The very first step towards this capacity of seeing from another's perspective, is to listen. Without fully paying attention to the other, we will not be able to truly see from their perspective. One might be able to understand rationally the points the other makes, the way a debater understands the opponent's arguments in order to counter them, but this is not what we're talking about here. What I mean is listening in order to really understand (and maybe even feel) where the other is coming from, what the story is that the other inhabits. In order to do this, one needs to, at least temporarily, drop one's own perspective. We can thus see how wisdom is required in order to love. What's remarkable is that love and wisdom can form a virtuous cycle - each one deepening the other. The wiser we are, the more we'll be able to empathetically understand someone, and thus to love them. Conversely, as we grow in love, we open ourselves up more to other people and their perspectives, and come to understand how different perspectives might help us overcome our own blind spots.

One example: I believe that God doesn't exist. At the same time, if I think about it, God is, if nothing else, a concept that influences many people's lives. The brain scans of people praying to God show identical brain activities to the people socially interacting with real people. Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann wrote a fascinating book about this and related phenomena. So in this sense I'd concede that God exists after all - he is at least as real as Capitalism or other ideas that shape life on earth in a major way. A fair objection here could be that I'm just using different definitions of what existence might mean when talking about God. But this is exactly my point: when transcending single-story thinking, all these nuances suddenly become available, and I'd argue that nuanced thinking is a strong indicator for wisdom.

Many people are so embedded in their story that they are unable to view "past it". They are so confident that their story is the true one, the one that accurately describes reality, that they don't even want to hear about other stories. A term that I heard a few weeks ago used by Nate Hagens and that could be applied for exactly this is single-story thinking. Having a discussion with somebody who is single-story thinking is difficult: to them, their story is like water to a fish - they are not even aware how fully immersed they are in it all the time. Challenging their story can seem like a threat to them and trigger certain defense mechanisms. They are not really interested in hearing a different perspective. When you encounter such a person, your first instinct might be to judge them - but this wouldn't be a wise thing to do. What makes you so sure that the other person is obviously "off"? Maybe it's you who has got the blinders on and can't see something the other person is seeing. Regularly reminding ourselves of this possibility goes a long way in cultivating wisdom.

A religion is an interpretative framework (or story) that tells us how to read our perception of reality so that we can explain and derive meaning from what we experience. Whether we are fully aware of it or not, each of us uses such frameworks constantly. The question of which ones we are using is strongly shaped by our past, particularly our upbringing. David Dark points out that our religious upbringings are always "mixed bags". If you just thought "wait... I didn't have a religious upbringing..." I invite you to think again. For example, most of us likely grew up in the "capitalist faith", or maybe your parents, and later school, taught you the "dogma of materialism".

The best kinds of religion are those that invite questioning, those that don't pretend that their adherents always have everything figured out, or are always on the right side of history. We could say, together with Paul Tillich, that the maturity of a religion can be judged by its capacity for self-criticism and its willingness to sit with its own ambiguity. So what religions are you practicing? And how mature do you rate them to be?

Evil is the moment I lack the strength to be true to the good that compels me. (Alain Badiou)

Everytime I read Badiou's definition, I feel deeply moved - and convicted. At least according to this definition, there is evil in every one of us. Even if it might not be my intention to do harm, the moment I lack the strength to the good I know I ought to do, evil has taken hold of me. And yet, the strength to do good doesn't grow from endlessly cataloguing my failures. As I explored in my last mini essay, I believe that there are few things as powerful as living your life from a place of radical self-acceptance and self-forgiveness. From such a place, with the self-resentment and excessive guilt removed, something opens up - a quieter healthier way to grow. "I am not perfect. I have my flaws and I know them well - but I forgive myself." Try saying that out loud, or maybe just whisper it to yourself right now. Experience how that feels in your body - that feeling of deep okayness. If you took some time in introspection and meditation and still haven't been able to fully accept yourself, don't beat yourself up about it - instead, try to do the following: forgive yourself for not being able to fully forgive yourself.

According to the Christian belief Jesus was living a life of love and dedication for the people around him, and yet the people condemned him unjustly and nailed him to a cross. The Gospel recounts that even there on the cross, while the people mocked him, Jesus prayed: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."  Theologically speaking, the death of Jesus is all about forgiveness, and his resurrection from the dead is God's confirmation that this is the way - that love and forgiveness are victorious in the end.

