The Religion of Peter Pan vs. the Prophetic Tradition

Our religious traditions tend to dignify the refusal to accept one's human, all-too-human limitations. Psychologists sometimes refer to this refusal as the "Peter Pan Syndrome." This would not necessarily be a bad thing, if the "refusal to accept one's human limitations" expressed itself as a relentless desire to explore what may be possible within those limits--and, having identified the possible, to attempt it. And religions have provided human beings with resources necessary to do just that.

Often it is the case, however, that religious traditions fail to encourage an exploration of human limitations and offer, instead, a condemnation of those limits: human beings are to be blamed for lacking divine perfection. And since the divine alone is perfect, it alone is capable. Consequently, human beings are encouraged to forgo the labor of thinking through the possible and to resort, instead, to wishful or magical thinking. If one just prays hard enough, or performs a particular ritual often enough, God will intervene (deus ex machina) and all will be well.

When promoted by culturally admired institutions, magical thinking grants the adherent of a religious tradition permission to rationalize the status quo as "God's will" or fate--it is for this reason that Marx famously referred to religion as the "opiate of the masses."

Our religious traditions also offer adherents relief from the adult responsibility to undertake the difficult task of individual identity construction. Why should anyone attempt this difficult task and risk finding one's self, at the end of much effort, with an ambiguous result when the religious institution or community is prepared to offer its adherents a ready-made identity--like a shirt straight off the rack?

An alternative to the religion of Peter Pan is the so-called "Prophetic Tradition."

Of course, "prophecy" is often popularly understood as a mode of magical thinking, but this is nothing more than Peter Pan hermeneutics. In Biblical religion, "the prophet is the mouthpiece of the will of God. He does not see or predict a future reality. In fact, the future concerns him only in so far as it cannot yet be grasped and beheld as reality, in so far as it is still latent in the will of God and also in the free relationship of man to this divine will, and hence is, in a certain way, dependent on the inner decision of man" [Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters, 32].

We must learn to recognize in such theologically-charged language a definition of "prophecy" as the discernment of human possibility and freedom exercised against genuine human limitations. "The will of God," according to this definition, is the limiting case; the human being remains the responsible actor.

The "Prophetic tradition" eschews magic and wishful thinking; it demands mature action in an imperfect world. It is, has always been, and will most likely always be the mode of Biblical religion with the fewest adherents: but those few afrad (an Arabic term meaning "singulars") have a special role to play in the history of human religiosity. For by their labors of discernment and their struggle to cope with the limitations of their species and the world, they undertake the Great Work of Amelioration: they are true "progressives" who, in solidarity with their fellow human beings, engage in the prophetic struggle against cruelty, ignorance, and all forms of social and political inertia that inure to the benefit of those deeply invested in the status quo. By their efforts, healing occurs in individual lives and Biblical religion itself--to the extent that this is possible--finds redemption in the historical record.

To say nothing of the eyes of God.