The question that is often raised in the field of phenomenology, the study of human perception, is the following: Is what I see really what I see? Phenomenology was a challenging course when I was a student at Berkeley at Yale. The teacher, Dr. Werner Rode, was a French intellectual. I was lost in the first part of the course until I realized that his whole perspective was to get at the issue of how we see others when we are in relationships.
We started with physical images like the sketch of a woman who if viewed one way would be seen as a beautiful woman, but if you adjust your vision and look at the same sketch you would see an old hag. Phenomenology is the basis of a test in psychology known as the Rorschach Test or Ink blot test. In this test you are asked when various ink blots are placed before you what you see. Someone may see a flower while another person may see blood. What you see speaks volumes as to what is going on in your psyche and soul. For example, seeing a flower in the ink blot may indicate that you are at peace with yourself while the same ink blot that is seen as blood may be that you are feeling violent. The test is still used today.
Anais Nin, a French Cuban American author, captured the spirit of phenomenology, when she said simply but profoundly, “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” We all bring biases to our relationships with others. We need to know what those biases are. When I was studying counseling at Duke and Duke Medical Center, we were required to be in individual therapy and group theory as well so that we would be less likely to put our personal baggage on another who we were counseling. Even so, everyone brings perspective and bias to our relationships. You can’t avoid it, but you can learn from acknowledging your bias. Nin’s point is that we never can totally free ourselves of our personal way we see the world.
One thing that we can do to be a responsible person and citizen is to recognize that when we feel strongly about someone else, that there may be a bias in the mix of that relationship or may reveal what is important to us.
Let’s see how this applies to the heart of Christianity and a separate issue that is dividing our nation, race.
We need to start with the fact that race doesn’t exist. .01 % of the human genome is what separates blacks and whites. Race is a social construct to rationalize slavery. There is intentional racism such as calling a person by the N word, but racism is found as well in subtle ways referred to as microaggressions such as saying to a black person that they speak well (compared to what), black people are lazy, assuming a black person cannot pay for something in a store such as Oprah and finding out that she could buy the store, choosing to not sit next to a black person, if you need help with math, just ask an Asian, feeling that black people are violent and a threat to you, the black person was admitted to college because of their race and not their ability, making the comment that as a woman I know what a black person goes though, and I have friends who are black so I am not a racist. I don’t see color, and many more. This is really defining prejudice. Racism has a social dimension to it such as institutional structures that work against black people that include white privilege. It is this latter kind of racism that has created so much division in our nation in approaches such as Critical Race Theory which arose in academia.
Let’s explore Christianity through Nin’s comment that “We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” There is no better example of phenomenology and the Gospel than the passage in the Gospel of Mark: “Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi where he asked his disciples on the way, ‘Who do people say that I am? And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist, and others, Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets. He asked them, ‘But who you say that I am? Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:27-29) Jesus goes on to say in the Gospel of Matthew: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my Church.” (Matthew 16:15-17.”
This is ultimately the question that people in the Christian tradition need to ask and answer within their own psyches, souls, and hearts. It is a question that is often avoided because it requires a direct response. Some say that he was a great teacher, others a model of how to live, and still others who see him as a prophet. The answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” cannot be avoided in the Christian tradition because all else follows from our answer.
As I hearken back to those days in New Haven, it turns out that there is great insight in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French father of phenomenology, as well as Anais Nin whose insight that “We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.” These perspectives can tell us much about how we live.
This is something to keep in mind as we examine our relationships with others particularly those that form a category of an “ism” as well as our response in Christianity to that fundamental question of Jesus’ identity.
It also explains to me why the folks at Duke made as sure as they could that we wouldn’t put our stuff on those that we wanted to help. Bringing our stuff or baggage to others is a large part of our national division. The insights of Merleau-Ponty and Nin could assist us getting to be a more unified country where all people are created equal actually means something not only by our words but by our deeds.
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