God as a Narcissistic Parent

We kill our gods even as we worship them. In Jewish mysticism, god reduced himself ("tsimtsum") in order to create the world. The act of creation involved mayhem on a cosmic scale ("broken vessels"). Christianity is founded on the violent demise of god at the hands of mere mortals. God dies - literally, symbolically, or metaphorically - in almost all religions.

Such hate-love ambivalence characterized our relationships with our parents, especially when these parents self-absorbed, dysempathic, manipulative, toxic, and objectifying. Such parents refuse to allow their children to separate and individuate, never let go. They emotionally blackmail their offspring and engender an environment of ambient incest.

Indeed, the gods - these substitute progenitors - are often described as petulant, capricious, and narcissistic attention whores: they are clinging, needy, histrionic, rage uncontrollably when ignored or abandoned, jealous, aggressive, with poor impulse control, and with impaired judgment. They abuse their unbridled powers abundantly.

So, from time immemorial, we have been killing our gods, it symbolizes our autonomy as individuals. We need to repress to oblivion the inner representations of our parents to emerge as independent individuals. Killing god is an act of liberation and identity formation.

I am writing a book about god that I hope will introduce new themes to a 4000 years old debate.

Download the first chapters here