You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
~ Mt 5.43-48
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse… Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
~ Ro 12.14, 19-21
The violence of our contemporary world is sustained by the mythic discourse of protection. That is to say, violence is routinely justified as a means of protecting the vulnerable, and, in particular, protecting those whom we love. Thus, troops are mobilized and forcefully cross international (and other) boundaries, not because said troops are “going to war” but because they now operate as international “police” forces. In contemporary discourse, a basic (shall we say “ontological”?) shift has occured in the nature of armies. The armies of the dominant global powers are no longer aggressive forces trained for terrorism and conquest. Rather, they are defensive forces trained to implement, and police, “the peace.”
Of course, there is nothing new about this discourse. Empires have always waged wars for the sake of peace, and, in retrospect, we have been able to see that, time after time, it was these wars which were the greatest obstacles to peace. History has taught us that empires that promise peace through violence are, inevitable, the primary agents of the perpetuation of violence in the world.
Still, it is amazing how easy it is for us to understand this about the past, while simultaneously failing to see how we are being manipulated in the present.
Be that as it may, it is worth noting how the discourse of protective violence also operates closer to home, within our own justice systems. Take, for example, those who are in favour of capital punishment in cases of violent or especially heinous crimes — and let's take the example that is most despised in our society: those who have sex with children. Many Christians support death sentences for pedophiles.
Of course, Christians who are in favour of capital punishment in these cases, generally don't justify their position on the basis of vengeance. That is to say, while the families of the survivors (or “victims”) may desire vengeance, the general Christian public is a little more suspicious of vengeance. In theory, we recognize the dangers of vengeance and we recall the inability to see clearly, or respond appropriately, that frequently arise when we've been wronged. Furthermore, we remember the example of Jesus and the injunctions of Paul, and we think, “yes, although we would never blame the families for desiring vengeance, perhaps it is best if we leave vengeance to God.” So, yes, let us confess our desire for vengeance — indeed, let us fully work through that desire, rather than repressing it — but let us distrust vengeance as a motivating force, and let us distrust our ability to see clearly while we are under the influence of this force.
But what of justice? And not only justice but what of protecting the vulnerable? What of ensuring that others will not suffer at the hands of those who commit such acts? This, then, is where the general Christian public becomes attracted to capital punishment. Yes, perhaps we should never kill others based upon feelings of vengeance, but perhaps we should kill others in order to protect the vulnerable (children, in this case) and in order to protect our loved ones (our children, in this case).
Of course, this form of justice is somewhat suspicious. It risks being little more than an act of pre-emptive vengeance. Here it is worth recalling the example of military action. In our day, we have seen the ways in which pre-emptive military campaigns have been waged by some nations in order to prevent other nations from developing the ability to wage war. In general, we have also seen how artificial such pre-emptive reasoning tends to be. Or, stated differently, we have seen that pre-emptive wars are immoral wars. Indeed, I think that all pre-emptive forms of justice risk falling into the same artificiality and immorality. I do not believe that pre-emptive acts of violence are ever justifiable.
However, I think that there is an even more fundamental reason why Christians should refuse to support the death penalty, or any other type of killing that is premised upon the discourse of protection (here I will leave aside references to the biases, incompetence, and corruption that exists within our judicial system — such injustices have been well documented elsewhere and, although such injustices alone are reason to reject the death penalty, I'll leave it to the discerning reader to explore the research on these things). The primary reason why Christians should not support the death penalty in particular, or protective violence in general, is because we are called to love our enemies.
Here it is absolutely essential to recall that our enemies include the enemies of our loved ones. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, the discourse of protective violence runs something like this: “If you hit me, I'll turn the other cheek; If you hit my wife, I'll fuck you up, motherfucker.” The discourse of protective violence rests upon an artifical distinction between “my” enemies, and the enemies of my loved ones, or of the vulnerable. I tell myself that I am committed to forgiving and loving my enemies, but I fail to see that those who hurt my loved ones, or those who hurt the vulnerable, are my enemies. The enemy of my loved ones, the enemy of the vulnerable, is the enemy who I am called to love.
(Some of us tend to forget this because, coming from places of privilege, we have never really encountered anybody who merits the label “enemy”. We think loving our “enemies” means being nice to the guy who picked on us in highschool because we didn't swear or something like that. Thus, when we discover that one of our dear friends has been violently abused, we don't think of the abuser as the “enemy” whom I am called to love; we think of the abuser as a subhuman monster that should be destroyed — “enemies”, after all, are like that guy who picked on me, and so people who do horrible abusive things must belong in a different category altogether!)
