I'm normally very bitter about Christmas. I don't like crowds, shopping, and gimmicks. However, being a Scrooge is no fun.
Instead, I have been rethinking the Advent and Christmas season a little bit, as reflected in my two previous posts. This morning I was thinking about Advent again. The Advent wreath contains four candles arranged in a circle and one candle in the center of that circle. Often times when I think of circles, I think of Jacques Derrida who noted how circles are defined by a center, but the center is not part of the line that is the circle. In effect, the center is something transcendent to the circle ("Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences").
The concept of center is, well, central to how we understand Advent, Christmas, and life in general. Around the Advent wreath are candles representing hope, peace, joy, and love, concepts connected like radii to the center of the circle, connected to Christ and Christmas through the stories of Jesus's birth.
And already the circle is starting to re-de-fine and un-define. There are multiple Christmas stories, stories of Christ being born in and to humanity in Jesus. There is the story in Matthew, the story in Luke, the baptism of Jesus in Mark, and the abstract story in John, not to mention a number of stories that never made it into the canon.
I'm particularly interested in the stories that aren't birth narratives, but tell of Jesus' coming to Earth. The book of Mark opens: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." According to Mark, the Good News of Christianity has nothing to do with Christmas, which is an understanding of Jesus, Christ, and the Gospel quite contrary to the portrayal in Matthew, Luke, the Nicene Creed, and the month of preparation Christians have observed for centuries, not to mention the long celebrations of the US "Christmas season."
If the author(s) of Mark were to celebrate Advent, they wouldn't be waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but rather the coming of Christ's movement in the life of people. For Mark, this coming didn't happen when Jesus was born, but rather when Jesus was baptized, reborn not of man and woman, but of God solely. In this story, Jesus' virgin birth was of God, not Mary.
And thus, Advent and Christmas are de-centered. Hope, peace, joy, and love are no longer connected to Christ through the generally-accepted reconstruction and assimilation of the stories Christmas. They may still be connected to Christ, but Jesus as the Christ--"born of the Virgin Mary"--is no longer that which defines them for this or any season.
Since deconstruction is not destruction, a de-centering of Advent and Christmas is not an end to Advent and Christmas. Advent can still be a season of anticipation--of hope, peace, joy, love, and Christ. A deconstructed Advent sees the themes inevitably and forever interconnected and interdependent, instead of four dependent on the one. Furthermore, a deconstructed Advent will embrace the interplay of anticipating and receiving, the already and the not-yet, of God's absence and presence, and of absence in presence in relation to hope, peace, joy, and love.
Christmas deconstruction will re-remember Christ in the various aspects and stories of Christ's "beginning" on earth, a beginning lacking an originary event. That is, Christ never came, but has always been coming and has always been here (to use some more deconstruction terms: a "hauntology" of Christmas in the "aporia" between presence/absence).
A deconstructing Christmas is one where "God so loved the world," not "God so loved all the people I love." Christmas would then lose and gain significance. It would lose the significance of gift-giving to those we love and being with those you love, it would no longer be a holy day (holiday), a day set apart and other than the rest of the days, because it would give significance to the rest of the days of the year by recognizing the Other and Otherness by asking for generosity, for hope, for peace, for joy, for love, for Christ, for "the Christmas spirit," to be a year-round thing, so these things are born every minute, not once a year.
A deconstructing Christmas would be an active holiday where significance needs to be created, not inherited. For all of these abstract terms--generosity, hope, peace, joy, love, Christ, Advent, Christmas--are merely abstract terms with no center defining. If we are to use them at Christmas or ever, they need to be embodied. Words don't mean, they are given meaning.
And so it was in Mark with Jesus. Jesus wasn't born the Christ. Jesus became the Christ by giving that term meaning--that was the beginning of the good news. Christmas is a time not only to remember, but to actively remember by continuing to create meaning for Christ, by continuing to create Christ, to birth Christ.
Showing posts with label derrida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label derrida. Show all posts
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
On The Unforgivable: Grace & Impossibility in Jesus & Derrida
"Do you think there is such a thing as an unforgivable sin?"
My friends know I love spiritual, biblical, and theological conversations. Sometimes they even appreciate my opinions. A few evenings ago, one of my friends asked me the above question. My answer surprised me a little.
