One Week

Erika thinks I should post a little more personally on this blog. Everything I have written so far is certainly personal to some extent because it relates to wehatever is on my mind. However, in answer to her challenge, I am including here a sort of emotional-metaphorical journal that I kept for just one week earlier this month. I don't expect it to be completely comprehensible - feelings aren't - but hopefully it evokes the sensation...

Thursday:
Today I am a lead sparrow. I am small and inconstant and unimportant. I am heavy and fixed. Just as indecisive as always – today, unable to make good on a single whim. Unable to do anything but stare and breathe – like a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. I am a vacuum trying to suck water out of carpet. And a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in skin of people that touch me. But today people don’t touch me – I leave poisonous traces.

Friday:
A pigeon is inside the study centre. We chased it towards the door but it flew where we weren’t, its chin pumping frantically. It has been here all night but doesn’t want food. Even when we leave it alone it will not take the open door. It doesn’t care about being free. Only about being safe.

Today I am the signatured bullet – the atomic bomb – boring fast holes in both sides of a pigeon so sunlight can glow on its entrails. I am setting it free.

Saturday:
Today I am the lazy hand inside the puppet. Moving the mouth and tilting the head carelessly. Forgetting for hours to animate my false creation – losing the artifice. A disillusioned illusionist.
I finally feel rested today. I took a three-hour nap.
My hand has been cramping, my armpits sore and sweaty from holding the puppet above my head – I am worn out holding it above my head. And today it drooped in my lap and only talked when I remembered it. So I finally feel rested.

Sunday:
I am the foam at the tip of a wave, curling away from the fall, clinging against the wind. A tentative mountaineer. An uncertain victory. I am static shock building up in fingertips. Waiting to startle someone’s heartbeat. Waiting to set someone’s teeth. I am going crazy with waiting. But I am the terrified fingertips, curling back from metal knobs and car doors and foamy streams of water out of taps.
I am the foam at the tip of a wave – wondering if I will ever crest higher swells. I am waiting to fall back into the sea.

Monday:
Alone very much today. Alone at work, alone here, alone running the streets and in my car. I’m my new Mazda’s four pistons. Fuel injected into my head bursts the rest of me into tortuous shoving. I am moving – I am making myself move but I can’t see where or why. I am only pistons. Sealed in perfect, greasy loneliness to keep the explosions from setting my engine on fire. Getting burned myself – in solitude.

Tuesday:
I am a man, today. Not a pigeon or a Sasquatch. The Sasquatch has a compliant gait – I lock my knees when I walk. And the Sasquatch weighs 600 pounds.
I am a Kodak 16mm catching blurry, debatable footage of Big Foots. I am my own self-assured cynic. I am the senseless debate. I am debatable, blurry, imaginary. But I persist in being. I am a boy.

Wednesday:
I am whatever you want. I am fun, severe, empathic – I belong to you. But don’t get comfortable, don’t feed on me too much. “Are you listening? This concerns you gentlemen.” By tomorrow I will be new, harder, less malleable: a lead sparrow – leaving poisonous traces in your bloodstream. Tomorrow I will be.

Thursday:
Tonight was the measly opening night of our play. And tonight was me not getting the refugee job and my wife depressed about it. And driving home from the play feeling dirty.

I am the slavering tongue being forced to the edges of my mouth. The cracking corners of lips. I am the convulsing hand, grasping at my costume. I am the evil leaking out of an upright shell. I am the unsuccessful actor. The unbelievable fraud. I am evil. I am trying to be light because I think I am light. But I’m not fooling anyone. My act is the corners, points, edges of my soul poking through the stretched-smooth bottom of my plastic shopping bag. I am a stretched shopping bag.

If you have not seen Hotel Rwanda you should.
If you have not read/seen the play/film The Crucible (Authur Miller) you should.

Both are very moving and personal looks at horrific killing sprees in the recent (the 1994 Rwandan genocide) and more distant (the Salem witch trials) past. What stands out powerfully about each is its dedication to the humanness of its characters. Don Cheadle is heart-breakingly stoic as Paul Rusesabagina - a practical, loving man who becomes the saviour of several hundred Rwandans seemingly, more than anything else, for love of his wife and children;
and John Proctor (played by Daniel Day Lewis in the film), the hero of Authur Miller's play, is so full of a tenuous honor - constantly at war with his overwhelming sense of guilt and inadequacy - that when he finally learns to forgive himself and stand his moral ground only to be sent off to the gallows, it is more triumphant than William Wallace's Hollywood death cry.