With this realisation, those who wish to engage in any act of violence, “protective” or otherwise, must demonstrate that that act of violence is an expression of love for both the vulnerable and the enemy. Indeed, I believe that it is precisely this realization that led to the nonviolence of Jesus, and of the early Church — this is why the early Christians were told that they could not become soldiers, and this is why they allowed themselves (and, nota bene, their loved ones!) to be killed by their enemies. Once we realize that we are called to love our enemies, then we must simultaneously realize that we cannot kill our enemies.
Thus, if Christians are to live as a peace-able people today, if Christians are “to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect” (which means that they are to love as their heavenly Father loves), then the primary challenge which we must confront, deconstruct, and reject, is the mythic discourse of protective violence.
This is truly where the rubber meets the road in our faith, for the most trustworthy gauge of how seriously we take our faith is not how we respond to those who abuse us, it is how we respond to those who abuse our loved ones.
March Books
1. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N. T. Wright.
Well, it was helpful to have Wright summarise and simplify what he has said in more detail elsewhere but, apart from a few points where Wright extends his thinking, this book is basically a combination of The Resurrection of the Son of God and Simply Christian. So, if you’ve read these other books, you may want to take a pass on this one. To be honest, I wish Wright would stop putting out these short books (that mostly restate what he has said elsewhere) and get on with publishing his next installment — the installment on Paul — in the Christian Origins and the Question of God series.
2. Christians at the Cross: Finding Hope in the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus by N. T. Wright.
After reading Surprised by Hope, I thought “okay, this is Wright’s ‘theology of hope’, now he needs to develop his ‘theology of the cross'” (just as Moltmann — whom Wright engages in Surprised by Hope — moved from Theology of Hope to The Crucified God). Thus, I was pleasantly surprised when Wright mentioned that he had simultaneously published a short book — Christians at the Cross — to address some of the issues and questions of the cross and cruciformity.
However, upon reading Christians at the Cross, I must say that I was rather disappointed. Given that this book was a series of sermons given over Holy Week, at a former mining town now experiencing a great deal of poverty and violence, I had fairly high expectations. Sadly, Wright’s book reads like the sort of book that a well-intentioned, but rather clueless, academic would present to those on the margins — the sort of book that the miners I have known would probably read and, after yawning, say “that was… um… nice.”
To be honest, I think that Wright’s earlier writing — parts of The Climax of the Covenant and Following Jesus, for example — exhibit a better introduction into a theology of the cross. In those works, Wright talks about following the Spirit, and the crucified Lord, into the “groaning places of the world” in order to be agents of God’s new creation. I wish Wright would develop that sort of thinking more (but, then again, leading the affluent lifestyle of a Bishop doesn’t contribute well to developing this sort of thinking). Instead, in these sermons were have a classical music motif that dominates — talking about how the Old Testament is the bass part, the New Testament is the treble part, and our lives are the alto part. Granted, this is a clever analogy, but if miners in England are anything like the miners (or iron-workers, or labourers, or loggers) that I have known, then I suspect the resounding response from Wright’s audience was, “Bo-o-o-oring!”
3. A Theology of History by Hans Urs von Balthasar.
I find von Balthasar to be unique amongst authors because, far more than anybody else, I find myself needing to put his books down — often in the middle of a paragraph — in order to pray. No other author consistently moves me to prayer in this way and this alone is reason enough to read his books.
Balthasar’s central thesis is that Christ is the “norm” and “living centre” of history, through whom we then interpret the rest of history. Now this is a fairly standard Christian approach to history (or, should I say, eschatology, which I believe is the proper term for a Christian theology of history). However, Balthasar, as always, puts a fairly exciting and unique spin on how this works out. He argues that Christ’s mode of time is surrendering all sovereignty to the Father, and thereby receiving everything from the Father, to such a degree that “receptivity is the very constitution of his being.” This then leads Balthasar to conclude that all sin is found in our efforts to break out of this mode of time either by attempted to flee from time into timeless constructs and philosophies, or by attempting to anticipate the will of the Father, rather than simply receiving what the Father gives through the Spirit. Consequently, just as Christ gives meaning to time, Christians can participate meaningfully in time, because they are in Christ. Thus the Church takes on Christ’s mission and becomes “the ultimate gift of God to human history.”
Damn good stuff, what?
4. A Broad Place: An Autobiography by Jürgen Moltmann.
Well, this was a fun read, and I’m hoping to use some of my free time (when I have free time, that is) to read more auto/biographies this year. As a fan of Moltmann, it was interesting to get a glimpse into events that Moltmann had only hinted at, or spoken of in a truncated manner, in his earlier works (usually in his introductions to his various works, but especially in Experiences in Theology). I did, however, find myself a little puzzled by the way in which Moltmann connects his theology to his lifestyle as a renowned academic, and thus I hope to have my questions answered once he receives the letter that I have written him (see my post below). I’ll keep y’all posted.