I first admitted my ignorance of Matthew 12:31-32. The Jesus of Matthew's Gospel says "blasphemy against the holy spirit will not be forgiven." I know the passage, but I have never done serious study into what the verse means. I haven't even spent significant time trying to understand the passage without outside study. I've heard other people talk about what the passage means, but I'm too skeptical to take their words for it.
Not surprisingly, I thought of Derrida's nearly incomprehensible words after I thought of Jesus'. In 1997, Derrida wrote On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, an intriguing combination of topics. And perhaps Derrida's thoughts aren't completely applicable. After all, my friend wondered not whether humans cannot forgive a certain sin, but rather if God could or would not forgive a certain sin or sins. Maybe Derrida's thoughts say more about God than I initially realized.
Derrida says, "We are all heir, at least, to persons or events marked, in an essential, interior, ineffaceable fashion, by crimes against humanity." A crime against humanity is "a crime against what is most sacred in the living, and thus already against the divine in man," and perhaps, in a sense, the blasphemy about which Matthew's Jesus speaks.
Derrida believes forgiveness should be "anecomonic," one should not forgive a sin because one wants to be forgiven. No one should give forgiveness in payment for a forgiveness or in expectation of a later forgiveness (cf. Matt. 18:21-35). In fact, for Derrida, anything that can be forgiven is not something needing forgiveness.
Jesus promotes the social justice of the Torah and Tanak, not the dueteronomic retributive justice upon which too many Christians focus. Retributive justice seems to have a place in society. The ancient Hebrew Torah set up retributive justice for their society to work. Today we continue it at the societal level with institutes for correction, however corrupt and non-corrective they are.
On the social level, Jesus and Derrida realize justice in a different sense, where we are all debtors like the man in Jesus' parable, all heirs to the most heinous of sins, all guilty. If we are all guilty, then forgiveness becomes impossible and necessary. But all of our sins are against ourselves and each other. "Forgiveness is ... mad. It must plunge, but lucidly, into the night of the unintelligible." It must happen in order to enter into relationship with others, with ourselves, and with God--the God in us and the God with us.
So we come again to Peter's famous question about how many times to forgive his brother. Jesus' answer is a ridiculous number intended for exaggeration, a hyperbole. Jesus' answer changes the concept of forgiveness completely. Jesus is not concerned with forgiving sins. "What would be a forgiveness that forgave only the forgivable?" Rather, Jesus is concerned with forgiving people.
Forgiving the forgivable forgives the past, which is doable, although sometimes hard. Forgiving a person means you forgive their future, too. Rationally, you cannot forgive something that hasn't happened. The unforgivable sin is the one that has not happened, but it is "the only thing to forgive[.] The only thing that calls for forgiveness." This is the only forgiveness that can be unconditional, the only forgiveness that is actually forgiveness.
"In principle, there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no 'to what point?'"
And so it is with God, I believe. I still do not understand the whole bit about blasphemy against the spirit. But I imagine God forgives people, not sins. God is concerned with sins and wrongdoings, but God does not forgive those things. Things don't need forgiving, people do.
===
Derrida, Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes. Thinking in Action. New York: Routledge, 2001. Originally published in 1997, in French.
My friends know I love spiritual, biblical, and theological conversations. Sometimes they even appreciate my opinions. A few evenings ago, one of my friends asked me the above question. My answer surprised me a little.
I first admitted my ignorance of Matthew 12:31-32. The Jesus of Matthew's Gospel says "blasphemy against the holy spirit will not be forgiven." I know the passage, but I have never done serious study into what the verse means. I haven't even spent significant time trying to understand the passage without outside study. I've heard other people talk about what the passage means, but I'm too skeptical to take their words for it.
Not surprisingly, I thought of Derrida's nearly incomprehensible words after I thought of Jesus'. In 1997, Derrida wrote On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, an intriguing combination of topics. And perhaps Derrida's thoughts aren't completely applicable. After all, my friend wondered not whether humans cannot forgive a certain sin, but rather if God could or would not forgive a certain sin or sins. Maybe Derrida's thoughts say more about God than I initially realized.
