The chicken grows as the egg decays: war and spirituality as contradictory and complementary forces

Abstract

This essay examines what happens to spirituality in time of war. By analysing major masterpieces by Hobbes, Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Frankl, the author highlights current theoretical conceptions in the literature on how human beings handle their spirituality in times of war and what impact it has upon their personal world. Finally, the author presents extracts from The diary of Anne Frank to illustrate and analyse the relationships between children’s spirituality and their encounter with trauma, viciousness and atrocity.

Keywords:

• spirituality
• war
• resilience
• transformation

This issue investigates children’s spirituality in times of war. It focuses on the relationships between children’s spirituality and their encounter with trauma, viciousness and atrocity. War is understood in the widest sense and covers the full range of terrorist attacks, political and religious violence, mass traumatic events, direct exposure to destruction, chaos, viciousness and atrocity in civil, political, social and cultural arenas and their environmental context.

What is spirituality?

Spirituality is an expression of human longing to approach a supreme entity or power situated beyond human control and grasp, thereby expressing the existential uniqueness of man over beast (Gross 2006). Spirituality is realised in abstract aspects of human life that constitute part of one’s existential secular or religious being. The definition of spirituality consists of two basic constructs: transcendence and an encounter with a supreme being or deity. Transcendence is considered in the literature as a major characteristic of spirituality (Beck and McDonald 2004; Kay 2005; Piedmont 2007). An encounter with a deity is considered prominent mainly among religious people and an encounter with a supreme being on a very general and vague level is endorsed more among secular people (Gross 2009). These two features are connected to Pargament’s definition of spirituality as ‘a search for the sacred’ (Pargament 1999, 12), which refers ‘not only to concepts of God or higher powers but also to other aspects of life that take on divine character and significance by virtue of their association with, or representation of, divinity’ (Pargament 2009, 210). Pargament attests that ‘many life domains can be perceived as manifestations of God or as imbued with divine attributes, such as transcendence, boundlessness and ultimacy’ (2009, 211). These include feelings that are beyond religious behaviours and concerns, such as church attendance and prayers, and the fulfilment of certain precepts that widen and extend human capacity and experience to other arenas.

An examination of research on spirituality yields three distinct approaches to the relationship between spirituality and religiosity. There are researchers who view spirituality as an integral part of religiosity (Benson 1997; Gordon et al. 2002; Smith 2003); those who view spirituality as separate from religiosity (Scott 2001; Tisdell 2000); and those who view spirituality as synonymous with religiosity (Ahmadi Lewin 2001; Halford 1999). This special issue perceives spirituality as distinct from religiosity. Elkins et al. (1988) identified nine non‐religious components that constitute what they define as humanistic spirituality which are distinct from religious forms of spirituality: transcendence; meaning in life; mission in life; sacredness of life; ultimate satisfaction in spiritual rather than material things; commitment to altruism; idealism; awareness of the tragic; and fruits of spirituality. These nine components are apparent in diverse ways in the analysis of this and other articles in this issue and can serve as a starting point for a concrete discussion on spirituality and its implementation in times of crisis and war.

Spirituality is not a natural stance. It is affected by the different contexts and locations where it is situated (Massimini and Della Fave 2000). The way individuals conceptualise spirituality is highly correlated with the special circumstances they encounter and experience, which affect how they internalise, manifest and interpret it. War is a unique, complex and multidimensional setting where spirituality may play a major role. In order to understand the encounter between spirituality and war, it is necessary to explain the essence of war, why people initiate wars and the role of spirituality within the framework of war.

Motivation for war

Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz was one of the first military theorists who conceived war as means to achieve the eternal quest for power over resources, where the strong attempts to overcome the weak. He defined war as the continuation of politics by other means. Namely, war is a social phenomenon, an extension of politics.

The first war in history was fought between Cain and Abel. ‘And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him’ (Genesis 4:8). Bible commentators suggest three different reasons for this: (1) a war over space and consumption; (2) a war over a woman; or (3) a religious cause: they quarrelled over which territory to build the temple. These three reasons represent basic human needs and fundamental motivations for war: materialistic, romantic and religious. In each, there is a hidden spiritual motivation.

