I got several responses from my last post: one person said "Give me more! Don't stop there!", one person claimed to be "interested to see how this story develops..." Another sent me a link to a cool website. I take this as a good sign. I suppose from here I could explain, in more detail, what seems to have happened. I told myself I'd start writing about something else -- anything else, really -- but maybe I need to get this out.
The ethics of Christian radicalism is generally (and often very specifically) pacifist, in that retributive justice -- making sure the bad guys get it -- is left to God while distributive justice -- making sure the innocent are cared for -- is the purview of the church. On one hand we have "'Vengeance is mine; I will repay,' says the Lord," while on the other we have true religion as caring for widows and orphans. To co-opt Michael Lerner's terminology, the church is the left hand of God and need not concern itself with what the "mighty right hand" is up to. What might otherwise be just a cloistered withdrawal from the messiness of life is offset by a grassroots commitment to helping the poor and needy.
This is attractive because it is very practice-oriented; all you need for a starting point is a recognition that helping poor people is good and killing people is bad, and a willingness to do one and not the other. Of course things are much more sophisticated and nuanced than that, but the point is that even an atheist could, on some level, get behind this. It presents itself as something fairly meaningful to live out, even if a lot of it isn't exactly true in the modern sense. Add a postmodern spin to things and suddenly it's no less true than all the other untrue things we're fed on a daily basis. This is looking easier all the time.
Pacifism as an ethical position passes the "what would the world be like if everyone did this" test -- the world would indeed be a better place if we all loved our enemies, especially if we assumed that meant not killing them -- but it is quite clear that not everyone will. Ever. And this creates a problem, the answer to which is a fundamental church/world dichotomy: God uses, or at least tolerates, the world's violence as a means of keeping things in check while the church does its work of ministering to the victims of civilization. Right hand, left hand. The ethics of loving one's enemies is not a universal standard for the world at large but a specific calling for a people chosen to live out the future God has in store for everyone. Let the nations rage, as indeed they will; the church has other fish to fry.
What you end up with, in political terms, is a variant of radicalism in which "revolution" is deferred eschatologically. It will come by the hand of God, and not by the efforts of mortals. Now, aside from the vaguely apocalyptic possibility of cultural and/or environmental collapse (which I regard as possible but probably not immanent), I don't have an eschatology, and certainly not an expectation that God is going to fix everything. But I find it interesting as a way of couching radical resistance: the church is to resist the fallen power of this world not by striking out against it but living out the alternative within it. It can be, and often is, a beautiful vision, where the weak are counted as strong and the meek lay claim to the earth (non-violently, of course) and lowliest have a voice. The last shall be first, and a little child shall lead them, and this can happen in the here and now, in fits and starts, in the shadow of empire.
This may not be seductive to you, but I'm a sucker for it. We don't have the space to talk about how Paul's vision for the church answers, in theological fashion, some of the nagging questions of radical resistance. I don't have the time to lay out the all of the contours, or name the significant voices, or connect this to larger questions of religion and politics in American culture. That would take, oh, I don't know, a dissertation or something. [One coming near you in 2010; the popular version should be in book form around 2012. If you'd like to pre-order, just send me your credit card number, and never mind all those charges at Starbucks.]
Part of the attraction is that this really does look like the sort of thing you could live out as if it were true. For me, it seemed like this might be it, my personal Holy Grail, a way to have genuine faith -- maybe even a greater faith than others. This is because while they say they believe, they live like they don't, putting their trust in [insert whatever people might look to for solutions to nagging human problems] and failing to fully give up the use of coercive power. Yes, there's a huge red flag there, and this essay is, as usual, part exploration and part confession.
If most Christians live, deep down, as if their faith weren't true -- more like "God helps those who help themselves" than God as a champion of the downtrodden and oppressed -- then living out a radical faith as if it were true is a kind of spiritual one-upsmanship. No more Mr. Closet Unbeliever, I can be Ironic Super-Disciple. Take that! And maybe it wasn't that bad, maybe I'm being too hard on myself, but I really thought this was going to work, that I could be at home with the faith in a way that was real and authentic and intellectually satisfying. And better than all those other people.
The problem with this plan is that you have to actually live it out as if it were true, and I was really only prepared to write about it as if it were true. Oh, sure, I don't do so bad in terms of garden-variety Christian charity, but as with any sort of radicalism you have to really live it to be taken seriously, and I'm not prepared to do that. Plus, when it comes down to it, you have to really believe in something if you're going to die for it, or even if you're just going to radically re-think your own comfort in ways I know I'm not going to do.
