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Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 49, No. 3, 2001

Christianity and the Shadow Side

of Human Experience
Kirk A. Bingaman1

In Jungian theory, every human being, including the Christian believer, has a
shadow side to his or her personality. The shadow, then, like it or not, is a part
of our common human lot, a part of the human being’s fabric. The best any of
us can do is to mitigate the effects of the shadow, by taking back into the self,
integratively, those aspects of the shadow that we have projected onto others. As
Jung believed, it is sheer fantasy to think we can eradicate the shadow from the
self, or that, through religious devotion, suppress it into submission. Yet even if
we could, by our own power and/or the power of God, straitjacket the shadow,
would we want to live without that which not only at times brings us pain and
sorrow, but at other times adds richness and depth to our living? This paper will
take the position that it is in the best interests of the Christian believer to answer
this question with a definitive, “No!”
KEY WORDS: Christianity; Carl Jung; shadow.

INTRODUCTION

Down through the centuries, Christianity has not looked favorably upon hu-
man nature and human creatureliness. Martin Luther, for example, suggested that
the root of our sin “lies not in our works but in our nature” (Luther, quoted in
Althaus, 1966, p. 153). John Calvin was more graphic, when he explained that
human nature is “a veritable world of miseries” and “a teeming horde of infamies”
(Calvin, 1960, p. 36). Yet according to C.G. Jung, disparaging our very own nature,
even if it does have historical and theological justification, will do the modern man
or woman little good. Modern human beings, Jung believed, had heard myriad
1 KirkA. Bingaman holds a Ph.D. in psychology and religion from the Graduate Theological Union,
Berkeley, and is a pastoral counseling associate at the Lloyd Center Pastoral Counseling Service,
San Anselmo. Address correspondence to Kirk A. Bingaman, 11 Glen Dr., Fairfax, California 94930;
e-mail: abingama@marin.k12.ca.us.

167
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C 2001 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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sermonic pleas to triumph over human nature, or the so-called shadow side of
human existence, to subdue the flesh and tame instinctual appetites, but to little
or no avail. Even after 2,000 years of theological and homiletical exhortation, the
shadow side of human existence is still very much alive. Thus, for Jung, it was time
for Christianity to try a new approach, a new strategy, one that does not persuade
human beings to distance themselves from their fundamental nature or creature-
liness, but rather helps them make peace with it. As Jung pointed out so many
times, the modern human being has heard more than enough about sin and guilt:
“He [sic] is sorely beset by his own bad conscience, and wants rather to know how
he is to reconcile himself with his own nature—how he is to love the enemy in his
own heart and call the wolf his brother” (Jung, 1958, p. 341).
The purpose of this paper is to examine C.G. Jung’s analysis of Christianity’s
response to the shadow side of human existence. In reviewing Jung’s shadow
concept, we will discover that it is an indispensable aspect of psychical life, indis-
pensable if one’s goal is the integration of personality. However, Jung feared that
Christianity’s aim was to keep the shadow side of human existence at arm’s length,
hopelessly relegated to the periphery of religious faith. Jung, though, will issue
something of a warning to Christian theology: Do not be too hasty in condemning
or ignoring humankind’s biological inheritance. Indeed, Christian believers would
do better to remember that they are bound to this earth and world, that they are first
and foremost bodies, and that they are fundamentally related to the animal world.
Jung, in keeping before us the shadow side of human existence, was in many ways
expressing his displeasure with Christianity’s tendency to depreciate our basic,
God-given humanity.

