(Ir)religiosity

“[W]e lack the courage for the truth…[it] will make us stronger just so long as it doesn’t kill us first.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Maybe hypocrisy isn’t the best word. But on a certain level I think it fits. If anything it’s a catchy, provocative title that will hopefully catch the attention of some readers.

Recently I was speaking to a — I don’t want to say hostile — less than friendly crowd on pretty controversial topic in a “church setting.” I was presenting some research I had done (which wasn’t outside mainstream scholarship at all) and was arguing what I believed to be a position of truth and one that in my view remained deeply faithful not only to the Way of Jesus but to the Hebrew prophetic tradition.

I knew in advance that this was going to be tough gig and I decided that I would do the best I could to remain prophetic, speaking what I believed to be the truth, while retaining some sense of a pastoral spirit and meeting people where they are. So I toned down some of the material a bit and tried to walk the line the best I could. I didn’t want to completely alienate or turn anyone off, but at the same time I wanted to challenge them, which meant a certain degree of uncomfortability.

The presentation itself went great. I thought I did I good job of getting my point across while communicating in a way that didn’t upset people (too much). The problem came during the question and answer period. I tried beforehand to rehearse how I might answer potential tough questions so I would sounds too off the cuff. I felt like I think well on my feet, so I wasn’t too worried.

But even still, I was asked a few tough and quite pointed questions that I hadn’t anticipated. I’m not sure if the questions were actually sincere or if they were meant to trip me up. I’d like to hope for the former, but I have my suspicions about the latter. But that is beside the point.

Either way, I took the bait. I tried to answer the question. And, in retrospect, this is what bothers me and has continued to bother me since I took it upon myself to answer. Instead of remaining firm in my commitment to speak the truth, I felt that I accommodating and comprised myself in the name of being pastoral. Instead of answering the question bluntly, as I should have, I coated it a bit, convincing myself that I was meeting this person where he/she was. In short, I felt that I sacrificed the prophetic truth and my own personal integrity for the sake of chaplaincy. I failed at everything about speak of.

So here’s the question: how can a person do both? Can one do both? Can one remain fervently prophetic and speak the truth while remaining pastoral? Are the two mutually exclusive or is there some small space of overlap? Is it possible to build a sense of respect and confidence with a given group while at the same time challenging them and yes, even making them feel uncomfortable with the event of the truth?

Of course the conventional wisdom would hardly recognize these as legitimize questions because, so the rationale goes, it is always possible to speak the truth and remain pastoral; the two are virtually inseparable or so says the empire with one side of its forked tongue while covertly redefining what it means to be prophetic and pastoral with the other.

Meanwhile, we’re conditioned to quote the proverbial axiom: that we are to “speak the truth in love.” Let me be as clear as possible: I understand the necessity of that statement (and by necessity, I mean its original necessity before the imperial powers that be perverted it) and I don’t want to discredit it per se, only the way in which it has been manipulated. In fact, I believe that statement is very much a true statement, one that many critics could stand to hear again in its original voice and with its original veracity and after careful reflection and deconstruction, a statement through which we might answer “yes” to the questions above.

However, I think the notion of speaking the truth in love as been grossly romanticized, especially by those on the Left (who are in my mind no different than those on the Right on a certain level; they are both two sides of the same coin, but I digress). It has been reduced to some sort of feel-good mantra that beckons us all to form a circle, join hands, and sing “Kum by yah” until the last injustice is somehow, through supernatural intervention, overcome without the need for our action and our voice — that is without the event of truth.

In short, I believe some use the statement “we should speak the truth in love” as a means of legitimizing the status quo, of placing accommodation before the prophetic imagination, and of negating the event of truth. And really, that shouldn’t be too surprising because truth tends to be ugly at times, it tends to get us into trouble and even killed. In that respect, the empire wants nothing more than for us to preoccupy ourselves with “speaking the truth in love” as long as that means what it normally means and as long as we continue to allow imperial propaganda to suppress the voices from the margins, monopolize the event of the truth and colonize our prophetic imagination.

Again, I understand the need — or should I say the original need, intent, and veracity — to speak the truth in love, I really do. But I think it is high time we take a serious look at our traditional interpretation of that statement and what it is we mean when we say “in love.” As my personal example shows, most of us have been conditioned by the empire to believe that “in love” means absence of the event of truth, it comes automatic to us, because “in love” means we shouldn’t step on anyone’s toes right? Of course we would never say that, but as with anything our ethos is defined by our actions and not by what we say we believe our subscribe to.

So here’s what I think: when push comes to shove, when we’re forced to choose between the event of truth, as seen in the prophetic tradition, and accommodation — in whatever covert disguise it presents itself in: love, chaplaincy — we should always choose to exercise the creative, prophetic imagination by, as cliché as it sounds, speaking truth to power and allowing the event of truth to unfold itself in our midst. And the first step towards making that happen is liberating ourselves from the death grip of imperial propaganda and civil religion which colonizes the prophetic imagination and murders truth. Until then, all endeavors to be pastoral are nothing more than hypocritical acts of the worst kind.