The early Christians faced martyrdom bravely because they earnestly believed they would be resurrected for their trouble. To go through the motions and play along with people who don't really believe in resurrection any more than I do is one thing; taking the plunge into this kind of radical faith is another. It's not just that I have problems with the whole literal thing, it's that I also don't completely believe in the social vision, though I find it inspiring. At the end of the day, I think it's great, but for other people; I don't have the stuff. Even Mark 9:24 ("Lord I believe; help my unbelief") isn't working anymore. I'm screwed.
I confess to mourning a little bit, grieving over the loss of ideology. I was so close. I was really getting it, even contributing original thought to the movement. As much as it speaks ill of my character, I was really enjoying the feeling of being right, and the clarity afforded by this kind of extremism. Of course there are more modest and probably healthier versions of the same thing, and I still have the constellation of values and concerns that led me this direction in the first place. Like I said, in some ways not much has changed. But I feel like I've lost my ace, my trump card, my angle. I'm mostly just sort of a generic middle-class moderate liberal, and not a way-cool radical dude. I still have my ear pierced, though.
On the upside, this is somewhat liberating. Trying to sort out all of the ways in which we might be held captive to "principalities and powers" can be an exercise in legalistic futility. McDonald's may be a symbol of everything wrong with capitalism, but there's just something about a double cheeseburger, and just try to feed a minivan full of kids on a road trip without hitting the Golden Arches. Maybe the state is less a demonic leviathan than just a really clumsy and dangerous but indispensable tool. Maybe I don't have to feel guilty about drinking Starbucks. Maybe I can hit a new stride where I don't try to lock any single lens in place, but stay open to a broader range of possibilities -- and more importantly, more open to people.
Because if your spiritual path isn't helping you be less of an asshole, what good is it?
Friday, August 15, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Snapped
Recently something snapped. No, I don't need to go back on medication; it's not that kind of snapped. As much as I'm loath to admit it, as much as I should have seen it coming, I've reached, as I have in times past, a kind of system failure. To put a finer point on the computing metaphor, I still have the same constellation of applications and peripherals, but my operating system crashed. I'm currently working on an upgrade.
Let me try to explain: I'm actually finding a new sympathy for fundamentalists, not because I'm reverting but because I realize my disdain for the fiercely faithful, appropriate though it may be, is really a projection: I still have a fundamentalist's bloodlust for clarity, for simplicity, for a way to answer all of life's nagging questions ahead of time and be done with it (which, of course, never really happens). Locking something in place that will do that kind of work is exhilarating, like an epistemological bong hit. I'm an addict, a junkie. I'm strung out. Just one more, and I swear I'll quit. No, really, I will -- but I need this next one real bad.
In fact the other day it occurred to me that all of my various and varied rabbit trails, my intellectual harem of '-isms' -- mysticism, neomonasticism, preterism, atheism, integralism, primitivism, anarchism, existentialism, liberalism, postliberalism, Christian radicalism -- have been substitutes for the fundamentalism of my college years. In other words, they have been replacements for a God, or a system of answers (or is there a difference?) I no longer truly believe in. Not that I'm certain the universe is simply a happy accident (see 'atheism' in the list above) but that I've been cramming various things in this gaping hole and trying to pretend it's okay.
[I am ignoring, for the moment, the possibility that fundamentalism itself is a way of filling this void by dogmatically asserting the necessity of just the sort of God that doesn't exist -- no offense to God (I'm sure none is taken).]
Now the truth is, I still have sympathies for all those things, and my latest project -- the one that hit system failure over the past couple of weeks (thought it's been longer in coming than that) -- was a combination in some ways of nearly all of them, heavy on the Christian radicalism (which I'm studying, and still find fascinating; giving it the workout that I have will only improve my analysis), and my sympathies are still very strong. In some ways, not a lot has really changed. But it feels huge.
What seems to happen is that I latch on to one of these things and for awhile the clarity is stunning. As I see how things hang together, my reaction is the philosophical equivalent of "Whoa...dude...awesome! Hey -- do you have any Doritos?" Eventually, however, I can't get any more hits. I run it to the rails. I find the fault lines, the contradictions, the fissures. I find the weak spots. At that point the magic is gone; I held on too tightly and mauled it to death, like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I don't know what that says about me but I will say this: a truncated and conscious version of this process has served me well in graduate school.
Part of my realization is that my personal theological project is untenable in its current form. There are too many things I don't really believe in, at least not in a way that makes sense of the rest of it. It's like making a recipe and realizing you're missing one of the ingredients, so you substitute. No big deal. But then there's another one. And another, and pretty soon you have something that might be tasty, but is significantly different from the original recipe.