What is boggling my mind, after experiencing these two stories in the same week, is that, at any time in history when an opportunity arises (due to a government, movement or social atmosphere) there never seems to be a shortage of human beings ready and willing to carry out all sorts of atrocities against their own kind. Where do these people come from? Are they smoldering in our "peaceful" societies, ready to destroy us all at any moment? Or is some "brainwashing" required before they will become murderers? In the case of the Salem Witch Trials, the perpetrators were "devout" Christians acting, apparently, spontaneously as the social climate gave opportunity.
Sometimes I wonder what prevents our world from going straight to hell.

(The Scripture of the Church)

Hey Dad. Well, it may be months before you even make it through my last epistle, but while the iron is hot I wanted to write a sort of updated comment on the last part of my little essay.

I'll get back to you about the place of prepositional truth in this subjective metaphysic. Still need to think about some stuff with that one but here's some thoughts about the necessity of the church:

Essentially, I have begun to realize that the church is absolutely crucial to the process of "discussion" or interaction with the Biblical text I have been talking about, and, ultimately, with God himself. In fact, I don't believe you can separate the two.
It is, I think, part of the core of our faith that God glorifies himself through the weakness of imperfect man. This is certainly played out in the composition of the scriptures. His people, collectively, have been involved in the creation of scripture from beginning to end. Unlike many other religions where a single person has supposedly received a direct revelation over a short period of time from the mouth of angels or some such, our scriptures' authorship span as much as a thousand years; there are many authors, none of whom can be considered infallible or the voice of God in themselves or all the time; and only a few of whom have written direct words from the mouth of God for us. Apart from this, particularly if we look at the NT (but I know the Jewish people had to put their scriptures through a similar process), the church has always been responsible for deciding what is and isn't to be scripture and in what order they should be presented and even how we ought to divide them up. Also, naturally, how they ought to be moved from one language to another. We never say that any of these subsequent steps are "inspired", however, to my mind some of them carry almost as much weight as the actual sentences of scripture themselves (not the order or division of course, but certainly the canon). Also, the interpretation of the scripture has always been the work of the church collectively – and interpretation is clearly no simple, lightweight matter.
So, I think it is misleading the way we have begun to speak about scripture as if it is somehow not integrally tied up in the church through the ages – as if it has some self-evident meaning that is not brought out through our long and ongoing discussion amongst ourselves guided by the Holy Spirit. Without the church, the scripture has no life – conversely, of course, the church is lost and equally dead without the scriptures. Therefore, this dialogue with scripture that I was discussing earlier cannot take place outside the context of the church both now and throughout history – and not only the church, but also the Jewish people before it. In some ways, I am saying that there is no knowing God ultimately without the plurality his people as a body bring – the so-called "dialogue" cannot take place at all without it.
I just want to clarify that the “discussion” I am talking about is not merely a continual adding on to our knowledge of scripture and its meaning but, more than that, the ongoing "rubbing together" of persons.
The difficult question is, of course, where does the "authority" of the church begin and end? There are many branches and periods of the church that are full of heresy and error – how do we determine who is right and wrong? I don't have a complete answer for that, but I suspect that, again, it’s a case of wrong perspective. Whenever we say unequivocally, "You're wrong and we're right," we are instantly and arbitrarily ignoring all our own short-comings and deciding that we have landed – incredibly – on the meaning God has in mind. Instead, we have to keep thinking of it in terms of persons rather than goals of knowledge – even when the church has gone wrong this way or that it has added to the discussion. And we would be incredibly arrogant to assume that our branch and time doesn't have to listen to and engage with the church of the past and the rest of the church today. It doesn't mean we're all “inspired”, it means that God has always met with us and revealed himself through our clumsy, stumbling humanity. I think he has instigated the diversity in the church and his word for that very reason – as in any discussion we can't all grasp everything at once.

If we trust his Spirit we can trust that the church will go on knowing God – that the church will go on being that second party that is necessary for meaning and the conveyance of truth. And if we abandon the church we have abandoned our hope of continuing in the relationship.

peace

chad

Part One

(Interpretation, Meaning and Subjectivity)

Dad,
I was laying in bed last night having trouble going to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about our discussion. So, I thought I'd write down a few of those thoughts and send them to you.
This won't necessarily answer all the questions that came up yesterday – it probably won't even make sense – and it won't be complete. I'm not dumb enough to think there aren't countless things I haven't considered yet – both in scripture and tradition as well as practically.
Also, I should just mention that whatever I say here will be sort of “initial” – i.e. it will probably ignore a lot of the practicalities in favor of getting things theoretically right first (if that makes sense – it has to be worked out practically over time)

OK.
First, the ideas of “journey” and “dialogue” and all those annoying buzzwords we mentioned relate to what I was saying to you yesterday about the sense of continuity that the church's revelation has about it. Perhaps it is born of being in a time of excessive information in which we have a much clearer view of the long history of Biblical interpretation and understanding. For instance, Augustine, Aquinas and the Counsels continued to add to our "Christian theology" (while at the same time the Jews were perpetually interpreting their scriptures with, occasionally, superb insight) but they did not understand things in the way that we do now – or even did a hundred years ago. When you look at all the nuance and difference in tradition that the church in every age and part of the world (as well as denomination) has adopted you begin to suspect that there will never be a final answer – that there will only be a continuing interaction between ourselves and God's Word. It also becomes clear that we have not “evolved” in the sense of continual improvement, but merely changed over the centuries.

