I was reminded of these videos created as a final project for a course last fall with Ryan Bolger – Church in Contemporary Culture – when someone made a comment on them via YouTube. Watching them again is like reading an old paper or listening to an old sermon, remembering where I was at and what I was reading back then.
Rob Bell’s latest NOOMA offering, Whirlwind, enters into an interesting conversation centered on the ancient story of Job. In it, Bell quotes at length from the earliest of books in the Hebrew Scriptures, which has played a central role in recent works by Slavoj Žižek and David Bazan (previously addressed here).
Bazan concludes his latest album:
When Job asked you a question
You answered “Who are you?”
That sounds a bit defensive
Did you just bite off more than you could chew?
And Žižek wonders if Job stayed quiet
neither because he was crushed by God’s overwhelming presence, nor because he wanted thereby to indicate his continuous resistance – the fact that God avoided answering his question – but because, in a gesture of silent solidarity, he percieved the divine impotence… What Job suddenly understood was that it was not him, but God himself who was in effect on trial in Job’s calamities, and he failed the test miserably. (The Monstrosity of Christ, 55-56)
After noting such quotations, the assertion that Bell enters into this conversation, as aforementioned, could be rightly questioned. It is by no mere chance, however, that all three thinkers are drawn back in to the same old story that has influenced all three monotheistic world faiths.
This is, of course, because this oldest of all biblical narratives addresses one of the most pressing questions of humanity: Why do we suffer? And what can be done about it? And after a century that was to end all suffering (and even “Christianize the world”), our capitalism, democracy and in some cases, even our faiths (other than capitalism and democracy!?), have led to increased suffering and systemic violence.
And so, we question like – and with – Job.
Žižek and Bazan (who was great at Detroit last night) are wont to conclude that God is impotent to stop it. Bell, on the other hand, concludes
We want answers, don’t we? We want explanations. We want to know why we suffer like we do. Could somebody please explain this? And there are times when the only honest, healthy, human thing to possibly do is to shout your question and shake your fist and rage against the heavens and demand an explanation. But true wisdom, the kind we find here with Job, the kind that endures, the kind that sustains a person through suffering – that kind of wisdom knows when to speak and when to be silent. Because your story is not over. The last word has not been spoken. And there may be way more going on here than any of us realize.
And then he invites:
So may you be released from always having to understand why everything happens the way that it does. May this freedom open you up to all sorts of new perspectives. And may you have the wisdom to know when to say “I spoke once, but now, I will say no more.”
Synecdoche, New York was written and directed by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote and produced Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich, each of which examines the meaning of life in a rather existential fashion. In some ways, his films function like postmodern reappropriations of Albert Camus or Jean-Paul Sartre novels (or filmed David Bazan’s records):
I will be dying and so will you, and so will everyone here. That’s what I want to explore. We’re all hurtling towards death, yet here we are for the moment, alive. Each of us knowing we’re going to die, each of us secretly believing we won’t.
Synecdoche, however – Kaufman’s directorial debut – functions as much more than a surrealist/existentialist musing on the meaning of life, and could be seen as an extended metaphor based upon the Apostle Paul’s metaphor for the church and the importance of narrative – metanarrative even. This emphasis upon Story may be paralled by Donald Miller’s new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life, especially considering the role of Robert McKee in the work of Kaufman and Miller.
Throughout Synecdoche, Caden Cotard (played by Philip Seymour Hoffman) struggles to come to grips with his mortality, and all that entails, as seen in the aforementioned quote. His character is based upon Cotard’s syndrome, which is a nihilistic, neuropsychiatric disorder wherein a person holds the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In one scene, another character is seen reading Proust’s novel Search of Lost Time which features the charater Dr. Cottard, said to be based upon Proust’s father.
After directing Death of a Salesman, Cotard is awarded a MacArthur grant which allows him to build another body, in a sense, even as his own body fails him. After purchasing a huge dilapidated warehouse, Cotard begins recreating Schenectady, New York with a synecdoche (where a part is used to designate the whole). The recreation of Schenectady, however, begins to overlap with “real” life – and the viewer can become quite confused, at times, knowing which is which.
