See psychologist Harold Ellens’ essay below on “monster God/sick God” theology and the psychological damage that inflicts on human personality and life.
Ellens states that the monster God theology has infected and shaped all 3 of the great western religions- i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ellens does not pick on any one religion in particular as all have the same basic theology, though he does note Islam to illustrate eruptions of theocratic violence today.
Note that Ellens uses features other than my evil triad (i.e. tribalism, domination, violent destruction) to illustrate his version of “monster” theology.
Understand the nature of the real monster in the Hero’s Quest battle of good against evil that we all engage in life.
The desire to engage a hero’s quest is natural to all of us, to confront and defeat some enemy/monster, and to gain valued insights from our battles with monsters in life whether physical struggles, mental/emotional difficulties, social/political/economic issues, or whatever we battle with in the diversity of human stories.
The mental pathology of monster God theology deforms the “Hero’s Quest” with ideas like cosmic dualism that affirms people in feeling heroic for engaging tribalism battles against fellow humans. When people’s spirits are misdirected by pathologies like tribalism, they will engage crusades to defeat and dominate others and even find themselves energized to use violence to destroy differing others as “enemies”, believing that in doing so they are heroically fulfilling a divinely demanded purification of the world. These ideas/beliefs have driven theocracy crusades of varied types (Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution of heretics/unbelievers) and continue to drive modern-era movements like Marxist revolutions and environmental salvation crusades.
Ellens details below the psychology involved in the perversion of human personality and life under the influence of monster God theology.
Historical Jesus saw clearly that the real monster or enemy was not differing others (i.e. no more eye for eye against others) but instead it was the monster God of religious theology that was the real enemy of all humanity. He went after that monster with a “stunning new theology” to defeat it- i.e. an alternative image of deity.
Battling/defeating the ultimate Monster, Wendell Krossa
A uniquely insightful hero defeated humanity’s greatest monster. He liberated us from millennia of darkness and enslavement to that monster. The true believers in the monster then killed the man for daring to protest the core of their identity.
One of the better insights on true heroism came from Alexander Solzhenitsyn who properly focused the Hero’s Quest on the real monster/enemy in the real battle of good against evil. He said that this battle took place inside each human heart. I would add that it is the battle against our inherited impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and the impulse to eye for eye “justice” that retaliates with violent, punitive destruction of differing others. Just as critical, this inner battle involves the ideas/beliefs that energize and validate such impulses.
Historically unique and outstanding heroism…
I have long been interested in Historical Jesus and the growing recognition of who he actually was and what he actually taught that has emerged from the past few centuries of investigation.
Centuries of research by historians, scholars, and theologians have revealed who the man actually was and what his message was really about. The main discovery (my evaluation) is that he was someone entirely different from Paul’s distortion of him in the merged “Jesus Christ” of the New Testament, the scriptures that were assembled to support Paul’s Christology known as “Christ-ianity” (i.e. a myth that ignored the actual message of the man and created a new threat theology based on the man).
The research of the “Search for Historical Jesus”, the “Jesus Seminar”, and “Q Wisdom Sayings”, has been a project to recover the non-religious “diamonds” of Jesus from the “dunghill” of Paul’s Christ religion. Those were the terms used by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy to describe the difference between the humane teaching of Jesus as contrasted with the entirely contrary themes of Paul’s Christ religion.
See for example- “Notable contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ, Wendell Krossa”
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=14451
From my own poking around in the above research, my takeaway is that the man Jesus did something incredibly heroic that no other person had done before him, or since. How so?
Consider the “Hero’s Quest” element of going out to confront and defeat a monster. Through our battle with a monster, we gain insights. We then return with what we have learned as a benefit to share with and help others. That is how we fulfill the Hero’s Quest role of a wise person to assist others in their battles with monsters, to pass on to them the weapons to defeat their monsters.