You may not like the way this sounds, but I think it is impossible to say that language is independent of its users. Words have meaning – but that meaning is always determined by the context in which the user finds him/herself and even, beyond that, by the outcomes of the intercourse between the people using them (a conversation is really a culture within a culture – or, inversely, a culture is really a long, overarching conversation).

This, of course, shouldn't lead us to say that we can make words mean whatever we want, but rather to a hermeneutic of authorial intent (cultural/ historical/situational setting and so on). So far so good. However, although original meaning is determined by the author and his situation, there cannot be a final meaning until there is a receiver of the words. I can say as much as I want in Urdu, for instance, but I have communicated no sense outside of myself until someone who speaks Urdu actually hears what I’m saying. Words are essentially useless unless there is someone to receive them. And then, of course, two people, rather than only one, become involved in the conceptions those words convey. There is one conception in the mind of the author/speaker and one in the mind of the receiver – and it is simply impossible for those two conceptions to be identical because the persons involved are not identical in any literal sense.

When you read this letter you will have certain responses to what I am saying. You will probably, as far as I’m concerned, misinterpret this or that sentence or idea and comment accordingly. I will try to correct your interpretation and in doing so, possibly make some slight (or large) mistakes of my own about your comment so that we will end up exchanging meaning back and forth in an effort to get the same conception in each of our heads, realizing that our conceptions will never be exactly the same because we are two people and not one.

This is the key point about human beings: we are unavoidably subjective. We have no other way of experiencing or understanding except our own, individual perspectives – our consciousnesses. Yes, imagination helps us “see” from another perspective – but even then it is only myself that can create the imaginary other. Because it is persons or living things that experience “reality” there cannot be, literally speaking, an “objective reality”. In fact, such an idea is almost absurd because this “objective reality” would have to, at some point or in some imagined framework, exist without any consciousnesses present to experience it and would, therefore, being completely unknown, be no reality at all since only a conscious being can call it so. To experience – to be conscious – is to be subjective. (Hence, my comment yesterday about natural “laws”. Sure, on a practical level, describing physical law is very useful, but we as human beings only develop these laws because they are consistent, seemingly common, features of our past experience. They, like everything else, are experienced subjectively – I will never feel/see/understand the effects of gravity from any "neutral" perspective, only my own – there is no guarantee that what I call gravity is the same for everyone). This, to me, is inescapable.

Now, I know this is probably making you squirm because of the apparent implications, but wait till I finish.

This is where interaction becomes so important. Since I am unavoidably subjective and cannot partake in some imagined objective world, the only choice left to me is to interact with the things or beings I encounter from my relative position. In fact, it could easily be said that this interaction defines existence – without it we could not be supposed to have consciousness at all. Because every vantage point is intrinsically subjective, I am nothing except in relation to something else. (This would seem even to play out in the triunity of God himself. It also has interesting implications in terms of our relative degree of “existence” in relation to God. Everything that “exists” might be said to do so only in relation to what existed before it – i.e. Him).

Getting back to the conversation between you and I that I referred to before (that we're having right now), I can only "experience" or "learn" or "understand" what you have to say about my words by conversing – interacting – with you about it. If we stop talking, of course, it's not because we’ve reached our goal of objective reality on one or the other side of the conversation or even as a synthesis of both – we still maintain our subjectivity about whatever the other person has said (even if we "completely agree"). What we're actually doing, then, is – rather than coming to some fixed, objective knowledge about what the other person has said – in a small way, striving to reach a point of sameness, of unity of mind where, ideally, we would be of literally a single consciousness, both fully having the other's literal point of reference. Since we can never get to this ideal point, what we do instead is continually "dialogue" (in a broad sense which supercedes mere conversation) and in that way come to know, not a series of immutable facts, but each other – ever transforming persons.

It may seem like I've really gotten away from what I was saying at first about scripture, but I haven't. This is my main point: It seems to me that we have focused too long on coming to know facts rather than the person of God. I do not know you, Dad, as a list of attributes. I know you because I continually communicate with you. If I stopped communicating with you then I would, I suppose, know you less and less as the time between our interactions lengthened. It is the same with God.