THE JUNGIAN SHADOW AND CHRISTIAN FAITH

“The Jungian concept of the shadow,” argues Henri Ellenberger, “should not
be confused with the Freudian concept of the repressed:” the shadow is related to die
Unbewusstheit, or “the phenomenon of unawareness,” instead of das Unbewusste,
or the phenomenon of unconsciousness (1970, p. 707). For example, I might be very
effective (maybe this is wishful thinking) when it comes to marriage and family
counseling, and yet I can still go home at the end of the workday and not always
be the most loving husband and father. As a result, I begin to psychically gravitate
towards the former, my persona as a pastoral counselor, as that which is most
indicative of my fundamental identity. My polished social persona becomes the
real me, in toto, while the other side of me, the shadow, is conveniently ignored. And
it gets easier and easier to ignore my shadow, since it only seems to manifest itself in
the hidden confines of my home, away from the public eye. Thus, in an increasing
state of unawareness, I can incessantly embrace the “good side” of my personality,
while overlooking my shadow side. Even worse, I can project my shadow onto
the other members of my immediate family, seeing them as the provocateurs, the
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ones to blame for my unlovingness. But until I can withdraw the projection of
my shadow, there will be for me no individuation. As Peter Homans reminds us,
individuation, Jung’s word for the process of human growth and development
leading to wholeness and integration, only begins when the shadow has been
confronted. In other words, “confrontation with [the shadow] denoted [for Jung]
a kind of ‘prologue’ to the individuation process” (Homans, 1979, p. 104).
Quite frankly, the shadow side of human personality does contain certain infe-
riorities and dark aspects that we would often like to forget, or, to use Ellenberger’s
terminology, like to block out of awareness. “The shadow is made up of all the rep-
rehensible qualities that the individual wishes to deny, including animal tendencies
that we have inherited from our infrahuman ancestors, as well as the modes and
qualities that the individual has simply not developed” (Wulff, 1991, p. 424). These
“reprehensible qualities” and “animal tendencies” are undoubtedly what Luther
and Calvin had in mind when they expressed their displeasure with human nature.
Indeed, what Christian wants to be reminded of his or her shadow, when, after
all, he or she is making every effort to be a “new creation” in Jesus Christ? One
only has to remember the words of the apostle Paul: Anyone who truly belongs to
Christ is a new creation; “the old (presumably the shadow, or what Paul called the
“flesh”) is gone, the new has come” (II Corinthians 5:17, NIV). Maybe Paul knows
from experience that when one confronts, head-on, the shadow archetype, nothing,
including one’s religious faith, will ever be the same again. Let me put this plainly:
one’s religious faith will not and cannot emerge intact after it has confronted the
shadow. Make no mistake about it, confronting the shadow is risky business. Why
else would Christian theology put so much emphasis on putting to death the flesh,
on treating human nature as the enemy, as some sort of intruder or invader?
While it is all well and good for Christians to think of ourselves as “new
creations” in Jesus Christ, they would still do well to juxtapose this particular
theological construct with Jungian psychology, as a way of giving themselves a
reality check. As Jung never let us forget, it is sheer unreality and fantasy to believe
that conversion to Christianity can eradicate the shadow from human personality,
that our miseries and infamies can be miraculously corralled simply through faith
in Jesus Christ. This, for Jung, to put it mildly, was wishful thinking. It perpetuates
the fiction that only the persona, the surface layer of human personality, needs
our work and careful attention. Christian believers can work at polishing their
personas, while leaving the task of eradicating the shadow or the flesh to God.
However, assuming God has the capacity to remove the shadow from the human
psyche, we must ask ourselves this question: Do we want God to remove it? For
Jung, the answer was a resounding “No!” The shadow, as Jung elucidated, “does
not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number
of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights,
creative impulses, etc.” (Jung, 1959, p. 266). Therefore, even if God does possess
the power to turn us into shadowless creatures, is this what we want to put at the
top of our wish list? Would we want to live without the fundamental dynamism,
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170 Bingaman

