Desire Found Me ... or did it?

I've been reading* Andre Rabe's book Desire Found Me. It aims first to introduce us to mimetic theory (hence one strand of my interest in it) as propounded by Rene Girard. 'Desire' in the title is mimetic desire, but desire more generally has to be considered and I think it is right to see desire as a central characteristic of what forms us as human beings.
Having helped us to understand mimesis, Andre Rabe takes us into how this plays out into our spirituality. What I like about this book is that there are relatively simple explanations of mimesis -both the bare psychology (mirror neurons and all that) and the more developed 'psychoprehistory' which he calls anthropology.
Now, I have to confess, that I am well up for the first dimension of mimesis: I am all but convinced that the scientific evidence points that way. I think I've mentioned so before on this blog. And I agree that this basic human psychological trait is what enables 'principalities and powers' to grow out of human interactions. Rabe, rightly in my view, uses this to help us think about evil and the nature of original sin. I think that his exposition of this dimension of mimesis is well done and reasonably clear. Rabe's explanations are, I judge, helpful -though I wouldn't want to put them before someone without university level ability to understand stuff.
Where I'm a bit more skeptical is the second dimension of mimesis. It seems to me that the hypothesis of an ever-tightening spiral of mimetic desire leading to a primal scapegoat murder which becomes reframed as 'sacrifice', is hard to prove or falsify. And to me, it just doesn't quite gel: I find myself unconvinced and unable to quite make the connections stick to contemporary cultural phenomena. But that's not Rabe's fault, he's re-telling Girard's theory. As it happens, I don't think that my skepticism regarding this second dimension of mimetic theory actually impinge on many of the most telling or interesting ideas made in the book.
I enjoyed the reflections on atonement which, again, I think are helpfully expressed I was reminded during some of the discussion of atonement of my own posts trying to place forgiveness at the centre of accounting for atonement. I also felt that the insistence on resurrection being accounted for in whatever theory of the atonement is well made. How that fits with mimesis, I think is also helpfully explored.
I would definitely consider giving this to someone exploring christian formation and spirituality with attention to psychology -particularly in relation to desire- and anthropological insights, especially if there is interest in how it might relate to theories of atonement.

Link-Love: 

alwaysloved.net - Andre's site
Desire Found Me - book site
Andre on Twitter
Andre on Facebook
Andre on Youtube
Andre on Google+
Desire Found Me on Amazon 

* And in all honesty and transparency, I should mention that I was given the e-book free by the publishers via the Speakeasy scheme in exchange for reviewing it to some degree within 30 days. I didn't have to give it a favourable review.

Neurophysiology and spirituality

For those of us who follow Christ, and for others with an interest in the possibility of God, the up-and-coming field of research into the neurology of religious and spiritual experience is one to watch. It will be (actually is) a playground for those disposed to nothing-buttery, and it behoves us as Christ followers to look properly at the results emerging from the research and at the interpretations offered. We should recall that it is unlikely to offer us proof or otherwise of God or afterlife or whatever. However, it will be interesting to compare and contrast reductionist explanations with emergentist ones. The starting point, as Sacks points out is:

The tendency to spiritual feeling and religious belief lies deep in human nature and seems to have its own neurological basis, though it may be very strong in some people and less developed in others.

Remember though that the frame can interpret very differently. Is the spiritual tendency simply an evolutionary quirk or is it sign of a spacetime centred round the strange attractor of an Incarnation? Both readings could make sense.

Seeing God in the Third Millennium - Oliver Sacks - The Atlantic