Category: peace and violence

A sign of contradiction

I am beginning to wonder about a fairly fundamental orientation of the church.  The church has largely understood and accepted the role of being or bringing Christ to the world.  I do not want to rehearse the misguided ways that the church has understood this mission, namely through colonial disbursement.  It is not hard to understand how people can come to the conclusion that contemporary global capitalism is an extension of an earlier theology.  In both practices there is a message of hope that is articulated by the saved/wealthy and in both cases the message never seems to play out as being truly good news for the pagan/poor.

I came across a sort of ominous foreshadowing of this orientation to the church’s message in The Epistle to Diognetus (2nd century).  In upholding love of neighbour the author of this text states,

[H]e who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive [his benefits]: he is an imitator of God.

Now to be sure the early church was not in the same position as it was to rise to in the 4th century but the logic of disbursement is already elevated to a strong paternalistic even divine tone.  While we are uncomfortable with saying that we ‘become a god’ in this imitation, that is essentially what we are saying theologically when we talk about imitating Christ, isn’t it?

In any event, this Sunday I preached on the presentation of Jesus in the Temple in Luke 2.  This is a story of reception, of receiving the Messiah.  And how does Simeon the priest receive Jesus?

Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
29     “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
30     for my eyes have seen your salvation,
31     which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32     a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
A beautiful image hope and peace but then Simeon turns to Mary and says,
This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed (sign of contradiction) so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.
Here are a few excerpts from the tail end of my sermon.
So what does it mean to receive Jesus as a sign of contradiction?  I did a bit of research on this phrase and found that the Catholic Church has an entire doctrine based around it.  This doctrine holds that the church is to be a sign of contradiction; that the church in its holiness it will be rejected or opposed.  There is an element of this doctrine that I can appreciate.  I believe that to live out the vision of the Gospel will lead to contradiction and opposition in the world.  But as I understand it there is a destructive assumption at work in this expression.  The assumption is that it is the church the has the privileged knowledge of how Jesus becomes present in the world.  This doctrine assumes that it is no longer the church that needs to receive the sign of contradiction.  In trying to hold this doctrine the church itself can actually become immune to the presence of Christ.  . . . When you believe that your way of life has a privileged or even exclusive access to ultimate human truth then it will be near impossible to receive a sign of contradiction; you control the rules of the games and determine the value of those around you.
. . .

The church, and particularly the Mennonite church, has elevated the call to discipleship, the call of being like Jesus in the world.  Mennonites have fought theological wars over this matter.  When other churches focused simply on the death and resurrection of Jesus, or the centrality of Communion the Mennonites demanded that we also give attention to Jesus life, how he taught, what he did, how he treated people.  But where is the theology that asks how we might receive the presence of God precisely from outside our theology and our expression?  How does our theology and our practice prepare us to receive something that contradicts our theology and our practice?

. . .

Our tradition affirms that the church is the body of Christ and yet Christ must remain fugitive.  Already as a child in the Gospels Jesus flees to Egypt after Joseph received a vision of Herod’s plot to kill Jesus.  The French activist and philosopher Simone Weil is quoted as saying, “We must always be ready to change sides, like justice, the eternal fugitive from the camp of the victors.”  We cannot secure the place of Christ, but we can hope to receive Christ.  Our vision remains universal because there is no place we will not seek this Christ.  Our theology and practice remains fragmented because we are never so Christ-like that we cannot receive again this child, this man, this saviour, this God.  Our theology and our faith is only as healthy as it is able to receive from outside of its expression.  I am wondering if we have made a fundamental error in our basic understanding of the church’s mission.  We go out not to bring the message of Christ.  We go out to receive it, to encounter the fugitive.

I am not exactly breaking new theological ground and I am not claiming to overturn any notion of having content or a message of some sort.  I do however sense that there is still a horrendous imbalance in how churches continue to view themselves as fortresses of divine truth.  And this line of thinking has helped me to challenge a basic Mennonite goal of discipleship.  While discipleship has always been problematic I have not heard it addressed from the basic shift from giving to receiving Christ.
Thoughts?

