“Down to Earth”: an Anthropology

When I told my mom some of the classes I would be taking in my last few quarters at Fuller Seminary, she expressed her delight and then said, “And how are you going to stay down to earth?” I chuckled and jokingly said, “I cannot help but stay down to earth. Both my feet tread the earth every day.” In retrospect I think I should’ve added, “When we soar too close to the sun, our wings melt, so I will be sure to stay nearer to the ground.”

I have fond memories of growing up in rural South Carolina and being able to smell the soil as the dew evaporated in the morning. I miss that smell.

While we live, we may develop the desire to soar to the heights of human achievement, but as soon as we are born, gravity begins pulling us into the grave. This is not my attempt at seeming cynical, but I would like to remain well grounded in recognizing my own finitude, something of which teenagers are prone to be ignorant.

Quite a few folks point out similarities between humans and animals, and I think rightly so. It doesn’t take much imagination to note similarities between humans and animals. Other folks point out the vast differences between humans and animals, and again I think rightly so. Genesis may be considered to be too archaic for providing insights into anthropology, but I think Genesis paints a rather illuminating picture. It plants us firmly on the ground like many of the other animals, and it notes that humans are spirited: we are spirited dirt people. Now what this signifies precisely is the beginning of debate. Perhaps, along with Hamlet we will declare that humans are “the paragon of animals…and yet what is this quintessence of dust?” (2.2).

We Christians, especially in America, don’t know what the heck to do with apocalyptic literature most notably in the canonical witness. Our rather frightful incapacity for reading apocalyptic literature leaves us thinking that we are extraterrestrial creatures visiting the earth only for a short while. This couldn’t be farther from the canonical witness’ portrait of what it means to be human.

Our modern forefathers had a thing or two to say about what it means to be human. That great wizard Pascal spoke wisdom that will continue to echo in our ears for generations to come: “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, a man would still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality” (347).

Recalling the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, Voltaire would probably not have been too far off from echoing Pascal’s conclusion that we are but feeble things, and in light of several recent major disasters, Pascal’s remarks about our frailty have been accentuated further.

Descartes is famous or infamous for declaring, “I think therefore I am.” However, some folks have facetiously pointed out that according to Descartes’ own rationale he cannot even say, “I think therefore I am,” only “thoughts are being thunk.” In any case, I sure hope I am more than merely a thinking thing. Descartes’ reflections, and for that matter Pascal’s, may have been of some worth; however, we would likely do ourselves a disservice by not moving beyond Descartes’ rather limited and dubious conclusions. His conclusions were not quite conversant with Genesis’ anthropological portrait nor were they trying to be.

Wittgenstein has greatly influenced contemporary theological conversations and rightly so. You might say that he has dusted away the cute homunculus from the alleged seat in our skull, and this spring-cleaning has not been to our detriment. In moral discourse, MacIntyre has made an assertion or two, and fortunately for us morality apparently has a body.

Unlike our animal friends, we humans are monomaniacs when it comes to telling stories about ourselves. It might be said that we are walking narratives more concrete, hilarious, grotesque, and subtle than any of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories.  

Whatever fancy descriptions we use for anthropology especially a theological anthropology, we should likely remember to keep things down to earth. After all, we are dirt people. 

"For All have Sinned"?

This is not merely some cute theological abstraction nor is it merely some sort of mystical, metaphysical guilt that inscrutably pertains to the isolated individual. This pertains to our social complicity. We share complicity in our society’s sins, and we continue to do so. It is precisely for that reason that we must find forgiveness at the foot of the cross and live a life of perpetual repentance.

When I was a kid, my mom gave me piece of profound theological and sociological instruction: “when you point your index finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at you.” (By the way, at whom is the thumb pointing?)

I have frequently asked the question, “But where does complicity begin and end? Where or how do we or can we draw a line between when we do and when we do not share complicity in particular sins of a corporation for example?” I have frequently wished that we could draw lines and thereby assuage some guilt, relieve some of the burden. However, I am slowly realizing that I am asking the wrong questions. I am trying to distance myself from any sort of societal culpability. This is probably what many of us want. We want to separate ourselves from those pernicious culprits “over there.” However, (perhaps much to our chagrin) we are woven into the thick fabric of society, and we cannot neatly separate ourselves from other threads that have become noticeably stained. We are connected.

This emphasis is not to evade personal culpability but is to punctuate it and to give it a context.

