If you need a little encouragement today, here is a 6 min sermon.
It plays off of Rumsfeld and Zizek
Then Zizek reminds us that the 4th quadrant would be “unknown knowns”
If you like this you can also check out an early rendition based on Phronesis
Romans 5
It may be time to embrace cynicism.
Our cultural moment may be calling for it.
Several years ago I was part of a leadership development cohort of young people and on the final day before they sent us back to the places that we came from all over the globe the leader encourage us to stop working on our weaknesses.
It really caught my attention because up to that point I been under the impression that my primary job was to become a well-rounded person and leader into bring up my weakest areas so it would’ve matched everything else. He said “no, put almost all of your energy into you area of strength – the thing that makes you unique only work on your weakness to the degree that it would disqualify you from ministry or cripple your leadership take away your credibility”.
Don’t work on your weakness – put all your energy into your strength – only work on your weakness enough that it does not cripple you or disqualify you from leadership.
I’ve always thought that was an interesting idea and I logged it in the back of my head carrying around all of these years and once in a while I see something and I think this calls for that I was recently out of the news cycle in the political arena for several weeks due to illness and then work stuff and then caring for family and so I was out of the loop and coming back into it has been rough.
It has been really eye-opening and I’ve noticed that when people are cynical or critical that sometimes they have an internal message that the cynical suspicion is something negative to be resisted.
I want to consider today that it might actually be the perfect time to be cynical.
A couple of years ago my friend Tad DeLay wrote a book called “The Cynic and the Fool”and I was in conversation with him around that time. I’ve noticed that it is not healthy to define yourself by what you’re not! There’s no fruit in that. There’s nothing nourishing about defining yourself in contrast to somebody else or some other group
What I am saying is that because of how we participate in our society – especially in the media age (the Society of Spectacle is one of my favorite books) – that we are conditioned, trained, and well-practiced at being cynical. It helps us not be so vulnerable and susceptible to the stunts and lies that are constantly put in front of us.
Embrace the cynicism to the degree that it compels you toward action.
So that’s my encouragement for today that that maybe this isn’t something to be resisted and that maybe it’s entirely appropriate for our moment and that it’s not a negative thing.
Maybe a little cynicism isn’t the worst thing in the world – especially if Zizek is right and the light at the end of the tunnel is another oncoming train.
I am preparing to lead a 3-month book discussion of The Church of Us vs. Them by David Fitch for the adult Sunday school at my church.
My plan is to pair the chapter in the book with a different book, school of thought, or historical movement. Some of these include The Argument Culture by Deborah Tannen, The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas, and the Anabaptist tradition.
Here are the 7 conversations that I hope will come up in the next 3 months:
Here is a quick video (5 min) to introduce the topics:
Let me know your thoughts, questions, and concerns.
Is there a connection between deconstruction and the dark night of the soul?
Many who participates in deconstruction experience the dark night. Not everyone, however, who experiences the dark night of the soul has been doing deconstruction.
There is enough overlap that it is worth exploring.
Many people who begin to deconstruct their faith experience various levels of disorientation, discouragement, depression, and even despair. It is difficult to dismantle the thing that used to give you shelter and even structure your experience and very existence. You begin to question everything that you have been taught, the people who taught it to you, and even yourself for being misled, fooled, or indoctrinated.
This can trigger feelings of abandonment, isolation, embarrassment, shame, and god-forsakeness at times.
This is where I find the work of Peter Rollins very helpful. He says things like
“I’m not trying to make you depressed, I trying to help you see that you are already depressed.”
One of my favorite things that he introduced me to (working off a thinker named Lacan) is called the Experience of Absence and the Absence of Experience. Let’s say that you and I are sitting at two table in the coffee shop. We are in the same place doing the same thing at the same time – with one big difference: you are expecting a friend who has not shown and is not answering your texts or calls.
You are experiencing your friend’s absence, whereas I am having an absence of that experience.
This is helped me so much over years since Peter’s book “How (Not) To Speak of God” came out. It has become a key for me that has unlocked a door into a much bigger auditorium of ideas.
I have learned to embrace the experience of absence. I actually prefer it of the absence of experience. I know that something is wrong or missing – but I would rather sit in that awareness than not know and sit in my happy naiveté. I would rather be awake the beautiful disaster than not-awake and happy.
This is not a criticism of anyone else and I know many who would disagree with me.