5. The Making of the Counter Culture: Reflections on the tecnoratic society and its youthful opposition by Theodore Roszak.
I saw this book in the “free books” bin at my school, picked up it, and then ended up really getting into it. It’s interesting to read a book on the counter-culture that was published in 1969 — just before the counter-culture of the ’60s really began to die.
Simply put, Roszak is a fan of the counter-culture — indeed, he believes that the counter-culture is the only move,ment that contains that which is capable of freeing bourgeois society from itself — but he is also aware of its weaknesses. Indeed, his warnings to the counter-culture remain as appropriate today as they were then (see my post below). Of course, I believe that Roszak is operating with a faulty soteriology (the flipside of the faulty State-based soteriology), but his book was still quite a bit of fun to read, in part because he was commenting on authors — like Ginsberg, Watts, Goodman and Marcuse — whom I have not read in detail.
6. Street Stories: 100 Years of Homelessness in Vancouver by Michael Barnholden & Nancy Newman, with photographs by Lindsay Mearns.
This book provides a nice, clean-cut, overview of how homelessness developed in Vancouver, and how the downtown eastside became what it is today. This overview takes the first forty or so pages. The remaining eighty pages are very brief glimpses into the lives of thirty-eight different street-involved people (who allowed their pictures to be taken, and who give advice to youth who are considering homelessness).
Finally, I should note that this book starts with a fantastic quotation from Herman Melville that reads as follows:
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed and well-fed.
Amen, brotha!
Death and Story-telling from the Margins
Remember: in one’s own death one only dies, but with the death of others one has to live.
~ Mascha Kalécko
Yesterday a fifteen year old girl was found dead in one of the Single Room Occupancies in the downtown eastside. The media is reporting that no foul play is suspected, but the word on the street is rather different. Be that as it may, I’ll leave the details aside.
…
It’s an odd thing to constantly be living one’s life in the presence of death — and not just death that comes to take those who have lived full and privileged lives, but death that comes violently for the young who never had a chance. My wife was hit especially hard this time. She was doing outreach in the alleys yesterday, it was a beautiful sunny day, and she was wondering why hardly any kids were out. It was only after she started hearing the stories circulating about the girl who died that things made sense — the kids were hiding, avoiding risky places, they didn’t know who would get it next.
…
I’ve always felt conflicted about sharing my experiences with the marginalised, or the experiences of others, on this blog. Some stories seem too intimate, too sacred, to share — especially with strangers who, nine times out of ten, completely miss the point. I worry that I simply end up becoming another form of provocative, but essentially meaningless and inconsequential, entertainment. Readers will be titillated by my stories, and will leave me notes telling me how “hard-core” I am, and thus we arrive at a parasitic relationship where I exploit the vulnerable by sharing their stories with the apathetic in order to boost my ego.
And yet, another side of me feels as though it is burning if I keep these stories in. These stories must be told, they must be presented to the public. This is the suffering that is goin on in our own backyards — these are the kids we ignore on the sidewalk when you step into Starbucks to buy our fucking “fairtrade” coffee. These stories must be told. They must be thrown back into the faces of the public because maybe, just maybe, somebody will be moved to act.
These stories are my act of begging. A begging that, just like the begging of the youth I know, is almost always ignored.
…
I hope Jesus has finally come to meet this girl. I hope her hard days are over now. I hope she is free. It is we, the living, who must feel her death as a wound. It is we, the living, who are left wondering how people can do the things that they do to other people. Her race is over. It is for us to labour in exile, while she is welcomed home.
An Aside on Race and Gender
In combatting racism, it is not enough to become “colour-blind.” Such an approach assumes that people of all races have an equal chance to “make it” in our society, thereby maintaining the fiction that society itself is neutral when it comes to matters of race. Thus, the “colour-blind” approach ignores the very real, and ongoing, structural evils that confront black people in the United States, Native people in Canada, and so on. In such a situation, one cannot become colour-blind. Rather, one must become aware of the ways in which the structures of our society are deeply rooted in racism. One must see colour, instead of ignoring it, if one is to truly offer an alternative. The solution to racism is not ignoring race, it is “Black Power” or “Native Pride” or whatever other movements embrace an awarenes of race, instead of side-lining race altogether.