A really good illustration of the distinction I want to make is that trusty old Glenn Matthews illustration of the train of faith. He says you must put your faith in the facts and then the feelings will follow – where the faith is like the fuel that goes into the engine of facts and the feelings are the caboose.

I'm not suggesting we turn that around and put feelings in front or anything like that. I'm suggesting we throw out the train altogether. Faith must be in the Person of God – in the person of Jesus Christ. All those "facts" are not to be trusted because they are merely a part of the back and forth conversation between us and our immutable Father. The Father himself is what we trust. If we could put our faith in the facts as the illustration says, it would imply – as I mentioned yesterday – that there is something above and outside of God, a point that not only contradicts orthodox theology but the idea of intrinsic subjectivity I have been discussing.

We can put our faith in God himself because he is a real person (real in that complete sense I mentioned – the Acts 17:28 and Colossians 1:17 sense – compared to his realness we are not real at all) and we can trust what he says to us in his word (just as, to much lesser extent, you can trust that I am saying what I mean in this letter), but as I have been saying, we can't come to a oneness of mind with him about his meaning and therefore we must continually interact with him through his word in order – not to finally come to perfect understanding of what he is saying, which is impossible – but to know him.

If, at any stage, we pull some "nugget of truth" out of scripture and declare it once for all to be the truth of God, we will cease to interact with him on that point and stop coming to know him. We must move away from seeing truth as an objective reality toward seeing it as a person – Christ. In some ways, this relates to what Jesus said in John 17:3: "This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent". We often water that down conceptually to say, essentially, "To have eternal life you must believe in God". But I think the intention is closer to the idea that eternal life is that continuous dialogue with God that must take place in an “eternal present” (a topic for another time). The concept of believing on him for salvation, by the way, is clearly dealt with elsewhere in scripture.

I think putting our faith in doctrine, in the "facts", instead of a person will very slowly kill our faith. I think we have to get away from the whole conception (in relation to your question) of "rules" and "dogmas" and the like. If you stay within that conception then you will think I am suggesting anarchy. Not at all. I am suggesting that rules do not belong to relationships but religion. Rules are, on a broad level, a means of power. Every religion in the world defines itself by a set of rules because they are a means for us, as human beings, to achieve a certain perceived control over our destinies. If, on the other hand, ours is truly a faith of faith then power is exactly what we must give up. Faith, in its truest sense cannot be in rules and doctrines because those things are a means of defining what actions will lead us to a specific end – power over our destiny. Do you see? Faith in the sense we talk about it, can only be in a person – a being that we must continually be knowing, not that is known at some point in time – for it to be a complete relinquishing of power – for it to be faith at all.

This is linked to what Paul is saying in Romans 7. That chapter has often been explained to me as a description of the struggle of the Christian life. But that (to my mind) mis-interpretation belies the distinction I am making between two types of thinking. What, in context, Paul seems very clearly to be driving at is that the struggle is one of life under the law. The more you seek power over yourself, the more you are beaten down by yourself. It’s as if he's describing a man trying to lift himself into the air by the seat of his pants – the man expects his arms to lift his legs into the air and take his arms with them, but, obviously, his arms would have to be in the air first. But "thanks be to God!" we have been given the Holy Spirit who enables us to live a life of relationship in which power plays no part, instead of a life of striving toward an impossible goal through our rules and regulations and fixed doctrines.

[I should say, to curb your sweating, that prepositional truth, beliefs, doctrines and the like are not thrown out here, they merely take a subordinate role as tools of our ongoing interactional dialogue. If we pretend, as it seems many people are doing now, that everyone is right – or that no one is right – we actually deny our subjectivity rather than embrace it. Meaningful interaction can only come from an assertion by the actors of their point of view. The moment one of them relinquishes completely their right to subjectivity, the interaction, on a meaningful level, ceases.]

What I am driving at, to summarize, is that Christianity must not be about a series of "truths" we have mined from the scripture but about "The Truth" a person who is continually known through an interaction with his word – that is a personal, individual interaction as well as a corporate and historical interaction. Christianity is not about reaching some goal but about knowing God in the only place anyone can be known, the present – which is eternal – and that through the mediation of his Holy Spirit.

Our faith is about relationship. About engaging with God.

Which brings me to the role of the church in all this. We can't interact with him in his word without interacting with each other. The upshot of everything I have been saying about subjectivity is that we, as subjective entities, only have meaning in relationships. This is, I think, why scripture emphasizes a plurality in every unity – even God himself is plural. Or, I should say, because God himself is plural, we as human beings cannot have meaning except in plurality.

