Krampus

http://www.monstropedia.org/index.php?title=Krampus

I picked up a copy of National Geographic for December. It has an article about something I had not encountered before. The link above gives the essential information. It is a strange new--rather resurrected--practice.

As I read about this, my psychological analysis kicks in. It bespeaks the "split" nature of personality I cited before with Reaction-Formation Psychosis being the basis of much modern religiosity.

Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, was a resident of Vienna, Austria. It is in the area where the Krampus roamed at his time. That time was one of great turmoil in philosophy / medicine / political unrest. It was the era which generated Karl Marx and his ideas of a government where the workers ran things with committees and all material goods should be shared equally. Out of unhappiness comes deeper thought and insight.

We are in a similar era today. All sorts of religions are in direct conflict. Americans are trying to say we must be a Christian country despite the clear constitutional demand that Congress shall make no laws concerning religion. We are certainly in a war tantamount to the Great Crusades! Conflict is everywhere.

Add to this conflict scenario the economic struggles which are world wide and you have pressure on most of us which causes our demons to come out like Krampus. The masks are scary and bespeak several people I have met lately. They have a demon within which lurks beneath the surface of their personality!

Freud posited 3 aspects of personality which are basic: Id / Ego / Super Ego.

According to his theory of personality the Id is our selfish self. It seeks to get what it wants when it wants it. There are no bounds on the lusts of the Id!

The Super Ego is exactly the opposite. It gives our personality a super human perfection. It seeks good and success. It treats people with the same good goals that Jesus prescribed: Love the Lord your God and your neighbor as yourself.

The Ego is the balance point trying to encompass both Id and Super ego. A balanced person has a sense of self that incorporates some of the Id and Super Ego and recognizes their existence. In short, Ego is the present moment self trying to maintain control of the excesses of Id and Super Ego.

Another concept of Freud was the importance of dreams. In our dreams, he posited, we are freed of normal conscious restraints. Each dream has strange objects which symbolize those things which are troubling the Ego--usually a conflict between Id and Super Ego. Out of these dreams and using hypnosis, Freud tried to help people understand themselves. His favorite questions were: "What does this mean to you?" "What was that symbol in your dream representing out of your past history?"

Freud started by trying to help himself in his terrors. He advocated that every practitioner should have therapy himself on, at least, a weekly basis. For him, the therapy was essential and a never ending process. Like many people in my Abnormal Psychology class years ago at Emory, the main reason for them studying was that they had emotional and personality problems driving them to the edge of sanity. As I looked around the classroom and witnessed the discussions and interaction, I concluded: about 10% of us in this class are normal--the rest be a little crazy!

Our professor, in the first lecture, stated clearly that as we studied the abnormal classifications that everyone here will find some of these things in his/her mind because none of us is perfect. If any of you find yourselves severely troubled by any of this, make an appointment and let's talk privately--I mean it!!! This is important!

Now back to Kampus.

The mask worn by the participant is hideous and scary. The reveling going on right now across Europe has a high amount of intoxication accompanying it. The purpose is to scare children into being good so Santa brings toys rather than the switches in the bag of the Kampus. Before the day of Freudian understanding, pagans used this practice to "get the demons out." Once demons are out and looked at, we can begin to acknowledge their presence and put them in perspective.

What troubles me in recent years is the dispersion Fundamentalist preachers are putting on Halloween. The costumes and spooks of All Hallows Eve deal with the same fears and worries of children. It is simply a way to make spooks fun and get candy from adults. As children go up and down the street, there are fun things to make their hair raise without killing them. It is similar to a roller coaster ride. In your heart you know you are safe despite things that go bump in the night!

Too much is being put out these days as scare tactics. We have seen them in abundance over the National Healthcare debate. George Bush used this tactic to the max by saying Sadam Hussain has "Weapons of Mass Destruction." In reality most of this amounts to "Weapons of Mass Distraction" so we have to fund and follow the leader of the US Government. Thereby, we sanction our soldiers using our Weapons of Mass Destruction applied against the citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan who are killed by what is called "peripheral damage." Too often, our own soldiers are the victims of a bomb or artillery shell gone awry. Everyone is scared in war and innocent people die a bloody death.

In reverse, this is exactly the purpose of the Terrorist. The events of 9/11 now have us held captive with fear. We stand in long lines at airports for searches. The citizens of New York and the Pentagon employees go to work every day with hidden fears every time a plane passes close overhead. We are living in a current environment filled with fear!

Back to the Freud Id/Ego/Super Ego idea: Our fearful Id is putting massive doses of Adrenaline into our bodies. There are more panic attacks these days. We hear news reports of murder/suicides. We rejoice that the Oregon State killer of cops was cut down yesterday, but we can't help but wonder who will be next. In many ways we become our own worst enemy through fear!