Similarly, in combatting patriarchalism and sexism, it is not enough to espouse a “gender-neutral” approach (say in one’s writings). Once again, such an approach assumes that society, and its structures, have adopted a gender-neutral approach, and thus all that remains is for each individual to become gender-neutral. This is a lie. Society, and its structures, still perpetuate a consistent gender bias (to state it mildly; if you want a stronger proof of this, look up the statistics on the prevalence of sexual violence in Canada). Thus, the solution to patriarchalism and sexism is not gender-neutrality — after all, there can be no neutrality in such things, one is either for, or against, the oppressed. Rather, the solution is “Feminism” and other liberating movements that take gender seriously.
You see, when we try to take an enlightened approach to things and say, “oh, things like race and gender don’t mean anything to me — they don’t have any impact on how I view people,” we have actually become complicit with the oppressors and bought into the myth of “equal opportunity” that they have sold us. For as long as people are oppressed because of things like race and gender, then those things should matter very much to us. Otherwise, we run the risk of thinking we are “radical” or “loving” when, in actuality, we are perpetuating systemic evil.
Ultimately, I think that the key to all of this is not treating things like race and gender as primary ontological categories, but as ideological social constructs that are used and abused by those who seek to influence the formation of our life together. Hence, they are both relativized and, at the same time, taken with deathly seriousness. Yes, we are all God’s creatures; yes, we are all brothers and sisters and (by hopeful implication) child-heirs of God. Yes, in that light things like race and gender appear to be inconsequential… BUT in the very real socio-political and economic realm of our contemporary life together, things like race and gender are used in crucial, and often brutal and death-dealing, ways. Therefore, we need to also take these things seriously.
Thus, we once again discover that the proper way forward is revealed by maintaining the eschatological tension upheld by the New Testament.
If You Want to Journey with Marginalised People, Do the Necessary Prep Work!
Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called child-heirs of God.
~ Mt 5.9
God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Some Jews who went around driving out evil spirits tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed. They would say, “In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out.” Seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. (One day) the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
~ Acts 19.11-16
Friday evening I ended up attending a candlelight service at a church that some of my friends attend. This church has a reputation for trying to journey alongside of various marginalised populations, and several of the people who go there also work for a Christian drop-in in the downtown eastside. Not only that, but this church is also one of the churches that participate in the “Out of the Cold” program, and thus it operates as a shelter for homeless people on certain nights of the week during the winter.
Anyway, during the service last night a drunk street-involved man became volatile and became increasingly loud, vulgar, and violent. To my surprise, nobody seemed to know how to deal with the situation, and none of the people in attendence who actually worked in the downtown eastside did anything to de-escalate what was happening. Now I get that this church wants to be a welcoming place for those who are, in general, made to feel unwelcome, but once a fellow starts yelling, “Fuck you, you whore!” and things like that, while simultaneously becoming increasingly threatening and violent in his actions, well, something needs to be done. So, to make a long story short, I ended up having to get up and deal with the fellow. It ended up being fairly exhausting for me, but nobody got clobbered so all’s well that ends well.
However, I felt quite frustrated by how the church handled the situation. Not only was there no structure in place for addressing this sort of situation (and this sort of situation is inevitable if a community chooses to try to journey with street-involved people), but those from the church who did respond to this situation made some real basic mistakes and ended up worsening things. For example, the first young guy who went to talk to the man, approached him from behind, and put his hand on his back. So, here are a few of the basics: when dealing with a volatile situation involving people who are street-involved (1) if at all possible, never come at somebody from behind; and (2) don’t touch somebody unless you (a) absolutely have to, or (b) have a very close relationship with the person you are about to touch (and even then, think twice — when somebody is preparting themselves for a fight, the last thing you want to do is touch them).
So, if this wasn’t bad enough, some little old lady decided she wanted to take the fellow aside (after the service had ended and after we had moved outside) and reprimand him while telling him that Jesus loved him. Once again, I had to intervene to make sure the little old lady didn’t get knocked out. So, here are a few more of the basics: (3) limit the number of people involved in the situation — if somebody who is drunk and has been on the edge of violence wants to shut up and bugger off, let him shut up and bugger off. At that moment, he doesn’t need to hear about how much Jesus loves him — he needs to get some sleep and sober up; (4) The whole “aw shucks, we just want you to know that you are loved, so can you please just be a little more polite, good buddy” thing doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes you need to look like a you’ve been in a fight or two, and you know how to carry yourself in that sort of situation. It’s all about how you position your body, what you do with your hands and eyes, and what you choose to say or not say. This is an art that needs to be learned — you need to be able to show that you are willing to physically commit yourself to the situation, while not actually posing or acting in a way that escalates the situation.