the energic vitality, which not only at times brings us pain, grief, and sorrow, but at
other times adds richness and depth and substance to our living? The shadow side
of human personality, then, in Jungian thought, is a more neutral entity. Contrary to
traditional Christian theology, the shadow, our instinctual inheritance, is not always
an enemy, but is sometimes a friend, “exactly like any human being with whom
one has to get along, sometimes by giving in, sometimes by resisting, sometimes
by giving love—whatever the situation requires” (Jung, 1964, p. 183).
If the shadow is, as Jung suggests, an important and ineradicable component
of psychical life, then the Christian believer, just like any other human being, must
find a way for the conscious ego and the shadow to peacefully coexist. “Everyone,”
wrote Jung, “carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s life,
the blacker and denser it is” (Jung, 1938, p. 93). Jung would have been further
ahead if he had revised that last clause to read, “the darker and denser it is.”
With the unfortunate decision to at times associate the shadow with blackness,
instead of consistently using the image of darkness, Jung’s writings on the subject
could be construed as implicitly racist. Demaris Wehr points out that while the
Jungian “shadow is relatively free of sexist overtones, it is not free of racist ones”
(1987, p. 63). Jung’s theory of the shadow, according to Wehr, was unfortunately
“whitecentric,” especially when he traded the imagery of darkness for that of
blackness. The implication, of course, in terms of the latter, is that the shadow side
of human nature is subtly likened to a black-skinned person. “Obviously,” Wehr
observes, “this description (of the shadow) would not work for a black person
since the shadow is the opposite of the conscious personality” (1987, p. 63). Said
another way, Jung’s concept of the shadow, especially if it is imaged as the “black
side” of human existence, cannot inclusively engage all human beings, cannot be
applicable to every group of people. The problem, Naomi Goldenberg insists, is
that Jung had a tendency to judge other peoples and cultures “only in terms of
his own.” There are times when “blacks in Africa and in America play the role of
primitives for Jung, who obviously sees white European culture as much superior”
(Goldenberg, 1979, p. 55).
Still, I would argue that while the Jungian shadow does have its flaws, it is
nonetheless a relevant concept, and can help the Christian of the Western world
to reimage a more realistic human nature. For if we bring Jung and the neutral
shadow into the theological discussion, then we cannot automatically assume, like
Luther and Calvin, that human nature is vile and contaminated. In the seminar on
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, Jung suggested that if the human individual is integrated
and whole, or at least on the road to becoming whole, then that particular person’s
shadow side will be visible. Jung believed that if the shadow was not visible, then
a person was incomplete, “as if painted flat upon the wall:”
People who have only two dimensions are identical with a sort of persona or mask which
they carry in front of themselves and behind which they hide. The persona in itself casts no
shadow. It is a perfectly clear picture of a personality that is aboveboard, no blame, no spot
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Christianity and the Shadow Side of Human Experience 171

anywhere; but when you notice that there is no shadow, you know it is a mask and the real
person is behind the screen (Jung, 1998, pp. 61–62).

In Jungian thought, we must, as Christians, and even more fundamentally, as

human beings, recognize that in addition to the more exalted ego of consciousness,
the shadow is also part of the basic human fabric. History shows us that failure to
do so can mean disaster. For example, if Christians deny their shadow side, then
their shadow instincts and tendencies get projected onto a devil who is “out there,”
or worse, get projected onto other human beings. We need only recall the history of
Western civilization, and the various crusades of inquisition and racial purification,
in order to see the pernicious effects of projecting the shadow “out there,” onto
other human beings. More recently, in the halls of Capitol Hill and various state
legislatures, we have heard of a war on illegal (and in some cases, legal) immigrants.
This “war,” so we are told by our political leaders and legislators, is simply a matter
of economics. Yet one intuitively gets the distinct feeling that this is not the whole
truth. Noting Jung’s point about our reluctance to see the shadow as residing
within ourselves, I would venture to say that our government leaders, in many
ways, have been projecting their shadows onto the immigrants. At a surface level,
all of this is simply crafty politicians consciously using antiimmigrant rhetoric
for political gain. On a deeper level, though, what we see is something more
insidious and unconscious, namely the projection of shadow content onto other
human beings. Immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Latin America, become,
in the nonintegrated minds of politicians and legislators, intruders and trespassers,
the spreaders of disease and economic chaos, a threat to the social fabric.
We have come to the essence of the “moral problem” for the modern human
being: acceptance of oneself. Jung was particularly inspired by the Oracle at Delphi,
so much so that he inscribed above his doorway in Kusnacht the Delphic verse,
vocatus atque non vocatus deus aderit—Summoned or not summoned, God will
be there. Another Delphic proverb that meant a great deal to Jung, which just
happened to be particularly relevant to the modern problem of accepting the totality
of oneself, was the familiar, “Know Thyself.” “Acceptance of oneself,” wrote Jung,
“is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on
life.” On the surface it sounds simple, but then again, “simple things are always the
most difficult” (Jung, 1958, p. 339). Accepting the totality of ourselves, especially
the shadow side of our nature, will be, for those of us living in the Western world,
nothing short of a Herculean task. Said another way, consciously withdrawing the
shadow content one projects onto others, and consciously integrating that content
more fully into one’s personality, will be easier said than done. After all, do we
want to be reminded that we are instinctually related to the rest of the animal world,
that our shadow side could even be, in the words of Jung, “indistinguishable from
the instinctuality of an animal” (1959, pp. 233–234)? However, because the shadow
contains material not just from the collective unconscious, but also from one’s own
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personal unconscious, there is some hope for bringing it more fully into conscious
awareness. If at any time we are tempted to believe that the shadow is forever cut
off from conscious awareness, Jung, with biting wit, encourages us to go to church,
where our “memory can easily be refreshed by a Sunday sermon” (1959, p. 17).
Jung is obviously being facetious, with his comment on the usefulness of a
Sunday sermon. While a sermon on Christian theology can jog our memory, can
help us recall or recognize the darker contents of our nature, it cannot, as Jung
pointed out, help us integrate those contents more fully into the totality of human
personality. Much of the problem is that Christian theology, in its present shape
and form, makes it virtually impossible for believers to even discuss the possibility
of integrating the shadow more fully into their lives and into their religious faith.
As Jung argued:
The moral categories are a heavy, even a dangerous inheritance, because they are the in-
struments by which we make it impossible to integrate the shadow. We condemn it and
therefore we suppress it (1998, p. 355).

