Continuing the theme of spiritual incest, an old bromide from my youth was, “He who lives by himself and for himself will be spoiled by the company he keeps.”  This is relevant to groups and certainly to churches and denominations.  A church that overly emphasizes  the “come ye out from among them and be ye separate” theme can find themselves pathologically alone to the extent that they have no relevance to the world at large.  They are suddenly lost in “a world of empty self relatedness.”  (Paul Tillich)  And since mental illness is a reference problem, they technically are mentally ill.  A case in point is the infamous Westboro Baptist Church of our present day world.

I would like to offer a quote from an Ibsen play, Peer Gynt, which so eloquently illustrates this “empty self relatedness” that Tillich mentioned.  This is the superintendent of an insane asylum describing the constituents of his facility:

Its here that men are most themselves, themselves and nothing but themselves sailing with outspread sails of self. Each shuts himself in a cask of self, the cask stopped with the bung of self and seasoned in a well of self. None has a tear for others woes or cares what any other thinks….Now surely you’ll say that he’s himself.  He’s full of himself and nothing else, himself in every word he says himself when he is beside himself…Long live the Emperor of Self.

The language is a bit stilted, being centuries old, and it describes individuals.  But the lunacy portrayed here is also relevant to groups who have so isolated themselves, so turned in upon themselves, so violated the law of exchange with the outside world, that they have essentially sold their soul to the devil.