I am framing this with Solzhenitsyn’s point, noted above, that the real battle of good against evil takes place inside each human heart. I would add that is also a battle against the real monster in life- i.e. the inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and vengeful destruction of differing others. Our ancestors constructed ideas/beliefs that incite, energize, and validate these impulses as good, even as divine. My point is that the internal monster consists of the impulses and the ideas/beliefs that affirm these impulses.
My argument is that Historical Jesus courageously confronted history’s greatest monster– i.e. the “threat theology” God of religious traditions. Pre- and post-Jesus the religious view of deity has been presented to people as (1) tribal (i.e. favoring and “saving” true believers but damning and eternally destroying unbelievers), (2) a dominating “Lord/King” demanding submission and obedience (i.e. via intermediaries/representatives such as religious leaders, divine rights of kings/political elites, wives submitting to husbands, etc.), and (3) a punitive, destroying Judge (i.e. salvation through the destruction as in apocalypses and afterlife hells).
The theology of monster deity had previously dominated primitive mythologies and then transitioned into the world religions of subsequent history.
One man- Historical Jesus- that few understood during his life, directly confronted the Jewish version of monster God theology, and initiated his battle against that monster in front of a Jewish audience (Luke 4:14-30). He fired the first shot by not reading a follow-up statement from Isaiah 61- i.e. “the day of vengeance of our God”. In doing that he publicly rejected the traditional religious understanding of God as vengefully punitive and destructive against the enemies/offenders/oppressors of true believers. He rejected the view of God as the enforcer of eye for eye justice.
And then to make his stunning new theology real clear to his Jewish audience, he presented two illustrations of the true nature of God as unconditional love toward all. He noted that God had sent the respected prophets Elijah and Elisha, not to Jews but to heal and feed pagan outsiders.
That blow to their image of God aroused murderous rage in his audience of Jewish true believers.
In his later fuller presentations (e.g. Luke 6: 27-36, Matthew 5:38-48), he stated his new theology even more clearly-
“There should be no more eye for eye retaliation against offenders, but instead, love your enemies because God does. How so? Let me illustrate from nature- God generously gives sun and rain (the two critical elements to survival in agrarian society) to both good and bad people, inclusively and equally. So love all unconditionally just as God loves unconditionally” (I paraphrase to add clarity to his points).
Following the initial presentation of his God to the synagogue audience, he was aware that his new theology would incite murderous rage in Jewish true believers.
But he refused to back away and continued to confront the monster. He continued to reject the image of vengeful, punitive God, “assaulting” the monster of threat theology with the weapon of unconditional love. Note the illustration of his new theology that he presented in the Prodigal Father parable of a God who freely forgives and loves without demand for payment, punishment, or sacrifice.
Jesus was eventually put to death for confronting, rejecting, and defeating the monster theology of his time that energized and validated the little monsters inside people- i.e. the inner monsters of inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and vengeful destruction, drives that are energized and validated with complexes of monstrous ideas that cloak these drives as religious goodness, as divine.
During Jesus’ time, threat theology deformed human personalities with psychosomatic illnesses described by the New Testament authors as “demon possession”. It drove people crazy with fear of deity as angry with human imperfection and intent on punishing and destroying people. As Ellens says in the essay further below, “Sick Gods make sick people.”
Two decades after his death, Paul rejected the new unconditional theology of Jesus and re-affirmed threat theology, restating a similar version of the very statement that Jesus had refused to read in Isaiah 61. Paul quoted another Old Testament affirmation of vengefully destructive deity from Deuteronomy 32:35, “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate/repay’, says the Lord”. Paul thereby re-established “the terror of the Lord” in human minds.
Paul then constructed the template for a new threat theology, initiating the new epitome embodiment of tribalism, domination, and violent destruction in his Christ as the cosmic Lord/King for all humanity across all history. His Christ was the kick-off of a new reach for universal supremacy of threat theology above all other religious traditions. He took the monster of threat theology to new heights of ultimate domination over all things. John later presented Paul’s threat theology in his Revelation portrayal of the Christ as “Lord of lords and king of kings” (Revelation 17:14, 19:16).