Derrida says, "We are all heir, at least, to persons or events marked, in an essential, interior, ineffaceable fashion, by crimes against humanity." A crime against humanity is "a crime against what is most sacred in the living, and thus already against the divine in man," and perhaps, in a sense, the blasphemy about which Matthew's Jesus speaks.
Derrida believes forgiveness should be "anecomonic," one should not forgive a sin because one wants to be forgiven. No one should give forgiveness in payment for a forgiveness or in expectation of a later forgiveness (cf. Matt. 18:21-35). In fact, for Derrida, anything that can be forgiven is not something needing forgiveness.
"If one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable, what the church calls 'venial sin', then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. If there is something to forgive, it would be what in religious language is called mortal sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or harm. From which comes the aporia, which can be described in its dry and implacable formality, without mercy: forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable. One cannot, or should not, forgive; there is only forgiveness, if there is any, where there is the unforgivable. That is to say that forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself. It can only be possible in doing the impossible."I can't imagine Jesus would disagree with Derrida. Jesus made forgiveness sound sensational. A man in a parable does not forgive a debt and reaps condemnation. Peter asks how many times he should forgive his brother, who apparently commits a great amount of wrongs. Seven times? How about seventy times seven.
Jesus promotes the social justice of the Torah and Tanak, not the dueteronomic retributive justice upon which too many Christians focus. Retributive justice seems to have a place in society. The ancient Hebrew Torah set up retributive justice for their society to work. Today we continue it at the societal level with institutes for correction, however corrupt and non-corrective they are.
On the social level, Jesus and Derrida realize justice in a different sense, where we are all debtors like the man in Jesus' parable, all heirs to the most heinous of sins, all guilty. If we are all guilty, then forgiveness becomes impossible and necessary. But all of our sins are against ourselves and each other. "Forgiveness is ... mad. It must plunge, but lucidly, into the night of the unintelligible." It must happen in order to enter into relationship with others, with ourselves, and with God--the God in us and the God with us.
So we come again to Peter's famous question about how many times to forgive his brother. Jesus' answer is a ridiculous number intended for exaggeration, a hyperbole. Jesus' answer changes the concept of forgiveness completely. Jesus is not concerned with forgiving sins. "What would be a forgiveness that forgave only the forgivable?" Rather, Jesus is concerned with forgiving people.
Forgiving the forgivable forgives the past, which is doable, although sometimes hard. Forgiving a person means you forgive their future, too. Rationally, you cannot forgive something that hasn't happened. The unforgivable sin is the one that has not happened, but it is "the only thing to forgive[.] The only thing that calls for forgiveness." This is the only forgiveness that can be unconditional, the only forgiveness that is actually forgiveness.
"In principle, there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no 'to what point?'"
And so it is with God, I believe. I still do not understand the whole bit about blasphemy against the spirit. But I imagine God forgives people, not sins. God is concerned with sins and wrongdoings, but God does not forgive those things. Things don't need forgiving, people do.
===
Derrida, Jacques. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes. Thinking in Action. New York: Routledge, 2001. Originally published in 1997, in French.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Why I'm (Not) Emerging/Emergent, But Support the Movement
I have been really excited about emergent/emerging Christian communities. Some people tell me a difference exists between "emergent" and "emerging," while others use the terms interchangeably. I don't know if a difference exists between the two and, frankly, I don't think I care all that much. I'm not trying to offend anyone's attempt to create an us/them binary, to put massive groups of people into a box, or to understand with good intentions other people by committing the aforementioned crimes; I just don't currently see an importance in the distinction due to my ignorance of it.
In case you missed it, I opened the last paragraph with "I have been." Those three words could imply continuance with the past or a breaking with the past, either, "I have been and still am," or, "I have been but am not longer." I am looking for a little bit of both connotations.
I am still really excited about emergent/emerging Christian communities and the conversations surrounding them. They are doing wonderful things and making some changes I enthusiastically support. Down with hierarchy, up with co-servanthood. Down with marketing and flattery, up with relationships. Down with isolation, up with intentional living communities. Down with monostructure, up with variety.
Did you notice I just said "they." It seems nearly impossible to analyze and communicate without creating us/them binaries, or, worse, I/them or I/it binaries.