Previously, I asked the questions about sharing complicity precisely because in practice we separate guilty persons from non-guilty persons, and so I was asking a rather intuitive question.

The righteous one who died for all did precisely what we do not and will not do: he refrained from complicity and thereby accentuated ours. When reading the gospel of Matthew, we may ask, “Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?” It would be easy and quite erroneous to say, “the Jews.” We might then point a finger at the temple regime. We might also point a finger at the crowd, and then we might point a finger at Pilate. But what about those who stood by and did nothing? What about those, like Peter and co, who distanced themselves in order to remain unscathed? It might then be noted that complicity seems to go in all directions.

The good news of forgiveness at the foot of the cross: forgiveness is extended to us even when we are clueless about our complicity.

Don Quixote and the Gospel of Christ

What can possibly be said about that knight errant extraordinaire Don Quixote that has not already been said? He is that great knight who took his bidding from the brilliant books of chivalry. After having cleaned his long-forgotten lance, shield, and metal cap he mounted his steed to seek adventure. Don Quixote is that knight who with great determination sought to right wrongs, correct injustices, and rectify abuses. He also just so happens to have been that mad knight who mistook an inn for a castle and who was subsequently humored by a disgruntled innkeeper. Our magnificent Don Quixote read too many adventure books, which consequently so consumed his mind that it left him totally mad, and thus he rode into the sunset of absurdum charging at windmills with his lance mistaking the windmills for monstrous giants. And I suppose every lunatic needs a follower or two, and hence Sancho, a completely inane donkey-rider, followed Don Quixote into every contrivable misadventure imaginable.

Proclaiming and embodying the gospel of Christ in our culture of pop psychology, preemptive-war, and self-obsession may seem as absurd as charging at windmills with a lance, though we might say that the person who charges at windmills is an intriguing case study.

Jesus looks like Don Quixote to our eyes. We, like the innkeeper, seek merely to appease Jesus. We go along with his fanciful babbling until it proves unprofitable and disruptive. We, like the innkeeper, wish for Jesus to leave us alone as soon as possible, and when he finally leaves, we are relieved to see him leave our peaceful town without further ado.

We seek to ensure safety and stability. Jesus did not make those things a priority for himself nor did he for his followers. It is easy to say the gospel is counter-cultural. However, I am beginning to feel the gospel’s foreignness. I am beginning to feel it in my bones. It seems so foreign to us that we don’t know what to do with it, so we make it into something else that we may continue augmenting our own priorities in our own way and according to our own rationality. We continue talking about “carrying our crosses,” but we make it compatible with our wish for safety, which is far more absurd than charging at windmills with a dilapidated lance.   

I imagine if Jesus were to walk down Wall Street or for that matter “Main Street,” he would appear to us to be a ludicrous dreamer, an absent-minded vagabond who has read Isaiah too many times and who knows nothing of honest pragmatism, for he is an alleged king who thinks victory comes through crucifixion. We wouldn’t vote for him; his health plan is too costly.  We do not want to carry a cross and walk a road that leads to bloody crucifixion. We, like Jesus’ disciples, duck for cover.

After spending several weeks eating, sleeping, and breathing the Gospel of Matthew, it struck me as foreign, foreign from the world we have constructed for ourselves. This feeling was accentuated when I watched the latest Batman movie. We simply do not want a king who is killed by his antagonists; we want a hero who protects us and who survives in the process. We want heroes who will keep us safe. None of us want a murdered king as our king. None of us believe that a war can be won without weapons, for believing that a war can be won without weapons would be like mistaking dangerous giants for harmless windmills.

We say it is “just” to kill rather than be killed. And so we kill our enemies and even celebrate their deaths. We murder for “liberty” and call it “justice.” If a person is a domestic murderer, then that person deserves the death penalty. However, this rationality knows nothing of the gospel of Christ, but we prefer doling out death because it is more conducive to our self-obsessed schedule and budget than the dangerous business of peace and restoration. At the foot of the cross, we divide and conquer instead of seeking forgiveness.

The absurdity of the gospel of Christ remains absurd without the vindication of Christ and those who follow him. It remains absurd without resurrection. We wish to make the cross and safety compatible because we have forgotten the last sentence of the Nicene Creed, the Apostle’s Creed, and the last act of the gospels. We have forgotten (or perhaps disbelieved) resurrection. And so the gospel of Christ remains absurd to our eyes. We then content ourselves with mythologizing Jesus, which is conducive to our attempts to live as long as possible at the expense of others.