Here is an interesting clip from an interview with John Dominic Crossan discussing the difference between literalism and fundamentalism. Found on Shuck and Jive.
=== Please listen to reflection before reading on ===
Let us make a distinction here between meganarrative and metanarrative. A meganarrative being that term which refers to the story that one lives while a metanarrative referring to the story that intellectually justifies and makes sense of our existence.
For so many, Christianity is thought of as comprising a very particular metanarrative. The result is that Christianity begins to resemble a Gnostic faith insomuch as it affirms a certain way of interpreting the world as a requirement for salvation. What can then happen is that we fall into the trap of theoretical belief and practical unbelief. In other words, we believe intellectually while living as though we didn’t in our grounded day-to-day life.
There are of course many who believe that Christianity offers a way of interpreting the world (that the scriptures give us a particular cosmology and anthropology) while also living their faith in terms of showing love to ones enemies and standing up for the oppressed. Thus affirming Christianity as a metanarrative while also living it as a meganarrative.
The question I wish to ask here however is whether Christianity requires the affirmation of a particular metanarrative. In other words, in the same way that the church once asked whether circumcision was required for salvation today I want to ask whether the metanarrative affirmed by contemporary evangelical churches is necessary for salvation.
The above words from Mother Theresa (harvested from various letters) offer a stark answer to this question. For Mother Theresa, the traditional metanarrative of Christianity was deeply questioned and often found wanting. Yet it did not stop her from living her faith in an uncompromising manner. Indeed it was her doubt at the level of metanarrative that made her faith even more awe-inspiring. For this faith was so much a part of her flesh and blood that her Garden of Gestheme experience did not rock her Christ-like devotion to those around her. It was obvious that she lived this way not because she beleived that she would be rewarded, or because it was what her beliefs demanded, but rather because she loved with a supernatural devotion that asked nothing in return.
She could embrace doubt and unknowing while expressing an unwavering commitment to the life of faith as expressed in caring for the oppressed and unwanted. There where many times when she was a theoretical unbeliever, but through it all she was a practical believer to the very end.
In my next post I will explore why this position may well bring us close to understanding how a healthy and dynamic Christianity will be expressed in the 21st century. In this way I will argue that Mother Theresa may well be on the short list for being the first patron saint of emergence Christianity.
For those of you patiently waiting for the release my next book I thought I would count down to its publication by offering a series of excepts. In the run up to the books release (in mid April) I will be offering these excerpts in audio format with background music provided by ikon’s resident DJ, Rothko. Today I offer you the introduction…
In the last post I made reference to the phenomenon whereby the seemingly uncompromising and unwavering belief of a parent is sometimes only maintained insofar as that belief is accepted by their child. And that if this child expresses their doubts then the parents are forced to confront, not merely the child’s loss of a religious worldview, but their own (a loss that was, up until then disavowed). Often, of course, the role of the child in this example is taken by another, perhaps by the local Pastor, or other authority. In such cases the other believes on our behalf because we don’t really believe.
In this post I want to briefly mention a slightly different phenomenon. Slavoj Zizek notes the existence of educated sceptics who freely accept and speak of their unbelief, yet who believe through a ‘naïve’ other. Here the enlightened individual is happy not to believe in anything in particular as long as they know of some ‘naïve’ individual or group who does believe. Here, for instance, someone is able to live without any real belief as long as his or her parents continue in the tradition, or the local church where they went as a child remains open. However, if they find out that their parents no longer believe, or the church is closing its doors, then they feel a deep loss: as if it was they who had lost faith, even though they already supposedly had.
Here the parent’s naïve belief believes on behalf of the child, believes so that they don’t have to. These individuals do in a sense still believe then, even through their lifestyle and thoughts would give no direct hint of that belief. The belief has been externalised and is disavowed. In this setting such people may then return to the faith of their youth, for in a sense they never left it behind but only disavowed it.
As Neal and Sarah pointed out in the comments from the last post, the church can often take the place of the naïve parent in this example. The church believes on behalf of people. Believing for them.
The problem for me is not that the church should help people locate their own belief within themselves rather than externalise it (although this is preferable to believing through the other), nor (in reference to the last post) that it should help people to recover a belief that they have lost. Rather I am building an arguement that states the church should break the idea that faith is about belief wide open: exposing doubt when it is hidden in dogma and exposing dogma when it is hidden in doubt. My position is that the church today needs to imbibe doubt into its very structures while simultaneously helping people to incarnate faith in life. This will require a fundamental restructuring of church and is something that I will take up in later posts. This is also the topic of the book that I am currently writing (which I will hopefully finish in mid 2009 and release in early 2010).
