The Force of Id and Otherwise
Photo by Adrian Siaril on Unsplash
Recently I read a book by Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (2024). The book is a review of the immigration policies of the United States over time that has played a decisive role in the imposition of the United States' sometimes unhelpful policies on the Central American states. Its narrative focuses on the remarkable courage of a few individuals who have stood bravely for human dignity, respect, and freedom for their fellow citizens in these several vulnerable states. At one point, Blitzer shares about a particular political speech given in 2016 at the Heritage Foundation on immigration policy. He reports that for him, the speech “was the screaming Id of American self-interest” (p. 418).
The biblical writers of course had no access to Freud’s psychological vocabulary concerning the complicated nature of the human self, and therefore of course no access to the notion of Id. (We may note in passing that Freud’s notion of “superego” is no persuasive equivalent to the biblical God. Whereas Freud’s superego is primary disciplinary, the God of the covenant and of the Gospel, unlike the superego, is generative of blessing and abundance). Without appeal to such psychology, the Bible articulates the matter in theological categories. I could think of two pairs of biblical texts that give voice to the same toxic side of human reality. First, consider the quite remarkable introduction to the narrative of II Samuel 24:1-9.
Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he incited David against them saying: “Go, count the people of Israel and Judah” (v. 1).
We are not told why YHWH is angry with Israel. Perhaps the narrator reasons backward from the royal edict to conduct a census to what might have caused such a royal decision. A census is an act of top-down power the purpose of which can only be for military mobilization or for imposition of taxes. Either purpose represents an over-assertion of human leverage over more vulnerable human persons. Why would King David do that? Here it is said that YHWH “incited” David to such a top-down act. The verb rendered “incite” concerns the capacity to influence tacitly. Thus, in the uncomplicated world of early Yahwism, it is only YHWH who can initiate such an action that is inimical to YHWH’s own intention, and YHWH would do so only because he had anger toward Israel and David, and decided to punish Israel, and to punish David (see II Samuel 24:10-17). To credit YHWH or id as causative agent is a matter of repertoire options, as either agency can be credited.
The same matter has an alternative articulation in I Chronicles 21:1. Here the agency is framed in this way:
Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel.
The narrative has removed YHWH as the agent of motivation and now credits “Satan” who is at this point an agent of YHWH. Either way, whether YHWH, Satan, or id there is acknowledgement of a powerful force that propels action in ways that contradicts both common sense and wise policy.
The second word pair concerns the structure of the narrative of the Gospel of Luke. In Luke 4:1-13, like the narrative of Matthew 4:1-16, tells of the temptation of Jesus. In both renderings the instigator (inciter?) is “the devil.” But it is only in Luke that the narrative ends in a way that leaves matters open for further narration:
When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time (kairos) (v. 13).
The work of the devil in the life of Jesus is not finished in this early chapter. The devil is in no hurry but will find a time loaded with potential for disrupting the life and work of Jesus.
In the Lucan presentation, the devil (now “Satan”) will await exactly the right kairos moment to finish the work of evil. He found that moment when the Jewish authorities “were looking for a way to put Jesus to death” (Luke 22:2). Satan occupies the thought and interest of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve. Satan finds the right time and Judas the right agent to complete the work that was not finished in the early “temptation narrative.” The narrator has no precise way to speak about the work of Satan, but might have said Satan “incited” Judas to act. From this point in the narrative, it is all at the initiative of Judas. He confers with the authorities who were “greatly pleased.” Judas began to look for “the right time,” that is, “a favorable opportunity” (eukairian). The rhetoric is reminiscent of that of Satan’s “moment” in the temptation narrative. Both texts play on the term kairos, the freighted moment for decisive action. Thus the action of Judas provides a complement to the initial action of the devil. In one instance it is Satan who waits for such a time; in the other it is Judas. The two belong together as perpetrators of this ominous moment. Both actions aim at eliminating the threat of Jesus; the aim is to terminate the work of Jesus.
In both of the David narratives and in the two narratives in Luke, the motivation for negative action is hidden. It is variously credited to the intention of God or to the work of Satan as God’s agent, or those who function as God’s nemesis. In any and all of these forms, the reference is to desire that remains hidden. There are indeed theological options to Freud’s id that evoke the basest actions. These several narratives, along with Freud’s vocabulary, are finally at a loss to “explain” why it is that human action so frequently violates sound judgment in order to satisfy ignoble appetites. Or with the Apostle Paul:
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am (Romans 7:21-24).
In this different idiom, it was “the law of sin” that propelled David’s top-down action, or that evoked Judas or—we may say—that authorizes politician’s base rhetoric on immigration policy with assaults on “vermin.” Humanistic psychology is wont to make all good things not only possible but likely. In the darkness of our nights of candor, however, we know better. We know that we are propelled, in ways beyond our own self-understanding, to undertake negating actions that violate our own best modes of self. Along with the Bible writers, Freud is puzzled about how to name this propulsion that shows up in all sorts of unexpected and inexplicable ways. Thus a politician's performance of “id” belongs in this long trajectory of our awareness that the self can and does act against our own good judgment and against its best interest. And now, in this and every election, we see how followers might go down such an id-path with some politicians, to join them in policy and action that are self-serving and mightily violate the common good.
In a world of positive affirmation that does not want to acknowledge the force of evil among us which causes us to engage in the destruction of both neighbor and self, the church has an “opportunity” to invite reflection upon the force of sin that is “lurking at the door” (Genesis 4:7). It is for that reason that we regularly recite, without much thought, the prayer of petition, “deliver us from evil” or from “the evil one.” The prayer is a recognition that the “evil one” is endlessly recruiting us for nefarious work. The prayer, moreover, is an acknowledgment that we ourselves do not and cannot resist such a force, and so we petition God as an active agent to “deliver us from the evil one,” from “Satan and all his works.” The church is a venue for honesty and candor about that force that besets us in our innocent vulnerability.
But of course, the church may do more than bring the matter to light. The church may celebrate the claim that the power of Jesus, in his suffering love, has broken the power of such a force, and so makes it possible to live a life beyond such a power. Thus Paul can finish with this:
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 7:25)!
The good news is that we are not and need not be propelled by the negating work of God, of Satan, of the devil, or the id. What a wonder and a mercy, to be emancipated for an alternative life that is “new and righteous.”
This astonishing claim for the emancipator power of the gospel comes to us in many different versions. In the biblical perspective, there is the great declaration of emancipation that we may indeed withstand such temptation to be at our best selves. In our honesty, however, we admit our willpower to live differently is not enough of a force against our negating self. It is for that reason that we appeal, finally, always, and yet again, to the force of God’s Holy Spirit at work among us, summoning us to a life that is able and willing to enact,
hospitality and not hostility,
generosity and not parsimony, and
forgiveness, not vengeance.
These actions, policies, and postures are surely counter to our id, all the more reason to give ourselves over to the goodness of God and God’s endless resolve for restoration and rehabilitation.