De Souza defines spirituality as an expression of connectedness: it is ‘a movement through varying cycles and layers of connectedness which gave young people a sense of self and place within their world, and which promoted a sense of resilience’ (de Souza 2006, 167). Accordingly, war is a fight for connectedness to place, to a woman or to a God. Religious wars are a quest for the best way to worship God.

War and human nature

Peace is an unnatural human condition. According to Hobbes, what is natural for humans is their propensity to fight. In The Leviathan, he writes, ‘the condition of man… is a condition of war of every one against every one’ (Hobbes 1651, ch. 14). Primo Levi, a holocaust survivor, believes that the tendency of human beings to fight and compete is primordial, reminiscent of ancient times when men were social animals. In his book, The drowned and the saved, he claims that the ‘human tendency for conflict is innate and embedded within his basic nature and his tendency for simplification and binary construction…’ (Levi 1988, 22), perhaps because the need to divide the field into ‘we’ and ‘they’ is so strong that this pattern of friend–enemy prevails over all others. ‘Popular history, and also the history taught in schools, is influenced by this Manichean tendency which shuns half tints and complexities: it is prone to reduce the river of human occurrences to conflicts, and the conflicts to duels – we and they,…the good guys and the bad guys, because the good must prevail, otherwise the world would be subverted’ (Levi 1988, 22–3). Thus, the need to compete and overcome the opponent is a basic construct of human nature and explains the urge of mankind for wars.

Similarly, war is perceived by Nietzsche as a driving force. The basic categories through which men operate are power and victory. The struggle and the triumph over the enemy and the defeat of an opponent are considered virtues. Nietzsche believes that war exposes the power of the soul: ‘I know the hatred and envy of your hearts. Ye are not great enough not to know of hatred and envy. Then be great enough not to be ashamed of them! And if ye cannot be saints of knowledge, then, I pray you, be at least its warriors. They are the companions and forerunners of such saintship. I see many soldiers; could I but see many warriors!’ (Nietzsche 1954 [1886], ch. 10).

Nietzsche seeks victory. ‘Ye shall be those whose eyes ever seek for an enemy – for your enemy. And with some of you there is hatred at first sight. Your enemy shall ye seek; your war shall ye wage, and for the sake of your thoughts!’ Nietzsche suggests that ‘Ye shall love peace as a means to new wars’ (Nietzsche 1954 [1886], ch. 10). Peace is a temporary ceasefire, an opportunity to renew strength and prepare for a new fight. In such a vicious world, spirituality is a positive psychological asset that helps the individual to withstand evil and balance atrocity.

Coping mechanisms of war: withstanding and transformation

War is a crisis, and coping with war requires coping with crisis. Literature that deals with crisis stresses the importance of the healthy personality to enhance positive adaptation (Antonovsky 1979, 1988; Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker 2000; Seligman 2002). In complex situations, positive adaptation helps the individual to emerge from the difficulty rather than concentrating on its negative influences (Greene et al. 2000; Snyder and Lopez 2007; Walsh 2003). Researchers relate to ‘resilience,’ which has two components: withstanding, which has a psychological aspect; and transformation, which has a developmental aspect. Both are connected theoretically to the essence of spirituality (Greene et al. 2000; Walsh 2003).

De Souza notes that resilience has become an expression of outcomes linked to the spiritual dimension of the individual’s life in terms of the layers of connectedness s/he may feel to the other in their community or in the wider world and possibly also toward a supreme power or being (de Souza 2006, 166). Both spirituality and resilience deal with connectedness but each represents a different stage of the spiritual journey. Hence, there is a need for more delicate and distinct terminology.

The idea of withstanding when in a war means trying to find new meanings amidst the catastrophe. The attempt to imbue the reality with new meanings and new positive thoughts enables one to overcome and withstand. Hence, withstanding represents the spiritual manifestation of coping, as opposed to physical resistance.

An example can be found in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s search for meaning, where he describes a horrendous moment in the Auschwitz concentration camp:

We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp… Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: ‘If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.’ … each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. (Frankl 1963, 41)

Looking at the sky helped him to rise above the harshness of the moment and be spiritually united with his wife. Frankl continues:

The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. (1963, 42)

The concept of love and the feeling of connectedness to his wife imbued meaning into the prisoner and his being. Under these circumstances where love is a major factor, the reality seems different and the meaning of suffering changes. This enables the human being to withstand the temporal hardship for the sake of the great love that awaits him outside of this specific context.