Most insidious in the centuries-long ongoing development of the Christology of Paul was the violent destruction of outsiders to his religion (i.e. unbelievers punished through apocalyptic destruction, eternal torture in hells, etc.). Violent destruction of unbelievers was cloaked as divine goodness. Vengeful retaliation (i.e. “eye for eye”) was presented as divine justice, as righteousness, presented even as divine love and grace (see Ellens’ quotes just below).
Fortunately, some along the historical route of developing Christology saw through the cloaking of that evil as good and protested. They were skeptical of what had happened, of how a Jewish wisdom sage who died for protesting threat theology was subsequently turned into a Hellenized God who promoted threat theology. See, for example, Helmut Kuester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”. Add here Bob Brinsmead’s Substack essays on this subject, along with others like Maurice Casey’s “From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology”, and many more.
Christian theologian, psychologist, and army chaplain Harold Ellens bluntly exposed the cloaking of the evil of threat theology as divine goodness by stating…
“One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…
“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…”
He continues:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
(End of Ellens quotes)
There is nothing honorable in threat theology that incites/energizes our worst inherited impulses to tribalism (some included and saved, others excluded and damned), that models relationships of domination/submission, and that validates justice as violent retaliatory destruction through apocalypse and eternal hell for unbelievers.
That is monstrosity that has driven mass-death eruptions in human societies at immense scales in the long history of crusades, inquisitions, religious wars, society-destroying apocalyptic outbreaks, and more lately through Marxist revolutions and the ongoing crusades for collectivism that ruins societies. Add that the threat theology at the center of Paul’s apocalyptic millennial Christ also drove Nazi mass-murder, and the same themes now drive/validate modern theocracy crusades like Islam radicalism as well as the environmental alarmism destruction of societies (another contemporary apocalyptic millennial crusade).
Research has revealed that Paul’s apocalyptic Christ themes have been main drivers behind the above profoundly religious crusades that repeatedly derail the progress of western civilization toward freedom in liberal democracy. See, for example, Richard Landes’ “Heaven On Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God: The Psychology of Religious Violence and Oppression”, Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, and others.
Bob adds these insightful statements to Ellens’ more detailed essay below on how bad theology influences human personality, “We become just like the God we believe in”, and “Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of their God.”
Another egregious outcome from Paul’s Christology and his re-construction of the ultimate monster in his Christ myth: It deformed entirely and buried the diamonds of Jesus’ unconditional God under another highly conditional religion. Worse, it cloaked the very evil that Jesus had protested (i.e. tribalism, domination, violent vengeful destruction) as divine, as essential features of the nature of God. Paul’s affirmation of wrathful, destroying deity thereby short-circuited and derailed the greatest potential liberation movement in history- i.e. Jesus’ advocacy for freedom from fear of the monster of threat theology that has always added a horrific psychic burden darkening and enslaving human minds and spirits.
The practise of religious traditions to cloak evil as divine goodness has been exposed and we can now see more clearly that the core themes of Paul’s Christology are entirely opposed to the unconditional message of Jesus.
Our responsibility now is to continue the courageous battle of pulling the diamonds of Jesus out of the dunghill of Paul’s deforming Christology. Thankfully, we have good sources like the “Q Wisdom Sayings” material that help us see clearly the original message of the man Jesus and we can contrast that evidence with mental deformities like the enraged monster Christ of Revelation 19.
Do you want to engage a heroic adventure in life, a real liberation movement, that promotes encouragement of people with “Its going to be alright for everyone, ultimately”? Then take up the battle that Jesus initiated against the real monster of all humanity.
Again, the battle takes place on two fronts or levels. There is (1) the intensely personal level, the battle that takes place inside each of us, as Solzhenitsyn pointed out. Go after the monstrous impulses that we have all inherited, the real enemy inside us that consists of impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and the impulse to vengeful, punitive destruction of differing others.
And most critically, go after the monstrous ideas/beliefs of the threat theologies that incite, energize, and validate the monster impulses in all of us.