Moreover, not only do we suppress the shadow within ourselves, we also project it
onto others, enemy and friend. “When this happens,” writes Murray Stein, “there is
usually strong moral indignation and the groundwork is lain for a moral crusade”
(1995, p. 17).
In case we have doubts about the moral categories being a dangerous inher-
itance, we can always turn our attention to the representatives of the Christian
Right, whether they belong to the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and so
forth. Here we see a squeaky-clean morality that repressively leaves no room for
any trace of shadow content. Where, then, does this content go, if Christians refuse
to integrate it into their theology and into their personalities? It gets projected “out
there,” onto the vilified “them” of American society, the homosexuals, feminists,
unwed mothers, and political opponents. Christians, then, whether they be con-
servative, moderate, or liberal, who distance themselves from the shadow side of
human existence, run the risk of developing, in clinical language, a split person-
ality. At the very least, they are in possession of a one-sided personality, which
anytime it is filled with indignation, tends to crusade for moral purity. “Moral
giants,” we may conclude, are not necessarily the most integrated human beings.
To be sure, we have invested for quite some time now, in the Western world,
a great deal of energy trying to sever ourselves from our animality, from our
instinctual drives and energy. Whether it has been the dualism of Christianity,
Docetism, or Cartesianism, we have been waging an all-out battle against our
basic humanness, to little or no avail (unless one believes that we should be guided
by a dualistic framework). Yet the fundamental dynamism of the human race,
the energic vitality to survive and procreate, to create and evolve, resides in the
shadow side of our nature. In other words, the instinctual dynamism that has at
times brought the human race so much pain and misery is the very same force that
has inspired us to evolve, to be infinitely more than we have ever been before. Thus,
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back again to the same question: Even if the shadow could be eradicated (Christian
theology’s unfinished attempt, even after 2,000 years, to subdue the shadow of the
religious believer is a stark reminder that this is a very, very big “if”), would we
as a species, even as a community of religious believers, want to cut ourselves off
from this vital force of strength and energy? This is a rhetorical question.
According to Jung, these 2,000 years of Christian history tell the story of the
progressive development of Western consciousness. Before human consciousness
could become more sophisticated, there first had to be a period or aeon of differen-
tiation, of conscious judgment about good and evil categories. Indeed, Christianity
has played a crucial role in this development of consciousness, and specifically the
development of moral consciousness. It seems to have laid the foundation for the
union of opposites—good and evil, spirit and body, persona and shadow—which,
as Jung believed, will be the central issue of the next aeon of Western history. Jung,
I would argue, had a tendency to make the issues even more complicated than they
were before. While he certainly had the capacity to take in and juxtapose myriad
aspects of the big human picture—evolution, religion, history, psychology, and so
forth—he also had a tendency to make the waters of analysis very muddy. Instead
of, like Freud, addressing the issues with brevity and precision, Jung always had a
desire to analyze his way into virgin territory, which did add tremendous breadth
to his writings, but also left a multitude of loose ends.
Still, the above critique notwithstanding, I would argue that Jung does provide
us with a useful conceptual framework in which Christianity can be interpreted
vis-à-vis the bigger picture of human evolution. Christianity, as Jung saw it, has
been the Western world’s guide through the past 2,000 years, but there is no guar-
antee that it will be our primary guide throughout the coming millennia. Since,
as Jung believed, the future aeon of Western history will be about the union of
opposites—e.g., mind and body, spirit and shadow, good and evil, masculine and
feminine—Christianity will necessarily have to undergo something of a transfor-
mation, from a religion with a dualistic orientation to a religion of integration and
unification. As human beings continue to evolve these next few centuries, individu-
ally and collectively, it would seem that integration and unification will be the nec-
essary prerequisites to the survival of the species. But can Christianity, as it has done
throughout the previous aeon of Western history, lead us into the coming age of po-
tential integration and unification? According to Murray Stein, Jung had his doubts:
Jung regarded our times as the turbulent trough between two vast religious and cultural eras.
Modernity, he felt, was a transitional space between two great epochs that stretched out over
four millennia. And even from his vantage point, he saw the religious and cultural scene
of his time as both the receptacle of the wreckage of a passing aeon and the perceptibly
swelling surface of a new. The dominant religious tradition of the past era, which for nearly
20 centuries had been evolving through stages of growth and change side by side with
developments in Western culture, had now flattened out. . . . (1985, p. 179).