I do not associate myself with any emergent/emerging Christian movement or group any more than I associate myself with any Christian denominational movement or entity. I am just as much Presbyterian as I am emergent as I am Protestant as I am Christian heretic as I am Christian apostate as I am Christian liberal or postliberal or postmodern or post-postmodern as I am Christian deconstructionist and process Christian and agnostic.
Alongside all those other words I just listed, "emergent" and "emerging" are labels promoting identity. Identities build walls. Identities build those us/them binaries. Derrida suggests working towards identification, not identity, a slight and genius play on words.
Identity is one thing; identification isn't one thing. Identity settles for conformity; identification is a dynamic, exciting, frightening, never-settling process. It doesn't involve getting rid of all our lovely identifiers like "emergent," "emerging," and "Christian." We keep those words and recognize they have no denotation and contradictory connotations--they are words, intrinsically meaninglessness words that continually take shape in conversation.
We use these words only when appropriate, not all the time. I'm never always emergent/emerging. Instead, I can identify with an idea or practice I associate with others who self-describe them and this idea or practice within an emergent/emerging movement. Alongside my emergent/emerging leanings, I have a tendency to find myself in Presbyterian (PC-USA) and Baptist circles, although I still have a preference for some theology I have always associated with Advent Christian circles.
With all this identification, I am never placed in a box, because no one will expect me to be the (nonexistent) definition of emergent, emerging, Christian, Protestant, evangelical, Presbyterian, or even "Presbymergent."
I include you in this identification, too. Whether you accept it or not, I don't think you have an identity, as much as I might sinfully judge you to have a few (I often try to put you in a box. Sorry.). With the process of identification, us/them shatters to I/Thou, to, more simply, "We." We are a community. We have commonalities and differences. I am different from and the same as you. We are never completely opposite, because on some level I am not me and you are not you, because we are both we.
I just took some notes on a book I read this winter: An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, with chapters by Brian McLaren and Samir Selmanovic.
I've read books by Brain McLaren. He talks about Christians having "a generous orthodoxy," which attempts to maintain the idea of right belief within what he calls wide margins. Really, he is just promoting one orthodoxy to replace other, previous, "narrower" orthodoxies. He doesn't skirt around the many problems orthodoxy has as an identifier and creator of oppressive us/them binaries. Although saying great things about emergent/emerging, in A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren simply and unfortunately touts another orthodoxy.
I haven't read any books by Samir Selmanovic, but I met him and listened to a presentation he made called "Learning to Love the Other in God, Self, and Society." Whereas McLaren wants to create a Christian community that accepts more people as "us," Selmanovic seems more concerned about becoming yourself, which you can only do in community with the Other. Selmanovic acknowledges the unavoidability of us/them and instead of creating a larger "us," like McLaren, he decides to engage with as many "Thous" as he can in order to be himself. In that presentation, Selmanovic spent more time on I/Thou than us/them.
Both of these men were present at the "Transform" conference I attended in Washington, DC this past April. So was Peter Rollins of Ireland. I don't think Rollins had a version of emerging/emergent like the other two. I think Rollins could even care less about being called Christian. Instead, he wanted to lose himself in order to find himself, to give up identity for the process of identification that could one day be resurrected with Christ. (You might call Rollins a fan of deconstruction.)
All three of these men were at the same conference, in some way associating with the emergent/emerging identifier. McLaren touts that label frequently. I know little of how often Selmanovic uses it, but I know he engages with an interfaith community. Rollins is often associated with Christianity and emergent/emerging, but he apparently spends a lot of time pointing out the deconstruction in those terms.
And yet, they were all enjoying each other's community. I love that part of the emerging/emergent movement. But I resist large parts of the emergent/emerging movement that are obsessed with being emergent/emerging. I don't like oppressive binaries and I saw those binaries hailed at Transform as many had a general distaste for education, certain ways of reading the Bible, and the institutionalized churches. Yes, many based this distaste on hurt, but hurt transformed into an oppressive us/them binary is not deconstruction, but rather entering into the alterity that hurt you and pushing that hurt back on those who hurt you.
I associate with much of what emergent/emerging people are doing--experimenting with faith and trying to get closer to God based on individual communities, not finding one way for everyone to do it in different situations.
