"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.

Sticky Relationships

Lifelong relationships have a glue that is mysterious to us in America (“America” may be a generalization, but it is a helpful generalization denoting American pop culture). When we see couples who have been married sixty years, we stand in awe and view them as otherworldly creatures. When we see couples who have been married forty years, we do much the same thing. When we see couples who have been married twenty-five years, we’re impressed, and when we see couples who have been married five years, we may wonder how much longer it will last. Lifelong marriages are growing increasingly foreign to American culture. But it doesn’t end there. In America friendships are similar, for the self usurps the priority of the relationship.

Commitment is not an American value. We are far too sophisticated for such things. Short-term relationships are much more convenient and entertaining for the self – entertainment after all is a core American value (Cf. Either/Or vol. 1, “Rotation of Crops”). We enjoy the use of prenuptial agreements. When the going gets tough, we opt out. There is no reason to stay in a difficult relationship, for “it is much more important that I be true to myself than true to any relationship.” Not surprisingly, we have probably all heard some version of this statement from Hollywood celebrities. It seems that we in America have forgone the glue for relationships and have opted for a whimsical game of pin the tail on the donkey with as many turns as we so desire. 

This debacle with commitment isn’t foreign to the church. I’ve heard far too many pastors lament the high numbers of divorce, but church bodies seem to splinter as much as marriages do. Churches will have a difficult time avoiding hypocrisy when it comes to talking about commitment. 

It seems then that we don’t know the first thing about covenant, albeit the church ought to know all about it.

Is “covenant” just a word we Reformed desire to tack on to our theological emphases in order to baptize them as truly Reformed?

This rambling blog is in some ways a convergence of a lot of things that have been on my mind as of late. In early church history class, our professor has emphasized the centrality of the early church’s yearning for unity, often at great cost. In Pentateuch class, I have encountered a refreshed understanding of covenant, i.e. God’s incorrigible loyalty to Israel. In some recent stories, I have felt the hurt and anguish that commitment in relationships sometimes incurs. And in my own denomination, I have watched as people have opted out of the denomination for one reason or another.

I am not saying that separation is never an appropriate course of action. Sometimes it is – OT teachings on the subject seem to presuppose that relationships break down. But it seems that we in America have begun using various types of separation as devices of convenience that have the self as the sole standard. Relationships are hard, and making a relationship sticky seems in many ways inscrutable. I basically don’t know what I am talking about, considering I am only twenty-four and have been married only a few years. But my naïveté on the matter doesn’t change our need to recover the value of commitment and a robust notion of covenant relationship that necessarily excludes prenuptial agreements and easy ways out.   

Korean Drama and Jesus

This title makes me chuckle. Last night Esther and I finished watching a Korean love story. First of all I should admit, I was slow in being drawn into the story. I missed most of the first few episodes because it seemed terribly uninteresting. However, somewhere along the line, I found myself transfixed and unequivocally invested in the story.

I would very much like to recap the entire story here. However, that would take a series of blogs, and in that case you might as well just watch the show. Let me suffice it to say: two friends, a young girl and a boy grow up together in meager circumstances in rural Korea. She needs heart surgery, if she has any chance of living. The boy’s father is a scoundrel and steals the money for her surgery. The mother of the girl then searches for the boy’s father in Seoul that she might recover the money for her daughter’s surgery. In the process, the mother is hit by a car and dies. To make matters worse, the boy’s father abandons him. The young boy cares dearly for the young girl, but he doesn’t know what to do because they are penniless. He attempts to steal a lady’s purse, but he is immediately caught. As it turns out, he looks strikingly similar to a wealthy couple’s recently deceased son. The wife is suicidal after losing her son, so the husband tells the young boy that he will pay for the young girl’s surgery if he, the young boy, agrees to become their son. The young boy agrees, but they take him away before he is able to find out if the surgery was a success. They tell him the young girl died during the surgery. However, fifteen years later, he discovers that she didn’t die at all. The story continues with a feeble seed of hope.

I do not want to diminish the magnitude of laying down one’s life for another – “no one demonstrates greater love than this.” Dickens captures this notion well in A Tale of Two Cities. In fact, I imagine that there are many stories that have utilized the notion of dying for the sake of another. However, I think there is something to be said about living a whole life of sacrifice, and I do not mean merely being subservient in rhetoric and disposition. I mean trading in one’s own life and identity that another might live, like the young boy trading in all that he was that the young girl might have a chance at life. For me this was the most striking aspect of the story: that the young boy would give his whole life over to strangers that the young girl might have some hope of life.

Before I go a step further, let it be said that I do not go about baptizing movies and TV shows, and I do not like pretending that this and that movie have biblical analogs (many people have done that with The Lord of the Rings, which to my understanding is in direct conflict with Tolkien).

That said, after finishing the show last night, I found myself naturally wandering into the land of the Gospels. The Son came and dwelt among us as Jesus of Nazareth. I am fully aware of the many Christological heresies that would ensnare me, if I were to draw direct parallels between the young boy in the Korean drama and Jesus. I have no intention of attempting to draw consistent parallels between the Gospels and the Korean drama as a whole. But in a sense, the Son sacrificially traded in his identity that humanity might be drawn into life, perhaps similar to the young boy allowing himself to be essentially kidnapped that the young girl might have the life-saving surgery. When we think of the Son’s sacrifice, we often think of Jesus’ death, but I think we would do well to take heed of Jesus’ earthly life as a whole that we might then be drawn into the Son’s overwhelming and rather incomprehensible life-long sacrifice.

I wonder if this might also shed light on Christian life.

Suffering and the Presence of God

I remember when the phone range and my mom answered it. It was the doctor. There was silence. She hung up and walked into the living room. I remember standing, waiting for an explanation. She told us that she had been diagnosed with cancer. It felt like the world had imploded, but strangely it hadn’t. It felt like life had ended, but strangely we woke up the next morning the same as before. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I felt like my world had come crashing down, perhaps analogous to what many people felt on 9/11. For many long and excruciating weeks, my mom endured chemotherapy. I remember sometimes going with her to treatments and sitting with her on the bed. I didn’t have much to say, and there wasn’t much I could do. Most of the time, I just sat there with her.