The problem, as Jung saw it, was that the symbols and images of Christian
theology and ritual had less capacity to hold and contain the varied experience
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174 Bingaman

of modern human beings, to help them make sense of this complicated “turbu-
lent trough,” these in-between times. Nor, he argued, will the traditionally and
historically one-sided “imitation of Christ” be of much help, to modern men and
women who feel that “the integrated shadow offers substance to the conscious per-
sonality” (Wehr, 1987, p. 60). Too often, the Christ-symbol only represents, both
theologically and psychologically, one side of human existence, the good and more
spiritual side. Without any shadow content, the Christ-symbol loses its flesh and
blood, its root connection to the concrete experience of human beings. The writer
of the epistle to the Hebrews does suggest that “because [Christ] himself suffered,
when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews
2:18, NIV). This verse of scripture, of course, has brought comfort and assurance
to generations of Christian believers. But stop and think for a moment: Can the
figure of Christ, beatifically imaged, bring modern believers any lasting comfort
and relief, men and women whose cardinal temptation is to deny their shadow and
project it onto others? Unless the Christ-symbol acquires some shadow content, it
is rather doubtful that this fundamental symbol of Western religion will be a defini-
tive guide for modern men and women, who struggle with some very unique and
specific temptations. Thus, if religious faith revolves around the traditionally one-
sided imitation of Christ, rather than a reimaged, more fully-embodied imitatio,
then the modern Christian believer is in danger of becoming detached from his or
her own humanity. Naomi Goldenberg explains:
Many Christians . . . treat Jesus’s life as their only archetype. They grant most attention to
the parts of their lives that can be seen as conforming to his. The parts of their lives that
do not reflect Jesus’s life do not receive such attention and are treated as ungodlike and
mundane. Sexuality becomes highly problematic because there is so little of it in what we
know of Jesus’s life. Likewise, the lives of women seem inferior because they differ so
enormously in both form and focus from the life of Christ (1979, p. 63).

If Christian theology, either intentionally or unintentionally, pushes us further