Jesus fought the battle on the two levels above, presenting lists of precepts (e.g. Luke 6:27-36) and illustrating in his own behavior that countered the impulse to tribalism- i.e. inclusively inviting outsiders to public meals as equals, also extending his healing ministry to members of other groups aside from Jews.
He fought the impulse to domination of others by stating there must be no more lording over others but instead serve others.
And he fought the impulse to vengeful destruction by urging no more eye for eye retaliation but instead, love for enemies.
Also battling on the second level of ideas/beliefs, he rejected the God of tribalism, domination, and vengeful destruction that had functioned as the ultimate embodiment of human ideals that validated similar behaviors. He presented his alternative theology of a non-tribal, non-dominating, and non-destroying God of unconditional love. That defeated the ultimate Archetype that energizes and validates human behavior.
First conquering the monster inside each of us (i.e. impulses and their validating ideas/beliefs) then better equips us to take up the public project of Historical Jesus to liberate people from the archetypal monster, to bring light to the darkness of fear-possessed minds, just as he quoted in that Isaiah 61 passage (here is a fuller quote):
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…”
Jesus then refused to read this next statement- “the day of vengeance of our God.”
That Isaiah passage continues: “to comfort all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.”
“God’s health and human health: A proposal for the world of well-being”, Christian theologian/psychologist Harold Ellens
https://scielo.org.za/pdf/hts/v67n1/a56v67n1.pdf
Ellens’ Intro:
“This article reflects on people’s presuppositions with regard to God’s mental health as it has been recounted throughout history. The article asserts that the dominant report of a ‘sick god’ has nothing to do with God at all, but is, instead, the manifestation of a sick projection of people who are terrified of the unknown and the unpredictable in life. Such a projection reflects their own fears, which they project upon their own mental image of the mentor who they thought was God.
“The other, sound, report on God’s mental health has encountered many difficulties in competing with the dominant report. The alternative report has met with much resistance, because it seems so humanly unbelievable, in its claim that God is a God of unconditional grace to all humankind.”
Some quotes from the opening of Ellen’s essay:
“The sickness of God
“For much of the last 4000 years, ‘God’ has been deemed critically ill, in most people’s perspective. That is, the reports on his nature and function indicate that his patterns of relationality, affect, and ideation have been considered to be beyond normal range. To be very specific, apparently ‘God’ has suffered from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, or severe borderline personality disorder, with frequent erratic, that is, unprovoked episodes of active psychosis. The dominant stream of reports indicates that he operates with the psychotic notion that he is caught in a cosmic battle with another god, who threatens to thwart, corrupt, and undo his work.
“Such are symptoms of a classic psychotic syndrome, in that, according to the reports, they form a global ideation, which shapes his entire world view, whereas there are no empirical, heuristic, or phenomenological data to indicate that any such cosmic conflict or evil reality actually exists. His notion of reality has no reality in the real world to which it corresponds.
“Moreover, such a pattern of ideation is specifically paranoid, as it indicates that he thinks there are forces ‘out there’ that are intent upon securing his downfall, whereas there is no evidence that such forces, in fact, exist. If the reports about him are accurate, these notions are figments of ‘God’s’ sick imagination. ‘God’ is, according to such accounts, insane. The ‘God’ of ancient Israelite religion, which produced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is diagnosably ill in terms of the rubrics of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is published periodically by the American Psychiatric Association.
“Sick gods make for sick people. To put it slightly differently, sick gods make people sick. As children and disciples model after their parents and mentors, so do individuals and communities of humans create themselves in the images of their gods. Sick gods provide sick models, which produce sick persons and sick communities. To ensure personal and communal well-being requires that one’s god be well, or, at least, the converse is so. If one’s god is sick, one cannot achieve well-being, either individually or communally.