God extends this forgiveness to the whole world - showing all of us grace. Grace means total acceptance - acceptance despite past failures or current flaws, no matter how numerous. The importance of this is also stressed in other worldviews such as Stoicism and Buddhism. Psychologists, too, acknowledge the fundamental role of self-forgiveness. Nonetheless, in my opinion Christianity manages to express it in one of the most moving ways. I invite you to read and fully experience the following words by Paul Tillich right now:

"You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!"

Paradoxically, it is in this experience of groundlessness - of fully feeling the absence of God - that we are most at one with Christ. The glorious, powerful, miracle-making, death-defeating God is something wholly Other and utterly foreign to my lived experience - something that I, at least, cannot connect to anymore. The lonely God, the betrayed God, the broken God, the crucified God - that is the one I recognize.

The De-Siting of the Soul

There is no longer the sort of fulfilling time that is due to a beautiful structure of past, present and future, that is, to a story, to narrative suspense. Time becomes naked, that is, devoid of narration. A point-like time, or event time, emerges. Because it is poor in horizons, this kind of time is not able to carry much meaning. (Byung-Chul Han)

A time not able to carry much meaning - this is how many people in the West experience the age we inhabit. In the past years there was a lot of discourse about the 'Meaning Crisis' - the collective inability of most people in Western societies to answer the question "Why does any of this matter?"

While the phrase 'Meaning Crisis' started to be used only in the last seven years or so, the idea itself can probably be traced back at least to Nietzsche's 'death of God' and so it's no wonder that Byung-Chul Han, already in 2005, was able to write such a striking analysis of the cultural situation we find ourselves in - a cultural situation which explains the even stronger rise of perceived meaninglessness of people's lives that could be seen in the last decades.

The term that Han used for our cultural situation is "Hyperculture". He defines it as being "based on a dense side by side of different ideas, signs, symbols, images and sounds". What this effectively means is that cultural space is de-distanced first of all by globalization, but maybe even more by the adoption and use of the internet. A few decades ago, one needed to travel far away to experience different cultures - today there is a dense side by side and overlapping of all kinds of different cultures in most places. The cultures are not tied to specific sites any more - they don't really have a center. Even when travelling far away, one is bound to find the same side by side of cultures there too (McDonald's, Hollywood, etc.). Today, more than 20 years after the book was written, social media platforms increase this effect even more: global trends, expressions, memes, and countless similar phenomena.

Han observed and predicted that hyperculture triggers resistance in those for whom this muddling of cultures means the trauma of loss, of the 'pure' cultures they inhabited and that grounded them. Han calls the common reaction to this "fundamentalism of sites", which can include re-theologization, re-mythologization and re-nationalization.

An example for the last category can be seen in the well-documented right shift of politics in Europe, especially since 2015. These movements advocate for a return to the 'pure' culture of their nation and inversely for a rejection of any immigration. As Herder shows, European culture itself is "a plant sprung from Roman, Greek and Arabic feed", and Hegel wrote that the ancient Greek culture itself was anything but pure, but owes its existence to a "conflux of the most various nations".

Hegel's insight is as true on a personal level, as it is on a cultural level: "Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another". Psychologically speaking, developing a self-model requires an Other to mirror yourself back at you - we only truly exist in relationship. Han notes that the Chinese sign for 'human being' includes the sign for 'between' - which points at the same fundamental truth: the human being cannot be taken for a substance - but must rather be understood as a relation. Hegel makes the same point in relation to the Greek spirit / culture. According to him it is "a superficial and absurd idea that such a beautiful and truly free life can be produced by a process so incomplex as the development of a race keeping within the limits of blood-relationship and friendship."

The point is clear: the presence of the foreign is necessary for the formation of one's own.

An important aspect of this is the concept of 'appropriation'. While this term is mostly used negatively in today's discourse (think 'cultural appropriation') - for Han it is an essential part of education and identity: "Only an idiot or a god could live without appropriation" - and one's identity is, he adds, in a sense nothing more than the result of successful appropriation.

