“It is the
tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in
tradition . . .
the hermeneutical problem.” - Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method
As a professed ana-theist, I do not need to agree nor participate
in the national political fascinations, anxieties and dramatics that captivate (mediate)
the masses. When the nation-state appears more lost than ever, sucked up in the
vortex of political fever and anxiety, I am reminded that
I am identified with and mediated by a counter narrative that takes
serious the gift of life and the need for a non-anxious, interpretive guide
via the great traditions, such as the Jewish and Christian traditions, yet not
to exclude the contributions of Eastern and philosophical inputs. I am a
Westerner on a journey, and this has been no choice of mine; it’s a necessity
for existential survival. Stanley
Hauerwas makes this point plain in his essay, “Christianity: It’s not a
Religion; it’s an Adventure.” “[Y]ou do
not choose God’s story. You don’t get to make God; God gets to make you. You
are made by being brought into the community through which you discover your
story.”
And one never really knows where that story unfolds.
It’s clear to someone like me who has passed through the
liminal state—
out of naïve theism
(the majority blindly socialized by a dominate script or narrative),
through the necessary force of doubt
with the mediating guide of the apophatic tradition guiding me to work out the mythical
traditions (hard, dark spaces of caves, clouds and mountains)—transformed to
live quietly and yet prophetically (
Parrhesia)
,
embracing the thinning niche of my existence.
The liminal state is well illustrated in the mythic story of
Jacob (
Genesis) the night before he
nears the tribe of his brother Esau. Here Jacob in great inner turmoil wrestled
with a stranger, demanding a “blessing”. This illustrates the rare epochs of
one’s life when faced with the need to give great rigor, wrestling with text/story,
language, questions, doubt and life itself in the midst of immense sense
certainty
,
injustices, danger, and uncertainty. Wrestling is serious mediation (hermeneutics)
that endeavors with courage to seek, explore, witness, and experience
Bārāq (Hebrew). Often translated
“blessing”, this word is overly and poorly understood by those who live by the
dominant script
—the
narrative for all who have no story, and the underlying script of the majority
of Christians and their pastors who do newspaper, television exegesis.
Bārāq is the
capacity or perhaps the energy/spirit (
geist)
to endure with faithfulness and
prosperity
(a rich Hebraic idea that does not sync with the consumerism of our day). It
alludes to the things that feed “generativity versus stagnation” and “integrity
verses despair”.
Like Job, one can be stripped of everything that life offers yet lacking
nothing.
Bārāq provides the mediation, longevity and generativity to overcome
the emptiness, the meaninglessness, absurdness of life (society and culture). Ergo,
like Jacob, the consequences of wrestling with a stranger is passing through
this state and walking away with a permanent limp, i.e., injured in a way that
transforms us into a more wholly/fully human being. This is the mark of
ana-theism. In the words of John Caputo
(“God Perhaps,”
Philosophy Today,
2011) “
Anatheism is a clear, imaginative, fascination and robust account of the
life of faith in the postmodern world, a world marked by cultural plurality and
religious strife by the astonishing transformations
brought on by new information technologies, as well as strident materialistic
critiques of religion . . . it is a theism that comes after theism, that returns to theism once again after having passed through a certain
non-theism or atheism, which [Richard] Kearney adroitly identifies in various
postmodern movements . . . [a] return to faith after doubt [or coming to terms
with doubt].”
Sadly, the American Christian right feed off the political machine
as if it suffuses our lives with an authority that requires us to work out our
allegiance to it while being somehow faithful to the kingdom of God. Jesus’ wisdom rings true: one cannot have two
masters. Subjection to political
government according to the ancient tradition and wisdom (St. Paul in Romans
13) means retaining moral
independence and judgment and perhaps suffering the very patience of God. In
The Politics of Jesus, John Howard Yoder explains this often misinterpreted
text.
The authority of government is not self-justifying. Whatever government
exists is ordered by God; but the text does not say that whatever the
government does or asks of it citizens is good. . . “they are ministers of God to the extent to which they busy
themselves” or “when they devote
themselves” or in that they devote
themselves” to the assigned function. . . they are ministers of God only to the
extent to which they carry our out the function . . . or by virtue of their
devoting themselves. . . what is “ordained” is the concept of proper government
or the principle of government as such.
From this the question is how to live in servitude (not
obedience) along side the governing reality and dominant script, which from a theistic argument, such as
Romans 13, is the working out in practical reasoning the ideal of the Kingdom
of God. Of course, in a democracy one has a more tolerated response and greater
opportunity to serve creatively; and the necessity of a counter narrative is
normative and requires imagination, commitment, and humility along with patience,
suffering and other virtues such as peacemaking to exist in faithful,
generative ways. An essential practice,
e.g., that animates this ideal is
hospitality to the stranger. How vital is this when our existing governing powers and the anxiety of the masses systematically forget the poor, immigrants, and marginalized people, while devoting itself to a market economy and ideology? Multitudes are being left out, inapt, without hope and aliveness.
Hope and sadness are intertwined in the paradox of the
Jewish and Christian stories. The emergence and development of awareness of the Kingdom of God hungers for the true quality of
Bārāq, the capacity that
grows out of humility to listen to the universal wisdom that is resident in
traditions ("Let one who hears, hear.") and to respond meaningfully with the gift
of life (intentionality) among the stranger(s) while living in a politically saturated
(mediated) society that holds to a common script that continues to delude the masses over time.
Bārāq is
the needed spiritual libido of the “great reversal; Ana-theism is the adventure
of theism in the post-modern world. Both phenomena in
tradition bring understanding to faith and unfold into practice (see
Beatitudes). It is not necessary, nor is
it anymore necessary to be “Christian” to experience such phenomena and to
yearn to be set apart from the dominant script or narrative. Any source
of disqualifying and limiting injunction that wants to censure a personal or
group definitive awakening out-of the dominate script is primarily from those
stuck in the admixture of a theistic view with the dominate script (mostly
nationalism). They will call you either
unpatriotic or godless. I say, "Come!"
Identifying, locating and becoming aware of the dominate
story is to realize that this is your story if you have no story. You have been socialized by it no matter what
your political affiliation is. So what’s your story? How do you work at and
imagine yourself creating possibility in a world of disappointments?
Here are a few examples of rich, faithful counter narratives
linked to sources:
