Politics, Naked Before God

In our human realm of knowledge, wisdom, and ideas, where we converse, agree, disagree, argue, and so on, what is the role of charity, humility, love, and justice? How is it possible to hold firm to something and yet also be charitable to other points of view, or even be open to the possibility of having one’s own opinion changed? Is intellectual charity even an option when we’re trying to proclaim gospel truth, the truth of good news for the world?

I think often of the Biblical prophets, Jesus included. No holds barred, they unleashed the gospel truth which condemned their own nation of idolatry, narcissism, and oppression, while also proclaiming good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed. There wasn’t exactly a polite conversation which took place (though I suppose it’s likely that the oppressors to whom the prophets were preaching wouldn’t listen to either a level tone of voice or a shrieking cry). When you’re passionate for the good news of justice, you don’t worry about calling the problem perpetuators hypocrites (Jesus), cows (Amos), or whores (Isaiah and others).

There are two particular scenarios in which I struggle to discern how the proclamation of gospel truth in the vein of the prophets might be worked out. The first is in the political sphere, where there is a certain understanding of the left and right spectrum. The second is where I currently spend a lot of my time: a graduate philosophy classroom. I’ll focus on the first.

What does the Biblical good news say into contemporary politics, and how can anyone, Christian or not, cry for justice? I think the main reason I started writing this post is to say this one thing: whatever you think of the other side of the political spectrum from where you happen to be standing, don’t be arrogant, mocking, or spiteful. Don’t cover up your own insecurities by adopting a position of superiority. Chanel that energy in a different way. Face yourself, take yourself less seriously, and surrender your self before God.

I know that there are people and systems who need to be screamed at in an energized and prophetic manner. They are hypocrites, cows, and whores who probably need some of that name calling to jolt them out of the self-secured sanctuary of greed, lust, and gluttony. But arrogantly mocking everyone who doesn’t agree with your particular understanding of politics and justice is hardly a prophetic call towards justice. I should be clear: I am thinking primarily of some of those on the political left who criticize the right. I personally have largely left-leaning tendencies and am convinced by a lot of critiques of capitalism and the free-market. But the prophetic cry for justice is only genuine if it comes from a soul who is naked before God. There is then no need to assert one’s own intellectual or ethical superiority.

Anyone who shakes their head in personal disgust at their political opponents has given up their right to criticize. Rid yourself of any negative energy that pushes you towards criticism out of malice or arrogance. Criticize and energize in the knowledge of your own insignificance before God. Then you won’t shake your head in personal disgust, but you’ll run naked through the streets screaming for justice because you’re naked before God. You’ll be at peace with yourself before God and thus not able to handle the injustices which arise from the rest of the world not being itself before God.

Spend some time naked before God. Then see what political criticism looks like. 

The Great Allower

God is the Great Allower, despite all attempts of ego, culture, and even religion to prevent God from allowing.  Show me where God does not allow.  God lets women be raped and raped women conceive, God lets tyrants succeed, and God lets me make my own mistakes again and again.  He does not enforce his own commandments.  God’s total allowing of everything has in fact become humanity’s major complaint.  Conservatives so want God to smite sinners that they find every natural disaster to be proof of just that, and then they invent some of their own smiting besides.  Liberals reject God because God allows holocausts and torture and does not fit inside their seeming logic.  If we were truly being honest, God is both a scandal and a supreme disappointment to most of us.  We would prefer a God of domination and control to a God of allowing, as most official prayers make clear.

– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, pp. 18-19

Waiting, Hoping, Praying, Trying

My academic struggles have continued. I feel lost, ungrounded, and uncertain in what I know, in my ability to write and think, and in where I fit, not just in the academy but in the world. Toronto and ICS have brought real challenges. I've left a loving and encouraging community at King’s and the process of finding my footing again continues to be difficult. I admit to myself often the difficulty of this situation and I keep hoping that by such an admission I will then magically find my way to more stability. It hasn't worked out that way, though. I have to face the same difficulty again and again, day after day, week after week.

We’re reading Walter Brueggemann’s book “The Land” in Biblical Foundations. Commenting on Israel after the exile, Brueggemann writes about hope. “Here is the heart of the good news of the gospel:  things that seem hopeless need not stay as they are. Things that seem hopelessly lost, closed, and dead are the very region of God’s new action. The reversal of destiny is not some clever trick of human ingenuity, but it is the action of God himself when all human ingenuity has failed” (126).

I always feel as though I’m on the brink of really locking into this new pursuit of wisdom I’ve undertaken here in Toronto. The problem is that I feel kind of frozen before all the wisdom and knowledge that is in the brilliant minds of my classmates and professors, and that lines the pages of thousands upon thousands of books.

So, what does Brueggemann have to say to my situation of the experiences of groundlessness and uncertainty? Well, by his own standards, it’s not much. After all failed human attempts at knowledge and wisdom, it is only God that brings about anything substantial. So I can attempt to be patient and await God’s renewing word, maybe create the space for such a word to be spoken. I do this in silent meditative prayer. But perhaps my prayer could also take an assertive tone, like that of the psalmist.

The psalmists often quite bluntly tell God to defend them. I quickly found a psalm of complaint (The Message): “Harass these hecklers, God, punch these bullies in the nose. Grab a weapon, anything at hand; stand up for me! Get ready to throw the spear, aim the javelin, at the people who are out to get me. Reassure me; let me hear you say, ‘I’ll save you’” (35:1). The psalmist is sure that God has promised to protect and uphold them, and so they demand that God hold up his end of the bargain!