and further away from the shadow, then it will be part of the problem, rather than
part of the solution to the modern predicament. Whether the shadow is sanitized, as
in the case of the Christian who tries to imitate a shadowless Christ, or demonized,
as in the case of theology’s attack on basic human nature, the result is always
the same: no wholeness or integration for the religious believer, no opportunity
to symbolically reconcile the opposite sides of his or her nature. If Christians
of the Western world have in their possession a symbol that can only unify their
theological, but not their psychological experience, then they are living, as Jung
feared, in precarious and even perilous times. Anytime the shadow side of human
nature is suppressed, ignored, or not treated with proper respect, it becomes more
powerful and dangerous. Edward Edinger makes the same point, only more starkly
and chillingly:
Darkness is most likely to get a “hold” when you are safely settled in the good and righ-
teous position, where nothing can assail you. When you are absolutely right is the most
dangerous position of all, because, most probably, the devil has already got you by the throat
(1996, p. 57).
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To those who might be tempted to treat the shadow without due respect, who are
tempted to suppress it or ignore it, Jung issues his own eloquent warning: “What
is small by day is big at night . . . besides the small by day there always looms the
big by night, even when it is invisible” (1959, p. 30). An important rule of thumb
to always keep in mind is that the brighter the persona of consciousness, the darker
and more dangerous the shadow of unconsciousness or unawareness.
In some ways, Jung’s analysis of the shadow side of human nature anticipates
feminist thought, particularly feminism’s emphasis on the harmful and corrosive
effects of Western dualism. Men and women in the West, as feminists rightly point
out, have difficulty feeling at home in their own bodies. In keeping desire, pas-
sion, pleasure, and sexuality—i.e., shadow content—at arm’s length, we become
alienated from ourselves. We do not, as Jung put it, feel at home in our own bodily
houses, and, consequently, we are not held fast to “our own personal and corpo-
real life” (1998, p. 348). Jung urges us to begin reimaging the Christian mandate
to love “the least of these,” for in so doing, we will stay better connected to our
own personal life. He asks: “But when it happens that the least of the brethren
[sic] whom you meet on the road of life is yourself, what then” (1998, p. 353)? In-
deed, what if the Christian community broadened the particular mandate to include
those typically vilified, split-off aspects of human personality, the shadow content
of human nature upon which Christian theology has typically frowned? This, un-
doubtedly, will alarm those who deplore the psychologizing of Western culture,
particularly the psychologizing of Christian religion. Self-denial, especially denial
of the shadow side of ourselves, has long been one of the fundamental virtues of
Christian religion. Therefore, resistance in the Christian community to reimaging
the “least” of these as within, and not merely outside the believer, will be under-
standable. Nevertheless, until Christianity can reimage a more realistic theology
of human nature, the words of Jung must be taken seriously:
One should love oneself, one should accept the least of one’s brethren [sic] in oneself, that
one endure to be with oneself and not go roving about. And how can we endure anything
if we cannot endure ourselves? If the whole of mankind should run away from itself, life
would consist on principle of running away all the time. Now that is not meant; God’s
creation is not meant to run away from itself (1998, p. 353).

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS FOR CHRISTIAN FAITH

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom
of God would come. It seems they were looking for a prediction, a precise and
literal day and time. Jesus, however, did not give them any sort of prediction,
but rather shifted the discussion from the celestial to the existential plane. “The
kingdom of God,” he replied, “does not come visibly, nor will people say, ‘Here
it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:20b-
21, NIV). And it is probably safe to assume that Jesus, a Jew who likely never
ventured beyond the bounds of first-century Palestine, was not speaking of the
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kingdom being “within” in any Platonic sense, lodged within the purified soul
of the individual. Instead, Jesus, in keeping with his Jewish theology, was really
saying that the kingdom of God is within each of us who belongs to the community
of faith. The kingdom, then, is “within you,” within the group as a whole and within
each religious believer. Jesus, who was teaching from a Jewish standpoint not yet
modified by the radical dualism of Greek thought, could only have meant, in terms
of the individual believer, that the kingdom of God is within all of you, within
every fiber of your being. Since the monism of Jewish theology had not yet given
way to the dualism of Judeo-Christian theology, one can surmise, exegetically, that
the kingdom for Jesus is firmly lodged within the entire being of every religious
believer, spirit and body.
Now if we keep this exegesis of Luke 17 in mind, it soon becomes evident
that the profaning of ourselves, the depreciation of our basic human nature, is
theologically unwarranted. “The kingdom of God is within you,” Jesus teaches,
and from a Jewish point of view he means all of you and all of me. To profane the
body and the instincts, to profane the shadow side of our existence, is to profane an
aspect of ourselves that is just as basic to our existence (maybe more) as the more
polished, conscious, and spiritualized ego. Certainly, the question for Christianity
is, Does religious faith, as it did for Jesus, apply to every fiber of our being, or is
religious faith merely a matter of polishing the surface layer of human personality
(the persona, in Jungian terms)? The kingdom of God, Jesus makes abundantly
clear, is not in some distant, future heaven, but is rather in you and me, in our souls,
spirits, and bodies. Moreover, locating the kingdom of God in our bodies means,
quite frankly, that the Spirit of God is more in our humanity, and even animality,
than in some future celestial sphere. The implication here, of course, is that the
shadow side of our existence is as representative of the kingdom of God as the
more polished ego.
As I pointed out earlier, we begin the process of psychological individuation
by confronting the shadow. For those who prefer spiritual language, I would rec-
ommend substituting the word wholeness for individuation: Christians begin the
process toward wholeness after they have first confronted, in a way that is more
neutral and realistic, the shadow side of their existence. As Jung reminded us,
it is only confrontation with the shadow, that deposit of animality, instinctuality,
and energic dynamism, that gets us moving in the right direction, towards psy-
chological and spiritual wholeness. “So it is a sort of redemption of the body,”
he wrote, commenting on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, “something which has been
lacking in Christianity, where the body, the here-and-now, has always been de-
preciated” (1998, p. 193). If we did not know any better, we might be tempted to
conclude that we were reading words taken from a page of feminist theory.
Jung’s redemption of the human body, and the here-and-now of earthly reality,
is nothing short of an affirmation of the totality of human existence, an overt and
unequivocal yes to human life. In certain ways, this sounds very much like the
Deuteronomic mandate to “choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19). However, Christian
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Christianity and the Shadow Side of Human Experience 177

