William James and the Sick Soul

One of the things that has always intrigued me about William James is his perspective on religion and spirituality. What I find particularly fascinating is the way he addresses how we handle our relationship with God when things go wrong in our lives. He posited that there are two kinds of Christians: the “healthy-minded” Christian and the “sick soul”. The healthy-minded Christian tends to view everything optimistically, and ignore the more difficult aspects of life completely. This attitude keeps these kind of Christians happy, but seems to be a rather dishonest way of sugar-coating spirituality and avoiding the tough stuff. The sick soul is the most interesting to me; James described this type of believer as one who grapples with the evils of life and takes on religion even if it causes distress. The sick soul doubts, is frustrated, struggles with God and faith, and yet sticks with it. I feel that although this is not the most pleasant way to deal with spirituality, it is the most realistic. Looking back at questions that great men like Augustine asked about how evil can exist in the world if God is in control, how else can we respond to the difficult issues that arise in life? Although I do not feel we should solely focus on the overwhelming evils in the world to the point where we get as depressed as James’ description of the sick soul, I do think that if we really want to try to make sense of the world instead of just ignoring what we don’t like, we need to struggle with our faith in the manner of the sick soul. I also think that this is a greater testament to others about our faith; the gritty, realistic perspective will ring a lot more true to others in the world struggling to answer the “why’s” of the world’s evils than the happy-go-lucky sugar-coated Christianity.

I must give credit to our very own Dr. Beck, as I started pondering this after reading what he had to say about James in his blog, Experimental Theology, which everyone should check out. He also makes some very interesting to Freud’s view of religion, which are worth looking at.