Or, to simplfy the analogy, it's like making Veal Parmesan with a pork tenderloin because you have a thing against veal. It sounds good, and is even preferable in some ways, but you can't very well call it Veal Parmesan. Your new recipe is informed by it, and might not have existed without the original as a launching point, but it's not the same thing. To stretch the simplified analogy, one might be better off just discreetly passing on the veal when it's passed, or just not showing up for dinner.
So what does this mean, if anything? In the preface to the More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams explains the process of translating Hitchhiker's from one medium to another. At one point, he tells us, this transition meant that some of the characters did different things whereas sometimes they did the same things for different reasons, "...which amounts to the same thing but saves re-writing the dialog."
Well, I don't want to re-write the dialog, so I'm probably going to do a lot of the same things, but for different reasons or for reasons I don't fully understand, and I'm going to see what it's like to live with that. Mostly I notice I'm more relaxed, more tolerant, maybe even more compassionate -- though it's hard to tell since most of this takes place in my head anyway. I'm more accepting of the differing and disparate paths of the people around me, and more willing to accept the world as it comes to me.
Which might be complacency -- but it might be growth. I guess we'll see.
Let me try to explain: I'm actually finding a new sympathy for fundamentalists, not because I'm reverting but because I realize my disdain for the fiercely faithful, appropriate though it may be, is really a projection: I still have a fundamentalist's bloodlust for clarity, for simplicity, for a way to answer all of life's nagging questions ahead of time and be done with it (which, of course, never really happens). Locking something in place that will do that kind of work is exhilarating, like an epistemological bong hit. I'm an addict, a junkie. I'm strung out. Just one more, and I swear I'll quit. No, really, I will -- but I need this next one real bad.
In fact the other day it occurred to me that all of my various and varied rabbit trails, my intellectual harem of '-isms' -- mysticism, neomonasticism, preterism, atheism, integralism, primitivism, anarchism, existentialism, liberalism, postliberalism, Christian radicalism -- have been substitutes for the fundamentalism of my college years. In other words, they have been replacements for a God, or a system of answers (or is there a difference?) I no longer truly believe in. Not that I'm certain the universe is simply a happy accident (see 'atheism' in the list above) but that I've been cramming various things in this gaping hole and trying to pretend it's okay.
[I am ignoring, for the moment, the possibility that fundamentalism itself is a way of filling this void by dogmatically asserting the necessity of just the sort of God that doesn't exist -- no offense to God (I'm sure none is taken).]
Now the truth is, I still have sympathies for all those things, and my latest project -- the one that hit system failure over the past couple of weeks (thought it's been longer in coming than that) -- was a combination in some ways of nearly all of them, heavy on the Christian radicalism (which I'm studying, and still find fascinating; giving it the workout that I have will only improve my analysis), and my sympathies are still very strong. In some ways, not a lot has really changed. But it feels huge.
What seems to happen is that I latch on to one of these things and for awhile the clarity is stunning. As I see how things hang together, my reaction is the philosophical equivalent of "Whoa...dude...awesome! Hey -- do you have any Doritos?" Eventually, however, I can't get any more hits. I run it to the rails. I find the fault lines, the contradictions, the fissures. I find the weak spots. At that point the magic is gone; I held on too tightly and mauled it to death, like Lenny in Of Mice and Men. I don't know what that says about me but I will say this: a truncated and conscious version of this process has served me well in graduate school.
Part of my realization is that my personal theological project is untenable in its current form. There are too many things I don't really believe in, at least not in a way that makes sense of the rest of it. It's like making a recipe and realizing you're missing one of the ingredients, so you substitute. No big deal. But then there's another one. And another, and pretty soon you have something that might be tasty, but is significantly different from the original recipe.
Or, to simplfy the analogy, it's like making Veal Parmesan with a pork tenderloin because you have a thing against veal. It sounds good, and is even preferable in some ways, but you can't very well call it Veal Parmesan. Your new recipe is informed by it, and might not have existed without the original as a launching point, but it's not the same thing. To stretch the simplified analogy, one might be better off just discreetly passing on the veal when it's passed, or just not showing up for dinner.
So what does this mean, if anything? In the preface to the More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams explains the process of translating Hitchhiker's from one medium to another. At one point, he tells us, this transition meant that some of the characters did different things whereas sometimes they did the same things for different reasons, "...which amounts to the same thing but saves re-writing the dialog."
Well, I don't want to re-write the dialog, so I'm probably going to do a lot of the same things, but for different reasons or for reasons I don't fully understand, and I'm going to see what it's like to live with that. Mostly I notice I'm more relaxed, more tolerant, maybe even more compassionate -- though it's hard to tell since most of this takes place in my head anyway. I'm more accepting of the differing and disparate paths of the people around me, and more willing to accept the world as it comes to me.
Which might be complacency -- but it might be growth. I guess we'll see.
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