“Now you may feel that, somehow, I am too severe in my clinical diagnosis. Therefore, let me recite a more palpable panoply of symptoms which, according to the dominant reports, constitute the syndrome of god’s clinical disorder. He is reported to suffer from a perfectionistic need to have his world, and all who happen to wander through it, carefully conform to a prescribed set of thought forms and behaviour. Such a requirement sounds rather obsessive compulsive, to say the least; particularly when you consider that the world he created is not a production factory, or forced labour camp, but was designed by ‘God’ to resemble more closely a greenhouse, in which the primary style and objective is that of growth and development, which necessitates a constant process of unpredictable change and experimentation.
“Perhaps you have not taken the reports of his demand for conformity so seriously as to have been much affected by this pathological symptom. What, then, of the reports that ‘God’ is so upset about human nature and behaviour, human exploration and experimentation, that he simply cannot correct his attitude until he has literally killed somebody?
“Take all of Noah’s community, for example, or Onan and his brother, or the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. Think of the threatened genocide of the Israelites at Mount Sinai; the genocide of the Canaanites upon the Israelite invasion of the former’s land; the extermination of the Northern Israelite Kingdom; the exile of the Southern Israelite Kingdom; the sudden death of the man who tried to protect the Ark of the Covenant from falling into the mud; and the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah.
“If such events do not sound to you like a pattern of consummate narcissism, chronic situation inappropriateness, sadistic vindictiveness, impulsiveness and obsessive compulsive disorder, depressive and irrational rage, as well as signs of being out of touch with reality and out of proportion to the actual problematic events at hand in each case, you have not been paying attention. At the least, you have not been reading your Bible regularly.
“The behavioural syndrome I have just described is, clearly, a psychosis. Moreover, what about the fact that his fury was so intense towards you and me, innocent as we are, that he either had to exterminate us or slaughter his unique Son, Jesus of Nazareth. If the reports are true, this ‘God’ is one sick puppy, and dangerous to boot. After all, he resolves all his ultimate impasses with the utmost violence. Do you not think that that is sick? Any god who cannot behave at least as well as an average human being would like to is a monster. Monster gods make monster people. Earlier, I referred to human beings as innocent. You might disagree. I concede that the only evil which exists in our world is the evil we do to one another.”
(End of Ellens comments. See full essay at link above)
Grok’s summary of the full Ellens essay:
Summary of Harold Ellens’s article “God’s health and human health: A proposal for the world of well-being”
J. Harold Ellens argues that human well-being (individual and collective) depends directly on the “health” of the God-image people hold. The dominant portrayal of God in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) over roughly 4,000 years is that of a psychologically disordered deity; this sick God produces sick people and societies. An alternative, healthier report of God as the source of unconditional grace has been largely discounted but is essential for genuine well-being.
The “sick God”
Ellens diagnoses the dominant biblical and theological depiction of God in clinical terms drawn from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This God exhibits chronic paranoid schizophrenia or severe borderline personality disorder: a cosmic dualistic worldview (battle with an opposing evil force), perfectionistic and obsessive-compulsive demands for conformity, narcissistic rage, sadistic vindictiveness, impulsivity, and situation-inappropriate violence.
Biblical examples include the Flood that destroys Noah’s world, the deaths of Onan and his brother, the drowning of the Egyptian army, threats of genocide at Sinai, the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the Canaanites, the destruction of the northern kingdom and exile of the southern, the sudden death of Uzzah for touching the Ark, the incineration of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the ultimate requirement that either humanity or God’s own Son must be slaughtered to resolve divine fury.
Such a God resolves every impasse with ultimate violence. Because humans model themselves after their gods (and the unconscious archetypes those gods generate), this image legitimates human violence: ancient Israelite campaigns, the Crusades, Islamic conquests, modern right-wing Christian crusades, al-Qaeda-style jihad, and pre-emptive military doctrines. “Sick gods make sick people.” Well-being is impossible while this image reigns.
