(Ir)religiosity

Contrary to the plethora of blog reviews I’ve read, I don’t think Brian McLaren goes too far in his newest book.  I think he doesn’t go far enough.  I’ll explain.

One of McLaren’s major claims in the book — in fact, the claim on which the entire book rests — is that traditional biblical hermeneutics have been limited to what he calls the “six-line Greco-Roman narrative” which constructs the rigid dualisms and binaries with which we are all familiar: spirit/body, heaven/earth, form/substance, good/evil, etc.  When applied to Scripture, this interpretive lens results in the following trajectory that has prevailed in traditional, conventional Christianity for quite some time: (1) perfection in creation, (2) fall into sin, (3) condemnation, (4) the possibility of salvation, and either (5) eternal damnation or (6) a return to perfection in heaven.  The picture below gives you sense of the movement of the lines.

McLaren maintains that this Greco-Roman narrative has been transposed over Scripture as a narrative overlay.  As such it guides interpretation of the text and, in turn, the trajectory of theology.  For McLaren, this is the dominant way of reading and interpreting Scripture, it is, quite literally, the water in which every Christian swims.  The deeper question, though, is whether Scripture is being circumscribed and restricted by this narrative overlay.  That is, whether the arc of the Greco-Roman narrative is actually indicative of Scripture itself or whether it has been imported to the text.  McLaren thinks it has.  And he spends a good deal of time drawing comparisons between the six-line interpretation of Scripture and Platonism.  I’ll spare you that piece and simply throw up another picture that does the trick. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been to Rob Bell’s Drops Like Stars tour then you know that at an important point in his “talk” persons write “I know how you feel” on an index card (with their non-dominant hand!) and exchange the cards with someone else in the room who has undergone the same experience (divorce, affected by cancer, etc.).

At one point I exchanged cards with a person sitting next to me — who may or may not have been under the influence — and his card, instead of reading what it was supposed to, said “I know you feel.”  I thought it was pretty funny at the time, but I have been reflecting on that difference between the two statements for several weeks now and I’ve come to the conclusion that that the latter, that is the one with the “typo,” is truer than than the former, the statement we inevitably default to when empathizing with those who are suffering or hurting.

In fact, the more I think about how radically different each of us is and how strikingly dissimilar our seemingly similar experiences are given the intricacies and peculiarities of our own subjectivity, the more I realize how arrogant and rash it would be to tell someone that I know how they feel.  Even if I have shared an experience that we might for the sake of convenience call “similar,” or even “the same,” I simply cannot understand nor comprehend how that experience may have altered or radically augmented the other’s narrative in ways strikingly different from my own.  My subjectivity and the other’s subjectivity are wholly other to one another.  Even our shared and similar experiences different; we experience the same experiences differently, so differently that I would say we are precluded from state that we know how the other feels.  Such would be to collapse the other into myself, relegating the other into the order of the same.  I think this is devoid of true empathy and compassion because it still places my experience and my subjectivity above that of the other.  I experience another as an object, not a subject.

The closest we can come, by contrast, to truly identifying with the other in our (un)shared experience is by declaring: I know you feel.  This seems superficially axiomatic but I think one would be hard pressed to find normal instances in which the deeply heterogeneous ways in which we experience trauma and suffering are actually validated rather than simply recognized and shoved aside.  Moreover, I find it very powerful that while I can identify with the other on a certain level through various shared experiences I can never know the full depth and breadth of her subjectivity, indeed that is precisely what it means to experience the other qua other.  I do know empathize with the other, despite our shared experience, because I know exactly how that experience relates to the other’s subjectivity or because I know “how” that experience makes the other feel.  Compassion and empathy couched in that way is, at its core, narcissistic.  I know the other feels (not how!) and I identify with the other despite the mystery that is her complete subjectivity and despite my desire to project myself onto the other. This is, I believe, what it means to “be with” those who are hurting and those who are suffering, not because we have actually been in their shoes — because we haven’t and to say we have would be damaging — but because we are woven together in the fabric of humanity and we encounter one another face to face despite the enigmas the separate us.  We stand together and hold together our shared experiences whilst realizing we understand those experiences and their effects quite differently, that is what it means to relate to one another and see one another and respect one another as other.

I don’t know how you feel but I do know that you feel despite what the world around you may say.

I’ll put all my cards on the table:  I think Kierkegaard is unfortunately habitually misread today.  The common reading as dictated by the philosophical and theological canon and undoubtedly displayed in undergraduate intro. courses couches (and caricatures) Kierkegaard as a prime example of religious fidelity gone awry.  His “teleological suspension of the ethical” represents all that is wrong and dangerous with religion after the Enlightenment and such a position is decidedly irrational, lacking the proper grounding in ethical reasoning.  That is one reading.  To be sure, it is important and one that should be not ignored, but it is, however, not the only one nor is it, in my view, the best one.