I shall not build a theodicy. That is for someone else to do. But I will say that if a theodicy begins and ends “on paper,” then it isn’t a theodicy at all. Formulas, theorems, and syllogisms do no service for a mother who loses her daughter or for a son who loses his father or for a wife who loses her husband.

In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard sheds light on what may be a potentially redeeming quality of suffering. He says, “When life begins to quake, then it is immediately apparent that despair was what was lying beneath” (Penguin Classic, 74-75). It seems then that tragedy can potentially serve as a trigger to realize one’s despair and one’s need for deliverance. However, these words would seem cold and insensitive to anyone who is enduring tragedy and suffering.

Years later, my mom said that during those long weeks and months of cancer and chemotherapy she experienced a closer presence of God than she had ever before. She said, “I felt sorry for everyone else who had to be bustling about.” God was present with her in the midst of her cancer.

When it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, lying in bed with cancer is rather different than vogues in Christian circles that blur the boundaries of entertainment and the holy. I’m not suggesting we adopt a sort of Christian asceticism. But perhaps when it comes to dwelling in the presence of God, we are a bit off kilter and even upside down. Perhaps, we have forgotten to take off our shoes and childish desires. Instead, we have “satisfied” ourselves with sugarcoated experiences. It seems that we often associate God’s presence with health and surplus, and we play hot potato with suffering. It’s little surprise then that we in America don’t know what to do or say about the presence of God in the midst of suffering. But the testimonies of many around the world, including my mom, ought to teach us that God is present with those who are suffering, and perhaps they recognize God’s presence better than we who are “bustling about.”

Community: Plumbing the Depths of a Mud Puddle

It would seem that we are each individuals each responsible for our own peccadilloes and other perhaps more severe though private sins. It would seem that we are each unrelated atoms floating about casting dice for our own destinies. I am responsible for me and for no other, and no other is responsible for me.

Since the so-called foundations of “modernism” have begun to crumble or have crumbled (whichever flavor of vague description you prefer), a few things have come to light, namely: I am not an unrelated individual; I am not a manufacturer of my own destiny. The sad though potentially exciting twist is that I share complicity with society’s sins, and society shares complicity with my sins. I do not mean to suggest that each person may evade responsibility by contending that it is the society’s fault for personal sins, but it seems that we do need a more robust understanding of the larger society’s role in relation to particular persons. It would seem then that we need to reevaluate a person’s place in community and the community’s relation to persons. For too long we have treated persons as individual islands, yet no person is an island, no person is an atom unrelated to fellow atoms.

If respective communities share a responsibility for persons in the community and persons in the community share responsibility for the community, then the community needs to make its priority the building of character, lest the community crumble and with it any hope of recourse. The community is indeed responsible for the building of character within the community – a novel thought!

The church then cannot say, “oh look at that terrible sinner!” The church must say instead, “we have failed this person, and now we must come to the aid of this person!” There is no room for the church to evade responsibility for sins, and there is no room for particular persons to evade responsibility for sins. Responsibility goes both ways, and the responsibility to build character then goes both ways – it might be said as a side note, though no less important, that character is both public and “private,” and it is not limited to behaviors in the prayer closet or other "private" spheres of existence.

The Gospel calls people together and in so doing binds them together by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel does not give room for persons to be unrelated to one another, for the Gospel creates community, a community that is not to let its eyelids grow heavy at the crucial moment, a community that is not to deny its partnership with persons from the community. The Gospel creates community that is to be of integrity and cohesion. In the narrative world of the Gospel there is neither space nor time to let individuals be individuals unrelated.

Muddle puddles often seem shallow, but every now and then you might come across a mud puddle that keeps getting deeper and deeper. To plumb the depths of the church’s responsibility to particular persons is similar to plumbing the depths of a mud puddle that at first seemed only a few inches deep but keeps getting deeper and deeper. The church’s responsibility to particular persons runs deep, and the sooner churches acknowledge their responsibility and invest in particular persons the sooner they will be on the road to a Gospel community. The sooner churches make the building of character a priority, the sooner churches will begin clearing the murkiness of the muddle puddle.

An Incomplete Reflection for the Church’s Consideration

Changes have taken place in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Many have nodded with approval, while others have been horrified and have leapt overboard. In the following I shall speak as an evangelical who holds the biblical text to be an authoritative text for the church. And I am speaking primarily to evangelicals in this denomination. This is unequivocally an incomplete reflection, for there are many sides to the goings on in the Presbyterian Church on which I shall not touch.

Christians are often hypocrites in many areas. We evangelicals, in particular, have an abysmal track record with tithing, among other things. That needs to change. Before an evangelical opens his or her mouth with any sort of rebuke towards anyone, the evangelical tithing trend needs to change. Currently, it’s embarrassing and shameful. Spirituality is a wisp of air without generosity and self-giving, and yet we evangelicals continue the scandal of wispy spirituality and self-indulgence. In this regard, we evangelicals need to stop mincing doctrinal words and need to add some oomph to our game.

The Christian life is one of perpetual confession and repentance – marriage is teaching me this. Messy situations do not call for escape. They call for grace, mercy, patience, repentance, reconciliation, and cleanup, among other things. We Americans prefer escapism to repentance and reconciliation. In this regard, we evangelicals should try being a little less American.

How many stones were cast in John 8? I suggest, instead of picking up stones, we pick up our crosses. Instead of taking the dust out of the other’s eye, we practice self-examination. Instead of condemnation, we live in faithful obedience striving for righteousness.

Over the years, I have admired most those who continue to do what they believe is right, though everyone around them seems to be adding to the moral cacophony. These sorts of people are analogous to lighthouses. A lighthouse is not needed in the daytime, but at night when the seas rage and threaten life itself, a lighthouse needs to shine as bright as it possibly can. This means not avoiding the darkness and the storms but shining through them and in spite of them.

A Few Formative Years

Mud six inches thick. It swallows your ankles and threatens to take your knees too. Every step is a comprehensive bodily effort. Finally, some drier mud to sit on. Buzzing overhead. That’s the sound of bullets. Every few seconds a whistling sound and then an explosion and dirt flies everywhere. It’s difficult to see with the smoke. Another corpse missing two legs and a head. The blood and mud mingle into a dark muck. It’s just another day in the trenches.