Erich Fromm has written that to love ‘implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming… It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self‐renewing and self‐increasing ’ (Fromm 1976, 37). The yearning of the prisoners for renewal of the previous feeling of love with their wives generates meaning. Love becomes an expression of their being and connects them to their own selves. This moment of transcendence enabled Viktor Frankl and all the other prisoners to withstand suffering. He writes, ‘For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory”’ (Frankl 1963, 42).

The assertion that war is a direct outcome of evil human nature suggests that spirituality is a way to withstand atrocity. Viktor Frankl argues that the meaning‐making process was a major mechanism enabling him to withstand holocaust suffering. According to Elkins et al. (1988), this is an integral part of the humanistic non‐religious spiritual domain. Those moments of resistance, when the individual experiences his true self, enable him to merge with the ideal which is the main target of withstanding and one of the domains of spiritually. These merge the individual with his raison d’être of resistance and open up a new spiritual dimension within the human condition. This provides an additional understanding of the nature of spirituality. Spirituality cannot be explained; it can only be experienced. Withstanding is also an experiential mode of existence that becomes an integral part of one’s being, thus making it a spiritual endeavour which elevates the individual beyond the circumstances and enables him to transform and reach new landscapes.

War as a transformational force

War has a transformational power that elevates the individual into new metaphysical landscapes. Rabbi Avraham Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, states: ‘When there is a great war in the world, the power of the Messiah awakens’ (Kook n.d., vol. 1, 25). During a war, the world is renewed with a new spirit. Rabbi Kook does not mean that war is a prerequisite to the coming of the Messiah; it is a sign that the Messiah is coming. The sixteenth‐century rabbi, Judah Loew, the Maharal of Prague, explained that in reality these troubles are ‘the absence before the existence,’ namely, only after the seed decays in the ground can a tree grow and flourish. Rabbi Kook means that wars have an important role as they awaken the yearnings for the Messianic Era and, like a fire in the forest, enable healthy renewal.

A war enables the individual to experience transformative spiritual moments. In Tolstoy’s masterpiece, War and peace, after Prince Andrew is wounded at Austerlitz he has a transformative spiritual revelation:

‘What’s this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way,’ thought he, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes… . But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the sky – the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds gliding slowly across it. ‘How quiet, peaceful, and solemn; not at all as I ran,’ thought Prince Andrew – ‘not as we ran, shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!’ (Tolstoy 1869, ch. 16)

The war enabled him to reorganise his priorities and to reset his spiritual being, thus allowing him to perceive reality differently. The sky existed there before but he could not see it; the battle wound has opened channels to new horizons, which enabled him finally to reach God and thank him (‘how happy I am to have found it at last’). Prince Andrew experiences enlightenment. Spirituality can be attained once a person is transformed. Spirituality is a journey toward realisation, which consists of designated stages that gradually elevate the self; this journey is distinct from the religious journey. A religious moment can be attained only after the encounter with spiritual transcendence. As Pargament notes, ‘religion is designed first and foremost to facilitate spirituality’ (Pargament 2009, 209). Thus, religiosity is a by‐product of spirituality that enables the religious revelation of God. This moment of revelation enables Prince Andrew, in de Souza’s terms, ‘to gain a sense of self and place within the(ir) world, thereby providing meaning and purpose in (their) everyday life’ (de Souza 2006, 167). This feeling is the core of the spiritual dimension which enables a direct encounter between man and God.

Anne Frank: a case study of spirituality and resilience

Anne Frank was 13 years old when, in July 1942, she and her family were forced to go into hiding in a secret annex in Amsterdam. Her diary (1995), written over more than two years, is unique in its spirituality and the description of the coping mechanisms she utilised. One of the ways she chose to withstand hardships was through writing, which gave her hope and meaning. On 16 March 1944, Anne writes ‘The nicest part is being able to write down all my thoughts and feelings; otherwise, I’d absolutely suffocate.’ Like for Viktor Frankl, writing grants meaning and helps her to endure.