I don’t know if God has promised me anything. There may be New Testament promises to all believers. But I’m not sure if my relationship with God is such that I can assert myself like the psalmist does. Which, admittedly, is a lonely and discouraging thought.

I will continue waiting, hoping, praying, and trying to create silence and space in my life to hear God’s word. It might be that the academic pursuit is simply not where I should place my life’s energies. It’s discouraging to think that simply working hard at something doesn't necessarily mean you’ll succeed at it. But, I confess, there is pride at work in me which creates my unrest in the first place. I’m a typical human relying too much on human ingenuity. 

Condemned to Simplicity (The Wisdom of Love)

This past week, in one of my classes on philosophy of language, we talked about how how having a sophisticated and educated vocabulary is important for understanding the world and each other well. Language is probably the primary way we understand the world. We see and interpret our world through the language we've been taught. But language is not simply a pair of glasses which we can put on or take off. It really is what allows us to experience our world as our world at all. And so, a rich vocabulary leads to the possibility of a rich understanding of the world.

But it's only a possibility; it doesn't necessarily follow. And as a student pursuing higher education, it's important to keep in mind that knowledge about words is not necessarily wisdom. You can have all of the best tools in your toolbox, but you need to use them properly. You can have all of the best words in your vocabulary, but if you need to use them properly.

That is why the wisdom of love is so crucial. Philosophy comes from ancient Greek and is the amalgamation of two words: philia, love, and sophia, wisdom. The history of philosophy has thought of itself as the love of wisdom.

Emmanuel Levinas reconfigured philosophy when he said that philosophy isn't the love of wisdom; it's the wisdom of love. Thinking is not about loving wisdom. It's about being wise lovers. Wisdom is in the service of love.

I sit down to write this blog post, and again I'm frustrated at my lack of wisdom, my lack of control over language, my lack of creativity. I want to be a creative, sophisticated, and loving thinker, but I feel condemned to simplicity. If I can't control my words and thoughts in creative and life-giving ways, then how can I be wise? How can I be loving?

Not just knowledge. Not just wisdom. Not just the love of wisdom. But the wisdom of love.

John Main writes: "We have to confront the annihilating, the loss of self. People are often repelled by the negative language of the mystical tradition and of the scriptures: surrender, death, loss.

But what is surrendered is what is worthless. What is annihilated is what is unreal. What dies is what is impermanent anyway.

The essential experience of prayer is the powerful surge of God's creative love. It is this surge of love that brings about a break-through into the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is simply the power of divine love released and penetrating into every fibre of our being: the Kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21)."

What needs to be surrendered and annihilated, and what needs to die within me is the need to impress others and impress ourselves with knowledge, wisdom, or even love. Yearning for a beautiful skill of language, of wisdom, for the goal of impressing others, is a false self which needs to die.

The wisdom of love does not belong to our false selves. It doesn't "belong" to anyone, or any thing. Love is always gift, an outpouring of vulnerability and self-offering for the sake of others, vulnerable both in giving and receiving. The desire to have the wisdom of love, to contain or know or control the wisdom of love, necessarily won't allow for love to emerge.

Being condemned to simplicity may be a great gift.

A Child of this Instant

It's been probably more than two weeks since I put up a post on this new blog of mine. I was hoping that starting this blog and giving it a sophisticated first post would inspire me to continually work on my "project" (we all need a "project" in grad school). But I've been setback by my own limitations. I always hope for myself that I become a smart, thoughtful, caring, gentle, and wise person. But my obsession with achieving such a status pulls my focus away from the things in life that really bring me joy, and instead I become envious. I compare myself with others. Oh dear, I compare myself with others so often, to such an obsessive extent.

Comparing usually leads to me feeling poorly about myself. It drags me away from others and from God (whoever God is). But I'm confused as to where else I could put my energies. It's so easy and natural to put energy into comparing myself with others. Where would I put that energy? It's such a natural place for me to focus, I don't know if I could name where my focus would be if it weren't on my internal standards of comparison.

I keep hoping that my practice of meditative prayer will be a new place where positive energy can take hold of me. I'm realizing, though, that I am a very poor meditator (and I hope I say that with honesty and not false modesty). My mantra of "shalom" rarely takes hold for more than a minute before I'm drifting off into fantasies, anxieties, or, predictably, comparing myself with others or some internal standard of my own.

There's really nothing profound entering my mind as how to deal with such personal struggle, though I should certainly name right now that I am not the only one to face these difficulties! But the act of meditative prayer will continue to be a practice of mine, and I trust that will reveal itself as a blessing, though I'm certainly not sure in which way. I'll close with a Rowan Williams quote, commenting on Thomas Merton, which draws close to the heart of both meditative prayer and a prayerful life.

"Being a child of this instant is encountering and entering into that elusive 'there before us' quality of God's action, that active reality- or, indeed, to use the scholastic language which was not at all alien to Merton's thinking, that 'pure act' which is beyond both memory and fantasy, the active 'being' of the world now, in this moment. Religious writing is an open door to what God is doing in making and loving the universe- which of course God does in every moment. Religious writing, writing that is religious work, is part of our attunement to the doing of God, made real and concrete here in how we see and how we attend: a loving and acting, a perceiving without egoistic will, but without passive resignation" (New Words for God).