What is spiritual strength?

Sick conscience, moral forgiveness, and mental health

In the documentary, The Act of Killing, Anwar Congo, a former Indonesian death squad leader, reenacts the ways in which he tortured and murdered over a thousand people through various cinematic styles. At first, Anwar openly boasts about his murders, which he committed during the allegedly anti-communist massacre during the 1960s. He pridefully explains how he pioneered a more efficient approach to mass murder that involved strangling his victims with wire. “This is how to do it without too much blood,” he says with a smile while demonstrating the technique. However, as he performs more reenactments, his conscience sickens. He has nightmares, uses drugs to escape, and becomes physically unwell. 

Anwar is juxtaposed against another former death squad leader, Adi Zulkadry. Unlike Anwar, Adi has already confronted what he did and moved on guiltlessly. Anwar lives alone, while Adi has a family. Joshua Oppenheimer, the documentarian, asks Adi about his crimes during a drive.

Joshua: I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but I have to ask. By telling yourself it was “war,” you’re not haunted like Anwar. But the Geneva Conventions define what you did as “war crimes.”

Adi: I don’t necessarily agree with those international laws. When Bush was in power, Guantanamo was right. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That was right according to Bush, but now it’s wrong. The Geneva Conventions may be today’s morality, but tomorrow we’ll have the Jakarta Conventions and dump the Geneva Conventions. “War crimes” are defined by the winners. I’m a winner. So, I can make my own definition. I don’t need to follow the international definitions. And more important, not everything true is good. Some truths are not good. Like re-opening this case. Even if everything you’re finding out is true, it’s not good. 

Joshua: But for millions of victims’ families, if the truth comes out, it’s good. 

Adi: Fine, but start with the first murder, Cain and Abel. Why focus on killing the communists? Americans killed the Indians. Has anybody been punished for that? Punish them! For me, re-opening this case is a provocation to fight. I’m ready! If the world wants continuous war, I’m ready. If you wanna make us fight, I’m ready! 

Joshua: What if you were brought to the international court in the Hague? 

Adi: Now?

Joshua: Yes. 

Adi: I’d go! I don’t feel guilty, so why wouldn’t I go? [Laughs.] Because I’d be famous. I’m ready! Please, get me called to the Hague! 

In another scene, Anwar and Adi talk while fishing. Anwar solemnly turns to his friend, “For me, Adi, in the end, I’m disturbed in my sleep. Maybe because, when I strangled people with wire, I watched them die. … When I’m falling asleep, it comes back to me. That’s what gives me nightmares.” Adi listens compassionately before giving Anwar some advice. “You feel haunted because your mind is weak. The people we killed lost. Even when they had bodies, they lost. Now, they only have spirits, so they’re even weaker. How can they haunt you? But if you feel guilty, your defenses collapse.” He suggests that Anwar try going to a psychiatrist, a “nerve expert,” for help. He says that Anwar’s nightmares are “just a nerve disturbance” that a psychiatrist could treat. 

A statement from Adi plays as viewers watch him and his family stroll happily around a mall. He describes the ways he murdered the “communists,” how he impaled them, ran them over with cars, etc. He concludes, “The people we killed, there’s nothing to be done about it. They have to accept it. Maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better, but it works. I’ve never felt guilty, never been depressed, never had nightmares.”

The contrast between the two figures is striking. Anwar’s guilty conscience ravages his mental and physical health, while Adi is morally content and healthy. Who is spiritually stronger, Anwar or Adi? Is Anwar stronger because he feels sick about the murders and has nightmares about them? Or is Adi stronger for freeing himself from guilt in a way that enables him to raise a happy family? 

Christian pastors preach about how Jesus replaced priests as the forgiver of sins. “The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but [Jesus] holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:23-25 ESV). Instead of confessing to a priest and receiving God’s forgiveness through the priest’s blessing, Christians individually confess to the invisible person of Christ. 

Christ’s forgiveness is felt as an emotional shift. Guilt motivates the confessor to confess. He experiences divine forgiveness as a reduction in his guilty feelings. If a Christian dwells incessantly on his guilt, he cannot experience the grace and joy of life with Christ. 

Atheists view this process as a convoluted psychological ritual. The Christian confessor forgives himself by mentally externalizing his deserved punishment. His sin is punished, but only in his imagination. He pictures a fictional god sending his son to bear the moral punishment on his behalf, thereby liberating him from needing to receive the punishment personally to feel like his sin was appropriately punished. He imagines Jesus’s bloody body and all the pain Jesus endured, and mentally associates that imagined punishment with his own sin. The psychological ritual concludes when the confessor feels that a moral equilibrium has been restored as a result of this imaginative exercise. He experiences what he calls “God’s justice and mercy” but is really just guilt reduction. 

In the atheist’s view, Adi successfully performs a similar psychological ritual. Instead of invoking Jesus’s blood, he appeals to the ocean of human blood spilled throughout history. He forgives himself by considering the sacrifices he made to win a historical battle. His sins are covered by his own blood, winner’s blood. He doesn’t have to imagine any divine punishment to overcome his guilt and move on with his life. He is therefore more honest with himself than the Christian in the atheist’s view. He fully owns what he did without needing to imagine a fake Jesus interceding on his behalf to restore his conscience. 

Say Adi felt excruciating guilt after his murderous campaign and became a Christian. Say he confessed his many sins to God while kneeling over his bed and felt God’s grace, the disappearance of his guilt. He then went on to become the family man he actually was. Would his fellow Christians regard his emotional transformation as a sign of God’s incredible mercy? Would they view Adi as an exemplar of spiritual strength? 

Conscience speaks through feeling. It inspires emotions and desires. This relationship indicates a more general connection between spirituality and psychological health. A man is mentally healthier, more emotionally stable, and likely physically stronger when his conscience is not burdened. A burdened conscience manifests as debilitating feelings of guilt and shame that can lead to anxiety, depression, self-isolation, substance abuse, self-harm, and suicide. These things seriously obstruct a person’s ability to do good things like support a family or contribute to his community. 

Does a man who wallows in guilt and fails to fulfill his obligations and responsibilities exude less spiritual strength than one who quickly overcomes his guilt and leads a productive life? Perhaps the answer depends on the severity of the crime. Maybe a man who quickly overcomes guilt about massacring a thousand people lacks spiritual strength because he doesn’t wallow enough. He needs to feel guilty for longer to demonstrate that he recognizes the severity of his sin and to achieve some kind of proportionality between his sin and his guilt. Wallowing for only a short while reveals his weakness, his inability to really deal with the weight of his actions. Or maybe such a man exhibits true spiritual strength by consolidating the whole reconciliation process into a short moment of profound guilt and then proceeding on with his life. 

I do not have the answer. 

I leave you with two questions: Who would you rather be, Anwar, the sickly guilt-ridden man who lives alone yearning for forgiveness, or Adi, the content man who loves and provides for his family? What does your answer say about the spiritual strength that you aspire to cultivate?