I think the reason Christ begs for his followers to be one in John 17 and the reason we are described corporately as the temple of God in 1 Cor and elsewhere is – more than simple illustration of our need for “teamwork” – an indication that we meet God when we are together – not merely around each other, either; really together ("gathered together in his name"), touching spirits one with another. This is where God will dwell on earth and where we will meet with him. We won't meet with him, we won't continue to know him without this interaction. The Church to me is not just necessary because we need to encourage each other in our individual faiths but because we cannot interact with God without interacting with each other.

This last part, in particular, is not fully formed – I'll work on it some more – but it is the root of my frustration with this "let's dissolve formal church" mentality. I think that idea has been born out of the perception that formal church often hinders the sort of meaningful relationships the church is essentially about – and I would agree with that sentiment to an extent. But in rejecting it completely we fail to interact with those who have come before us (both still living – in my case, for instance, you – and long dead) and destroy the very "dialogue" we are running around whining about.

Well, this could really do with some careful revisions and some serious shortening. But I will just send it to you anyway – full of millions of holes. I couldn't get it all perfect anyway.

Let me know what you think.

Your son physically and spiritually,

chad

David

The three sons of Zeruiah were there: Joab, Abishai and Asahel. Now Asahel was as fleet-footed as a wild gazelle. He chased Abner, turning neither to the right nor to the left as he pursued him. Abner looked behind him and asked,
"Is that you, Asahel?"
"It is," he answered.
Then Abner said to him, "Turn aside to the right or to the left; take on one of the young men and strip him of his weapons." But Asahel would not stop chasing him. Again Abner warned Asahel,
"Stop chasing me! Why should I strike you down? How could I look your brother Joab in the face?"
But Asahel refused to give up the pursuit; so Abner thrust the butt of his spear into Asahel's stomach, and the spear came out through his back. He fell there and died on the spot. And every man stopped when he came to the place where Asahel had fallen and died.

Just one of the countless gems in the mythic account of King David's life and reign (1 and 2 Samuel, Chronicles). Lately, I can't put it down. The similarities of the Aurthurian legend to the life of David are striking. It is a heroic, violent, moving and deeply human story full of unbelievable feats ("[Abishai, brother of Joab] raised his spear against three hundred men, whom he killed, and so he became as famous as the Three."), seers and witches ("The king said to her, 'Don't be afraid. What do you see?' The woman said, 'I see a spirit coming up out of the ground.' 'What does he look like?' he asked. 'An old man wearing a robe is coming up,' she said...Samuel said to Saul, 'Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?'"), honour and kindness ("David asked, 'Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul [my enemy] to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan's sake?'"), tragedy ("The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: 'O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!'), deception, betrayal, love and lust, plagues, curses, glory and, ultimately, the powerful movements of God.

It is so compelling that David's great strength - his passionate love, kindness and mercy, even to his worst enemies - is also the cause of most of the deep tragedy in his life. It is always so with us.

Click here to read/rediscover this epic.

Am I

My wife has said to me several times - she said it again last night - that artists are intrinsically selfish. Essentially the greater you are, the more self-absorbed you become - the more deeply you set yourself against the world you suspect will never understand you.

I'd like to think this doesn't describe me - but then, I can't call myself great. I'd like to think that such an attitude is impossible for a writer. A painter, perhaps, can afford to despise the world. A writer will dry up.

But I understand the frustration with everyone and everything. I understand the not being understood. I understand the perpetual self-reflection - the endless asking, "Am I?"

Is it the very opposite of God, who says "I Am", to ask this question? Or is it one of the deep wells of our nature that draws us into the arms of the answer?

A Lincoln to the Past

I recently read a very interesting series of articles on Abraham Lincoln in Time magazine. The purpose was to dispel some of the mythology surrounding the man and paint a more complex, human picture of the former president but it was still very apparent that Lincoln was unlike any politician in my lifetime.
His willingness to admit fault, to cover for his subordinates by taking blame himself, to empathize with his enemies, to defer glory, was simply amazing. He lived a balanced life with plenty of time for recreation - probably a defence learned during his bouts with depression - even at the height of the civil war and he was one of the most maganimous leaders I have ever read about. His first act as president was to place his three election race opponents in key positions within his cabinet! Not because he was weak, as was thought then, but because he was strong enough to work with those who disagreed with him.
Lincoln, who is the great emancipator, actually had very difficult views on race and the place of Afro-Americans in society. In fact, he told a delagation of black men, early in his presidency that it would be best for them to move to South America since Whites and Blacks were so intrinsically different.

If Lincoln lived today he would be flambasted in the same way that all those in power everywhere perpetually are - despite the fact that he has been claimed and honored by almost every cause and ideology in the world. I thought, as I was reading, how wonderful it would be to have a politician like Lincoln in power - what a breath of fresh air in all the posing and finger pointing and dirt dredging - but then I remembered that Lincoln was in power once and the world is still rotting. Politicking and governments will never save the human race - no matter who is at the helm.

