postmodernquestions

Community as Event

    What is a community of faith? This seemingly simplistic question is actually fraught with complexity and nuance. Furthermore what is it that I am looking for in a community of faith? These are very real questions for me and I feel compelled to externalize them in the interest of analysis. This line of questioning obviously assumes first and foremost that I am genuinely interested in deconstructing not only what a faith community is but also my own experience and expectations. I must also confess that in even beginning to address these questions I will be unable to begin to engage with the totality of the thing. 

    For many I believe a community of faith conjures up ideas of what I will call a creedal based community. Loosely speaking this model can be described as a group of individuals who connect on the basis of intellectually assenting to the same sets of propositional truths or doctrines. Now I don’t necessarily think there is anything inherently wrong with this approach thus far. I suspect we all do this to some degree or another. However I do believe it has some nasty tendencies. Speaking strictly from personal experience this model has demonstrated the proclivity to emulate the country club. This then becomes indistinguishable from the ethos of the mafia as they love only those with whom they identify. These groups become entrenched in an us versus them mentality. The room for questioning becomes increasingly diminished as time goes on. Admission and continued membership becomes to be entirely predicated upon unwavering outward allegiance to the party line. Much more can be said of this model but suffice to say it is not one I am interested in joining. 

    The next model is one in which the proverbial tent is made as big as possible to incorporate as many perspectives as attainable. Here much energy is spent frantically keeping the peace and not committing to anything. The level of commitment here is arguably much lower. Furthermore the level and nature of expectations from the member of this group is substantially different. In other words the tendency for this group is that this affiliation lacks any significant performative discourse in their daily lives precisely because they do not expect it to. Again this another model that I want no part in. 

    However, what if a community of faith viewed itself not so much as centered around the paradigm of intellectually assenting to the same or different sets of propositional truths; but rather as the place in which to expect to experience an event that radically transforms ones own intersubjectivity.? This model does not attempt to relegate our differences to insignificance. Instead it attempts to create a space in which one can temporarily suspend those differences. Within this space one must enter expecting to encounter the divine and to focus on how to react to this unnameable benevolent presence. This I think requires a high level of commitment to creatively deconstructing our own man made gods. With this approach it is essential to be constantly reminded that we never discuss the nature of the divine but rather only our understandings of the divine. This however is daunting for many because it fails to become a consumable product. This paradigm demands the banishment of our utilitarian ideals. It refuses to capitulate to the demands of reductionism into guides of self help. It invites one to radically embrace the complexity and ambiguity inherently present in our every day lives. This is a community that I desperately want to be a part of. This I think is one of those topics that requires further reflection. However for now I will stop and ask you to please push back and engage with what I have written thus far.

Love and Hate

   

    How many people are walking around carrying hate in their heart? How many people cling to their bitterness? To what degree does this poison define the masses? Why do we have such an inability to let go? It seems to me that these are the questions that have been incessantly present since the dawn of humanity. They can be ignored only at our collective peril. We can no longer accept the myth that we are islands unto ourselves. We must accept the obvious and incontrovertible truth that we are inclusively deeply connected all the way down to the core of our collective ontological existence. We in the twenty first century must give up the last vestiges of the idols of the enlightenment. The enlightenment held that we were somehow distinct and separate from one another. For many of us it is easier to think of the world as a series of disconnected random occurrences from which no clear meaningful pattern will ever emerge. This then gives people the feeling of freedom to divorce themselves from the consequences of their actions. It is a sort of existentialists nightmare of sorts. I would speculate that many people bury themselves in meaningless pursuits in order to avoid these very questions. Therefore how could it not be the responsibility of us all to awake the masses from the darkness of mental slumber? Is it not the job of the poet to stir within us all an awakening of perception to the world around us and in us? Is it not the job of the prophet to scream at the top their lungs to force us to see that the shit around us is of our own making? Is it not the job of the philosopher to provoke deeper meaningful questions from the depths of our collective yearnings? Is it not the job of the teacher to teach more than regurgitation? Is it not the job of the friend to walk alongside to listen and to then faithfully hold up a mirror?

    It is strange that roughly 81% of the U.S. population lives in cities or suburbs and yet we are seemingly more disconnected than ever. Our collective feelings concerning this conundrum are even further complexing. People yearn for community and yet they spurn the very things necessary to find it. In many ways my generation is different than the ones that came before. However in this respect I fail to see any sizeable difference. We too find it incredibly difficult to engender deep community. It is genuinely exhausting and complicated to fulfill our obligations to both our friends and career responsibilities. Many find it near impossible to think of anything besides the endless stream of demands on their time. However at the end of the day we are unavoidably faced with what we want out of life. This question demands an answer and refuses deflection. To seemingly refuse and return to the slumber of incessant movement in the interest of avoidance is, in and of itself, an answer to the question.

    There is wisdom in the East and we in the West would be fools to ignore it. Much of eastern thought (Buddhism) has maintained that we are deeply mistaken if we fundamentally don’t understand our identity to be rooted first and foremost within the context of the sea of humanity. It is here ,within being connected to one another, that we can experience what it truly means to be authentically human. We must first understand that we are all ineluctably connected. Then we must learn to embrace this dauntingly beautiful reality and to shed our fear.

    As we enter into the insanity of the American capitalistic holiday of Christmas, where we worship at the altar of insatiable materialism, I would like to stop and consider this idea of humanity par example. Regardless of what flavor of religion you favor I would ask you to stop and consider the beauty within this Christian narrative. In order to understand the paradigm shifting nature of this story I think it is important to do some contextual work first. Plato argued that things that ontologically existed could primarily be defined as things which possessed the power to affect other things. Furthermore things were perfect insofar as they could affect others and imperfect insofar as they could be affected by others. This then is why Nietzsche describes life as the will to power. But what if we took that paradigm and flipped it on its head? What if we said that things increase in power insofar as they are able to both affect and be affected by others? In short, what if we gain power by the sheer ability to be in relationships? This I think is what the Jesus narrative so beautifully does. It says that the very nature of the divine is found within humanity itself in its very ability to relate to one another. This I think is exquisite to consider that beauty is found in physical messiness and not in some abstract etherial immutable realm. Again and again the greatest teachers across time and space have told us to love. We are taught to accept the absurdity of life and to live a life inspired by love. So in this season of advent I hope that I will remind myself to see the world in terms of redeemable love whatever that means. As my friends at Netzer would probably say: What that means God only knows, or perhaps thats just a bunch of bullshit spiritual prose. Maybe we are the ones God has been waiting for and perhaps he has been waiting at our door. He is waiting at our door. Now please go and live and love well!