The alternative account
The dominant report, Ellens contends, is not about God at all but a human projection of terror of the unknown and unpredictable onto an idealized parental/mentor figure. The alternative report— present though marginalized in Scripture— presents a God of unconditional, no-strings-attached grace. Key texts include the Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12 and 17), Micah 7:18–20 (a God who pardons, delights in steadfast love, and casts sins into the sea of forgetfulness), Romans 8 (nothing can separate us from God’s love), 1 John 1:9, and Psalm 103. This God recognizes that humans did not choose to be limited, developmental, incomplete beings operating with inadequate data and immature judgment; therefore mercy is a matter of justice.
Carl Rogers could affirm unconditional positive regard among humans yet found it nearly impossible to attribute the same to God, illustrating how deeply the “sick God” report has shaped even progressive thinkers. A healthy God is situation-appropriate and models genuine mental health.
Theology, psychology, and the living human document
Psychology and spirituality address the same domain: the human quest for mundane and transcendent meaning. Responsible practice of both disciplines therefore requires mutual illumination at the levels of theory, research, data, and clinical application, especially in personality theory and anthropology. Ellens re-reads Genesis 3 (the “Fall”) as an illustration.
Traditional interpretation sees arbitrary disobedience punished by a furious, cursing God— reinforcing the monster image. Illuminated by sound psychology and the grace perspective, the story becomes a myth of necessary human adolescence: leaving the nursery of innocence, discovering sexuality, good and evil, and individuation. God’s words are not a prescribed curse but a realistic description of the hard work of adult life. Human problems are better understood as sickness, inadequacy, and incompleteness (“under-evolved”) than as moral perversity in the modern sense of “sin.”
A practical model for well-being
Well-being encompasses body, mind, and soul— economic, intellectual, aesthetic, and spiritual dimensions— and requires a psycho-spiritual strategy grounded in unconditional grace. Ellens outlines ten characteristics of such a model of constructive relationality:
1. Genuine passion for unconditional acceptance of the adversary or “diverse other,” affirming them where they currently stand.
2. Profound empathy that enters the other’s frame of reference and discerns obstacles to grace-filled relationship.
3. A sense of mutuality in the quest for well-being.
4. Honest acknowledgment of the caregiver’s own impairments.
5. A comprehensive ambition for the wholeness of the entire human and natural world.
6. Expectation of mutual growth.
7. Recognition that well-being depends on the health of each party’s God-image (noting historical periods when Islam fostered rich, relatively harmonious culture).
8. Generation of security and trust that dismantles defensiveness.
9. Affirmation that both parties are taken seriously.
10. Ongoing psycho-spiritual measurement against the standard of mutual maturity and wholeness.
Applied to lethal conflicts (e.g., al-Qaeda versus the West), the model distinguishes possible drivers: borderline or active psychosis (requiring medication or firm boundaries rather than mere dialogue), legitimate socio-political defense of the umma, or genuine anguish over cultural and spiritual trivialization. Violence-based archetypes— fighting fire with fire, settling scores, pre-emptive force— derive from the assumption that the cosmos and God are “wired” for ultimate violence; these must be reframed.
Conclusion
Ellens rejects both sentimental soft liberalism and mere psychologizing. Achieving a world culture of well-being demands the hard-headed work of exorcising the “monster God” that still reigns unconsciously in the three Abrahamic traditions and releasing the healing God of radical, unconditional, universal grace. Only then can healthful unconscious archetypes replace those that continually escalate violence, freeing humanity to move toward the well-being it can already imagine.
(End of Grok comments)
Here is Chat’s summary of the Ellens article:
Chat:
Absolutely. Here’s a clear summary of Harold Ellens’s “God’s Health and Human Health: A Proposal for the World of Well-Being.”
Central argument
Ellens’s central thesis is that the way human beings imagine God profoundly affects human psychological, social, and spiritual well-being.
He argues that much traditional religious imagery portrays God as angry, punitive, violent, jealous, controlling, and willing to destroy those who oppose him. Ellens provocatively describes this as the image of a “sick God.” He does not mean that God is literally mentally ill; rather, he argues that this image of God is a projection of humanity’s own fears, anxieties, violence, and need for control.