Inwardness, actuality, dogmatic policing, and conversion

I would have to say that Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments was the most anticipated volume in my Kierkegaard reading tour.  So far I have not been disappointed.  While it is penned under the pseudonym Johannes Climacus I really feel Kierkegaard ‘pouring it on’ in this volume (and as far as I understand this was to be last and climactic work).  There is no ‘imaginative construction’ to set the stage in so many of his other works.  From the gate Kierkegaard pours forth his account of Christianity as the truth of subjectivity; or, truth as subjectivity.  Throughout my reading of Kierkegaard I have tried to monitor just how he develops inwardness.  I wondered the extent to which I could accept his account given the temptation of introspection as a pretext for a spiritualism that does not take social structures and actions seriously.  I always held out on the side of Kierkegaard because of his insistence on actuality as opposed to abstraction.  I felt that the extent to which Kierkegaard’s thought would veer towards an isolated spirituality then in fact it would betray his commitment to existence (which demands particularity be taken with utmost seriousness).  This being said Kierkegaard’s notion of inwardness was always a little opaque.  Then I encountered this line about halfway through CUP,

The actuality is not the external action but an interiority in which the individual annuls possibility and identifies himself with what is thought in order to exist in it.  This is action. (339)

To risk putting this in a certain therapeutic language I would say this refers to being congruent.  For instance there remains Christian language about loving the sinner and hating the sin.  However, we all know this ends up looking a lot like hating the sinner even if it only sounds like hating the sin.  There remains a fundamental incongruence here.  Kiekergaard advocates famously in another place that purity of heart is to ‘will one thing’.  All possibilities become annulled in passionate clarification of existing in the actuality of love.  And so hating the possibility of hating the sin is annulled in the actuality of loving the sinner.

I frame this response to Kierkegaard due to my own recent conversion experience.  For years I have tried to reflect on how the Gospel calls individuals to orientate themselves towards peace and justice.  This led to significant life decisions in terms of where I lived, how I acted and what I studied.  It was only recently however that I have come to realize that I carried along with this commitment a certain dogmatic policing that continually annulled the actuality of the sort of life I sought.  This dogmatic policing continued to hold people in judgment while outwardly I tried to work for liberation (in what was of course limited and often naive ways).  I still harboured ambiguity around how I could support those in same-sex relationships.  I remained largely blind or at least unresponsive to the gender prejudice that swarmed around in many of my contexts.  I did not integrate the significance that the basic lack of resources can have on people’s lives.

I was not functioning congruently.  In what felt like a very short time something simply fell away.  I felt somehow released to love (yes I will let that stand for all its possible cheesiness).  I don’t have more answers and I don’t know how to act differently.  I don’t actually think anyone would notice the difference.  But I know I am living differently and I know this will effect my ethical posture.  I just know something changed (as I also now it can change for the worse).  Perhaps I am stretching Kierkegaard’s account of actuality but if I am, I don’t think it is by much.  My notion of’ ‘peace and justice’ was largely situated in a field policed by a dogma contrary to peace and justice and so I was given free reign to explore it within those bounds.  This is abstract and speculative thought according to Kierkegaard and the further that path is traveled the further away one is from existence.

Book Review – Anarchy and Apocalypse

Ronald E. Osborn. Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith Violence, and Theodicy (Cascade Books, 2010).

Osborn’s short collection of essays is one of the more eclectic publications I have read in some time.  Faith and violence are indeed the mingled themes that bind this work together; having said that, however, the collection is somewhat nomadic moving from shorter almost op-ed pieces to longer more technical engagements.  Osborn’s introduction claims that a possible underlying ‘project’ here is an attempt to relate anarchist and Christian approaches to nonviolence.

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