I wish to offer two philosophical reflections on the subject of believing through the other. The first relates to the common situation in which someone who no longer has religious beliefs, or who is riven with doubts, lies to their parents: pretending that they still believe and attend church regularly. Knowing that revealing their true thoughts to their parents would be traumatic for them.
The common sense understanding of this situation is that such deception is designed to protect the parents from the distress of thinking that their child no longer believes and thus may be in danger of either forsaking their own salvation or putting their own children at risk.
However, there is a much more interesting and insightful interpretation of this behaviour, one that can help us gain insight into one of the ways that we can hold belief. We can call this, following Lacan, the act of believing through the other. Believing through the other refers to the way in which our own beliefs can be externalised into another who then believes on our behalf.
Take the example of emotionally charged music. Sometimes we may listen to such music as a way of unlocking and touching the depth of our own pain and suffering. Yet, more often, we listen to such music in a more composed manner, allowing the music to suffer on our behalf. Kierkegaard understood this when he wrote,
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music…. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ - that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.
Here the poet is the one who suffers for us, on our behalf. They suffer so that we don’t have to. So that we can feel the cathartic relief of crying out without the pain that provokes it. Hence, we go to concerts and listen to emotional music for recreation, paying the artists to suffer in front of us, to scream with such talent that their pain will be sublimated into beautiful music that will weep on our behalf. And at the end we feel better, just like we would feel if we had ourselves been weeping.
In a similar way it can be said that a parents uncompromising and seemingly strong religious belief is often very tenuous and maintained only in so far as it is perceived to be held by ones children. Hence the discovery that ones child doesn’t actually believe is deeply traumatic, not because one is confronted by the child’s doubts and uncertainties but rather because, in the confession, one is now confronted with ones own doubts and uncertainties. In the confession we are no longer able to believe through the other and must confront instead our own fears and doubts.
The child is thus not protecting his or her parents from facing up to the child’s own lack of belief but rather protecting his or her parents from facing up to their own.
While this is an interesting phenomenon perhaps the most interesting aspect of this believing through the other takes place when we realise that often the ‘enlightened’ child actually believes through the ‘naïve’ belief of their parents. This will be the subject of the next post.
Recently we had an ikon gathering entitled ‘Convertable’ based upon the phrase ‘You must be born again’. I promised to offer some of the reflections used on the evening, so here they are (along with an outline of the gathering as a whole). The following may take a couple of minutes to download.
We began in a bar called ‘The John Hewitt’. As people arrived we split them into groups of four and sent them to the front steps of a nearby Cathedral. At the huge, imposing entrance a man offered a 3 minute impassioned sermon on the words, ‘You must be born again’. When he had finished each group was given a piece of chalk, two CD’s (labeled ‘Reflections’ and ‘Soundtrack’) four plain brown envelopes (numbered ‘1′ to ‘4′) and the following piece of paper,
Reflection (written by Jon Hatch)
Envelope 1
Before going in search of the lonely poet (who sat at one of the tables in the bar and performed poems on the theme of transformation) people listened to reflection 2 (written by Shirley Milburne)
Envelope 2
In the next venue people had to find a psychotherapist who spoke on the nature of transformation. But before finding him they listened to the following reflection (which can be found in ‘The Orthodox Heretic‘)
Envelope 3
Before Chalking ‘I must be born again’ people listened to the following reflection (which can be found in ‘The Orthodox Heretic‘),
The last envelop contained a gift of car air fresheners with the words ‘I must be born again’ printed across them.
As each group finished they returned to the pub. Here we relaxed and chatted about the evening.
The aim of this gathering was to help us all go on a journey with the words, ‘you must be born again’. Beginning with a negative rendering of these words we were subsequently exposed to various, more positive, interpretations. Interpretations delving into the possibility of transformation and change. By the end of this internal and external journey we finished where we had begun, but hopefully with a different appreciation of these words. Returning to the same place but with a different attitude.
This Sunday ikon will be collaborating with The Garden in the latest ikon gathering. The event will be planned from scratch the day before. If you are around come and join the fun.
Peter is the founder and co-ordinator of Ikon (a community which describes itself as iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging and failing) as well as being a writer and freelance lecturer in Philosophy