But what happens when the frameworks one appropriates from have themselves lost their footing? The 'Meaning Crisis' can be traced back to a series of historical 'decentering' events: the Copernican revolution removed humans from the center of the cosmos, Darwinian evolution removed our sense of special design, and Nietzsche's "God is dead" declaration signaled the collapse of the transcendent framework that had long supplied people with meaning, morality, and a sense of belonging. The ripples of the last of these events came to be felt more definitively only much more recently with the rise of people identifying as non-religious or atheistic. But even most of such people are still 'site fundamentalists' in the sense that Han defines it. Western culture produced a range of 'surrogate gods' (The Nation, ideological progress, science and reason, consumer capitalism, etc.) that took the place of the old God and performed the same psychological function.

Hyperculture spells out the decentering of these 'surrogate gods'. Being confronted with the side by side of these manifold cultures, it becomes harder and harder not to notice their arbitrariness. The de-siting of the cultures means people are less embedded in them and experience an increasing individualization. There is a new practice of freedom, as people follow their own inclinations and cobble together an identity from the expanding pool of practices and forms of life offered by the hyperculture - but at the same time these practices are not able to provide the same meaning once they are taken out of their cultural and communal context.

The 'Patchwork Religion' people create for themselves is missing the interpretative frame needed to provide actual meaning. One possible step towards a solution for this problem might be found in Bernardo Kastrup's idea of myth as "any interpretive frame used to ascribe meaning to perceptions and sense experiences". In his view, today's dominant myth (scientific materialism) fails to satisfy the deep human need for transcendence that myths have always served and as a solution he proposes a new myth based on his analytical idealism, which I will cover more in-depth in a future text about Kastrup's book 'More Than Allegory'.

My reading of Han tells me that he would critique this approach as a regression - a 're-mythologization' that tries to respond to modernity's groundlessness by imposing a new absolute, by attempting to fill the void instead of learning to inhabit it. Peter Rollins, who has written about this existential void extensively, put it beautifully: "While the yoke of lack might appear too heavy to bear, in truth it is only crushing when we refuse to bear it - when we force others to carry it instead."

What seems to be core to Han's solution for our current predicament is Heidegger's concept of Gelassenheit - a different relationship with time, silence and otherness. He does not promise a new horizon, but rather a posture - a way of standing in the open without flinching at the nakedness.

In Praise of Reading

"Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own spirit, the world of books is the greatest." (Hermann Hesse)

Since my childhood, I have spent countless hours of my life reading books. I always enjoyed doing it, just as there are people who don't read and claim they just never much enjoyed it. Somehow I always had a feeling that it is important for me to read, yet I never spent a lot of time thinking about the 'why'. Even now, I feel slightly reluctant to argue for the importance of reading books based on the benefits it offers. For me, reading is an end in itself - it is autotelic. But of course, this is no reason to ignore the facts about reading and how this activity (or its lack) impacts our lives and even our society.

Maryanne Wolf starts her wonderful book 'Reader, Come Home' by taking a close look at what happens in the brain while we read. With her background in cognitive neuroscience, and years of studying developmental psycholinguistics, she is able to give a very detailed account of the multiple, simultaneously happening operations in the brain that occur every time we read even a single word. It is a complex interplay between the brain areas for vision, language, cognition, motor and affect. While this part of the book is rather technical, it definitely managed to inspire a sense of awe at the intricacy of the brain.

The most important thing to note at this point, is that reading is in fact an unnatural, cultural invention that is only about 6000 years old: "A large, fundamental mistake—with many unfortunate consequences for children, teachers, and parents around the world—is the assumption that reading is natural to human beings and that it will simply emerge 'whole cloth' like language when the child is ready." This is not the case! Reading can develop epigenetically based on the brain's biologically endowed functions of vision and language and because of brain plasticity. As brain plasticity peaks during early childhood, it is important that children learn reading at that age. One of the most important predictors of later reading achievement is how much parents read to their child, and according to Wolf, a parent cannot possibly start too early with this.

The sad reality is that, apparently this is happening less and less. According to recent statistics, reading books has been in stark decline for the past 20 years: In the U.S., leisure reading has decreased by an average of 3% per year.

Especially among children and young adults (but not only), we can currently observe a parasitic takeover of other forms of media, with short-form videos as the most prevalent of them. Is this really so problematic? After all, short-form videos might just be a new medium, just as books were at some point in history too. This is not the case, and Wolf explains the differences lucidly in this book.