My favorite show comes on in three minutes. “Hey mom, is dinner ready yet? I’m gonna eat in here.” Cool breeze. That’s the air condition. It’s Monday and can’t wait for the weekend. Nothing to do but chill and watch tv. Maybe go out with friends and catch a movie, maybe play pool. It’s just another day in my palace.

Both are happening simultaneously in the lives of American teenagers. The war wages on and yet many of them live like royalty with a parent to serve them.

I am still young, but I am just high enough on the “age-hill” to look back on my teenage years with some bewilderment. I have mixed feelings about those years. Some times I refer to my teenage years as my own personal “Dark Ages,” which is completely accurate – however, I do not think historically speaking it is accurate to call the medieval period the “Dark Ages,” but that’s another matter entirely. When I look back on my teenage years, I have no clue how I made it out alive and in one piece, albeit I took some shrapnel in both my legs and my chest, metaphorically speaking of course. I think I made it out alive by some stroke of luck or providence, whichever you prefer. In either case, I feel as though I had little to do with it.

It strikes me as rather strange that those few years can make or break a person’s life. Or perhaps those years do not make or break a person’s life, but those years impact the trajectory of a person’s life to a large extent.

It would almost seem that I should run around to every teenager I see to tell them that they just need to try to survive those teenage years doing as few puerile things as possible lest they be swept away into dark ally ways and dank dungeons for the rest of their lives; and it will be for the rest of their lives that they have to think about it.

It’s survival. It’s life in the trenches and bullets are buzzing overhead. One peak over the crest of the trench and that could be the end. It’s life in a palace and one too many movies and you might wake up eighty-five years old without a credit to your name, apart from successfully asking your parents for gas money.

Yet it seems impossible for an American teenager to realize the profundity of their predicament. Needless to say that is why so many take a peek over the crest of the trench to be met with a cold metal bullet between the eyes. That is why so many seep into their late twenties playing video games for the majority of their days. Thus, it is these formative teenage years that strike me as most scary, scary because though there are many things to worry about in my pseudo-adulthood it’s the teenagers who are in the trenches and do not even realize it. That’s the scariest aspect of all: that they do not even realize they are in the trenches! And they seem incapable of realizing it. They dance along the edge of a knife without a care, for they haven’t a clue that one misstep will cut them in two – imagine the trajectory of that. They tap-dance on the edge of a cliff as if they are in the prime of their life with little to nothing at stake. And yet everything is stake!

What then is to be done? Maybe a bulletproof vest to start?

Again, I must emphasize that I am a young and naïve seminary student with little experience outside of school. However, I must add that I have some experience in the teenage trenches as well as the teenage palaces. And those years were not so long ago for me, though they seem like a lifetime ago.

Sometimes the best thing to do when you’re lost is to get a guide who knows the territory. Those who survived those formative years might try to partner up with those who are still in the trenches and seemed to have lost their way. It’s not much, but it is a start.

A Recovery of the Prophetic

Last fall quarter I studied Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and I recently began reading Abraham Heschel’s book, The Prophets. Needless to say the prophets of the first testament have been churning in my mind. Perhaps, many folks today do not think of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk when they think of prophecy, but that is directly where my mind goes, especially Jeremiah.

God brought the people out of captivity into a land that would be their own. They were unfaithful to God’s wishes, and thus they relinquished the honor of living in the land. They were taken into exile. The prophets are speaking before, during, and after exile. They are speaking to an unfaithful people and reminding them of God’s faithfulness and God’s expectations for them. God requires that they be characterized by love and justice, among other things. They failed. Thus, they will remain in exile for a time, and eventually they will be redeemed. God will be their God, and they will be God’s people. God will lead them back to the land, as a father leading his son.

But I must ask, how precisely were they unfaithful? A short answer may be idolatry. However, what does that mean and for what particular behaviors is their community condemned to exile? I would suggest reading all of Amos (it is short after all), but here is a taste.

Amos 4:1, 5:11-12, 14-15

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria, you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

You levy a straw tax on the poor 
and impose a tax on their grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; 
though you have planted lush vineyards, 
you will not drink their wine. 
For I know how many are your offenses and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes and deprive the poor of justice in the courts. Seek good, not evil, that you may live. Then the LORD God Almighty will be with you, just as you say he is. Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts. 
Perhaps the LORD God Almighty will have mercy....

These pericopes are obviously multilayered, and it would be wrong to suppose that a single reading captures everything they have to offer. Of course, there are innumerable differences between their situation and ours (one may be that religious life and political life were bound together, and today we good ole post-enlightment geniuses compartmentalize these). I will not attempt to innumerate the differences. However, we may glean from the prophets still. We may locate ourselves with those who are in the temple courts. How do our multimillion-dollar temples stand in the face of the prophets? Our structures stand to be rebuked. The words and actions of God reverberate through the words and deeds of the prophets, and if we are honest, those words and deeds are aimed at structures such as ours. Has the temple become a den of robbers? How is the temple regime in the twenty-first century dealing with the oppressed? Is today’s temple regime a witness to its God?

My Old Testament professor in the fall quarter said, “it is often difficult to speak with a prophetic voice when you are on the payroll of the church, so surround yourself with people who are not on the payroll” who will speak out with a prophetic voice. This is wisdom. Perhaps because today's temple leadership is on the payroll, today’s temple leadership often slips into lesser versions of Jesus, exclusively spiritualized ones.

God’s love is to bounce off and through the walls of people’s hearts, minds, and relationships. God’s love, however scorching or comforting, is to pervade the manifold life of the temple. But what does this mean and how is this to be? How might today’s temple regime recover its prophetic voice and action? For clues, we would do well to take a look at Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Habakkuk (among others).

Woe to him who builds a city with

Bloodshed and establishes

A town by injustice!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are

No grapes on the vine…

But I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will rejoice in God my savior.

Habakkuk 2:12, 3:17-18

You will seek me and find me

When you seek me with all

Your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

A Few Variegated and Disjointed Words Concerning a Path of Least Resistance

Some of us have trekked down the cloudy road of doubt, while others have continued on sunnier roads. For those who have walked along the dreary path perhaps a brief reflection will serve as a flashlight, however infinitesimal it may be (even such a small flashlight is better than none at all).

