A Felicitous Journey July 20, 2009
Posted by Ryan in Books, WWJD.trackback
By Samir Selmanovic
This is the second post in a six-part series in the re-church Summer Reading Group (part one can is here). The six posts will correspond to the six chapters of What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, by John D. Caputo. Next week’s post will be written by Zane Yi. Zane is completing his Ph.D. in Philosophy at Fordham University in New York.
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When I first opened this book, the title of this 2nd chapter, “Spiritual Journeys, Postmodern Paths,” seemed innocuous. I find myself exhausted by all the deconstruction that is going on around me, theologically, economically, politically, personally. So, I was glad Ryan assigned this straightforward chapter to me. The words were familiar. In the parlance of traditional Christian spirituality, terms journey and path have been a way of comforting us on the demanding race of Christian life towards achieving an overwhelmingly all-encompassing perfect image of “being Christlike.”
Traditionally (here by “traditionally” I mean “before the blessings of deconstruction entered our psyche”) the destination was clear, good, and certain—but far away. To get there—we would say in our sermons—we need to take the Christian journey. The concept helped us focus our efforts and be patient. It was a way to keep ourselves going towards that perfect image, a way for a pilgrim to make progress.
Such a journey or path was something concrete, something we could envision, choose to take, and be disciplined about. It had maps and steps. And, importantly, it had a history and there was a concrete future awaiting us at the end. We were to hold on to “faith delivered to the saints once and for all” and cling to “hope that will not fail.” My contention here is that although we proclaimed the text that was authoritative, future that was certain, the present that was doable, we were not really comforted. There were too many things on the map towards God that did not correspond to the landscape of life, and no matter how beautifully attractive was the map, it produced anxiety within.
In contrast, Caputo (by Caputo, I mean Caputo and his cohort of philosophers) offers us cor inquietum (“restless heart”) and homo viator (“human being ever under way”), in other words: discomfort. He describes these spiritual journeys, paths, and maps (notice his “irreducible pluralism”) in quite un-inviting terms. To us, human beings bewildered with finitude, apparent randomness, suffering, injustice, mortgage payments, ailing family, and car breakdowns Caputo offers no consolations. At least not at the outset. Ultimately, he has the gall to say, adding salt to the human wound, we can never really know the past, present, future, ourselves, or other people. The bad news is worse than you think, he says.
I ask myself, why would I then take up this journey of deconstruction? Why not turn the tools of deconstruction against itself (deconstruct the deconstruction) and settle for something of substance? Life is short. I want to die in one piece, constructed and whole, with my family and friends around me, also constructed and whole. And my hope within me, also constructed and whole.
Think of it. He describes people on this journey as “people who crash-landed,” “frightened by the mysterious” and always partially “lost.” We are supposed to live under “hauntological principle?” We are invited to embrace “contingency” on a journey that has “teeth” and “bite,” a path seeded with “interrupted passages and missteps,” maps with “multiple tracks” and “counterpaths” on every turn. And to live in the world where other people are “shores we will never reach!” He calls this place, our very own lives (yes Christian lives too) “very spooky.” He brings ghost back into the Holy Ghost. He summarizes the situation we find ourselves in as the “postmodern condition.” It does not sound like a journey or a path to me. It sounds like a chronic disease.
As I began reading this chapter, I recalled meeting Caputo, after I heard him speak back in 2004 at an Emergent gathering in 2004 in San Diego at the seminar entitled “Why the Church Deserves Deconstruction?” He is Roman Catholic, and Brian was very happy to have brought him to Emergent for both his background and his topic. What was most surprising though, was how full of life this man was, with irrepressible and wry sense of humor (you can see it jump out from every page here). His uncommonly generous and kind wisdom stirred me. It seemed he genuinely enjoyed this postmodern journey. To describe it, in the first two chapters of this book he used word “felicitous” three times. This is telling, I think. He sees so much joy and grace in this postmodern dis-ease. The very last statement in the chapter is a question that is supposed to come later in the book, but since he cannot hold back the testimony, it bursts out of him (I can just see this short, stocky, grayhaired passionate man pulsating with felicity as he is exclaiming it), “If truth be told, is this not a fairer figure of our lives? Is this not a more compassionate and merciful account of who we are?”