Hence, my quotes at the beginning of the post. Yes, I believe we are called to journey alongside of marginalised people; yes, I believe that we are called to intervene into violent situations (which is why I’ve jumped into so many fights), and, yes, I believe that this is an integral part of our call to be “peacemakers.” However, we need to recognise that being a peacemaker is something of an art that requires us to practice certain disciplines — disciplines that require some training — otherwise we risk following the trajectory of the seven sons of Sceva.
So, let me be clear. If you are a part of a church that wants to try to journey alongside of marginalised people groups I think that that is really, really wonderful. However, as a community you will need to think carefully about how you go about doing this, you will need to develop some structures and people that are capable of responding to crisis situations, and it’s not a bad idea to consult with agencies who have been doing this sort of thing for awhile so that you can learn from what they have done well, and what they have done poorly (also, for those without experience, who don’t have good instincts, something like Non-Violent Crisis Intervention Training would be worthwhile). If you don’t do the necessary prep work, your good intentions will likely create a good many messes that can result in people getting hurt and, even more importantly, can result in you driving away or hurting those marginalised people with whom you are trying to journey.
That said, I’m not altogether shocked that all of this went down at a Good Friday service. Somehow it felt… appropriate.
An Open Letter to Jürgen Moltmann
Dear Dr. Moltmann,
It has now been almost ten years since I first began reading your work. Over these years, your books have been my constant companions – they were the first serious theological works that I read and, as I have continued my studies, your writings have continued to be my “first love.”
However, as I have read, and reread, your initial trilogy, your Systematic Contributions to Theology, and various other pieces that you have published, I never once considered writing to you. But then I read your recently published autobiography, and I suddenly felt as though you were somebody I could approach – both to question, and to express my gratitude.
Let me begin with what are bound to be stuttering and inadequate expressions of gratitude. No other author so profoundly influenced both my thinking and living during some of the very formative years of my life. For this, I am forever in your debt, and am deeply grateful.
I fell head-over-heels into your work when, in the first year of my Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies, a professor suggested that I read The Trinity and the Kingdom. Discovering your perichoretic understanding of the Trinity, and your application of that way of being-in-relationship to politics, ecclesiology, and other inter-personal relationships profoundly impacted me. “Yes!” I exclaimed to myself, “It is this mutual indwelling, this freely giving and receiving, of the Lover and the Beloved, which should define how we relate to one another!” Yes, you say it all so well; the Other ceases to be the limitation of my freedom, and is revealed as the expansion of my freedom. Let us love and be loved!
I hope you do not mind if I insert a few autobiographical remarks at this point. Like you, I have also never been tormented by the question: “Who am I really?” For, as you say in the postscript to your autobiography, “[t]hat question has left me since I experienced the love of a beloved person.” I well remember when I first encountered the love of God, and came to know myself as one who was, and is, Beloved. That experience was, quite literally, life-changing. It occurred when I was 17, a few months after my parents had kicked my out of the family home, and onto the street. At the time I was either homeless or (more usually) sleeping on couches at various friends’ houses, and I thought I was anything but Beloved. Yet the love of God broke through and changed my life, precisely when I thought I could go no lower.
Thus, the driving question of my life is similar to yours. After surviving the firestorm in Hamburg, you found yourself asking, “Why am I alive, and not dead like the others?” It seems like what answers you could find to this question came from the significance of your life and work. Perhaps, you seem to suggest (but never say!), you survived because God intended to use you in the many ways God has.
My question is this: “Why have I had my life transformed by the in-breaking of God’s Spirit of love, and others have not?” You see, after escaping homelessness, I have gone on to work with, live amongst, and journey alongside of the “crucified people of today”, as those people are found in the inner-city neighbourhoods of Canada’s urban centres (first in Toronto, and now in Vancouver where I currently reside). As I work, live, and journey with those who are being sexually, physically, and emotionally, exploited, abused, and abandoned, I regularly see people who are overpowered, and destroyed, by the powers of violence, addiction, and loneliness. Over and over I find myself wondering, “Why did God come and meet me but not all these others?” Regardless of the significance my own life has (or does not have), I cannot be satisfied with the suggestion that God broke into my life, and not into the lives of others, because he had some sort of special plan just for me. God could just as easily use anybody else to do what I do. Essentially, the question does not focus on me but on those others – the ones God has not yet come to meet. Why does God wait so long to come to meet us? Having spent close to a lifetime struggling with your own (similar) questions, I wonder if you can help shed some light on mine.