Doubt is analogous to a lens and when looking through it everything seems most dubitable. It is similar to a grey lens through which the entire world seems bleak and pointless. And then having grown accustom to the company of doubt’s seemingly honest company, the easiest thing in the world to do is to doubt, to doubt even oneself – that French mental magician, whose name I shall not mention, set an unfortunate precedent. In a way doubt becomes a self-perpetuating vacuum sucking inward. Even oneself is sucked into doubt, obliterating oneself.

Doubt is synergetic. It may be similar to a quagmire. If a person sinks into a deep muck and tries to wiggle free, the person will only sink further. It has been said that doubt begets doubt. This may not be too far off the mark, though a dose of doubt about some things may be good medicine to avoid gullibility, but I think at that point it’s not doubt anymore. It’s merely discernment. So doubt, in a sense, breeds itself, and once it begins it spreads growing stickier and stickier.

For some of us, doubt may be considered a path of least resistance. For some of us, it is a propensity. This is dangerous, for, though a measure of doubt may be good medicine as previously mentioned, doubt seems to be “engineered” in such a way that it can hijack human resources (such as reason, emotion, psyche, etc.) for their own self-destruction. In this way, doubt is analogous to the viciousness of cancer.

An ethics professor said during a lecture last fall, “Without community, we wither.” This is wisdom. Of course, “community” does not refer to arbitrary or affected groupings of individuals but of an authentically interrelated composite (though composed of individuals, the whole is distinct from the individuals individually) – let community be defined and judged not according to quantity of relationships but of quality. This composite can be synergetic, and this synergetic communion is, at least in part, an answer to the withering reality of doubt. A person must reach out for help from others in order to get out of the deep muck – this may not be the only way, but it is a way. Open dialogue within the context of authentic (unaffected) community is a healthy alternative and anodyne for the easy though treacherous path of doubt.

Kierkegaard’s technical use of the term “despair” and my generic use of the term “doubt” are not synonymous. However, as a tangential conclusion, I will parallel them here. When the despairer (I will not explain which sort of despairer, but you may read The Sickness Unto Death for further understanding on the issue) confides his despair to another, he despairs further. His despair intensifies. But let this not be a deterrence from confiding, for acknowledging despair and then confiding is of infinite value; it is the first step. The same goes for doubt. If it catches a person in isolation, it systematically appropriates and consequently disintegrates everything in its viselike clutches. However, if doubt is pinpointed and acknowledged, the low-hanging clouds may part, perhaps only for a moment, allowing a ray of sun to illumine the path.

Death, Life, and Faithfulness

Over the past few decades my dad has made frequent trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The past several years have been especially tumultuous for Haiti, and yet my dad has continued to make trips and work alongside his Christian brothers and sisters in ministry there. I am one among many others who have considered it reckless on my dad’s part to make some of the trips. On one particular occasion, I confronted him about this. I asked him if it was truly wise for him to make the trips. I asked him if there were not other means through which he could help. He responded by mentioning the importance of “just being there for people,” and he continued with explaining that he will continue to do what God seems to have set out before him to do. And in doing so, he will rest in "the sovereignty of God." Being a prudent son, I continued to prod him, asking him if he might not simply wait a few months until things cool off a bit in Haiti. My dad has a habit of making trips to Haiti while placid things such as national revolution and headhunting swarm the countryside, so I continued to prod and to urge him to rethink his trips to Haiti. And he continued to try to explain to his wise son that he rests in the sovereignty of God.

I cannot say that I have matured much since this particular occasion. However, I may be able to say that I am beginning to understand what it is to rest in the sovereignty of God, to rest in the knowledge that death may be my next step but my next step is held in the hands of God. Be it an earthquake, a car wreck, a mud puddle, or a cheerio, death may be my next step, but death and the means of death are not to be the focus. I think if we each continually pondered death, we may never get out of bed and even that may seem dangerous. The focus then is to live, to live out a calling faithfully. And then if death is the next step, it will be while trekking faithfully. And in that knowledge a person may truly find rest. This is not a stoic’s response. It is purely a Christian response, to live faithfully striving to live as a vital participant in God’s purposes. And then a person may rest in the knowledge that it is God’s purposes after all, and the result is in God’s hands, albeit the next step may involve death by a cheerio. Oh, to hear the words, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

Many Books on Doubt and Ambiguity

Needless to say much ink has been spilt for thousands of years regarding the issues of doubt and ambiguity. Job curses the day of his birth. The psalmist says his bones are in agony. Hamlet’s many soliloquies bespeak the gnawing inside of him. Raskolnikov grows physically sick toiling over matters of murder and meaning. As Prince Andrei lies mortally wounded on the battlefield, he stares up at the sky and contemplates existence and thoughts of home flood his consciousness. Roquentin is surrounded by people yet he feels sick with loneliness among other things. There are numerous other fictional people to add to the list, but what do all these fictional people indicate about the nonfictional world of people? Of course, a glance at historical contexts and myriads of reasons and causes will surface. It might be said that books grieving over existential doubt and ambiguity are induced by a trifling interest. It might be said that many people continue reading such books out of curiosity. However, generally speaking, I think there are other reasons.

These fictional people were squeezed out of their authors as if squeezed out of grapes in a wine press. The grapes endured great suffering but for great result. Stanley Hauerwas said that we would lose something if Dostoevsky had lived today and we made him a psychologically “well adjusted person.” So perhaps doubt and ambiguity are not thoroughly evil.

A rudimentary observation will likely note that doubt and ambiguity are described with rather vague metaphors. This seems true and with good reason. Metaphors seem to capture what plain language cannot. Dark-grey clouds hang low overhead, and they suggest an imminent storm. The air grows thick and bursts of light flash through the sky. With a smile and a nod, the trapdoor falls and the rope grows taunt. Choking and kicking of feet. Then calm. The feeling of existential doubt may be vague, but it is certain. This is a reason for the use of metaphor. The metaphor may be slippery and difficult to pinpoint, but it is apt.

Again, why the fascination with such existential wallowing as doubt and ambiguity? As of yet, I have only mentioned these issues as expounded by the ink on innumerable pages. It may be that many have tasted the bitterness and then read Dostoevsky, and said, “Is it true? I am not the only one who has tasted this fruit?” I will wager a guess that so much ink has been spilt on the same issues because these issues are not merely interesting but they are unshakable and intrinsic. For these reasons, at least in part, much ink has been spilt and will continue to be spilt. As long as we humans continue to live outside the garden, we will continue to spill ink and to wallow and to groan and to read the ink that has been spilt.