The question I want to bring up here is, how so?
This deconstruction thing starts with tremendous experience of being undone, confused, and disempowered. I am quite sure all of you can testify (feeling deconstructed lately?). And although for those of us in Christian service/vocation who “hope against hope” the felicity of the journey will surface to the fore at the time when we least expect it (feeling breezes of grace lately?), it seems that from now on the deconstruction will always stay by our side. Like in nature, everything that is, is there because something in the past has died. Deconstruction and death are part of good life, after all. If you think that this is Hindu or Buddhist or materialist kind of twist, I would call on the witness of the gospel: the resurrection experiences are always contingent on experiences of death. Seeds must die. In the hyper-reality of the Kingdom of God, both of these processes, construction and deconstruction, are good. None of them spell “destruction.” A saying of the Kingdom of God goes, “Everything will be OK at the end. If it is not OK, it is not the end.” But there is more to it. Because everything will be OK at the end, everything is OK now. Life will not only win; it has been winning all this time. Look at us, still kicking, still thinking, still feeling, still singing, still crying, still dancing, still dying, and being born. Just look into the eyes of the first person you meet today. Amazing, isn’t it? Life itself is an irreducible and undeconstructible experience. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God, all of us alive, together.
Being an extrovert (I don’t know what I am really thinking until I share it), I offer eight questions related directly to the comforts of the “postmodern condition” that this chapter has helped me see more clearly, for your consideration. Feel free to address any, all, or none of them. I hope you will dig into the chapter as well as into your experience.
1) What is comforting about losing certainty, control, and independence? Was Jesus independent?
2) Which concept of the Christian journey — traditional or postmodern — seems more rational to you and why? Was Jesus the Deconstructor sane?
3) Do you think of your spiritual journey as primarily Christian or as human? How so?
4) Nathan’s point here. Caputo uses a very disheartening phrase for anyone who has joined a “movement that has already arrived”: “present future” (contrasted with “absolute future”). How does that relate to a concept of “present truth” (for those of you who are not familiar with Adventist tradition, this means “truth for present time”)?
5) How does this “postmodern condition” view the value of human beings? Caputo uses, shall we say, the felicitous phrase: “perfect excess of the other.” How does that compare with Lutheran notion (Vince, this might be a caricature, I admit) of humans as “worms before God?”
6) How is living out this postmodern journey fun? Do you have any preliminary observations towards Jesus’ theology of humor?
7) What about purpose? Wouldn’t a “purpose driven life” be better? Or not? How so?
8) Passion is usually connected with certainty. How can we out-passion idolaters of certainty? Any personal experiences, intuitions?
Over to you.
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Samir Selmanovic writes this morning from his native Croatia where he is on vacation. He is the founder of Faith House Manhattan and author of the forthcoming book, It’s Really All About God.
Samir,
Thanks for the post and for the questions. I now attempt to broach one of them.
You quote Caputo: “If truth be told, is this not a fairer figure of our lives? Is this not a more compassionate and merciful account of who we are?”
And ask: “The question I want to bring up here is, how so?”
I think the good post-modern answer to this would be, well, it’s the truth. Enlightenment rationality viewed human rationality (inaccurately) as universal, ahistorical, unaffected by non-rational drives, and unlimited in scope and Truth as its target, which though though correct method and procedure it could procure; it placed tremendous pressure for everyone to reach this rational state, and pejoratively labeled individuals, institutions, and cultures that could not reach this state.
I remember the unbearable pressure I felt while in college(perhaps I put it on myself) to render my faith rational.
Post-modernism brings the good news that such a grasp of Truth is impossible for humans and takes the pressure off all of us.
The bad news is that we are left with lots of little truths and uncertainty regarding which truth is the “best” one, or the one that best reflects reality.
We are all finite, embedded in culture and history. All our truths are interpreted ones. The implication of this is that we should take ourselves a lot less seriously, and be more gracious toward others. We’re all fumbling along, at best.
Or course, this can leave us in a pretty bad (nihilistic) place, too. So we should perhaps hold off on the celebration! This is why I am glad that Caputo mentions the Holy Spirit, p. 54, 55.
We have someone leading us to our destination and to “truth”, although we may not know exactly where she is leading!
