job, a child will rise up to destroy parents, other authorities if it can, and then itself. The survivors grow up to be adults who carry the legacy of their childhood.
As the self comes into the fullness of physical maturity, our goddish style of life is more openly disclosed. Unstated and unrecognized convictions take deep root. Among these are a conviction of power, the desire to be always right, to be the sole source of ultimate truth, to evade the reality of the present, to have messianic aspirations, to be the law, to be perfect. Other symptoms are: Desire to be leader, winner, special, chosen, superior, see your name/photo in print, expectations of gratitude from others, being judgmental, grabbing the center-stage, fear of losing, harboring resentment, self-pity, victimhood, lust for power, fault-finding, condescension, perfectionism, retaliation, and many others. A problem with being god is that we have to be so busy, to carry so much responsibility. It is a staggering task to run the universe. No wonder that Jesus said, "Blessed are the humble."
One of the saddest and most painful expressions of adult egoism is loneliness. We egoists often tend to isolate ourselves from our fellows. The reason for this is simple. We can't stand people and they can't stand us. We may recede from people and, enthroned and alone, we begin to suspect that people are against us. Baffled and weary, we may choose to leave the battlefield to live by and unto ourselves, excusing our behavior by labeling it as self-reliance or independence. Life at the center of one's world is the loneliest spot in the universe. It is a place that God alone should occupy. Displacing God and taking his place, we egoists are liable to withdraw from people. We are too proud to ask favors in case of refusal, to ask questions because someone might laugh, or to express an opinion in case someone might criticize. It surely is lonely at the top.
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