His famous underlying principle is essentially: “Sick gods make sick people.”
If people believe that ultimate reality is governed by violence, punishment, retaliation, and cosmic warfare, they are more likely to reproduce those patterns in their own relationships, communities, religions, and politics.
1. The “sick God” image
Ellens examines biblical stories involving divine violence— such as the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of enemies, and the crucifixion of Jesus— and argues that, if these stories are interpreted literally as descriptions of God’s personality, God appears psychologically disturbed.
He characterizes this traditional image as:
• paranoid and obsessed with enemies,
• perfectionistic and controlling,
• easily enraged,
• vindictive,
• violent,
• punitive,
• intolerant of human imperfection.
Ellens’s point is deliberately provocative: if God is presented as solving problems through violence, why would humans be expected to behave differently?
Religious metaphors become psychological models. People imitate the God they believe in.
This can contribute to religious violence because believers may conclude that fighting, punishing, or even killing enemies is justified if they believe they are participating in God’s cosmic struggle against evil.
2. God as a projection of human fear
Ellens then proposes an alternative explanation.
Rather than God actually being violent and unstable, human beings may have projected their own fears onto God.
Ancient people lived with enormous uncertainty: disease, death, famine, war, natural disasters, sexuality, social instability, and an unpredictable future. Ellens argues that humans often transformed their anxiety about these things into a mental image of a threatening deity.
In other words:
Human beings were afraid → they imagined a threatening universe → they imagined God as the threatening ruler of that universe.
Thus, the “sick God” may actually be a reflection of sick or frightened human consciousness.
3. The alternative: God as unconditional grace
Ellens contrasts the “monster God” with another biblical tradition that he believes is often overlooked: God as radically and unconditionally gracious.
He points particularly to themes such as:
• God’s steadfast love,
• forgiveness,
• compassion,
• mercy,
• faithfulness despite human unfaithfulness,
• God’s refusal to abandon humanity.
He connects this vision with passages such as Micah 7, Psalm 103, Romans 8, and 1 John.
For Ellens, this is the psychologically healthy understanding of God.
God does not require human beings to become perfect before receiving love. Instead, grace precedes achievement.
This is important because human beings are inherently incomplete. We are born without adequate knowledge, mature judgment, or control over our circumstances. We learn through experimentation, failure, growth, and development.
Therefore, Ellens argues, a healthy God would respond to human limitation with compassion rather than condemnation.
4. Psychology and theology need each other
One of the article’s major proposals is that psychology and theology should work together.
Ellens argues that psychology helps us understand human development, personality, relationships, trauma, anxiety, and behavior. Theology, meanwhile, deals with humanity’s search for ultimate meaning and its understanding of God.
Rather than treating these as completely separate fields, he believes they can mutually illuminate one another.
His broader concept of spirituality is therefore not simply about religious belief. He defines spirituality as humanity’s fundamental search for meaning, including psychological, relational, intellectual, aesthetic, and transcendent dimensions.
So genuine well-being involves the whole person— body, mind, relationships, community, meaning, and spirituality.
5. His reinterpretation of Adam and Eve
One of the most interesting examples in the article is Genesis 3.
The traditional interpretation says:
Adam and Eve disobeyed God → God became angry → God cursed them → humanity fell into sin.
Ellens argues that this interpretation reinforces the image of a punitive God.
Instead, he proposes reading the story psychologically.
Adam and Eve represent humanity’s movement from childhood into maturity.
Leaving Eden represents:
• leaving dependency,
• developing individuality,
• experimenting,
• acquiring knowledge,
• confronting sexuality,
• discovering moral responsibility,
• experiencing uncertainty,
• accepting the consequences of one’s choices.
Under this interpretation, the “Fall” is not simply a catastrophic act of disobedience. It can be understood as an inevitable stage of human development.
The hardships that follow are not necessarily God’s punishment. They are the consequences of becoming mature, responsible, self-aware human beings.
This gives us a very different picture of God: God accompanies human development rather than violently punishing human beings for growing.
