First published in the Baptist Times 15 July 2011
In a sermon the other week, the preacher quoted Carl Jung: 'People who dream of flying are compensating for inadequate personalities.'
It woke me from a reverie, partly because I'm a frequent flyer and partly because I'm suspicious of Christians expressing unquestioning trust in secular experts. Who is Carl Jung to pronounce on dreams?
I googled him. Gnosticism, alchemy, Kabbalah, Hinduism and Buddhism were among his terms of reference. Sigmund Freud was one of his gurus.
Freud claimed that dreams were wish fulfilment, especially of sexual and social desires. Jung claimed they were accurate reflections of the person's actual state. Maybe Jung's clients had what Freud's only wished for. The two experts met and spent time analysing one another's dreams till Freud put a stop to it, saying it could 'undermine his authority.' (What was he dreaming of?)
Alfred Adler said dreams reflect the drive for power. Fritz Perls, of Gestalt therapy fame, said every person and object in dreams is oneself. He would have his work cut out analysing Revelations.
Countless other experts profess conflicting theories. Flying in dreams represents glory. Or fleeing. Or travel, abstract thought, genius, sex (yes, that was Freud), escape, sanctity, ambition, empowerment, and pretty much anything else. Most dream psychologists' backgrounds include some occult involvement, which may explain why they don't think of consulting God.
Dreams in the Bible are either a ploy used by fake prophets 'proving' a message from God (Jeremiah 23) or .... they are a message from God. Accurate information may be revealed to believers like Abraham, Jacob, Daniel and Joseph, or unbelievers like Pilate's wife whose dream warned against condemning the innocent Jesus. Acting on the real godsend-dreams or ignoring them can mean the difference between life or death.
Today, the 'vicar of Baghdad,' Canon Andrew White, reports many of his Iraqi parishioners experiencing dream-warnings to avoid a certain street tomorrow - then hearing next day of a bomb or ambush there. From various sources recently, we hear of Muslims who never heard of Jesus Christ or met a Christian, converting to Christianity following a lucid dream of meeting Jesus.
Joel's prophecy of 'young men having visions and old men dreaming dreams,' which was fulfilled among Jesus' early disciples when the Holy Spirit came, and among believers ever since, gave equal value to waking visions and sleeping ones. If God is revealing some truth, it makes little difference whether the seer's eyes are open or shut, as long as the person is not trying to pull the wool over anyone else's.
Flying features almost as much in the Bible as it does on paranormal websites - again, with similar value given to flying in dreams or in a waking state. Sometimes the flyer is not sure which state he is in, like Ezekiel 'lifted up and carried by the spirit of the Lord,' or Elijah taken up in a whirlwind.
If psychologists are fascinated by flying in dreams, what would they make of people 'lifted up on wings like the eagle's' in waking reality? Jesus ascending into the clouds left even his disciples, who had frequently seen laws of nature overruled, standing open-mouthed.
The disciple Philip, having baptised a passing traveller, was - wide awake - 'taken away by the Spirit of the Lord' and found himself arrived at his next destination.
A similar experience is reported by Briege McKenna, writer of 'Miracles Do Happen.' Walking downstairs in her convent while trying to persuade God of her unsuitability for healing ministry, she found herself lifted up and put down at the far end of the corridor. More than words, it reminded her that God was able to take her beyond her own limitations.
Carl Jung may be right. Inadequate personalities (aren't we all?) dream of flying. And of rising above mortality and arriving where 'every tear will be wiped away,' by our entirely adequate God who keeps his impossible promises, even in our time.