And I associate with the tendency to not associate, which is why I have been and continue to be excited about the emerging/emergent church and why I am not now nor will ever be an emergent/emerging Christian, although I hope to be involved in such a definition-defying community one day, either an existent one or one I start.
Perhaps I am part of one or more right now.
In case you missed it, I opened the last paragraph with "I have been." Those three words could imply continuance with the past or a breaking with the past, either, "I have been and still am," or, "I have been but am not longer." I am looking for a little bit of both connotations.
I am still really excited about emergent/emerging Christian communities and the conversations surrounding them. They are doing wonderful things and making some changes I enthusiastically support. Down with hierarchy, up with co-servanthood. Down with marketing and flattery, up with relationships. Down with isolation, up with intentional living communities. Down with monostructure, up with variety.
Did you notice I just said "they." It seems nearly impossible to analyze and communicate without creating us/them binaries, or, worse, I/them or I/it binaries.
I do not associate myself with any emergent/emerging Christian movement or group any more than I associate myself with any Christian denominational movement or entity. I am just as much Presbyterian as I am emergent as I am Protestant as I am Christian heretic as I am Christian apostate as I am Christian liberal or postliberal or postmodern or post-postmodern as I am Christian deconstructionist and process Christian and agnostic.
Alongside all those other words I just listed, "emergent" and "emerging" are labels promoting identity. Identities build walls. Identities build those us/them binaries. Derrida suggests working towards identification, not identity, a slight and genius play on words.
Identity is one thing; identification isn't one thing. Identity settles for conformity; identification is a dynamic, exciting, frightening, never-settling process. It doesn't involve getting rid of all our lovely identifiers like "emergent," "emerging," and "Christian." We keep those words and recognize they have no denotation and contradictory connotations--they are words, intrinsically meaninglessness words that continually take shape in conversation.
We use these words only when appropriate, not all the time. I'm never always emergent/emerging. Instead, I can identify with an idea or practice I associate with others who self-describe them and this idea or practice within an emergent/emerging movement. Alongside my emergent/emerging leanings, I have a tendency to find myself in Presbyterian (PC-USA) and Baptist circles, although I still have a preference for some theology I have always associated with Advent Christian circles.
With all this identification, I am never placed in a box, because no one will expect me to be the (nonexistent) definition of emergent, emerging, Christian, Protestant, evangelical, Presbyterian, or even "Presbymergent."
I include you in this identification, too. Whether you accept it or not, I don't think you have an identity, as much as I might sinfully judge you to have a few (I often try to put you in a box. Sorry.). With the process of identification, us/them shatters to I/Thou, to, more simply, "We." We are a community. We have commonalities and differences. I am different from and the same as you. We are never completely opposite, because on some level I am not me and you are not you, because we are both we.
I just took some notes on a book I read this winter: An Emergent Manifesto of Hope, edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones, with chapters by Brian McLaren and Samir Selmanovic.
I've read books by Brain McLaren. He talks about Christians having "a generous orthodoxy," which attempts to maintain the idea of right belief within what he calls wide margins. Really, he is just promoting one orthodoxy to replace other, previous, "narrower" orthodoxies. He doesn't skirt around the many problems orthodoxy has as an identifier and creator of oppressive us/them binaries. Although saying great things about emergent/emerging, in A Generous Orthodoxy, McLaren simply and unfortunately touts another orthodoxy.
I haven't read any books by Samir Selmanovic, but I met him and listened to a presentation he made called "Learning to Love the Other in God, Self, and Society." Whereas McLaren wants to create a Christian community that accepts more people as "us," Selmanovic seems more concerned about becoming yourself, which you can only do in community with the Other. Selmanovic acknowledges the unavoidability of us/them and instead of creating a larger "us," like McLaren, he decides to engage with as many "Thous" as he can in order to be himself. In that presentation, Selmanovic spent more time on I/Thou than us/them.
Both of these men were present at the "Transform" conference I attended in Washington, DC this past April. So was Peter Rollins of Ireland. I don't think Rollins had a version of emerging/emergent like the other two. I think Rollins could even care less about being called Christian. Instead, he wanted to lose himself in order to find himself, to give up identity for the process of identification that could one day be resurrected with Christ. (You might call Rollins a fan of deconstruction.)