The actors, then, reenact their own lives, as themselves, based upon the events which take place inside the synecdoche of Schenectady. Caden is “God” inside the synecdoche, handing each actor their part to play, for each day. In hopes of opening the play (after around 40 years of rehearsals), he states
I know how to do it now. There are nearly thirteen million people in the world. None of those people is an extra. They’re all the leads of their own stories. They have to be given their due.
Near the film’s conclusion, a priest in “Schenectady” muses on the meaning of life whilst officiating a funeral (which almost perfectly parallels Pedro the Lion’s song Priests and Paramedics):
Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won’t know for twenty years. And you may never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it’s what you create. And even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are only here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but it doesn’t really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope that something good will come along. Something to make you feel connected, something to make you feel whole, something to make you feel loved. And the truth is I feel so angry, and the truth is I feel so [very] sad, and the truth is I’ve felt so [very] hurt for so [very] long and for just as long I’ve been pretending I’m OK, just to get along, just for, I don’t know why, maybe because no one wants to hear about my misery, because they have their own. Well, [forget] everybody. Amen.
These lines recall some of Žižek’s thoughts, of course, about how the train never arrives, though I’m thinking also of his explanation that for the Christian believer the Event has already taken place. And, in light of Paul’s concept of the Body of Christ (written to the Corinthians, no less!), the Event has taken place but also continues to take place through the community of those seeking to follow Jesus, seeking to live faithfully in spite of the bodies and Body that can fail us, knowing ultimately that the Head of the Body – the Author of the Story – never will.
A while back Peter Rollins and Paraclete Press ran a competition of parable writing to mark the release of Rollins’ The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. The winner was announced last week via Rollins’ blog, and is none other than Kester Brewin, author of Signs of Emergence (The Complex Christ in the UK).
The parable is a sort of Žižekian parody of the well known Christian poem depicting life as a journey wherein God walks alongside us on the beach. When life was difficult, the author of the poem asks his Maker why during the difficult times of life God left him to walk alone. The response is, of course, that the one set of footprints seen in the sand was when God was carrying the author. Brewin’s reworking of the poem depicts, instead, the man carrying God:
The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when you carried me.
Alongside Rollins’ book title, this theological perspective is certainly heretical. As such, however, it reminds me of a number of things, including when ska band The Mighty Mighty Bosstones once defended themselves against riding the bandwagon, instead asserting that they had been carrying the bandwagon. Or, from a more theological perspective, Tom Waits’ song Road to Peace, which concludes:
And if God is great and God is good why can’t he change the hearts of men?
Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help
Maybe God himself he needs all of our help
Maybe God himself is lost and needs help He’s out upon the road to peace
Or take John Caputo, who questions at the outset of The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event
Has not the name of God from time out of mind been associated with unlimited power so that “God Almighty” is practically a redundant expression? That I would never deny. I am not saying that power has not been a defining feature of theology right from the start; theology has been strong theology and religion has been strong religion, in love with strength, right from the gate. But I am suggesting that theology is a house divided against itself and that it lacks self-understanding to the point that it is intellectually bipolar, vacillating wildly between the heights of power and the depths of weakness. (The Weakness of God, 7-8)
There is no doubt an interesting conversation going on here between Waits, Brewin, Rollins, Žižek and Caputo (among countless others, including – I think – David Bazan). I certainly struggle with some of the ideas presented – especially when they limit the power of God – though I continue to affirm the centrality that we must start with Genesis 1, recognizing that all of humanity is called to co-creation and co-mission, to work together in remaking the world to what it was originally meant to be.
And, I will affirm the central message of the Last Judgment, that in caring for the created order we ultimately show devotion to the Creator:
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.
Which is what Brewin may have been getting at all along.
David Bazan’s forthcoming record, Curse Your Branches, continuously explicates his current theological outlook. Through the years Bazan revealed his personal doubts through the lenses of a cast of characters, in largely existentialist terms. Curse Your Branches, on the other hand, is entirely in the first person, including a track entitled “Bearing Witness.”
I clung to miracles I have not seen
from ancient signatures I cannot read
Though I’ve repented I’m still tempted I admit
but it’s not what bearing witness is
Too full of fear and prophecy to see
the revelation right in front of me
So sick and tired of trying to make the pieces fit
’cause it’s not what bearing witness is
When the gap between what I hoped would be
and what is makes me weep for my kids
I take a cleansing breath and make a positive confession
But is that what bearing witness is?