Short-form videos encourage what cognitive researchers have called hyper attention. Daniel Levitin describes that this state "creates a dopamine-addiction feedback loop, effectively rewarding the brain for losing focus and for constantly searching for external stimulation." The more the brain gets used to this state, the harder it is to reach the opposite state: deep attention - a state of concentration on a single object for extended periods. Closely related is the concept of deep reading developed by Wolf in her research.

This type of reading is not superficial, but includes slower cognitive processes such as critical thinking, personal reflection and imagination. Another aspect of it is empathy: "when we read fiction, the brain actively simulates the consciousness of another person, including those whom we would never otherwise even imagine knowing. It allows us to try on, for a few moments, what it truly means to be another person, with all the similar and sometimes vastly different emotions and struggles that govern others’ lives." Deep reading also allows the reader to build up a reservoir of background knowledge, which is the basis for his ability to comprehend new ideas and concepts.

Almost none of these processes are possible in the state of hyper attention. We are also not just talking about the information itself that is contained in the content: reading a book exercises the mind in a way that consuming summaries of the information contained in the book does not. While reading, the reader follows the author's chain of thought and in a sense thinks with him or her. To follow an argument in a book, it is often necessary to keep multiple ideas which are built on one another in the working memory, which effectively trains the brain to focus for extended periods of time.

While reading this book I finally understood clearer than ever: Reading is important because it is so closely linked to thinking. The time a brain spends in a deep reading state is reflected in the quality and the clarity of its thinking.

This is why reading is more than a hobby or a preference, it is vital for a truly democratic society: "If we in the twenty-first century are to preserve a vital collective conscience, we must ensure that all members of our society are able to read and think both deeply and well. We will fail as a society if we do not educate our children and reeducate all of our citizenry to the responsibility of each citizen to process information vigilantly, critically, and wisely across media. And we will fail as a society as surely as societies of the twentieth century if we do not recognize and acknowledge the capacity for reflective reasoning in those who disagree with us."

Practicing Rest

Rest in peace! I was very sad when I found out that Walter Brueggemann had died just about a month ago. He was an appreciated Biblical scholar and theologian focused on the Old Testament. He was especially well known for his understanding of prophetic work: “It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing future alternatives to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one”. According to this understanding, he himself can definitely be seen as a modern day prophet: he was very critical of American consumerism and nationalism.

This book is definitely not missing a certain prophetic dimension in that sense. It is a study of the concept of Sabbath in the Jewish tradition, its underlying principles and what applying them in today's world could look like.

As most readers will know, at its most basic, Sabbath can be defined as a religious ritual in Judaism in which "certain workaday activities and ordinary busyness are suspended and brought to a halt" once a week for a whole day. While Orthodox Jews are still living out this ritual in a quite radical way, according to the "letter", so to speak, Brueggemann insists more on the "spirit" of this law.

Generally he understands it as a "cultivation of inaction in body and spirit". Nowadays we are used to being on "the initiating end of all things" - we want to always be in control. In contrast to this, during Sabbath rest, one "tries to stand in the cycle of natural time, without manipulation or interference". From my personal experience I can say that this is a refreshing and needed exercise which always leaves my mind refreshed.

Even more than just a personal exercise, Sabbath has a societal dimension for Brueggemann. In our current context of market society, it serves as an act of resistance: by keeping Sabbath one is visibly insisting that our lives are not defined by the production and consumption of commodities. In some countries, such as Germany for example, this might manifest as the fact that almost all shops are closed on Sundays and maybe even in the fact that parking is free almost everywhere on Sunday here.

What Brueggemann points at is indeed a huge problem. In our consumerist society we define ourselves by what and how much we can buy. As others have pointed out, the fact that we constantly compare ourselves with each other (especially now in the age of social media), is something that keeps us busy (work more to be able to buy more) and keeps us from uniting against the exploitative powers that be. One needs only to look at the CEO-to-worker pay ratio from the 1970s in comparison to today to understand that something deeply wrong has happened. While in 1970 the ratio was at about 11:1, by 2023 the average CEO of a major U.S. company earns more than 260 times what the median worker in the same company earns. I could write much more about this and how the doctrine of individualism is used to mask such injustices, but let us for now return to Brueggemann and the concept of Sabbath.