On 7 November 1942, she writes, ‘Oh well. So much comes into my head at night when I’m alone, or during the day when I’m obliged to put up with people I can’t abide or who invariably misinterpret my intentions. That’s why I always wind up coming back to my diary – I start there and end there because Kitty’s always patient. I promise her that, despite everything, I’ll keep going, that I’ll find my own way and choke back my tears.’ Writing generates personal hope for Anne and helps her to endure. Her attitude to her writing, which begins as an egotistic self‐centred act, becomes something that has the potential to contribute to humanity.

On 5 April 1944, Anne writes, ‘I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!’ Young et al. (1998) and Crawford and Rossiter (2006) found that spirituality is related to the positive moral development of young people. Steward and Hanik (1998) found that teenagers who reported high levels of spirituality also reported that they support and help other people. Indeed, on 11 April 1944, after they were almost discovered, she writes: ‘Be brave! Let’s remember our duty and perform it without complaint. There will be a way out. God has never deserted our people. …I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion and love. If only I can be myself, I’ll be satisfied. …If God lets me live, I’ll achieve more than Mother ever did, I’ll make my voice heard, I’ll go out into the world and work for mankind!’

Anne perceives her act of writing as an altruistic contribution to humanity. Writing thus is perceived as a spiritual manifestation of her entire being. Elkins et al. (1988) perceive altruism as one of the humanistic spiritual domains. This notion is intensified in Lerner, Dowling and Anderson’s (2005) analysis. They characterise spirituality as ‘an emotional orientation to self and context that involves the transcendence of self, and ‘fuels’ the development of a commitment to contributing to others or institutions’ (Lerner, Dowling, and Anderson 2005, 4). The experience of giving is a moment of transcendence. Rich and Cinamon (2007) define transcendence as an exceptional event or encounter ‘that created the sense of a unique moment in one’s personal history when life was experienced deeply and meaningfully, inspiring a sense of wonder or awe’ (2007, 24).

Anne experiences other moments of transcendence. Her diary illustrates how those uplifting moments or encounters can elevate and empower the individual. On 13 June 1944, she writes:

I went downstairs all by myself and looked out the windows in the kitchen and private office. …It’s not just my imagination – looking at the sky, the clouds, the moon and the stars really does make me feel calm and hopeful. It’s much better medicine than valerian or bromide. Nature makes me feel humble and ready to face every blow with courage!

As luck would have it, I’m only able – except for a few rare occasions – to view nature through dusty curtains tacked over dirt‐caked windows; it takes the pleasure out of looking. Nature is the one thing for which there is no substitute!

The encounter with the sight of the sky or heaven is perceived as a spiritual moment. The physical location of heaven above makes it an appropriate and major mediator for transcendence. Transcendence is considered a crucial component of spirituality (Kay 2005; Reich, Oser, and Scarlett 1999). Like in the spiritual moment that Tolstoy’s Prince Andrew experienced, the sky is a spiritual mediator which gives hope. Spirituality is a major source for enhancing well being and hope (de Souza 2006). Anne’s exposure to nature has a spiritual impact; it elevates her and enables her to perceive the world differently (23 February 1944):

The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God. For then and only then can you feel that everything is as it should be and that God wants people to be happy amid nature’s beauty and simplicity.

As long as this exists, and that should be forever, I know that there will be solace for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances. I firmly believe that nature can bring comfort to all who suffer.

Her reliance on God grants her strength and self‐reliance. According to Painton (2009), children’s ‘play stories are often metaphors that are not literal representations, but rather symbolic communications’ (2009, 376). Using Painton’s terminology, the metaphorical language that Anne utilises is the language by which she ‘implicitly conveys her life story along with her feelings and beliefs’ (ibid.). Painton argues that this has a healing effect which ‘comes from [her] intimacy with the truth, which is at the core of the spirituality of kids’ (ibid.).

On 14 April 1944, Anne wrote what seems to be a prayer: ‘Work, love, courage and hope, Make me good and help me cope!’ Two months later, on 15 July 1944, she writes, ‘It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them!’ Her attachment to her ideals gives her hope and imbues her life with meaning. According to Sagy (2006), hope is a cognitive‐affective psychological resource: ‘the emotion of hope arises when a concrete positive goal is expected , such as situations of yearning for relief from negative conditions. It consists of cognitive elements of visualization and expectation and affective elements of feeling good about the expected pleasant events or outcomes’ (Sagy 2006, 147).