I was intrigued by Caputo’s discussion of ‘no/steps’. Sheldon’s notion of ‘in his steps’ doesn’t resonate with me as well as ‘by His steps in me’. It is all of him, yet me. They are not my steps, yet I step.
Also, having recently preached on the parables found in Matthew 13, I couldn’t help but wonder if parables were designed to deconstruct church. The reveal/conceal. They teach/not. There is an insistent contrariness to parables so foreign to our ‘tell-you’ church. They invite question and give opportunity to wonder. Caputo put it this way, ‘The essential path is beset by the counterpath, which does not undo the path but makes it possible’.
Hello, I finally got access to internet after three days of trying here in the small town of Nin on the Adriatic coast in Croatia. Thank you Zane and Bill for the comments. Since I might not have access to internet until Monday, l wanted to share couple of comments.
I feel pretty good at this place. I see it is less nihilistic and more as contingent, which to us modern people bent on independence feels as nihilistic. We felt in “control of the call” as Caputo puts and now when we feel we are losing control, instead of rejoicing and saying “great, we are part of something larger than ourselves, so large we cannot even be sure what it is for sure” we despair we have lost everything. It is not everything, it is just sense of control (or illusion of control). I sometimes feel desperate as I used to be as a child, “If we don’t play the way I know how, I am not up for the game.”
Also, I find this postmodern journey, as Zane says, more true. Our interdependence with the past believers, present “other” and the future generations, makes so much sense. So, I do believe, Jesus was not independent. His hunger, thirst, need for prayer for him, need for friends, and host of human feelings were all genuine, not just a method to reach us.
Also, I really like Caputo’s discussion of the adventure we are a part of. As Joe Strummer from Clash says in the recent movie about him: “The Future Is Unknown” (that’s also the name of the movie). Only in this case we really participate in the Kingdom of God and not only play a role that has been designed for us by the programmer of the celestial computer game. Each of us can REALLY affect this hyper-reality, and it’s by God’s design.
As for humor, I think that in this Kingdom of God we are knights, but more like Don Quixotes, rather than Sir Lancelots. Not knowing anything can turn out to be the most correct way to live. One of the reasons I became a Christian is that I have found this parallel between a saint and an Idiot, like in Dostoyevski’s book by the same name. Great short stories to convey the same message are Herman Hesse’s “Augustus” and Isaac Basevis Singer “Gimpel the Fool” and awesome book by Tolstoy “Ressurection” and book “Slave” also by Singer. There is so much incongruency in our life in the Kingdom of God and so much assurance that somehow God will come through. Think of Isaac “The Joke” from Genesis.
And also, I liked the Caputo’s discussion on page 40 where he says “Is not the fist step in self-knowledge to concede that we do not know who we are?” Then he explains how this is an experience that links us with “the other”, and finishes the paragraph by saying “That is our common situation and the basis of a common understanding and compassion.” I was thinking that if we are connected with others the way he says that we “here” are always connected with people “there” then the question we Christians have for all humans “Where you there when they crucified my Lord?” can be answered in affirmative, “Yes, I am human, and through our common human experience, I WAS there.”
Finally, isn’t re-church a name that implies deconstruction as a way of life? Thank you Ryan for leading us so far. Very glad to be a part of this “condition”!
Cheers from super hot, on the brink of financial bankruptcy, great food country of 1200 islands of Croatia!
Wow, this chapter has great stuff but I’m still trying to process it. I find it so hard to reconcile these ideas which I personally agree with so many of the church members I pastor who want something so different. Most of the church members expect me to lead them on a well-marked path that will keep them from all danger and harm. They want me to show them the way. Tell people what to believe, particularly those who are new to faith and might say something unorthodox in Sabbath School. Very difficult.
I’ll try to take on question #1: What is comforting about losing certainty, control, and independence? It seems that one of the greatest barriers to spirituality is contentment. The first step of faith is recognizing our need for God and this won’t happen unless we lose some certainty, control, and independence. Jesus’ greatest antagonists were the religious leaders who were certain and had control which Jesus was beginning to erode.
So, it might not be comforting, but losing control, independence, and certainty are necessary to truly experience a relationship with God. We need to always be searching. God always needs to be just beyond our grasp or we’ll settle and miss out on all God wants us to experience.