Inequality is hardly a new phenomenon, and Sabbath, according to Brueggemann, has an equalizing power: "Sabbath is the great day of equality when all are equally at rest. Not all are equal in production. Some perform much more effectively than others. Not all are equal in consumption. Some have greater access to consumer goods [...] Because this one day breaks the pattern of coercion, all are like you, equal—equal worth, equal value, equal access, equal rest."

This equality fosters what Brueggemann understands as the final purpose of Sabbath: the creation of the "neighborly reality of the community beloved by God", which can be understood, among other things, as an environment of security, respect, dignity and love.

I want to end the review with one final quote from the book which sums up the problem again, and thus indicates why the idea of Sabbath is still prophetically potent, even if each one of us might find his or her own way of practicing it: "Indeed, our consumer society is grounded in the generation of artificial desires, readily transposed into urgent needs. The always-emerging new desires and new needs create a restless striving that sets neighbor against neighbor in order to get ahead, to have an advantage, and to accumulate at the expense of the other. The power of such a compulsion to 'get,' of course, negates neighborly possibility."

An Absurd Passion for the Impossible in Times of Despair

Towards the end of this year I finished reading To Have or To Be by Erich Fromm. The title of the book hints at two radically different modes of existence that Fromm elucidates in the first part of the book. The "Having Mode" is a way of existing that is centered on the desire to acquire, possess, and control, leading to a life focused on things. In contrast to this is the "Being Mode", which is a way of living centered on inner activity, authentic experience, connection, love and growth, rather than on the acquisition and possession of things. Fromm shows that this distinction has been pointed out in the past by thinkers such as the Buddha, Jesus, Meister Eckhart, Spinoza, Marx and Albert Schweitzer.

In the second part of the book Fromm offers a very accurate analysis of the individual in modern society. The "Having Mode" is clearly dominant as it serves the interest of the powerful owners of corporations under capitalism best: "Modern consumers may identify themselves by the formula: I am = what I have and what I consume". This consumption cannot satisfy the individual in a meaningful way, and it even creates insecurity and anxiety: If I am defined by what I have, what happens if I lose what I have?

Something else is even more problematic: in late-stage capitalism, most individuals have undergone a process of self-commodification. They view themselves as products to be sold on the "personality market" and they almost show a certain lack of identity in order to be adaptable and thus desirable according to the needs of the market. If anything, this has gotten worse since Fromm wrote this book. Byung-Chul Han has written more recently about why this is still so problematic: "The neoliberal regime conceals its compulsive structure behind the seeming freedom of the single individual, who no longer understands him- or herself as a subjugated subject ('subject to'), but as a project in the process of realizing itself ..."

Basically we are self-veiling, to use a term from James P. Carse - we are hiding our unfreedom from ourselves, living in an illusory freedom of being able to become who we (supposedly) want to become.

This all sounds very pessimistic, but Fromm actually ends the book on a quite optimistic note by offering a hopeful vision for the future, while still acknowledging the difficulties which might hinder this vision from being actualized. He calls for a radical transformation of not only individual consciousness towards the "Being Mode" of existence, but also of societal structures. This is important, as the "Being Mode" is already at least partially present in all human beings. If the society we lived in was different and would value individuals as beings and not as consumers, this potential could be further developed in everyone. The most important change in society should be a move away from capitalism towards an organization in which the economy is subordinated to human development and not the other way round as we still have it now.

Furthermore, he argues for some kind of universal basic income, the end of sexism, the prohibition of brainwashing through advertising and new forms of participatory democracy.

From a current standpoint we can sadly see that Fromm's vision is maybe even more utopian today than it was almost 50 years ago. He rightly assessed that there is going to be a growing awareness of crisis and an increasing dissatisfaction with existing societal systems, but instead of this fostering the growth of a humanitarian way of structuring society grounded in love, solidarity and reason, capitalism is still going strong. It can be argued that it is stronger than ever with algorithms and artificial intelligence deciding in a personalized manner what ads and content everyone is shown, while managing to numb many to their dissatisfaction by providing an endless dopamine feed at a fingertip. This way, psychological well-being and our ability to focus are being severely impacted. Politically it's also not looking too well: far-right political movements are on the rise almost everywhere in the west. Instead of recognizing neoliberal politics as the root of many of our problems, these movements are able to convince more and more people that certain groups of people are to be blamed - usually immigrants.