A Grateful Heart and a Careful Eye

As I have experienced more of life bit by bit, I have realized that yes indeed I am my parents’ son. My inadvertent habits and mannerisms seem to fall not from the tree. I speak about important and unimportant matters as indirectly as possible. I mince words when I have the chance almost as if I am an Ent in the bloodline of the great Treebeard. This often ironic tendency seems akin to my dad, who has a way of making requests and assertions in a rather indirect way. One particular day in my teenage years, my dad called the house from his office.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sam.”
“Hey, Dad.”
From this point I do not remember much save the following nugget of hilarity.
“Sam, do you think you could get someone to mow the lawn? The grass is starting to look a bit high.”
“Okay,” quickly looking around the house I had an epiphany, “but Dad I’m the only one here.”
“Yeah, okay, well if you could just get someone to do it that’d be great.”
And thus my dad has a tendency for the indirect, which I have unashamedly inherited and employ on a regular basis, though I like to think that I appreciate directness. My wife, Esther, can attest to this point. However, she has caught on, and now she likes to do it too. “Sam, could you get someone to take out the trash?” Of course, no one else is living with us.

I have inherited of few of my mom’s foibles too. She is what most people would consider a perfectionist. I think in that case “most people” are in the right. She has a propensity for reading, rereading, and rerereading etc. what she has been writing, be it a play, a paper, or a book. After rereading whatever it is for the umpteenth time, she remains dissatisfied, for she knows something is out of place or needs some subtle adjusting. I have inherited this proclivity with unmitigated enthusiasm. Whatever it is that I so happen to be working on, I check and recheck until I am seeing double. I know Esther laughs to herself about this. I often let my mom read what I have been writing (though she does not read these silly blogs, for then I would likely never get around to posting a blog!). One particular instance I let her read a piece of fiction I had been crafting, and the following ensued.
“Wow, Sam, this is great!”
“Thanks, Mom. So what’s wrong with it?”
She listed a whole host of things. I chuckled to myself knowing that I would have it no other way. After completing her laundry list, I showed it to her again.
“Is it ready do you think?”
“Well, Sam, I don’t know if I would say it’s finished yet. Just let it sit awhile, and then after you have developed some more as a writer perhaps you can go back to it and finish it.”

This could be taken poorly, but I enjoy her keen eye and perfectionism, knowing that I have indubitably partly inherited it, though I would not flatter myself to think that I have her same perspicacious eye. There are numerous other habits and mannerisms my parents have passed on to me, more than I care to mention here.

With these thoughts, I have come to realize that I am unavoidably not self-made. I have been and am shaped by others, most notably my parents. This reality has brought to my attention the fact that I will be doing something analogous to my children. It’s a scary thought. My goodness! To think that there will be a few little human beings walking around in the wide world having inherited some of my silly foibles. Fortunately, they will have inherited some of Esther’s too. Parents have the potential to bless the world or to curse it. And which they choose the world will see on display through their children.

A Few Recommendations

Jesus and the Victory of God. This book was placed in my hands, and before that moment I had not seriously considered reading it though I had heard of it. I am very thankful for “accidentally” reading this book. It’s long, but it’s quite readable. Whether or not you have an interest in any of the quests for the historical Jesus, this is an edifying book. If you are interested in Jesus academically, this is a good book. If you desire most of all to meet Jesus again for the first time, this is a good book. A lot of attention is aptly paid to Jesus' death and resurrection. But what about his life? Wright’s discussion is thorough, keen, and speaks on a variety of levels.










The Resurrection of the Son of God. I was spurred on to read this book after finishing Jesus and the Victory of God. I was not disappointed. This is a rather exhaustive discussion of resurrection language, its uses, and significance in the pagan world, the Jewish world, and especially in the early Christian communities. It was absolutely exhilarating to consider the early Christians' valuing of Jesus' resurrection and of their own future resurrection. I hope this book contributes to altering many of the current interpretations of resurrection language.







The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. After having heard professors from different fields refer to this book as illuminating, I decided it was likely a good idea to read through it. I have not read anything that comes close to this book regarding hermeneutics. As indicated by the subtitle, this book is an overview of critical methods over the past few hundred years. Again and again, I located myself in the discussion and realized why I naturally make certain inferences. This is a valuable book, if for no other reason than engendering a reevaluation of critical method.










Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism. I read this for a class, and I am glad I did. For Christians and non-Christians this neat little book offers some insights into what on earth theological liberals and conservatives are fussing about. It turns out that the two camps may be merely in two separate spheres of reasoning and argumentation necessitated largely by modernity. Something’s gotta give. This is a rather brief book, but it is quite focused and offers some clarity regarding the water-and-oil relationship of liberals and conservatives.









Evangelism in the Early Church. This was an unlikely book to make this list. However, I think this is an important book to read for anyone who is involved in church. Green says, “evangelism was the lifeblood of the early church.” That may have been the case, but what does that mean anyway? And if that was the case, how does that compare to the contemporary church?

Ontological Quibbles: Postscript

The last entry was quite fragmented, as my entries are usually. As of late, I have felt unable to think to the contrary. However, I thought it would be appropriate to give the previous entry a postscript aimed at the issue of ontological distinction and development. But this will be no more thorough than any other entry, in fact less so.

Picking up where I left off…

If relationship has ontological significance and epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, then the ontological difference between the pastor and the Hindu is with whom they each have relationship. The pastor allegedly has relationship with God. This relationship has profound ontological significance, and this may or may not be physically indicated by the community in which the pastor participates. Something analogous may be said of the Hindu, though I imagine it would look and sound much different. And in the pastor’s terms, the Hindu’s ontology would be without relationship with God, thus ontologically in the negative, which then ontologically distinguishes the pastor from the Hindu.