believers may not be in much of a hurry to redeem bodily and earthly reality,
particularly if they continue to assume that God is made happy by the subjugation
of their basic humanity. The danger, then, is that they and their theology of human
nature will become dull, flat, and colorless.
Christianity, anytime it distances itself from the shadow side of human nature,
is bound to become, in many ways, a religion of one-sidedness and fragmentation,
rather than a religion of wholeness and redemption. Part of the problem, for Jung,
has to do with the ideal of perfection. Some Christian groups, down through the
centuries, have claimed that the “perfection” spoken of by Jesus in his Sermon
on the Mount (see Matthew 5:48) is a real and tangible possibility for the present
life, while other groups have decided, primarily due to the “dark cloud” of human
nature, that perfection is a future hope to be realized in the afterlife. In either case,
the goal is essentially the same: salvation from human nature, from the “world of
miseries” and the “horde of infamies” lurking within. One can see, without too
much difficulty, why Jung would be especially critical of this religious ideal:
(Jung) believed that this ideal was both impossible to attain and responsible for the harsh
repressiveness with which we treat ourselves and others. Christian perfectionism is a main
factor in the creation of our individual shadows. Having been brought up to deny anger,
greed, envy, sexual desires, and the like, where do these feelings go? Into the shadow, claims
Jung (Wehr, 1987, p. 60).

Thus, the shadow becomes bigger and more bloated. It no longer is just the
repository of primitive instincts and energy; now it expands to include all the sup-
pressed desires, moods, and affects. We saw previously that this shadow content
does not stay where it is, within the individual’s psyche, but gets projected “out
there,” onto other individuals, groups, and nations. This is precisely what makes
the shadow the fundamental moral problem for each and every human being,
non-Christian and Christian. Like it or not—it really makes little difference—the
shadow is a part of our common human lot, a part of the human fabric. Realistically,
the best any of us can do is to mitigate the effects of the shadow. It is, as Jung made
very clear, sheer fantasy to think that we can, even with divine intervention, eradi-
cate the shadow content or beat it into submission. But again, back to the recurring
question: Even if we could, in the pursuit of spiritual perfection, straitjacket the
shadow, would we want to live without that which not only brings us trouble and
distress, but also adds richness and color and drama to human living? “In Jungian
terms,” writes David Wulff, “without the opposition of the shadow, there would
be no psychic development and no actualization of the self” (1991, p. 424). This
has major implications for Christian faith: without the opposition of the shadow,
the Christian may very well reach a state of one-sided, spiritual perfection, but
this will not necessarily be an indication that he or she has experienced what Jesus
called abundant living or the fullness of life.
The Christian pursuit of perfection, according to Jung, leads us down a blind
alley, towards psychological and spiritual one-sidedness and underdevelopment.
Perfection, he argued, can never bring the human individual, not even the most
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178 Bingaman

