Harry Potter, Hogwarts and The Salvation Army -Part Two-

I have just re read Robert Johnson’s brief treatise on Your Shadow Self’. Coming from Jungian philosophy he outlines that each of us has a ‘better self’ and a ‘shadow self’, and within us all is the constant battle between good and evil. Now in conservative Christian theology we tend to focus on all of us being really ‘good’ people ‘in whom there is no guile’, but an alternative is that within us all is the shadow trying to take over and the good needing an external focus, be it morals, faith or whatever, to overcome and be a really ‘nice person’. Like being a student at Hogwarts where there is such a focus on the combat with the ‘Dark Forces’, and let’s face we have all been in a situation at the training college where little education was given about how to combat the dark forces that we might encounter in our leadership years within the Army. Many of my memories of training college life are a little bit hazy but there was nothing of an educational nature that addressed my shadow side. It was almost a conspiracy of ‘if we ignore it; it will go away’, or if we train you to be the total goody, goody then you will be protected by some ‘magical power’.

Johnson and Jung of course, make the argument that there are a lot of good things that come from our 'shadow side'. Creativity is one and the argument is that in some faith traditions that just being ‘right’ or ‘good’ has stifled discussion and argument to a degree that its expression of its faith is no different now than when it was formed hundreds of years previously; and then there are faith, and non-faith groups, that have changed to reflect the world they live in. Maintained their standards and moral fibre but have put it into a new context. Now this shadow side that we all have, and if you assert that you haven’t got one, it could be said that it is beginning to take over, will often be something that we can spend a lot of spiritual and emotional energy to combat and try and eradicate, when it might be a better use of that energy to simply acknowledge it as something we can keep under control because we know it is there. If we fail to acknowledge that shadow side, then in times of stress, it can express itself in a very powerful way that can be very damaging to us and those around us. Someone once said that “we always attack in others what we subconsciously recognise as our own weakness”, and when we look at the way in the church and the army, the amount of energy that goes into addressing sin in other people it makes me want to ask why?

What is possibly a need for the times is to focus on recognising our own shadow instead of focusing on other people’s shadow. This does not mean that we need to do bad things but simply to acknowledge it in some symbolic manner and thus not allow it to become the focus of our living and relations with other people in our lives and communities.

At Hogwarts they focus on all sorts of dark expressions of the self and there are magical potions and spells to combat the ‘Dark Forces that would like to destroy us’; but we are not at Hogwarts and we do not have Harry Potter to champion our cause. But there may be a way to include in the TC curriculum some more practical issues about how we, as leaders within our respective communities of faith, can be aware and ready for the times when those dark forces unite to do us in, without us even recognising them. May be there is a need for an abridged book of spells and potions to simply make us aware of the times when these dark forces might be around us. Although I fancy seeing Sven dressed up in the outfit of ‘Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore’ Headmaster of the new Salvation Army Hogwarts Training College.

Fletch
Peter Fletcher
Former
Australia