As a side note, which cannot and should not be omitted, praxis is a consequence of ontology. A nonreligious person may have certain practices, which seem rather similar to those of someone with a particular religious ontology. However, this nonreligious person, though he or she has certain practices, lacks the particular religious relationship which alters ontology (a horse may walk on its two back legs, but it is no more a human than when it walks on all four legs (a flippant example)). On the other hand, the person, whose ontology has been altered in accord with a relationship with God, shall begin a certain practice as evidence and as a consequence of the new relationship. Henceforth, this person’s ontology and praxis shall mutually inform each other as the person grows more fluent in relationship and proper praxis.

It may be said, for example, that the church is full of terrible people. This is a sound observation. Then it may be said, “how can it be that such a people have been ontologically altered due to their alleged relationship with God and consequent new praxis? If this is so, then God is a terrible one.” The last inference goes astray, for though the people may be a ragged group of deceitful egoists this is not evidence of God’s not existing or of God’s being a rather nasty brat. The last inference should be inverted. Instead of concluding that God must not exist or that God is nasty because God’s people are so. It may be concluded that God is one of mercy and grace that God should bestow such gifts upon even these such sordid people. Perhaps, God does so with the hope that the ontological alteration due to relationship will not be stagnant but will continue along with praxis to mold the people into something less ragged and nasty. Thus, ontological alteration due to relationship with God may be a reality, though socially it may seem as if nothing much has happened.

Fragments: Ontological Quibbles in Theology and Literature

What does theology have to say about ontology? What does literature have to say about ontology? Can they be mutually informative regarding this issue?

Over the course of a few years, I asked, “what is the essential ontological difference between the Hindu and the Methodist pastor?” (this inquiry could be ventured in a variety of ways, and there are many answers in theology, though I felt generally dissatisfied). They are after all right across the street from each other, not even two hundred feet. I erroneously began this inquiry with belief asking, “what is the ontological significance of belief?” I was gravely disappointed (belief has epistemological implications though not direct ontological implications).

Since then I have directed my inquiry in a different direction, and I have concluded that, though epistemology is a grammar for ontological nexuses, relationship not belief has (direct) ontological significance.

The importance of community for the sake of identity among other things is currently emphasized by many. (This correlates to the much discussed apparent contradiction that though we seem to be “knowers” we do not know ourselves but must rely on others knowing us to know ourselves - we see ourselves and have certain notions of ourselves, but are these notions accurate or fabricated or at least partial truths? We need other people to identify us, and we need other people inform who we are.) However, I think more often than not this hackneyed emphasis lacks clarity in so far as it inadequately shows the concrete reality of identity (it is limited by its expressiveness and lack of referent).

Often community is offered as a way of ratifying identity but these attempts seem to fall short in showing concretely what this means or what this terminology (“community”) is doing to indicate resolution regarding the issue of ontology. I suggest that, with the imaginative powers of literary theory and narrative, we may begin to grasp the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (to validate ontology, a person must be capable of identifying what it is one is validating; thus, identity is crucial for ontology).

Do modern novels have the potential to help us begin grasping the concrete reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community? Maybe. Some can answer this only in the negative, for their writers had a much different agenda - showing the protagonists in isolation to reveal the true “nature” of the person (but in seeking to truly reveal the identity of the person the person was lost in phenomenological wallowings (isolation is an ontological vacuum-like relational inversion; the ontology is evanescent in this circumstance)). However, novels such as The Brothers Karamazov, a novel way ahead of its time, may be helpful in this area, for much of the identity and thus the ontology of the brothers (as even the title suggests) relies heavily on relationships. The immediate and also the extended communities of the brothers give tacit remarks and validations regarding identity and thereby ontology. We “know” Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, according to their mutually informative communities. I began to realize the potential of The Brothers Karamazov regarding ontology, when Esther exclaimed after reading a disturbing passage seemingly focused on Dmitri, “where is Alyosha in all of this!” Then I realized, “yes, Alyosha is there! Dmitri is the brother Alyosha wishes with all his heart to save!” It in this unsettling passage that we see a snippet of Alyosha’s enduring mercy. He would wish to save even this mongrel (this could and should be explained further, but this is at least a start).

Should theology and literature be divided? With the example of the bible, we see that it is best not. In terms of identity and consequently ontology, the bible is easily (apart from its canonization) the highest quality theological treatise, if for no other reason than it captures the imaginative powers of literature and thereby shows concretely the reality of what it is to identify and thereby validate ontology within the context of community (think of Genesis and 2 Samuel as examples). To this end, theology should rightly appropriate the powers of good literature and find its home in narrative.

Literary theory, on the other hand, may do well to learn from theology in learning how identity and consequently ontology is validated (in community) and thus develop new means of crafting the identity and ontology of a given protagonist(s).

Narrative Voice

It’s a curious thing that often when we begin to describe or retell a story we begin describing not the story but our own creation that may or may not have analogs to the story that we are intending to retell. This is an issue for students, novelists, pastors, historians, and anyone holding a casual conversation on the street corner. It’s likely a helpful practice then to be aware of what we are doing when we retell a story.

There are some stories reported by a named or anonymous persona. This persona may be loquacious or laconic. The common denominator is the persona’s conspicuous presence in the telling of the story. Though the persona may not be directly involved in the story, the persona is involved in so far as the persona engages on occasion with the reader and the characters’ thoughts and actions. The persona in a sense commentates on the story while telling the story. Perhaps, at times, the persona budges into the front and center of the stage so that the people, places, and events of the story are a backdrop to the persona’s commentating. The story may then be pages and pages of commentary and less actual action by the given people in the story. This sort of narrative voice is often simplistically referred to as telling.

In contrast, there may not be a persona telling the story. You may begin reading or for that matter listening without any inclination that there is someone telling the story other than the fact that portions of narrative are included and excluded in the telling of the story. The people, places, and events are front and center throughout the entirety of the story. There is not a persona commentating on the story’s happenings. There are merely people doing and saying things. This sort of narrative voice may be referred to as showing (similar to telling, this form of narrative may take on numerous forms such as implied third person, first person reflective, first person stream of consciousness, etc, so there is not one single form of showing).

