The Devil is Real: Some thoughts on Debt, Grace and the Forgiveness of Sin

It’s Easter Sunday. A day when many reflect on the Resurrection and its relation to the seemingly obscure notion of “forgiveness of sin”.

I’ve explored this theme in various ways over the years, indeed my latest book offers a reading of what “forgiveness of sin” means without any of the mystification and obscurantism that comes from religious renderings of Christianity. So here, I’d like to expand briefly on my previous work by saying a few things about the Devil and how this diabolical character fits into the picture.

To approach the subject, we need to reflect briefly on anxiety.

Traditionally, anxiety has been viewed as the fear of nothing. Not a lack of fear, but rather a fear of nothingness itself. While we might be afraid of pain, for example, we will be anxious about death (death as a privileged symbol of lack). In a phobia we take some general anxiety and compress it into a fear. Just as a sub-atomic particle in superposition crunches into a position when measured, so our generalized anxiety is compacted into a concrete fear of moths, butterflies or mice.

Those who write on anxiety often note the various ways it manifests in our lives. Tillich, for instance, writes of three prime manifestations:

Guilt, meaninglessness and death.

This deep lack goes by different names. In psychoanalysis, it is expressed in the Death Drive; in existentialism, it raises its head under the name Alienation; in post-structuralism, it is connected with Différance; in theology, we call it sin.

However, the Christian tradition complicates the picture of anxiety as simply connected to lack. An idea hidden to most, but visible to Lacan.

One of his phenomenal insights is the idea that anxiety does have an object; albeit a rather strange one.

I won’t go into technical details in this post, but rather will attempt to express his idea in an analogy that might help us approach the idea of Resurrection.

Imagine we’ve bought a house that lost its value. The bank has taken it back and we’re left with a huge debt.

Debt is the economic name for lack. A debt is literally a nothingness: a lack that binds us to the bank, building society, mob or government. Something is missing – money (itself the material representation of debt, but that’s a thought for another time) that is demanded to fulfil the debt.

Technically, the debt is not what causes the anxiety. It is merely the condition for the anxiety. If we have moved to another country, we might be able to put the debt behind us. It is still there, but we don’t get any letters or phone calls, and no one calls round to our door demanding payment.

The anxiety is produced by the other who keeps reminding of us of our debt. The one who sends the letters, texts, and people to our door.

Sartre famously wrote of how our being involves nothingness. How we are all inhabited by a certain debt.

The point that Lacan makes is that this debt is only a cause of suffering when an other (the superego) keeps posting us letters reminding us of it.

As children, we inhabit a world where authorities of different stripes keep telling us what we should and should not be doing. These external authorities are gradually internalized and continue to haunt us by telling us that we aren’t good enough, that we aren’t rich enough, good looking enough, having enough fun. In short, that there is a lack within us that we need to fill.

The problem Freud pointed out is that the more we try to fulfil the demands of this authority, the more anxious we actually become. The beast cannot be satisfied by our achievements, for the beast feeds on our ever-increasing anxiety over not reaching our goals.

For Lacan (at least my reading of Lacan), anxiety is thus connected to this other who is always sending us letters that tell us how much we owe.

In theological terms, this other can be called the Devil. It is the other within us that constantly uses our anxiety/alienation/sin against us. Driving us deeper into despair by telling us we aren’t good enough.

In economic terms, bankruptcy is the name that is given to the loss of our debt. It is the rendering nothing of the nothing that enslaves us.

Of course, in the US, bankruptcy is not the full forgiveness of debt, and there are other strings attached. But it as close an analogy we have to the idea of forgiving a debt in our economic system. When one forgives a debt, one doesn’t pay it, but rather negates it. An ideal enshrined in the never realized year of Jubilee.

When one is bankrupt, the letters, phone calls and house visits stop. And with them, the anxiety that they produce dissipates. It is the loss of loss.

In a Religionless reading of Christianity, the Devil can therefore be described as the internal enslaving other that inhabits us, causing us very real suffering by reminding us of our lack.

The devil thus exists in the same way as society or the unconscious. Of course, if we take everyone out of the world, we will not find an object called “society”. However, society is an operative force that makes real demands on us. This is what is meant by structural racism. Individuals might not be racist, but they operate in a system that is. A system that dictates what schools they should send their kids to, where they should buy a house, drink, or socialize. In the same way, the unconscious is not something one finds in the brain, the unconscious names a structure that emerges from beings of desire and language. It does however have a spectral existence, as seen in Freudian slips, and is the object of study in psychoanalysis. Its existence is thus similar to the existence of imaginary numbers in mathematics.

Too many of us wrestle with the devil daily, and the challenge lies in defeating him through experiencing the interconnected realities of grace and forgiveness. Two structures that drain the devilish other of its operative power. This will be the theme of my next Building on Fire two-day event in LA. Although I haven’t finalised the dates yet. I’ll also be delving into in in my online Omega Course in June.