One of the treasures that gives me comfort in the Experience of Absence is that we have resources for this crisis inside our tradition. One of my favorites buried treasures in Christian history is called ‘via negativa’ or the apophatic tradition.
It basically says that god – by the very nature of being god – is so expansive, beyond human comprehension or our ability to explain or describe the divine essence in anything that resembles its reality – that it is more accurate to speak of god in the inverse or negative.
I love this idea.
If there is something as grand as god then every time we try to assert something about god we both say it and inherently un-say it at the same time. [1]
Via Negativa shows that it is actually easier and more accurate to speak of god in the inverse: that god is not like anything or anyone you can compare to (analogy). Even when you try so say something in the positive, whatever you say is actually far more true in the inverse.
Whatever we know about god or believe about god, there is infinitely more that is unknown and unsaid (unexplored).
Any god-talk is actually more untrue about the actual divine than it is true.
Why do I bring this up? In the same way that I have learned to embrace the Experience of Absence, I have come to love the infinitely beyond-me. Deconstruction is concerned with the limitations of words and that has been immensely rewarding as it connects with Via Negativa and another deep idea:
Paul Ricoeur has a concept called Second Naiveté when you pass through the desert of criticism (deconstruction?) and come into faith again with your eyes open. It is not first faith and it is criticism. It is Faith Again but awakened to the mystery (moment).
I could talk and write for days about Ricoeur. His concept of ‘a surplus of meaning’ has transformed my life, faith, and ministry.
None of this the same as the 16th century Catholic concept of ‘the dark night of the soul’ which leads to mystical union with god. There are, however, enough similarities and overlaps that they all belong in the same conversation.
The Experience of Absence, Via Negativa, 2nd Naiveté, and the Dark Night have all helped me on the deconstructive journey. I would love to hear about helpful resources that you have found.
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
[1] Two great examples are found in the analogy of ‘rock’ and ‘father’.
Scripture often refers to god as ‘a rock’ to signify strength, resilience, and trustworthiness. But of course god is not actually a rock and a rock is not god. It is a metaphor or analogy at best.
Jesus sometimes referred to god as ‘father’. This was of course relational language saying that he related to God as one relates to a (perfect image of) father. Not that god was big man in the sky who got Mary pregnant.
God is as different from our earthly father as god is anything like those beautifully flawed human men.
Deconstruction is a word that is growing in popularity with groups like the ex-vangelical, post-christian, and even younger evangelical crowds.
As with many concepts that get diluted for mass dissemination, the popularized version of the term is more generic, palatable, generous or even hopeful that the original.
Said another way – deconstruction in its more raw form is difficult, critical, suspicious, and subversive.
Why am I bringing this up? I have noticed two trends within evangelical (or post-evangelical) types when talking about deconstruction.
Neither of these is the best development and so I thought I would just speak up in favor of the original impulse or sense of deconstruction.
I would like to say something in the positive and then in the negative (which is appropriate for the topic)
Positive: Deconstruction is love. It is not destruction. It is not demolition. Think of deconstructing an old barn. It is taking it apart timber by board, one nail at a time, in order to see (or show) how it is put together and how it stays together and works (functions). It wants to expose how it is assembled and where the various parts come from and where it fits in the function of the whole farm. Deconstruction may or may not ‘salvage’ what could be useful (or repurposed) in a different format.
Deconstruction is neither knocking the barn down with a bulldozer (demolition) nor is it setting the barn on fire (destruction). You have to love the thing to justify the time and painful energy to painstakingly pull it apart in an orderly and examined way.
If you didn’t love it you would either smash it in anger or just walk away and abandon it.
In the past I have used a plant analogy about how potted plants can get rootbound when they have been in the same pot too long and how it not only stunts their growth but how the roots will circle back and grow in on themselves. Institutions are like this. I still use the root-bound analogy for organizations, denominations, and groups … but it doesn’t have enough bite (or teeth) for the task of deconstruction.
Negative: You will never get the original thing back. You deconstructed the barn because there was something structurally flawed and deeply unsafe about it. You didn’t deconstruct the barn simply because it was old or outdated or had outlived its usefulness. There was something troubling, suspicious, and unusable.
This is the limit of the plant analogy. You might pull at the roots of a plant and repot it in a more spacious vessel in order to sustain its life and let it grow. This is the re/construction impulse that hopes to prune the vine in order to stimulate new growth.
I love the plant analogy and embrace the pruning for new growth mentality … I just want to be clear that this is not what deconstruction means.