On 4 August 1944, Anne was arrested, together with the other people hiding in the annex and in September was transported to Auschwitz. At the end of October, she and her sister were brought to Bergen Belsen, where Anne died in March 1945, shortly before her 16th birthday and only a few weeks before the camp was liberated. According to Hannah Gosler, a friend of Anne’s from the years before going into hiding, who spoke with Anne at Bergen Belsen, ‘Anne thought that her parents were dead. I have always thought if Anne had known that her father was still alive, she would have found the strength to go on living.’ Anne had lost hope.

Sagy (2006, following Hobfoll 2005) finds a fundamental difference between individual‐centred hope and existential hope. Whereas the individual‐centred definition implies that the individual has the adequate personal or social resources to reach a goal, the existential implies strength that people with few resources utilise to comfort and encourage themselves in hard times (2006, 156). When Anne was with her family in their hiding place at the beginning, she had individual‐centred hope; as time went on, and the circumstances became more complex, she had existential hope. She knew that this hope would help her to survive. However, when she lost what de Souza calls ‘connectedness’ with her family and assumed that her parents were dead, she also lost the resources she needed to survive.

Anne Frank’s diary is a quest for meaning and identity by a 13‐year‐old girl in the midst of a cruel and vicious war. Tirri (2006) notes that ‘many researchers define spirituality in contrast to religion. In these definitions, religion is usually defined as the organizational, the ritual and the ideological. The spiritual then refers to the personal, the affective, the experiential and the thoughtful’ (2006, 8). Anne’s diary includes all these spiritual characteristics and thus enables the reader to follow stages in her spiritual identity formation, withstanding hardship and transformation, in her pursuit of the ultimate truth. Following Elkin et al.’s (1988) spiritual typology, Anne experiences a humanistic spiritual journey, which consists of transcendence, meaning in life, mission in life, sacredness of life, ultimate satisfaction in spiritual rather than material things, commitment to altruism, idealism, and awareness of the tragic. What makes the diary so appealing is the maintenance of her personal freedom, which, according to Wright (2006), is the essence of spirituality and ‘requires a rigorous exploration of fundamental questions about the ultimate nature of reality’ (2006, 13). Her emancipation from external authority together with her directed effort toward what Wright calls ‘freedom for the autonomous exercise of a person’s capacity to reason’ (2006, 17) makes her an epitome of the notion of relational identity, in which freedom lies in establishing dialectic relationships between the truth of the individual exploring his subjective inner space and the community (Wright 2006, 21).

Spirituality seems to gain new facets when exposed to the context of war; it becomes a way of balancing the viciousness of war. This special issue on war and spirituality focuses on the growing debate about the function of spirituality in handling acts of violence and trauma; how spirituality can serve as a force for emancipation from victimisation and despair on one hand, yet may also be connected to denial and mechanisms of suppression that can arise in times of war, thus serving as a false adaptive mechanism. Spirituality is examined as an alternative space to the battlefield. A place of growth, emerging, becoming, generativity and transformation. War is a site where spirituality is redefined while constructing and deconstructing basic premises of existence. Spirituality in times of war is a quest for meaning in a world that attempts to perpetuate chaos and misery. Spirituality in times of war decries the binarity between good and bad.

This issue reflects new thinking or empirical research on how global terrorism, conflict based on national and ethnic differences, and ‘the war on terror’ affect children’s spiritual lives. We wonder: How does spirituality operate in times of war? How does spirituality enable children to construct alternative world images? What are the psychological, philosophical and sociological conditions that enable children to cope with phoney, imagined or ‘real’ world images and evil in times of war? How does spirituality facilitate the construction of a new consciousness in times of war? How and to what extent does spirituality give people depth, a sense of purpose, resilience, agency and self‐sufficiency? Does it enable renewed levels of engagement and commitment? How does it serve as a subversive force against the normalisation processes of evil? How do we analyse (and what analyses exist of) the mental, emotional, behavioural and moral experience of children’s confrontations with brutality?

The issue pioneers a discussion of the spiritual lives of children in wider social and cultural, religious and political, economic and environmental contexts that exist in the midst of war. Though war provides a context for spirituality and growth, let us pray that the prophecy of Isaiah 2:4 will come to pass: ‘And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; / And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning‐hooks; / Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’