Fromm is right to ask: "Considering the power of the corporations, the apathy and powerlessness of the large mass of the population, the inadequacy of political leaders in almost all countries, the threat of nuclear war, the ecological dangers... is there a reasonable chance for salvation?"

From a purely rational way of seeing things, the answer is almost certainly "No!". Does that mean we should give up? To answer using Fromm's words: "If a sick person has even the barest chance for survival, no responsible physician will say, 'Let's give up the effort,' or will use only palliatives. On the contrary, everything conceivable is done to save the sick person's life. Certainly, a sick society cannot expect anything less."

Can we still have hope in such a situation? Not really - but we might still be hopeful.

The Man Who Lived So a God Might Die

The novel 'Barabbas' by the Swedish Nobel Prize winner Pär Lagerkvist was published in 1950. On the surface it can be summarized as the story of Barabbas - the man in whose stead Jesus was crucified according to the Gospels.

The story begins with his unlikely release from prison after the crowd shouts that they would rather have Jesus crucified instead of the thief and murderer Barabbas. He is certainly quite astonished by this and follows Jesus on his way to Golgotha where he witnesses his death from a distance. His sentiment towards this supposed Messiah suffering a cruel death on the cross is one of repulsion and fascination alike, and will pursue him for the rest of his life.

Even though his friends rejoice in his new-found freedom, Barabbas seems to not be able to fully enjoy it. He can't really return to his former life and is almost bewitched by the meager man who died in his stead. He approaches his followers, the first Christians, and tries to find out more about the life and teachings of Jesus. Although there are other characters beside him, the story mostly focuses on Barabbas's strange attraction to the community of believers.

In the second part of the story, Barabbas becomes the source of hope for another Christian to whom he witnesses about the death of Jesus that he saw with his own eyes. He tries to believe too, but cannot and - in a moment of trial - truthfully denies being a Christian. He thus saves his life but will lose it later in a confused act of trying to make up for his unbelief. Even though in the end he is in prison with other Christians and afterwards condemned to death with them - he remains estranged from them and, in the end, alone.

The life of Barabbas, as depicted in this novel, is often understood to be reflecting modern man in his condition of unbelief. In the novel, the Christians experience deep joy and tranquility in the midst of their suffering, while Barabbas remains troubled and restless even as a free man. He yearns for love and a feeling of belonging, but he can't find it neither with the Christians, nor with his former group of friends.

While Barabbas is haunted by his past, the Christians have found peace with their past and certainty for a glorious future.

To read this as a simple polemic for Christianity would be shortsighted. Lagerkvist does not depict Barabbas as a man who simply chooses not to believe in Jesus - he depicts him as unable to believe. He wants to believe but cannot. The modern man is confronted by Nietzsche's famous "God is dead". For some this might mean the disappearance into insignificance of the God of the gaps, which get fewer and smaller as scientific progress advances. For others this is a signifier of the utter impossibility of a God after Auschwitz and other horrors.

This "God is dead" is experienced by more and more people, be it intellectually, be it emotionally or spiritually.

Another way of understanding the death of God is by looking at the cross, and seeing what Barabbas witnessed in the novel: Jesus's cry "My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me?". Philosophers like Slavoj Žižek read this as a hint at the divided nature of the divine. In this world, just like Barabbas, we experience separation: separation from the people around us, but also a kind of separation or division inside the depth of our very being. What religion offers us is the promise of oneness: the overcoming of the separation in our lives.

In the novel we see this as Barabbas observes the Christians with their supposed inner peace and loving community. The truth is, of course, that Christians experience just as much inner unrest and divisions amongst themselves as other people. The crucifixion hints at the fact that there is contradiction and antagonism even in the absolute, which means it is woven into the very fabric of reality.

Ultimately, Barabbas remains just as religiously invested in the illusion of oneness as the Christian believers. Perhaps the 'death of God' is less about the absence of a deity, but the presence of a division - a fundamental 'not-at-oneness' of everything. In this understanding, salvation is not found in the illusion of wholeness in the absolute Other; instead it is found in the embrace of the fractured self and the fractured world - a realization that tragically eludes Barabbas to the very end.