I wrote several years ago about deconstruction and I still hold to much of my outlook from back then.
The one thing that has changed is that deconstruction is come into more common usage and its popular version is safer and less edgy than the non-diluted original. So I want to be clear about something:
Deconstruction is not repairing the broken elements of something or tweaking the outdated parts. Call that renovation or restoration.
Just to be clear:
None of them are the same as deconstruction.
Deconstruction interrogates, second-guesses, mistrusts, speculates, and may even subvert that which is being investigated.
Deconstruction may come from a suspicion that something is fundamentally wrong.
Why does this matter? There is a growing tension between the increasingly common-use of the term deconstruction amongst parishioners and seminarians versus the agitation that term causes those in institutional leadership. It is obvious to see why those who run churches and seminaries don’t like deconstruction: they are inherently preservationists and conservationists. It is the nature of the job!
Evangelicalism is construct. It is a loosely configured constellation of loyalties. The boundary has to be highly guarded and aggressively defended because it is so fragile and temperamental. So those in charge of its unstable institutions don’t want their members and participants poking around at the foundation, calling everything into question, and pulling at every loose thread to see if it holds together.
Of course church leaders and seminary administrators are not big fans of deconstruction – it feels like sawing at the very branch you are standing on. It is somewhere between unsafe and unwise.
Having said that, it might be a good reminder that deconstruction is neither demolition or destruction … but it is also not renovation, restoration, or reconstruction.
I know that all terms are prone to drift and migration from their original intent (just look identity politics or ‘me too’) but wanted to be clear that deconstruction is more than just asking big question about the inherited tradition and it is not primarily for the purpose of reconstruction.
The danger with deconstruction is that the thing you loved enough to spend energy on will never be the same. You can’t just rebuild or refurbish it back to its original condition. Both you and the thing you loved are trans-formed.
How should we handle the ‘crisis of the week‘ from the pulpit?
In my year of being a professor I visited lots of churches. I noticed a predictable trend:
I made a decision (based on past experience) to go a different direction – and it has led to mixed results.
Do I need to change my sermon every time something happens in the news? If I did that, all I would ever do is respond to the ‘crisis of the week’ … but if I never do it, then I am not speaking to the issues of the day.
I could use some help thinking this through.
This September we are going through both the Gospel of Luke (Sundays) and the book of Job (Wednesdays). I had pointed people to NT Wright’s Luke for Everyone as a resource for our study.
It was pointed out that NT Wright is conservative. While he is certainly more conservative than I am (and most at Progressive Bible Study), it does merit a look at why we would use his work as a launching off point.
The key is that many of our participants are ‘post-evangelical’ and so we are being careful to not ‘define ourselves by what we don’t believe’. It is a danger that many ‘exvangelicals’ and former evangelicals (and even post-christian folks) are more sure of what they don’t believe than what they do believe.
We are on a journey together and so NT Wright provides us a launching off point because he is the foremost popularizer of contemporary Biblical scholarship.
It is not enough to know how you don’t want to read the Bible but we want to provide something to start with about what a passage may mean before we run it through our ‘progressive lens’.
I take the concern about NT Wright seriously. I have been critical of his approach many times.
It is also why I always pair it with a more adventurous (and usually academic) resource. For Luke I have chosen “Mark & Luke in Poststructuralist Perspectives: Jesus Being to Write” by Moore. It is a wild look full of daring ideas.
Admittedly, it is not for everyone. It does, however, allow me to come around the back door and sneak in some alternative perspectives. I also use Postcolonial Bible Criticism by R. S. Sugirtharajah
I hope that helps to clarify my comfort with utilizing NT Wright’s ‘Everyone’ series.
Here is a quick video explanation
After some time off and a house renovation, I am excited to return to the blog.
The past couple of months have renewed my commitment to ‘do theology in public’. The whole point of public theology (for me) is to engage 3 Publics:
These 3 Publics allow me to engage in a from of inter-disciplinary dialogue that is mutually informing and constructive. We can not afford to allow these diverse engagements to become silos and in-house conversations.
Here is a quick video (5 min) as I prepare to return to the blog.
I am really looking forward to this.
I condensed my library last year and decided to allow one theme or topic per shelf. An interesting theme developed with the books that did not make the cut.
There were 3 important topics that many books written before 2000 were missing:
Here is a short introductory video (more thoughts coming next week)
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 