Plurality, Immediate Love and Propositional Truth

Hey Dad,
I hope your weekend away was awesome.
Well, here's the last installment for now of my essay-ish letters. I realized when we were talking yesterday how difficult I think it will be to ever fully make you understand where I am at with this but I also realized how great it is to talk to you about it - not only for the benefit of clearer thinking for me - but because I feel like it has been a great way to get to know each other better. So, anyway, thanks.


I've been thinking a lot about the place of propositional truth within these ideas of subjectivity and the intrinsic nature of relationships.

To recap/restate what I was saying in my first letter: Philosophically speaking, there cannot be objectivity in a literal sense since to experience is to take a vantage point - to be subjective. This leads to the conclusion that nothing exists except in relation to something else - presumably derived from the nature of God himself - and, I would add, everything that exists does so only in relation to God. Theologically, we can infer that since God himself is plural and since it is impossible for anything to exist above or over God (i.e. some objective reality), persons, rather than fixed truths are the fabric of our existence.
These, to me, inherent ideas can lead to my conclusions about the importance of relationships over fixed propositions.

However, it would (obviously) be absurd for me to say anything like, "there is no propositional truth" or even, "doctrine and dogma are meaningless" since these are self-negating statements and since all my arguments so far have been propositions themselves.

So how can I reconcile this contradiction?
Firstly, I don't think contradictions are the aberrations we try and make of them. Our God seems quite comfortable proclaiming apparently contradictory things about himself or the world on a regular basis. I suppose it could all be seen as part of this idea of subjectivity: because reality is a matter of personalities moreso than propositional truths, we can almost suggest that propositional truths are merely products of the personalities (certainly in the case of God) and we would expect them, in this case, not to conform all the time to a set of rules (which would, in turn imply something larger than persons - something larger than God). Or, I think it could also be said that - if reality is centered around relationships, which are fluctuating, unstatic, eternally progressing things - propositions have an irreconcilable, processive nature. Nothing we say at any one point will be able to encompass "reality". No system or theory or set of facts can contain it because it is not a quantity, it is an endless interaction.

[This is, to a great extent, part of what I believe to be the genius of scripture. It is not, as I've said to you already, a list of propositions or facts but a very organic book of narratives, personal letters, poems and metaphors that clings tenaciously to the specific and, because of that, can never be comprehensively broken down - every time we make a statement that would seem to fully explain one aspect of it, another slips through our fingers at the same moment. Scripture is not describing a system but introducing us to persons. More about that in a minute.]

Which brings me to the "secondly": I think we should see propositional truth, not as non-existent or unimportant, but as subservient to relationships (in a broad sense - i.e. everything is related to everything else - and in a personal sense). Without it in some form, we can't comprehend the relationship we bear to anything else. We certainly can't enter into interactions with those things. Propositions become, then, the tools of relationship. They are the way in which we communicate our vantage point and in which we receive another's.

This is where it becomes very tricky for me to put my head around, but I'll try anyway: propositional truth is something like the glass through which we can see one another. It is not, in itself, anything. But if I were to abandon it altogether I would cease, in many ways, to hold a position from which another is able to encounter me. This is one of the huge problems with trying to assert that everything is true or right. We tend to take issue with that idea simply by saying "everything can't be true - there has to be an ultimately correct truth". But I think we are missing the real point. More importantly, that assertion is a refusal to interact meaningfully. Someone who is thus "tolerant" is really ducking beneath the glass and putting themselves "out of touch" so that I can no longer strive towards knowing them through the dialogue we have been talking about.

This is the crucial point that I have been working to make and that, so far, I think you have misunderstood: Inherent subjectivity as I have described it does not lead to the conclusion that everyone is right - that everyone can create their own reality based on their viewpoint - it leads, rather, to the idea of inherent plurality. As I have already said, nothing can exist except in relation to something else. This means that reality does not rest with me but, in a sense, with all of us as those who collectively experience the relationships.

Even theologically we can assert that everything ultimately exists in relation to God - who is plural (in a sense, exists in relation to himself) - but that we must continuously seek an interactional unity with him in order to partake in what is real.

What I'm driving at is that "reality" is a sort of ongoing accumulation of our interactions. You and I can no more decide what reality is than suddenly leap a hundred feet into the air. Reality and more specifically "truth" is an organic, living thing, which is not fixed so that it can be arrived at, but must be related to continuously. Further, it is not the sum of our "individual realities" but the interactions between them.