Though it may alienate your family
and blur the lines of your identity
Let go of what you know and honor what exists
Son, that’s what bearing witness is
Daughter, that’s what bearing witness is
Of all the tracks, it feels one of the most hopeful, both musically and lyrically. Note especially the line “I take a cleansing breath and make a positive confession.” Lines like this, among others, prompted my previous post attempting to short circuit Bazan with Slavoj Žižek. This is due not only due to the theological questions they ask, but also what they affirm, what could be referred to as a “materialist theology.” Thus the admonition, “Let go of what you know and honor what exists.”
While I cannot go as far as Žižek and Bazan, affirming only a materialist theology (thus negating any form of Transcendance), there is, of course, a wholly materialist element to the Kingdom of God, which the church desperately needs to recover – especially in the demise of modernity. May we recognize our “materialist” calling found throughout the Scriptures. As the Son of Man proclaims:
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
There seems to be, then, at the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel, the command to honor the Invisible in caring for the Material. This is no new concept, but has existed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures with the command to care for “the widow, the orphan and the stranger,” as a response to God’s liberation from the hands of the Egyptians.
David Bazan’s forthcoming Curse Your Branches has been spinning in my car all day; round and round in all it’s brilliance. While Bazan (formerly of Pedro the Lion) has always engaged in the theological, in recent years his perspective has shifted considerably, from evangelical Christian to agnostic, if not atheist.
Though each of Curse Your Branches’ ten songs engage a lofty – and rather modern – theological construct, the final verse of the last song on the record, “The Stitches”, sounds like the Seattle area songwriter has been sitting down with the Slovenian “Elvis of cultural theory.” Curse Your Branches concludes thusly:
When Job asked you a question
You answered “Who are you?”
That sounds a bit defensive
Did you just bite off more than you could chew?
In his recent theological title fight with John Milbank – and in conversation with Vattimo and Caputo’s weak thought – Marxist, militant atheist Slavoj Žižek (the aforentioned “Elvis”) equates Christ’s death with Job’s suffering.
Christ’s death on the Cross thus means we should immediately ditch the notion of God as a transcendent caretaker who guarantees the happy outcome of our acts… (The Monstrosity of Christ, 55)
He goes on:
What, then, if this is what Job percieved and what kept him silent: he remained silent neither because he was crushed by God’s overwhelming presence, nor because he wanted thereby to indicate his continuous resistance – the fact that God avoided answering his question – but because, in a gesture of silent solidarity, he percieved the divine impotence. God is neither just nor unjust, but simply impotent. What Job suddenly understood was that it was not him, but God himself who was in effect on trial in Job’s calamities, and he failed the test miserably. (The Monstrosity of Christ, 55-56)
Žižek concludes this section asserting the “radical notion” that Job even foresaw Christ’s suffering!
How interesting that both Bazan and Žižek engage faith – at least in part – from the perspective of a narrative that predates any other canonical book. Are there deconstructive efforts at work here that end up leaving the rest of the Narrative on the cutting room floor?
Ought Job and Jesus be so closely intertwined? And which should interpret the other? And what of the charge of impotence? Can it be justified if we gather up all that has been cut out?
It seems Starbucks and (RED) have teamed up for a new marketing campaign they are calling “From Africa To Africa.” For every pound of coffee purchased, Starbucks and (RED) will donate $1 to AIDS relief in Africa.Like U2 and Blackberry, the (RED) Campaign relies wholeheartedly upon capitalism to change the world. They’ve partnered with the likes of American Express, Apple, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Hallmark and Windows.
Long before I had Žižek’s language to engage with these partnerships, I questioned the efficacy of selling things in an effort to effect change. Ultimately, I suppose, I’m thinking back to the witness of the early followers of Jesus, who, Luke tells us
…were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.
Instead of buying things, these people were selling things in an effort to help others in need. And yet, today’s church seems largely beholden to such capitalist venture.Recently, in a class at Fuller with Erwin Raphael McManus (that I quickly dropped), a student seeking ordination in a mainline denomination asked McManus what he “should do,” after hearing McManus discuss their demise.