After I read The Trinity and the Kingdom, I quickly dove into The Crucified God. Reading this book was the first time I had heard of the notion of a suffering God, of a God who is with us, weeping and suffering alongside of us, even in places of godforsakenness – and it is to this belief that I have returned over and over again in my own life, and as I have sought to journey alongside of others. Indeed, in the years that I have spent journeying alongside of those who have truly experienced some of the hells of this world, and who are frequently understood (by themselves and by others) as godforsaken, I have shared this belief many times over and it has often given birth to perseverance, hope, and new life. Thus, I feel privileged to have been able to share your thoughts with many who would never read theology – child prostitutes, rape survivors, gang-members, drug dealers, and so on – and seen the fruit that your thoughts have borne in their lives.
Of course, your thinking has impacted me in many other ways – your thoughts on universalism presented in The Coming of God (and elsewhere), your reflections on the Eucharist presented in The Church in the Power of the Holy Spirit, and of course your many reflections on hope, promise, longing and anticipation in Theology of Hope – but, if I continued in detail, I would not know where to stop. Yet, as I try to express my gratitude, words fail me. “Thank you” sounds so superficial. What can I say? Je vous embrasse.
That said, there is one question that I would very much like to ask you. Throughout your writings, you constantly raise socio-political and economic issues, and are frequently in (a mostly approving dialogue) with the broader themes of liberation theology (despite the ways in which you were personally wounded by some liberation theologians). Indeed, I believe that you have consistently offered a liberating political theology that carries significant implications relating to issues of justice, solidarity, resistance, community, and, of course, love.
However, I would be very interested to hear how you then understand the ways in which your life as an Academic has related to these things. You see, after reading your autobiography and hearing of endless sherry parties, multiple trips to exotic destinations, several stays in flashy hotels, I started to think, “This all sounds so… bourgeois.” Where is the longing that hope brings? Where is the solidarity that love requires? Where is the resistance that arises from our memory of God’s actions and God’s promises? Consequently, although you speak of progressing from “the restless God of hope to the ‘indwelling and ‘inhabitable’ God” I can’t help but wonder if you simply became satisfied with the comforts offered to those who are situated in places of privilege and power.
Now, please, I hope you will forgive me for asking these questions. It is not my desire to be counted amongst those liberation theologians who “crucified” you in ’77. This question is one that is a part of my own process of “faith seeking understanding”. Indeed, it is part of my own process of trying to understand how one can be both an academic and be rooted in communities located within “the groaning places of the world” (N. T. Wright’s phrase). As I now consider moving to Europe to pursue PhD studies in theology, I cannot help but wonder if such studies will lead me into greater intimacy with the crucified people of today – with whom I am already intimately journeying – or if it will lead me away from intimacy with these people. Thus, I would find it very helpful if you could explain to me how your life as an Academic has fit with the themes of justice, solidarity, resistance, community, hope, and love, which you yourself have developed.
Let me try to say this another way. Although you explore the importance of recognising one’s locus theologicus, in your book Experiences in Theology, you do not comment on the idea that some loci may be better than others. After reading your autobiography, it seems to me that you are operating with the assumption that one can engage in a liberating political theology, even while living comfortably in places of power and privilege, so long as one is aware that this is where one is located. What you do not seem to suggest is that this liberating political theology should, in fact, lead us away from such places of power and privilege as we move into increasing solidarity, and intimacy, with those who are godforsaken, oppressed, and crucified within our societies.
In this regard I have trouble simply accepting the idea that the Academic contributes thoughts – analysis, theories, suggestions, and so on – while others, say the activists, actually engage in the practical work of living these things out. I think that such a divide is devastating to both Christian thought and action, and I wonder how much Christian academics who think this way are only fooling themselves. In this regard, I cannot help but think of the words of Slavoj Žižek:
Even in today’s progressive politics, the danger is not passivity but pseudo-activity… [radical academics] count on the fact that their demand will not be met—in this way, they can hypocritically retain their clear radical conscience while continuing to enjoy their privileged position… Let’s be realistic: we, the academic Left, want to appear critical, while fully enjoying the privileges the system offers us. So let’s bombard the system with impossible demands: we all know that such demands won’t be met, so we can be sure that nothing will actually change, and we’ll maintain our privilege! (I’m mixing a passage from Lacan with a passage from The Puppet and the Dwarf in this quotation.)
Now, let me be clear: I do not believe that you are the sort of radical Leftist academic that Žižek is criticising in this passage. I have no intention of questioning either your motives or your character. However, I do wonder how you understand the relationship between your rather radical theology and your (seemingly) rather privileged life(style). Indeed, given my own interest in academics, how you answer this question could significantly impact the direction of my own life.
And so, Dr. Moltmann, I must bring this letter to an end. Once again, let me reiterate the debt of gratitude that I owe you. Thank you, a million times over. I pray that your own gratitude and delight in life would only continue to increase, and I pray that, like you, after having so many intimate encounters with death, that I too will be increasingly joyful and delighted in every new morning.