If you keep watching the storms and hurricanes on the Weather Channel, you are obsessing on hidden fears and using the stories to scare them out of you. My mother lives in Atlanta where there is a murder or robbery every day. She acts as though each one happened right outside her door although she lives in a fairly safe and sane neighborhood. At age 91, she, like many elderly people, are filled with fear. However, at the same time she has a deep faith and trust that "God will take care of you." Remember that marvelous hymn. My daddy sang it often as he shaved getting ready for another day of trying to minister to people with deep troubles.

What I am saying is that, as Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is within you." The disciples were quizzing him on when he would return. They thought they could not exist without him. Jesus told them, in essence, "Quit relying on my presence. The Kingdom of God is IN YOU!"

God gives each of us the ability to cope if we rely on his Spirit and trust He will provide a way. The Kampus is awful, but it can be controlled by the centered person. With God's help, the Kampus is just a pretend costume designed to get the evil spirits out into the open so it can be seen a discovered to be---just a drunk in a silly mask and costume!

Dealing with Stress

30. November 2009 by David Julen, Pastor, First Baptist Cramerton (copied from Biblical Recorder online edition--you are encouraged to see their coverage of pastor suicide and Snyder Memorial family tragedy {Fayetteville businessman kills self, 2 children, and wife}).

When I learned in September of the death of a North Carolina pastor by his own hand I was reminded of how often I have dealt with Christians who believed only the weak willed and less devout dealt with depression and emotional breakdown.

It brought to mind an article in American Heritage magazine several years ago by John Appel.

Appel was a highly respected psychiatrist at Yale and received the Legion of Merit for his work in military psychiatry during World War II.

In the article he related how he and a team of psychiatrists were given the task of developing a method to determine which soldiers would ultimately break down because of combat stress and weed them out before they broke.

Prevailing Army wisdom was that the soldiers who broke down in combat were neurotics and weaklings. Yet Appel’s research showed that every man has a breaking point.

Every man who is exposed to enough extreme stress for a long enough period of time will become a psychiatric casualty.

Appel said this is now accepted in the military but is still hardly common knowledge, and it has tremendous implications for understanding social structure and human nature.

Appel noted that one of the places where this breaking point began to be clearly shown was in the Mediterranean theater of operations — North Africa and Italy.

In some places infantry rifle battalions had casualty rates of 1,200 to 1,500 per thousand per year.

Following such intense action, division psychiatrists reported a sharp rise in what they began to call the “old sergeants syndrome.”

Veterans with multiple stripes on their arms and medals on their chest were coming in as psychiatric cases at a far greater rate than new men.

This tracked with data from other theaters that pointed toward the fact that those who had broken down were not weaker but had been in the crucible of combat the longest.

The end result of their research was that by 214 aggregate days of combat duty (as I understand this, not tours of duty but days in combat), all men had broken down psychologically — that is, if they had not been wounded, killed, or lost to physical sickness.

Based on his data Appel asked Gen. George Marshal to recommend a limit of 180 aggregate days of combat duty.

The number who had survived that long was so small Appel noted that the loss of manpower involved would be acceptably slight and the Army adopted his recommendation.

The fact that everyone has a breaking point may be accepted in the military but it is often unaccepted in our Christian culture. In the abnormal extreme stress of combat the breaking point is exhibited by men who can barely function.

They are jittery, overly cautious, often possessing the “thousand yard stare” — broken men who simply stare off in the distance almost unable to function. In normal activities of life the breaking point may be when one is unable to balance stress from earning a living, dealing with family, sickness, pain and grief, finances, and perhaps a genetic predisposition toward depression.

Appel’s realization that every man has a breaking point is not held in common belief.

We often still operate under the assumption that only the weak need emotional help.

Recently in the Biblical Recorder, Steve Scoggin, president of the counseling agency CareNet, said, “We create an environment that makes it hard to admit our humanity.”

Appel’s report to Gen. Marshall led to a decision to change the environment for infantrymen.

I believe that we as Christians need to begin to change the environment in which we function by recognizing everyone has a breaking point, including the most devout.

This should be an extension of our foundational doctrine that we still retain a sinful nature that is not removed when we accept Christ as our Savior. (1 John 1:8-10, Gal. 5:17, etc.) Adopting a limited amount of time in combat gave men hope for a way out. Hope is in the DNA of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Psalms echo this theme of hope in God even when current circumstances are unchanged.

The New Testament speaks over and over of help and hope for the afflicted and hurting that are believers (Romans 8:18, 12:12). As ministers we often are called to be present in difficult circumstances where there are no easy answers. Our inadequacies can feed our hopelessness.

I often recall the words of my teacher Wayne Oates who cited 2 Cor. 2:15-16 — “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing … Who is sufficient for these things?”

We are often called to simply be the reminder there is a greater power at work. We are reminders of the presence of God. We are not God.

We all have our breaking point because we are all broken and in need of God’s help.