McManus’ response, in short, was that this student should finish his degree (if he wants!), but then get involved in business if he really wants to affect change. Citing Tom’s Shoes and To Write Love on Her Arms, McManus counseled this student away from “the church” in favor of business, where real change happens.Talk about a loss of imagination!
Žižek concludes, in Violence: Six Sideways Reflections
To circumscribe the contours of this radical rejection, one is tempted to evoke Badiou’s provocative thesis: “It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.” Better to do nothing that to engage in localised acts the ultimate function of which is to make the system run more smoothly (acts such as providing space or the multitude of new subjectivities). The threat today is not passivity, but pseudoactivity, the urge to “be active,” to participate,” to mask the nothingness of what goes on… Sometimes doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. (Violence,216-217)
Though Žižek would counsel us to “do nothing,” I suspect that isn’t his ultimate hope. Instead, I’d bet the Slovenian critical theorist is encouraging us to do nothing long enough to rethink the confines of capitalist thought and reject it in favor of communism.
Then again, maybe there is a way of life even more radical than he is encouraging us toward, One that changes the world as it changes us.
The Supreme Court confirmation proceedings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor continued today. I am interested in the previous comments she has made, but even more so in what others have – and continue to – make of them.
Yesterday, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, addressed a statement made by Sotomayor:
During a speech 15 years ago, Judge Sotomayor said, ‘I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt… continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies, and prejudices are appropriate.’ And in the same speech she said, ‘My experiences will affect the facts I choose to see as a judge.’
In light of her now famous statement regarding the superiority of Latin women, he later continued:
Each assumed that the nominee misspoke. But the nominee did not misspeak. She is on record making this statement at least five times over the course of a decade. These are her own words, spoken well before her nomination. They are not taken out of context.
And later, he juxtaposed these statements with the oath judges take:
I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me… under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.
The necessary question, then – assuming that Sotomayor did mean these statements as Sessions reports, of course – is an epistemological and hermeneutical one; is she at fault for assuming her ethnicity most effectively prepares her to make judgments? Have not men from European-American descent assumed this since America’s founding?
With her Princeton and Yale education, it may a little difficult to establish connections between Sotomayor and Liberation Theology, though questioning the role of the movement in context of the highest court in the land can’t hurt. So, a quick question, if we are really concerned with achieving justice for “the poor and the rich,” what could it hurt having some judges “from below”?
I’m thinking of Žižek’s Violence here, too, alongside Leonardo Boff. Maybe we need more “violence” after all.
f this weakened, kenotic metaphysical stance and dissolution of the sacred/secular is followed to its end, then, we can understand anew Jesus’ assertion that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” Indeed, this lines up with the intention of Solomon’s temple from the beginning.
As other “nations” are beholden to their own myths, we can recognize the importance of seeing in Christ’s incarnation and temple action an understanding and willingness to engage with these petit recits. Or as Vattimo puts it,
it is not that the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ undermines – and delegitimates – the myths of other religions; in many senses… it implicitly validates them. Since the Christian God was incarnate in Jesus, we may also understand God through the other forms of natural being appearing in many non-Christian religious mythologies. (After Christianity, 27)
Thus, instead of exclusively demanding adherence to each and every propositional statement of the Christian church, followers of Jesus ought to dig underneath the foundation for such propositions, recognizing and proclaiming God’s willingness to reveal himself in weakness to all people of all nations.
This emphasis on caritas for others signals a decisive break from Girard regarding the necessity of Jesus’ sacrifice, which can lead to legitimated violence:
[a]lthough Christ came into the world to reveal the connection between the sacred and violence, and to dismantle it, the violence of the sacred has remained active within Christianity until today.” (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, 12; see also After Christianity, 119)
One final element of Vattimo’s thought that is applicable to our present study is revealed in his thoughts regarding hermeneutics. In some ways similar to Žižek’s conception of lack, he asserts
if there is no objective truth given to someone once and for all, a truth around which we must all (for good or bad, willingly or unwillingly) gather, then truth happens in dialogue. The truth Christ came to teach the church is not an already accomplished truth. ((After the Death of God, 44)
Much to the chagrin of some of the Radical Orthodoxy movement (especially James K.A. Smith), Vattimo here opens up the possibility for and responsibility of followers of Jesus to continue the project of interpretation by deconstructing the hierarchical structures of metaphysical modernity. This continued hermeneutical praxis highlights the need to “continue the saving act of revelation… thus reducing the violence of institutions, including ecclesiastical ones.” (After Christianity, 119)
This is done in the name of the One who revealed true caritas by pronouncing judgment upon (and the deconstruction of) the temple, in favor of the Temple.