Grace and peace,
Dan
Stations of the Cross: When Visual Arts replace Cruciform Living
At the beginning of Holy Week, the “artist in residence” at my school, led a number of students and faculty through the Stations of the Cross. I did not attend. However, it did get my wheels turning a bit. You see, a professor had emailed me and invited me to go through the Stations with him, but I was worn down from a rough couple of weeks in the downtown eastside, so I turned him down.
Truth be told, I’ve always been a little suspicious of the ways in which Christians approach the Visual Arts. I’ve often wondered if we simply use the Visual Arts as a means of stirring emotions within us that we do not feel otherwise — and the catch is that we should be feeling these emotions, and we know that we should be feeling these emotions. However, rather than going into the sort of life experiences that would stir these emotions within us, we choose to participate in some sort of Visual Arts experience, which functions as a simulacrum of the real event, and thereby stirs our emotions. We then become satisfied because we think that it is the feeling of these emotions that is important, when in actuality is is the participation in the event that leads to these emotions that is important.
This then leads me back to the way in which we tend to practice the Stations of the Cross during Holy Week. Rather than living lives that continually lead us through these Stations, we prefer to simply participate in some sort of Visual Arts experience, which allows us to stimulate the emotions we associate with the Stations of the Cross. Rather than engaging in cruciformity, we observe the simulacrum of cruciformity, and receive some form of emotional gratification (I don’t think that I would be overstating my case to say that such an experience is to Christian living what pornography is to sex — which is why The Passion of the Christ is the ultimate Christian snuff film).
Of course, this is not to say that we should then abandon this sort of ritual. Rituals, and rituals involving the Visual Arts, can be important. However, I believe that we are engaging in a vile form of hypocrisy if we choose to participate in the Stations of the Cross at Easter while refusing to move on the via crucis during the rest of the year.
These, then, have been some of my Stations of the Cross during the last few weeks:
-Having my wife come home and tell me about a 15 year old girl she had met, who is addicted to crack and working in the sex trade because, ever since she was five, her father used to rape her in front of her brothers in order to teach them “how to be men” (Station One: a death sentence/Station 10: a person stripped/Station 11: a crucifixion).
-Jumping into a knife fight/rumble between two groups of feuding kids, just before things got bad (Station 5: participating in the crosses of others).
-Meeting a woman on the bus at night; she was asking me for money, and I had none. She had no shoes on and sores all over her feet (Station 8: behold the daughters of our city).
-Four dead sex workers (Station 12: death)
I think you get the idea. If you truly want to come to know, and experience, the Stations of the Cross, I know no better way than choosing to journey with those who are in exile.
If you could ask God one question…
…what would it be?
For me, there is one question, and only one question, that sums it all up:
Why have you waited so long to return and make your home among us?
This, I think, is the great challenge to faith — a challenge that has not, and I suspect cannot, be adequately answered until God does come again and make all things new.
If it is Too Late; Then we must Hope
[I]f anyone says, ‘After Auschwitz it is too late to go on hoping for the Messiah, who could come but who has not in fact come’—then, said Fackenheim, he would reply, ‘It is precisely because it is too late that we are commanded to hope… To hope after Auschwitz and Hiroshima is just this: don’t leave the future to hell because hell is always with us.
~ Moltmann, quoting Emile Fackenheim, in A Broad Place: An Autobiography.
I think that this quotation from Fackenheim does a fine job of expressing the sort of hope that I am pursuing. Journeying, as I do, with many who are considered hopeless, I am often confronted with the questions posited by the supposedly well-intentioned realism that pervades our culture:
“Why bother with all these people? After all, they will never get clean, they will die on the street, they will continue to break, and be broken by, others. Why remain in such a dark place? Why throw away your life, why surrender whatever talents you might have, on those who will not appreciate them? For these people, it is too late. Move on. Be free of them (doesn’t your Jesus offer you freedom?). Focus on those who are close to you, focus on those who will appreciate what you have to offer. Make the little difference that you can, but, for heaven’s sake, don’t get so caught up in all of this!”
Such realism is entirely hopeless. It is here — here in the places that are beyond hope, in the people that are beyond saving, in the broken who are beyond fixing — here that hope must truly come to exist. For hope should not be mistaken for the optimism that comes with experiencing privilege, nor should it be mistaken for the pale myth of progress that continues to cling to our culture. No, hope, the true hope of Christianity, must be born from the hells of our world. True Christian hope is precisely the sort of hope that arises from the (realistic but hopeless) observation that “it is too late.”