However, the distinction between telling and showing is naïve, for never is one form present and the other form absent. The difference then is that one form may be more present than the other. There are innumerable combinations. Gogol and Dickens come to mind as two novelists who do commentate but restrainedly, while there are some earlier novelists who find themselves most interesting and thus chat more than their characters. This lies in stark contrast with Sartre’s protagonist in Nausea. Antoine Roquentin journals about the world around him and within him. Sartre or Sartre’s possible persona is not commentating on Antoine. The reader encounters Antoine filtered only by the implied narration of the narrator, implied because some happenings are included while others are excluded, and even then it would seem that Antoine is his own narrator. Other examples of this sort of extreme showing are As I Lay Dying and The Sound and The Fury. However, showing may also be merely people doing and saying things without a chatty persona. An example of this sort of middle of the road type showing is seen in O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away or McCarthy’s Sutree. Telling and showing a story are both intermingled processes of telling a story and thereby including and excluding many people, places, and events. Though some stories may exclude a lot of events, no story is exhaustive, even for that matter War and Peace.

It seems nearly impossible then to retell a story that already formally tells (thus furthering the filtration of the events in the story) or to retell a story that accentuates the form of showing events as they happen. In either case retelling a story seems to subtract and add to the original story thereby creating something different (there are a few cases when a story can be precisely reduplicated but even those cases seem suspect). This seems to be the case even with stories told the first time around; the people, places, and events are filtered through a narrator. No matter which form of narration is employed, the narrator is a present filtration at least by implication. Thus, awareness of the form and limitation of narrative is indispensable no matter what telling or writing is at hand.

The student may find that self-awareness in the writing process heightens the accuracy and efficiency of his essays, for he may then begin to locate which narrative voice he naturally uses (fortunately or unfortunately), which he may then alter accordingly. The novelist may appropriate certain methods in writing that may enhance the fabric of the narrative and thereby avoid certain clunky foibles. The pastor may employ certain restraints while sharing a story thereby revealing a story that is vital in and of itself without distracting impositions. The historian may find that thinning the filter (fewer fabricated inferences) may prove to be much more exciting and informative for readers. And the person on the street corner retelling the comical happenings at work may find himself giving a much more lively account with more or less commentary. Thus, a crucial element in narrative voice is the awareness of the narrator, that he or she realize what he or she is and is not doing.

synthetic philosophy

My earliest childhood memories are of my parents reading me fiction. Since then I have explored fiction relentlessly, only to find that yes indeed, “the reading of books is endless.” What began with The Hobbit continues with Dickens and Dostoevsky and Percy. Somewhere along the way self-awareness struck, and I had to ask myself the questions, “what is this I am reading and why do I like it so much?” These are two questions with which I continue to wrestle.

For the first question, I haven’t the knowledge to give an accurate history of the novel, but I am willing to wager a guess that many modern novelists seem to have a desire, an urge, to capture that which C.S. Lewis indicates cannot be captured, the enjoyed, life as life is actually lived. What else is raw realism of subjectivity but an endeavor to do just this, capture life as it is? Portions of The Sound and the Fury show what I mean. Perhaps, Faulkner pined to capture it, life, but alas he captured what C.S. Lewis called not the enjoyed but the contemplated. Faulkner strove, perhaps subconsciously, in vain to display the enjoyed, but as soon as he began to write the enjoyed was but an imprint, the contemplated version of the enjoyed. But this does not reduce the novel to triviality.

The novel’s capacity to literally multitask astounds me (naturally, for this discussion I will assume the novel to be written by a good novelist opposed to a poor one. Other more derogatory discussions may be saved for the cheap novelists and their fast-food-fiction). An anthropology, theology, psychology, etc., may be discoursed with no more than a wink, nod, and a scream. For this reason, the novel is synthetic philosophy, capturing in a single dialogue or description or gesture a treatise of life. But a novel is more than a single dialogue or gesture; it is an ocean of dialogues and gestures. Thus, the novel, in a mere hundred well used pages, is ten volumes of anthropology, theology, and psychology. A novel may be a contemplated version of the enjoyed, but with a mere sentence a mirror is set in front of nature to divulge her virtue. A page-long dialogue in a novel has the capacity to possess more meaning than a classroom full of textbooks.

The second question (“why do I like it so much?” ) baffles me because in part it is a complex question, a question involving more than one question. The “I” must be considered, and the “it” must be considered. What is it about me that draws me toward the novel? How does “it” relate to that aspect of me that so desires it?

With the aforementioned considerations regarding novels, it comes as little surprise that throughout history traditions have been preserved with stories. Furthermore, it seems to make rather good sense that the Scriptures involve myriads of stories. It must be true then that I am drawn to stories and more particularly to novels for a multiplicity of reasons. For one, stories are integral to my faith, and second I have a certain fondness for stories due to a host of childhood memories. Furthermore, stories do what nothing else can do, recount life. And life is something worth recounting; we humans live and die for our memories.

Stories aim at uncategorized life, nearly the enjoyed; if nothing more, stories are a way of preserving a version of especially important enjoyed moments. It’s the critics who vivisect stories and make them what they’re not, themes and caricatures. If my parents had read only critics’ reviews of stories to me when I was I child, I suspect I would never have mustered the motivation to read a story. Fortunately, they introduced me to sprawling adventures wrapped in paper and ink. I am in their debt.

Who Am I?

Identity is curious and elusive. I do not claim to have a handle on it. We all want to say we have identity and know who we ourselves are, but how many of us can indicate our own identity and how might we go about doing so? Last night I went to a lecture by Stanley Hauerwas. He explained more eloquently than I shall attempt here: we get to know him through other people’s narratives about him; we learn who he is by discovering other people’s relationships with him. Conversely, we likely learn less about who he really is by hearing himself talk about himself. This may be an analog to the issue of identity. A person’s identity may be located by discovering a person’s relationships. Nietzsche furthers this point: “we are unknown, we knowers, to ourselves…of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves, we understand ourselves not, in ourselves we are bound to be mistaken, for each of us holds good to all eternity the motto ‘each is the farthest away from himself,’ as far as ourselves are concerned we are not knowers.”