This is partly why I can say what I did about the church. We cannot see ourselves as individual Christians who know this or that about God and have a relationship with him. We have to see ourselves plurally, as part of the community, the family, the body of God which relates to him as a group. I can't decide for myself what truth will be. [In fact, I really ought to get the idea out of my head that I can arrive at truth at all, as though it were a goal to be scored in a cosmic game of basketball. Living is not a matter of goals. We often act as though we, as Christians, have merely been handed the rule book in secret which tells us exactly how to come out on top in the end and that our job is to try and pass the rule book around so that everyone can be a winner. Rather, the adage is true: The Journey is the destination.] There is a constant tension between the irrevocable nature of our individuality - i.e. we can never become another or lose our subjectivity - and the inescapable plurality that subjectivity demands, which makes everything we experience continuous and fluid rather than fixed at a point.

I should clarify: the community of the church - any community for that matter - doesn't decide truth any more than an individual does. Even if we, as a church, make this or that doctrinal statement we haven't then arrived by vote at truth. That statement becomes, on a communal level, what any statement I might make to you is on an individual level - a claiming of vantage point which allows us to interact with others (community to community, community to individual etc.). Groups should really be seen as kinds of individuals that are part of still larger groups (and so on and on) so that the tension I am describing is never resolved.
The idea of propositional truth, then, takes on a sort of paradoxical nature: Propositional truth is always greater than me - it is even much greater than us - but it is always less than the interaction we are having right now.

This is why Paul insisted that love was the chief of all Christian virtues. When we insist that propositional truth is more important than anything else - that it comprises reality - then we inescapably relate to each other on the level of power. We wrangle each other into the truth - our goal becomes, not stark, painful, sacrificial, transforming love, but merely power. When there is an end in mind (conversion, persuasion, behavior change) we will always seek power to achieve that end. Love, like faith as I described it earlier, must be a relinquishing of power. Christ demonstrated this consummately in his death. Love is an extreme and willful deference to the needs of another rather than an attempt to change the other.

When we see reality as fluid, unending, interactional and completely dependent on others, we can begin to better embrace the idea of loving relationships not as a series of goals to be reached, but as continuous and sacrificial interaction. It is unloving and selfish to decide that I determine truth and that everyone must adjust themselves accordingly. On the other hand, it is just as unloving to insist that everyone decides their own truth and thus avoid any kind of real engagement. If, as a third option, I want to choose someone and allow that person alone to determine what I hold to be truth, I will fool myself into thinking that I have attained their vantage point, maintain my subjectivity unawares and end up at the beginning – determining truth for myself.

What this all means is that we ought to become more and more specific in our dealings with each other. Everything we do should be based in the present and on the person before us rather than on generalizations and categories (our propositional truth often leads us to categorize everything) which are based in the past and the future and are ultimately a bid for power. When we can become thus engaged we will be able to partake in the plurality that our subjectivity - that our theology - demands and thus partake in reality. Love must be immediate rather than general (theoretical, broad, planned, remembered) for it to be love at all and this “immediate love”, by focusing on the specific, the individual, the here-and-now, can bring us into community and thus overcome that tension between individual subjectivity and plurality.

This is where I was going with my earlier statements about scripture. To my mind, scripture defies neat systemization or categorization because it is always concerned with the specific – the stuff of stories and poems and letters. I think it can only introduce us to the person of God in this way. If it listed his attributes we would have a very finite God on our hands. Since it tells us his specific words/actions at specific moments through specific people and events he comes alive for us in a most organic and unquantifiable way on the page and we are left thinking, “I hardly know this ocean of a person” rather than, “Ah! So that’s God is it?” And all the time, as the specifics of our moments and relationships are brought to bear on those in scripture it continues – not to yield more and more information – but to take us deeper and deeper into the bottomless depths of God’s person.

Your comment about people wanting answers really struck a chord with me. I think you're right, people do want answers. But I think you're wrong to say that we can give them any. An "answer" is really just a thing of power. When we have a final solution to any problem that confronts us we can take control and "overcome" that problem – as if, once for all, we had “fixed” ourselves – as if the past and the future were just as real as the present. However, when we realize that nothing is fixed and that only God may possess power (though even God lays it down for redemptive love) it becomes clear that we cannot offer any "answers" to anything but only a relationship, through the community of God's people, with the Truth himself.


Well, dad, take your time reading this and we'll talk about it sometime. Some of what I've said here isn't as clear as I'd like it, I find it really difficult to express some of these ideas, but hopefully it helps you get a vague sense of where I am.