While Vattimo (following Girard) is right to emphasize the pacifist nature of Jesus’ ministry – and the Incarnation as a whole – Slavoj Žižek’s concept of subjective violence may be helpful here, as he defines it as “a perturbation of the ‘normal,’ peaceful state of things.” (Violence, 2) In other words, though we ought to disregard the shallow insinuation that Jesus’ temple action was an objectively violent, militaristic coup, its prophetic significance cannot be missed.
Jesus’ temple action is his final attempt at perturbing the “normal, peaceful” violence of the first century religious elite in favor of the outcast and downtrodden. Thus, it is not only the Incarnation as the event, but rather – in a Derridean sense – the Event within the Incarnation that provides for the dissolution of the metaphysical God;
The substance of the Christian announcement is not Christ’s revelation of an eternal truth but rather an actual historical event. (After Christianity, 109)
For Vattimo, this “implies the end of an almighty, absolute, eternal God and thus the weakening of God.” (Christ in Postmodern Philosophy, 11, see also AC, 120) As aforementioned, Vattimo sees in Heidegger’s history of Being a parallel between the Incarnation and the weakening of strong structures. Caputo – following Vattimo – notes, [t]he event that shocks the world is not a strong but a weak force.
Underlying, or arching over, all these famous paradoxes, there is, on my hypothesis, a thesis about God, or about the event harbored in the name of God, one that is contrary to the powers that be in theology and the church, a startling thesis found in what Paul calls ‘the weakness of God’… Paul spells out the way this weakness jolts the world: God chose the foolish ones in the world to shame the wise, and what is weak to shame the strong, and what is the low down in the world, the ones who “are not” (ta me onta), to shame the men of ousia, men of substance, the powers that be. (After the Death of God, 62)
This weakness is explicated not only by Paul, but seen throughout the life and ministry of Jesus, exemplified most notably following Jesus’ temple action in his demand that Peter put down his sword. His following question deserves mention: “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26.53, NIV) In this way, Jesus purposely chooses a way of weakness, as opposed to strength, which may well be why his disciples immediately desert him. We can see in this statement Jesus’ revelation not of sacred violence, but on the contrary, what Vattimo would call the “postmetaphysical and postmodern God of the Book.” (After Christianity, 8)
Jesus’ Incarnation of weakness leads necessarily to a reworking of the sacred secular “split.” Vattimo notes
secularization is not a term in contrast with the essence of the [Christian] message, but rather is constitutive of it. Jesus’ incarnation (the kenosis, the self-lowering of God), as an event both salvific and hermeneutical, is already indeed an archetypical occurrence of secularization. (After Christianity, 67)
Vattimo nowhere engages with the implications of Jesus’ ascension to “the right hand of God,” most likely because his project of understanding the Scriptures spiritually need not answer such questions. This, however, would present a present a problem for his more fundamentalist readers (if he has any!) in light of Vattimo’s proposition that the history of the Christian tradition ought to continue such secularization. Vattimo’s discussion of secularization is extremely helpful once we recognize its only limit. He asserts
[t]hough the event of Christianity sets in motion the processes of secularization, we may also find in Scripture a limit to secularization, hence a guide to desacralization – namely that of charity. If you read the gospels or the fathers of the church carefully, at the end, the only virtue left is always that of charity. From Saint Paul we learn… ‘even faith and hope will end at one point or another.’ (After the Death of God, 41)
This reality is indeed seen throughout Jesus’ ministry – and especially in his symbolic temple action – wherein Jesus seeks to extend caritas to those outside of the present community. In our deconstructive reading, then, are Jesus’ followers, then, not encouraged to do the same? The Apostle Paul’s continued encouragement to be a “living sacrifice” must be deconstructed (or recontextualized) in light of why Jesus was killed in the first place. Vattimo’s explication of caritas is, then, another way of explicating this Call to those who have been grasped by the Event (within the event).