Why is this the case? Because Jesus is the perfect example of the ways in which our concepts of ‘lateness’ are displaced by God’s activity. By all accounts, after dying on the cross, and spending three days lying dead in a tomb, it was too late for Jesus to be anything but another failed messianic pretender. The imperial powers, coupled with the local religious and social elites, had definitively put an end to Jesus’s work — Jesus was dead, the game was up, all the disciples could do was flee for their lives. But then resurrection happened… and everything changed. New life, life that conquers death, occured, and is now a central part of the lordship of Jesus.
And so we know, when all the powers of death are united, when they are bearing down on us and telling us that it is too late for change, too late for this person, too late for that person, too late for hope — when know that there is a power greater than death. The power of God, acknowledged in the confession of Jesus’s Lordship, it is this that requires us to hold onto hope for everyone whom death tries to claim (and even does claim).
Too late? We know that it is not too late. It is early! The new day has only just begun to dawn.
Too late? We know that it is not too late. It is only too late for death and all the powers in the service of death. For the rest of us, there is hope.
Too late? We know that it is not too late. After Holy Saturday, all of our hells have been planted with hope, and even the most devestated places can be the foundation for fertility. Yes, it is not too late, this wilderness will yet rejoice, will blossom, will shout for joy.
Too late? We know that it is not too late. The eyes of the blind will see, the ears of the deaf will hear, the lame will leap like a deer, the dead will be raised to new life, “and the ransomed of the LORD will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 35).
Challenges to 'Counter-Cultural' Christianity
In The Making of the Counter Culture: Reflections on the technoratic society and its youthful opposition, an exploration of the counter-culture of the 1960s, Theodore Roszak notes how the majority of those interested in the counter-culture are youth who were raised within the domains of bourgeois society. Roszak views this as an unanticipated development within the middle and upper classes. Thus, he argues that “the bourgeoisie, instead of discovering the class enemy in its factories, finds it across the breakfast table in the preson of its own pampered children.” He then goes on to note the twin perils of this counter-culture: “on the one hand, the weakness of its cultural rapport with the disadvantaged, on the other, its vulnerability to exploitation as an amusing side show of the swinging society.”
I think that this is an astute observation, and one that remains true for Christians who are interested in pursuing (or recovering) a counter-cultural form of Christianity within our contemporary context. In particular, I can't help but think of the Emergent Church 'Conversation'. It seems to me that the Emergent Church is, by and large, filled with disillusioned bourgeois Christians, and frequently falls prey to the perils Rozsak notes. It frequently fails to connect with the disadvantaged (even as it talks about AIDS in Africa, and caring for the environment) and is frequently simply a means of amusement, and self-gratification, for those who are no longer amused, or gratified, by the expressions of Christianity that dominated mid-to-late twentieth century America. All that to say, I don't think that there is very much that is 'counter-cultural' about the Emergent Church. Rather, I think it frequently simply counters the culture of modernity, and posits a form of Church that fits well within the dominant culture of 'post-modernity', or 'late capitalism.' Indeed, that the Emergent prefers to be called a 'Conversation' and not a 'Movement' should already be tipping us off to these things!
To a certain degree, I think that the same criticisms, and cautions, should be applied to the New Monasticism. Granted, there seems to be genuine efforts to attain a much deeper connection with the disadvantaged, but the extent of the depth of the New Monasticism remains to be seen. Given the media hype that has surrounded some of its proponents (think Shane Claiborne), I can't help but wonder if a great deal of its popularity is due to the fact that it can be viewed as an 'amusing side show'. Here I am reminded of Herbert Marcuse's response to his own rise to fame after the student revolts of 1968. “I'm very much worried about this,” Marcuse said. “At the same time it is a beautiful verification of my philosophy, which is that in this society everything can be co-opted, everything can be digested.”
Finally, I think that the same caution can be issued to certain 'hot' theological topics, especially topics that attempt to posit something unique (and thereby counter-cultural) about Christianity. Take, for example, our increasing interest in trinitarian theology. Now I don't want to suggest that we abandon trinitarian thinking (far from it!); what I do want to ensure is that trinitarian theology remains grounded in the proper place. That place, of course, is the cross of Christ, which then also becomes our own places of cruciformity as we follow Christ on the road to the cross. Thus, Jurgen Moltmann (who is surely one of the reasons why trinitarian theology has gotten 'hot') says the following in his recent autobiography, A Broad Place: “the doctrine of the Trinity becomes abstract and loses its relevance without the event of the cross.” Rather than being a amusing side show within theology, trinitarian thinking should also lead us to a deeper connection with the crucified Christ, with the crucified people of today, and with our own call to cruciformity.