I love you

Chad

Tolerance and Love

Tolerance is among our most dangerous words. Dangerous because it calls for a selfish, banal, subtle sort of isolationism. When we are tolerant we essentially say, in our most feigned tone of polite interest, “Oh, how nice!” to other human beings’ entire lives – their very existence. Tolerance is a means of self-protection, a pitiful appeal to the laws of reciprocation – if everything else has been declared ok, then certainly we are. Intolerance is so intolerable to us, less because it is “ignorant” or hateful than because it is a sort of turbulence in the stale air that separates each of us – scabby and raw – from painful contact with another. By becoming open and accepting of everything we avoid engaging with anything, and, we hope, deter anything from engaging with us. It is the foundation for a new kind of individualism in which we are not isolated from one another by a vision of independence and personal strength – no, “community” is the beloved word of the “post-modern” age – but by a foam of triviality. In a desperate bid to be accepted unconditionally we, ourselves, accept patchy costumes as complete, truthful representations of people – real people, with bitter disappointments and incredible transcendences – and in doing it, put ourselves so much further away from anything resembling an actual relational encounter.

Love is just the opposite. Love never tolerates – it embraces. Embraces until there is total contact; violent friction. Clings – wrestles – until lover and beloved are bloody and weeping and exposed from the anguish of their entwinement. If we are not wincing, we are not loving. And love transforms. We are, none of us, “ok” when there is love – we are all becoming – painfully healing – enlarging. When there is tolerance we fester. When there is love, we live.

It is never enough, for love, that anyone stand aside and tell another they are right, that they’re accepted – nor that they’re wrong, that they have failed. Neither amounts to contact. “Acceptance”, “rejection” – these have become distant words; for shouting across an interpersonal gulf; costless to the speaker. But when two people touch, both will feel it; both shapes will change to conform to the other. When all we do is tell we meet each other in imagined times and places – the past and the future, over there or over there. But when we touch there is realization, actuality – it is now, and here. God dwells in those realities – because God, himself, is real. And where God is, life is.

We have not invented “tolerance” to assuage our terror of hatred and bigotry – in our recently imagination-less West, such extremities scarcely exist. We scream “tolerance” because we fear love, which asks more of us than outright war – cml.

The Once and Future King

I have been enjoying over the last few weeks T.H. White's Arthurian classic The Once and Future King. In it there is a fascinating discussion of what it is that causes man to suffer injustice at the hands of other men - and what keeps peace at bay.

At the epic's end, Authur realizes that his life's work, to end the feudal barbarism and wanton injustice of the middle ages, has all been based on the assumption that man is essentially good. It begins to dawn on him, after a lifetime of fighting and feuds and betrayal, that, try as he might to channel those dormant noble energies out into the world, evil and pain and injustice will continue to rear their horrible heads.
He reflects that man's torment is rooted solely in the past - in his insistance on an endless feud of reprisals that begins with Cain's murder of Abel and spreads and complicates itself beyond extrication or repair. At first, he suspects the answer to this is "not to act at all, to draw no swords for anything, to hold oneself still, like a pebble not thrown [whose circles cannot spread across the pond]" - but quickly realizes that stillness - passivity - in itself is a kind of hate, a kind of revenge, an action of inaction.
The answer, he realizes, is first in "the blessing of forgetfulness" - putting the past unequivocally away, never to be looked to again. And, in fact, men often plan to do just that - in the future, as soon as the present wrong has been righted. We cannot start with a clean slate because we will all forever see certain wrongs as inexcusable, as demanding of justice - justice itself binds us to the endless circle.
Again, the king reflects that the solution is with the Church's idea that men are no longer to think of themselves as I but as we - to share, not only possessions, but their very selves with one another. The moment this ideal is achieved any idea of hurts done to oneself vanish and with it, the need for revenge. But it is an ideal, he muses, and not a simple reality. Men are not capable of trusting one another to that extreme extent.
As the book closes, we see Authur, facing his death, looking back to his boyhood training in which Merlyn turned him into an ant - whose kind fought and killed each other mindlessly over territory - and a goose, whose "people", like all the birds, had no sense of territory at all and could maintain their own cultures side-by-side with others of a different species without the slightest discord. He understands with sudden clarity that the imagined reality of boundaries, of personal space and possession, are near the root of the problem and that man's ant-like perspective is what keeps him from seeing it: "how mad the frontiers had seemed to [the geese], and would to man if he could learn to fly."

All the fighting and fighting for peace and hurling of insults and mistreatment of "innocents" and mistreatment of the mistreaters and aggressive aggression and passive aggression that has been flying back and forth in the Western world of late is, to me, an absurd ignorance of the transcendent perspective God has offered humanity. So often the deity is called to task for ruling over an injust world, of allowing atrocity and war and deception (and stupidity) to go on forever. But an end cannot be made of these things until we are ready to accept the utter dissolution of the past and the imagined boundaries that separate us as individuals who protect ourselves and our space from one another. God has offered us these seeds of a peaceful and painless world - he himself has absolved the universe of its most heinous sins against him, surrendered to mankind his own life doing it, and availed himself to the souls of every man. He has shown us how to fly - if only we will join him - and to put an end to everything that we blame on him.