I was re-reading some articles and interviews by John Caputo in preparation for Emergent Outliers’ first book club meeting tonight (you should join us!) when I ran across an interesting reading of Kierkegaard that avoids that usual, banal approach and obliquely offers a critique of modern ethics.  Commenting on Derrida’s reading of Fear and Trembling, Caputo writes that:¹

“Responsibility is the issue of the singularity of the situation of the responing subject (for which “Abraham” is a place-holder) standing alone before the “wholly other” (for which “God” is a place-holder) while the demands of the “other others” (for which Isaac is a place-holder) press in upon and interrupt the intimacy of this exclusive tête-à-tête ["head-to-head"].  Thus, to decide responsibly is always a matter of sacrificing “Isaac,” the ones who hold the Isaac position, by which he [Derrida] means, of sensitizing oneself to my responsibility to all the other others who also lay claim to my responsibility, even as I respond to the other one before me.  Unlike de Silentio, Derrida’s analysis does not turn a suspension of my ethical duty in the face of the religious call that overrides it, but on the conflict of ethical duties that structures every ethical choice, which makes the paradox of the akedah [the binding of Isaac] the paradigm of everyday ethical decisions right on down to the smallest detail….”

Interesting.  So instead of fixating on Abraham’s suspension of ethics perhaps it is helpful to read the narrative in a different manner, one that recognizes the sacrifice and conflict that is inherent in every ethical decision.  One must always, in every situation (even the most mundane and seemingly insignificant), chose between opposing responsibilities as there always other others.  That is the paradox of ethics and a paradox that most popular approaches to ethics (the deontological, utilitarianism, etc.) seem to avoid precisely because they are impermeable systems conceived in the abstract, demanding fidelity to a certain set of presupposed to premises which may or may not relate to the situation at hand.  I suspect that this is what Caputo is getting at in his book Against Ethics (though I have not read it in it entirety) and I believe that this is what the usual readings of Kierkegaard miss:  that modern ethical systems, while helpful as guidelines, will always be deconstructible insofar as they posit a set of disembodied propositions that must be applied to situation that always already has other cards that have been played ahead of time.

Such a critique virtually renders moot the tiring discussions we’ve all had over which ethical system is the best because all systems are in agreement that the most proper approach should be conceived in the abstract, relying on the so-called impartiality of Reason and  constructed outside palpable relations with the wholly Other and other others.  But the  true ethical dilemma is the one that catches us by surprise as we realize the impossible choice we must make between two responsibilities, two others who have already laid claim to us.  Such an event, not at all unlike the one faced by Abraham, simply cannot be solved by a intangible system alone.

That is, I believe, an unsung lesson of Kierkegaard and one that Caputo and Derrida can both return to after the desert of modern criticism:  that there is always already conflict inherent in every ethical situation, conflict that cannot be fully resolved and conflict that demands a choice between rival responsibilities and irreconcilable others.

1. The quotation is taken from an article Caputo wrote in the 2002 Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook titled, “Looking the Impossible in the Eye: Kierkegaard, Derrida, and the Repetition of Religion, pg. 8-9.  Caputo writes on the same subject at length in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida:  Religion without Religion, but the article provides the most concise and lucid description of his larger, more complex argument. [↩]

I ran across this quote yesterday:

“As a virtue solidarity becomes a way of life.  It becomes the new way of living out ‘the love your neighbor as yourself’ that up to now has been interpreted as giving out of largesse. Given the network of oppressive structures in our world today that so control and dominate the vast majority of human beings, the only way we can continue to claim the centrality of love of neighbor for Christians is to redefine what it means and what it demands for us.  Solidarity, then, becomes the new way of understanding and living out this commandment of the gospel.”

–Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz in Mujerista Theology

Interesting.  I’ve often been troubled by the common practice of giving — like the rich religious leaders in the gospel — and showing solidarity out of one’s abundance and excess.  I just wonder what that means when there is no cost, no sacrifice, and no real personal change.  Naturally, my next thought is to ask whether the giving and the solidarity are really authentic or simply cheap gimmicks to appease a guilty conscience either individual or collective.

The irony here of course is that I am often feel that I am doing exactly that; and I then have to ask myself: do I really care for the well-being of the Other?  Am I genuinely invested in acknowledging the mark of the divine that rests in my neighbor?  That’s tough.

This is something that crosses my mind every now and again.  I’ve watched many an episode of South Park and I’ve seen my fair share of risque comedians, movies, and television shows.  And, I’ll be honest.  I laughed at the jokes.  We all have at some point.

But I wonder where — in our post-9/11 world, as the cliche goes — the line should be drawn.  How, if at all, do we distinguish between humor and the perpetuation of hurtful and racist stereotypes?  For what its worth, in drawing out this line of thinking, I’m not so much interested in political correctness as much as I am interested in the implicit promotion of fear mentality, xenophobia, and cultural jingoism.

I bring this up because I was disturbed — and, a little angered — when I read this article about Adam Sandler’s new cult comedy, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (ironically, the article is titled, “You Don’t Mess with the Racism”).  Now, to be honest I haven’t seen the movie (I guess I’m being that guy, who critizes something without having watched or read it) so I’m giving the author the benefit of a doubt. Read the rest of this entry »