devoted Christian, any sort of lasting fulfillment. What, then, is the alternative?
The modern individual, Jung pointed out, after striving in vain for the goal of
final perfection, is “obliged to lower his [sic] pretensions a little, and instead of
striving after the ideal of perfection to content himself with the more accessible
goal of approximate completeness” (1963, p. 428). We have reached the crux of
the matter, the bedrock of Jungian thought, where we discover Jung’s teleological
goal. It is certainly safe to assume, by now, that the telos for Jung is not a state
of final perfection. Instead, what matters most to Jung is human completeness
or wholeness, approximate wholeness, that is, not absolute wholeness. Absolute
wholeness would connote, much like final perfection, a state of static being, in-
stead of a dynamic state of becoming. Like the great process thinkers—e.g., A.N.
Whitehead—Jung believed that reality has been, is, and always will be a pro-
cess. In fact, this “evolution of reality” depends upon the interplay of spiritual and
shadow forces, and where this evolution of reality is ultimately headed is and will
be “beyond our knowledge” (Jung, 1995, pp. 17 & 20–21).
It should be clear by now that for Jung, the pursuit of perfection and the imi-
tation of an all-good Christ figure will lead us down a blind alley. While the ideals
of final perfection and the imitation of an all-good Christ may have theological
justification, may be theologically true in the abstract, they are not necessarily
representative of what is ontologically real. “Know thyself” means more than
familiarizing ourselves with our all-good, spiritual side; it means to become con-
sciously familiar with every aspect of human personality. Each of us, Christian or
not, has a shadow side to his or her personality, and all the sermonic exhortations
to triumph over a human nature contaminated by original sin will do the modern
man or woman little good. Jung adds:

The world—as far as it has not completely turned its back on [Christian] tradition—has long
ago stopped wanting to hear a “message;” it would rather be told what the message means.
The words that resound from the pulpit are incomprehensible and cry for an explanation
(1959, p. 34).

Christians, then, whether they have been pursuing an obsolete spiritual ideal
and/or attempting to imitate a beatific Savior, must begin to rethink their theology
of human nature. The shadow side of that nature can no longer be automati-
cally dismissed as something anathema to God and religion, no matter how much
this simplifies our living. Besides, where there is no energic tension, no clash of
opposites—good and evil, mind and body, spiritual and material—there is no cre-
ativity, no imagination, no life. Without the willingness to live squarely within
the tension, ambiguity, and complexity of human life, Christian faith will be a
particularly dull and lifeless enterprise. Certainly, human living, including our re-
ligious faith, must have a certain degree of order and structure, but not before there
has been the initial energic tension which comes from the clash of opposites. A
religious faith grounded in the pursuit of perfection can only bring a premature,
pseudo order to one’s spiritual life. Order and structure must eventually emerge,
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Christianity and the Shadow Side of Human Experience 179

but only after one has encountered the dynamic and creative power of the shadow.
Christian theology, though, often tends to reverse the process, insisting from the
get-go that there be structure and order. Yet when we try to tap back into that force
of creative energy within ourselves, we wonder where it has gone, why it seems
to have disappeared.
An authentic, rather than a forced, pseudo sense of order can only be found on
the other side of the confrontation with the shadow, not before the shadow is ever
confronted. If a rigid order is forcefully applied too early to one’s religious faith,
then the fundamental dynamism of human living, the shadow that fuels human
aggression and destructiveness, as well as human creativity and imagination, will
be unalterably straitjacketed. Without the clash of opposites, without a certain
amount of energic and creative tension, one’s religious faith is bound to die, or at
least become stagnant and inert. As Murray Stein observes:
. . . . Jung would put forward a theory of opposites: psychic reality is made up of ordered
patterns that can be spread out into spectra of polarities and tensions like good-to-evil and
male-to-female. Without the energic tensions between the poles within entities like instinct
groups and archetypes, there would be no movement of energy within the relatively closed
system of mind/body wholeness. It is the tension within these polarities that yields dynamic
movement, the fluctuations of libido in the psychic system (Stein, 1995, pp. 16–17).

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