Trevan,
I really resonate with your answer to question #1. Perhaps we could paraphrase Jesus, “Blessed are the poor in certainty, they will receive…”
Your comment about Jesus and Jesus’ antagonists made me think of Jesus’ own sense of certainty about things. To me, Jesus was not acting as a “deconstructor” in the sense he was didn’t know where he or others were going and he was going to point this out. Jesus seemed to have a very clear sense of what God is like, what God’s will is, and what is wrong with the religious establishment. In other words, he spoke with certainty and authority.
This is not to say that Christians now have the mandate to act the same way; I think there is an important distinction to be made between our own certainty about God and our grasp of his/her “truths”, and our confidence that Jesus is still somehow “the truth, the life, the way.”
In other words, deconstruction, for the Christian, has its limits. We affirm our own finitude and fallenness, but, perhaps paradoxically, affirm that God, who we are uncertain of, in one sense, has spoken and still guides our journey.
I’m all for a deconstruction that leads to epistemic humility, but not one that finds its resting place in total agnosticism.
Your question, “How can we out-passion idolaters of certainty?”, intrigues me. The first thing that came to mind is to live in the ’second naivete’.
I came out of an unchurched environment. I often say that when one has a Roman Catholic mom and an American Baptist father one functionally becomes ‘unchurched’. My life seemed OK till it lead to chaos. The ‘church’ (Adventist manifestation), known by my non-SDA friends as the ‘Tell-you’ church, provided stability to me by ordering every aspect of my life. That bought me ‘freedom’ from the chaos long enough until I, having my feet firmly planted in ’something’ at least, could study and pray for myself. I loved it. It was my ‘first naivete’. My ‘knowledge’ of God put control in ‘my’ hands. I felt safe and secure with consistently and predictability. Until…
Some years later, having faced immense crises of faith where all my knowledge about God didn’t help I found myself in chaos again – this time the chaos of insufficient answers. My questions about life exceeded all that I knew about God by leaps and bounds. This stage of conflict lasted for many years, often inclining me to through the proverbial baby out with the bath water.
Eventually, God became ‘I Am’. I relinquished all control to the God I couldn’t figure out in the mids of a life that seldom made sense. I still studied and questioned, but decieded to simply and humbly trust God to be God. This is my passionate second naivete. I am more passionate about God now than I was as an ‘idolater of certainty’. I have joy in all circumstances because I no longer have to have understanding of all things to ‘control’ my life or my environment. All this has been good for my family and my church. As a child of passionate love for God I can freely incarnate into whatever world I find myself in – most of the time. lol
[...] in a six-part series in the re-church Summer Reading Group (click these links to read parts one and two). The six posts will correspond to the six chapters of What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, by John D. [...]
[...] in a six-part series in the re-church Summer Reading Group (click these links to read parts one, two and three). The six posts will correspond to the six chapters of What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, by [...]
I’m a little behind on the conversation since I’m a couple of chapters behind in the book, but I wanted to say that I really liked the fact that this chapter highlighted uncertainty as an essential part of the journey. At least, that was what I got out of it. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the level of certainty demanded within conservative Christianity in general and Adventism in particular. I don’t know where people get that kind of certainty (though I’ve met plenty who have it) or how they can think it’s a healthy thing. The whole pas/not thing in this chapter made sense to me, as much as anything about postmodernism ever makes sense.
So to your question #1, I’d say that what’s comfortable about losing control and certainty is that certainty doesn’t come naturally to me; it feels like an unnatural effort to try to maintain it, and a relief to let it go. I can still remember the huge relief I felt the first time I thought, about a religious issue, “I don’t know the answer to that … and that’s OK.”
When Jesus said “The Kingdom of God is here” he might as well said “this is the way things are” or, God is reality, or God is hyper-reality.
I think this whole book is leading us to a place where we can say “reality is good” even though I cannot grasp/manage it. The event of Jesus has provided us a far and deep trek into the really real, and now when we are faced with this uncertain multifaceted landscape of complicated human experience (that depends not only on limited words we have to grasp it, but on what we had for breakfast!) we have this experience of Beloved. And we can never know (figure out) our Beloved. The moment we say we know someone is the moment we don’t know them. So is with our daily experiences, God, Jesus, and each other. It is life without end!