6. From “sin” to human incompleteness
Another important shift in Ellens’s argument is his preference for understanding human dysfunction in terms of human limitation and developmental incompleteness, rather than simply moral depravity.
He isn’t saying that humans don’t do evil. He explicitly recognizes that humans cause enormous harm to one another.
Rather, he argues that humans are:
• limited,
• anxious,
• incomplete,
• developing,
• frequently confused,
• lacking adequate knowledge,
• capable of learning through trial and error.
Consequently, the appropriate response to human failure should be grace, rehabilitation, growth, and appropriate boundaries, rather than simply condemnation and revenge.
7. Applying this to religious and political conflict
Ellens then extends his argument beyond individual psychology to international conflict.
He argues that religious violence can be fueled by particular images of God. If someone believes that God is a warrior fighting against enemies, then the believer may see themselves as God’s warrior.
This creates a dangerous psychological pattern:
God has enemies → I am on God’s side → God’s enemies are my enemies → violence against them becomes morally justified.
Ellens applies this framework to historical examples including the Crusades, ancient Israelite warfare, and contemporary Islamic extremism.
Importantly, he also argues that conflict cannot simply be dismissed as psychological illness. Some conflicts arise from legitimate political, cultural, historical, and social grievances.
Therefore, understanding an adversary requires empathy: asking what fears, injustices, cultural threats, or political circumstances have contributed to their behavior.
8. Unconditional positive regard as a global strategy
Ellens ultimately proposes something resembling Carl Rogers’s unconditional positive regard applied at the level of communities and nations.
His proposed model emphasizes:
1. Unconditional acceptance of the other.
2. Empathy—trying to understand the other’s perspective.
3. Mutuality rather than domination.
4. Recognizing that we ourselves are imperfect.
5. Seeking the well-being of the whole human community.
6. Believing that both sides can grow.
7. Recognizing the psychological consequences of one’s image of God.
8. Building security and trust.
9. Taking opponents seriously rather than demonizing them.
10. Continually evaluating whether relationships are actually moving toward mutual well-being.
Importantly, Ellens does not mean that unconditional acceptance requires allowing destructive behavior to continue. He explicitly discusses boundaries and what he calls “tough love” when dealing with genuinely dangerous behavior.
The article’s basic progression
You can reduce the whole argument to this sequence:
Image of God → psychological archetype → human behavior → social relationships → culture → human well-being
If God is imagined as violent and vindictive:
violent God → violent psychological model → violent people → violent communities → violent culture
But if God is understood as radically gracious:
gracious God → gracious psychological model → healthier people → healthier relationships → healthier society
That is the heart of Ellens’s proposal.
What Ellens is ultimately calling for
The article isn’t simply asking Christians to develop a nicer theology.
Ellens is proposing a psychological and theological transformation.
He believes we need to replace the unconscious image of God as a violent cosmic ruler with an image of God as unconditionally gracious and compassionate.
That transformation would then change the psychological patterns by which humans relate to one another.
His ultimate goal is what he calls a “world of well-being”— a global culture characterized by psychological maturity, empathy, mutuality, meaningful spirituality, and reduced reliance on violence.
In one sentence
Ellens argues that humanity’s well-being depends partly on the God-image we carry within us: if we imagine God as violent, punitive, and vindictive, we reproduce those qualities; if we understand God as radically gracious and compassionate, we have a theological foundation for developing healthier individuals, relationships, and societies.
One important qualification
The article is intentionally provocative rather than clinically neutral. Ellens uses psychiatric terminology— “schizophrenia,” “borderline personality disorder,” “psychosis,” etc.— as a rhetorical and interpretive framework for criticizing traditional portrayals of God. His argument should therefore not be read as a literal psychiatric diagnosis of a supernatural being. His deeper claim is about how religious representations of God function psychologically in human beings.
And that distinction is probably the key to understanding the article: Ellens is really asking, “What kind of human beings does our image of God cause us to become?”
(End of Chat comment)