All three of these men were at the same conference, in some way associating with the emergent/emerging identifier. McLaren touts that label frequently. I know little of how often Selmanovic uses it, but I know he engages with an interfaith community. Rollins is often associated with Christianity and emergent/emerging, but he apparently spends a lot of time pointing out the deconstruction in those terms.
And yet, they were all enjoying each other's community. I love that part of the emerging/emergent movement. But I resist large parts of the emergent/emerging movement that are obsessed with being emergent/emerging. I don't like oppressive binaries and I saw those binaries hailed at Transform as many had a general distaste for education, certain ways of reading the Bible, and the institutionalized churches. Yes, many based this distaste on hurt, but hurt transformed into an oppressive us/them binary is not deconstruction, but rather entering into the alterity that hurt you and pushing that hurt back on those who hurt you.
I associate with much of what emergent/emerging people are doing--experimenting with faith and trying to get closer to God based on individual communities, not finding one way for everyone to do it in different situations.
And I associate with the tendency to not associate, which is why I have been and continue to be excited about the emerging/emergent church and why I am not now nor will ever be an emergent/emerging Christian, although I hope to be involved in such a definition-defying community one day, either an existent one or one I start.
Perhaps I am part of one or more right now.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Deconstructing an Everest of Faith
On the BBC news website, I recently read an article about Mt. Everest. Apparently China and Nepal had been disputing the height of the mountain for a sometime now. China argued the height should be recorded by its “rock height,” while Nepal wanted to measure it by its “snow height,” which was 4 meters higher than the rock height. In early April of this year, China conceded to Nepal and Nepal officially recognized the rock height in addition to the snow height.
For the BBC News, the issue is not exactly resolved, even if China and Nepal agree. Eleven years ago, the US National Geographic Society records yet another height (8,850m), even though it does not have the claim to Mt. Everest that China and Nepal have. Apparently shifting continental plates is pushing India under Nepal and China, pushing Everest evermore towards the skies.
Paul describes Christ as a rock from which water flows. Wise people build their houses upon rocks. “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ.” Upon a rock Jesus built his church. If you have faith, you can move mountains.
Rocks are not as sure as the writers of the Bible might have thought. Mountains are moved today and, arguably, faith has little to do with their movement. In West Virginia, the tops of mountains are removed for more cost efficient mining and energy. Continental plates move mountains, making them taller. Even when measuring rocks and mountains, do we measure them by the rock or the snow that somehow becomes part of the identity we give them?
Even if wise people build their houses on rocks, they better not build them like the houses built in Haiti. Rocks and mountains are simply not as sure as we once thought. When it comes to building, the rocky foundation is not the most important issue, for the building must be sturdy and well-built. What if, like the hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness? The structure of my hope matters, too. Is my hope supported by faith? By education? By tradition? By experience?
Enter deconstruction. Perhaps hope is not something that should be built. In my life, the “built” metaphor, the mythic metaphor of structure has worn out its welcome. I offer no metaphor to take its place, no new myth awaiting immanent destruction or deconstruction.
Instead, I just hope, sometimes standing or reclining on slowly or swiftly moving rocks, sometimes on the sand, and other times completely at sea, be they calm, turbulent, or between Scylla and Charybdis. A hope against hope, or against some hopes (Romans 4:18, NASB). An impossible hope. A hope for the impossible. A hope that I can reach the unreachable star, love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, and in turn be forgiven, loved, and reached by the wholly, holy other who is my beloved, my God.
===
Cf. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes; Thinking in Action; New York: Routledge, 2001), 32-33; John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodernism;. Ed. James K. A. Smith; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 45-46; Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, “The Impossible Dream (The Quest),” (Man of La Mancha; 1965 Original Broadway Cast Recording; Universal Classics Group, 2001).
For the BBC News, the issue is not exactly resolved, even if China and Nepal agree. Eleven years ago, the US National Geographic Society records yet another height (8,850m), even though it does not have the claim to Mt. Everest that China and Nepal have. Apparently shifting continental plates is pushing India under Nepal and China, pushing Everest evermore towards the skies.
Paul describes Christ as a rock from which water flows. Wise people build their houses upon rocks. “The church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ.” Upon a rock Jesus built his church. If you have faith, you can move mountains.
Rocks are not as sure as the writers of the Bible might have thought. Mountains are moved today and, arguably, faith has little to do with their movement. In West Virginia, the tops of mountains are removed for more cost efficient mining and energy. Continental plates move mountains, making them taller. Even when measuring rocks and mountains, do we measure them by the rock or the snow that somehow becomes part of the identity we give them?
Even if wise people build their houses on rocks, they better not build them like the houses built in Haiti. Rocks and mountains are simply not as sure as we once thought. When it comes to building, the rocky foundation is not the most important issue, for the building must be sturdy and well-built. What if, like the hymn, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness? The structure of my hope matters, too. Is my hope supported by faith? By education? By tradition? By experience?
Enter deconstruction. Perhaps hope is not something that should be built. In my life, the “built” metaphor, the mythic metaphor of structure has worn out its welcome. I offer no metaphor to take its place, no new myth awaiting immanent destruction or deconstruction.
Instead, I just hope, sometimes standing or reclining on slowly or swiftly moving rocks, sometimes on the sand, and other times completely at sea, be they calm, turbulent, or between Scylla and Charybdis. A hope against hope, or against some hopes (Romans 4:18, NASB). An impossible hope. A hope for the impossible. A hope that I can reach the unreachable star, love the unlovable, forgive the unforgivable, and in turn be forgiven, loved, and reached by the wholly, holy other who is my beloved, my God.
===
Cf. Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes; Thinking in Action; New York: Routledge, 2001), 32-33; John D. Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodernism;. Ed. James K. A. Smith; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007), 45-46; Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion, “The Impossible Dream (The Quest),” (Man of La Mancha; 1965 Original Broadway Cast Recording; Universal Classics Group, 2001).
Saturday, December 26, 2009
A Brief Reflection on Justice & Deconstruction
To summarize what I've read about Derrida, deconstruction, and justice, just because I'm thinking about it right now (and this began for you, but is turning out to be more for me): Justice does not deconstruct. Jusitce is not law. Law should reach for justice, but being a thing written or spoken, it deconstructs. Justice is not giving someone what they deserve--those who have it coming--but rather giving to those who do not have (it coming, or do not have justice, or simply lack). And since it is a giving, justice becomes practicing or offering a/the gift. Some gifts--not true gifts--presume an economy. I give you a gift and I know you will eventually want to give me a gift in return, making the gift not so much a gift, but an exchange (even though we call them gifts in our culture). The true gift is one in which you cannot presume this economy. You give to those who do not have (it coming, or do not have justice, or simply lack). When you give a gift to them, you cannot receive in return because they do not have anything to exchange.
And that is justice--giving true gifts.
Because once someone is given a gift, they no longer lack what was given, justice changes. New gifts are given. And this is why laws deconstruct and lack justice, because they assume a singulairty, one "gift" given over and over again to the same person, like buying 25 of the same turtlenecks and giving one each year to the same person, beginning when the person is 17. The person moves to a warmer climate, styles change, and so does the person's body. Even if these things did not change, the turtleneck is not warn after a year and a re-gifting of the same gift is superfluous.
Justice, in another sense, is deconstruction, an opening up to future possibilities. It is, at least, tantamount to or in the same family as deconstruction.
I like this understanding, because it gives a different understanding to blind lady justice and her scales. If lady justice is blind, it is because she does not judge the person to whom she gives, but gives to all who need. And her scales weigh what one does not have, so she can give.
And that is justice--giving true gifts.
Because once someone is given a gift, they no longer lack what was given, justice changes. New gifts are given. And this is why laws deconstruct and lack justice, because they assume a singulairty, one "gift" given over and over again to the same person, like buying 25 of the same turtlenecks and giving one each year to the same person, beginning when the person is 17. The person moves to a warmer climate, styles change, and so does the person's body. Even if these things did not change, the turtleneck is not warn after a year and a re-gifting of the same gift is superfluous.
Justice, in another sense, is deconstruction, an opening up to future possibilities. It is, at least, tantamount to or in the same family as deconstruction.
I like this understanding, because it gives a different understanding to blind lady justice and her scales. If lady justice is blind, it is because she does not judge the person to whom she gives, but gives to all who need. And her scales weigh what one does not have, so she can give.
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