This may become clearer (or muddled further) with an example. Who is Raskolnikov? This question may be answered by saying, “he’s a muderer in one of Dostoevsky’s novels.” But who is it who is the muderer? And who was he before he murdered? And was he who was previous to murdering altered by murdering? (These questions may be answered in part by his dream in the first tenth of the story) Setting aside these such questions, we may then ask, as many people have done, “why did he murder?” This question strikes me as hilarious because so much ink has been spilled on that question, when actually it cannot be answered even by Dostoevsky. He explained definitively in a letter to his publisher why the student killed the old lady, and in a letter to a friend he said he is not sure why Raskolnikov killed the old “louse.” I assume Dostoevsky’s letter to his friend was a bit more honest. What does this have to do with identity? In relation to the aforementioned process of discerning identity in Hauerwas’ lecture, it has quite a lot to do with identity. Perhaps, one reason even Dostoevsky did not know why precisely Raskolnikov killed the old lady is because we meet Raskolnikov not long before he commits the crime and thereby have little resources for discerning who Raskolnikov is via relationships with other people. All we have is a rather isolated person who mumbles to himself and remains distant from other people even in conversations. This of course is indicative, but it is not what we need to acquire who he is exactly other than an isolated maunderer who is tortured by his economic situation among other things - Raskolnikov’s solitary entry may be modernity’s influence on Dostoevsky.

We have the Narrator’s narrative in relationship to Raskolnikov, which I originally thought might be needed in this conversation due to Raskolnikov’s origin being in the Narrator, which I thought might be analogous to God’s relationship to Augustine as indicated in Augustine’s Confessions. However, the Narrator does not posses an ultimate perspective on Raskolnikov as does God in relation to Augustine, for the Narrator (or creator of the Narrator, Dostoevsky) confesses ignorance as indicated in his letter to a friend. So as Hauerwas indicated last night, we are ultimately understood according to and within God’s narrative about us, but this is not analogous to the Narrator in relationship to Raskolnikov. Therefore, though the Narrator may be included in the many relationships with Raskolnikov, it is not required, so the Narrator need not be included in this discussion.

Ironically, there are many relationships throughout the story, though Raskolnikov is radically isolated. Two crucial relationships in the story, which may give insight into the identity of Raskolnikov, are Raskolnikov’s relationships with Razumikhin and Sonya. Razumikhin’s relationship with Raskolnikov is primary in the first portion of the story. Razumikhin is a voice of reason and mostly a good influence on Raskolnikov. Razumikhin is a faithful friend but to a narcissistic axe murderer. Did Razumikhin go wrong? Probably not because Razumikhin does not come into relationship with Raskolnikov in any prominent way until after the murder, and even when Razumikhin is prominent Raskolnikov remains rather distant from Razumikhin, especially considering Razumikhin is one of Raskolnikov’s only real friends at the time. This relationship may not be as helpful in identifying Raskolnikov, for Raskolnikov insulates himself in this relationship - though that’s a start.

It’s difficult to determine when precisely (good job Dostoevsky) Razumikhin drifts from primary to secondary friend, and somewhere along the way Sonya drifts into being a primary friend to Raskolnikov. This is crucial, for though Razumikhin is a portrayed as a mostly good person Sonya does something more. She is a prostitute that her family might not starve to death after her father died and left her mother with several children to feed. Thus, Sonya is at the bottom of the social latter, but she is somehow simultaneously a selfless saint who serves her family relentlessly. When she drifts into becoming a primary friend and confidant to Raskolnikov, we find her to be a penetrating voice of mercy and truth. She immediately empathizes with Raskolnikov’s burden when he confesses his crime to her, but she requires that he confess to the publicly. He refuses at first. Thus, we see need for confession, and his denial of that fact. Raskolnikov is thoroughly insulated, but then he melts and falls to Sonya’s feet. A murderer forgiven by a prostitute. A prostitute who urges confession and repentance. A dead man resurrected through confession and repentance. These snippets are merely snippets, but they may at least suggest the potential for discovering the identity of Raskolnikov by way of relationships with other people.

Unfortunately for us, we may never really see a clear picture of Raskolnikov because the narrator of Raskolnikov focused so exclusively on Raskolnikov - a rather individualistic, modern, way of seeking to thoroughly show who he is, which ironically does the opposite. But the isolation seems to be a correct diagnostic; the isolation should be expected to intensify after Raskolnikov murders. We know lots of what Raskolnikov thinks and does, but we know little of who is the one who is thinking and doing. When he confesses at the end, we get a glimmer of hope that maybe he will one day enter into vital relationships, vital relationships which may then reveal who this Raskolnikov fellow is. But the epilogue only suggests such a thing.

It seems then that, when we social creatures drift away from relationships, we may in fact lose ourselves. We may drift into evanescence, practically invisible to others and thereby to ourselves. “Who is Raskolnikov?” may be answered in the negative. We do not precisely know who he is. He thinks and does things, but we do not know who is doing the thinking and the doing. But this negative answer may provide at least some indication in favor of the converse. Relationships, other people’s narratives about “me,” may in fact provide a glimpse of “who” I am.

From Death to Life

If I were a cat and had nine lives, I would spend one of those lives studying Dostoevsky’s corpus. In the past few years I have merely begun reading his monstrous corpus. The more I read the more I realize just how much there is to read - though I must confess in advance that I have never read his first novel, Poor Folk (I’ve tried three times but alas the few pages I’ve read were ghastly). And then at the end of the day when the reading is done, I realize my understanding has barely touched the surface. Touché, Dostoevsky. From House of the Dead and Notes From Underground to Demons and The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky touches on some of the most vital and sensitive areas of life. In fact, I actually know Raskolnikov, though mostly as just an acquaintance. What makes all these novels so good? To answer in Flannery O’Connor’s manner, I might say that Dostoevsky introduces us to people, and it’s a mystery what will happen next. Before we know it we’ve been swept away into disaster, comedy, and pining. From what I can tell, it’s rather impossible to indicate by bullet points or litany reasons why Dostoevsky is so good - in fact Kierkegaard asserted that if “you can list reasons why you love her, you do not love her; you only love those aspects about her.” So maybe it’s better not to list reasons why Dostoevsky is worth reading and perhaps studying extensively.

I wish I could say that my first encounter with Dostoevsky was sublime, but alas it’s not. On one of the many book shelves in my parents’ house sat a row of comic books. I was young then, perhaps six or seven years old. I liked pictures as much as stories, so naturally I frequented this shelf stocked with comic books. The comic books had neat pictures, but they were black and white - now those books are antiques, and my brother Philip would very much like to pinch them from me (I snuck them out of my parents’ house when I moved to California). I scanned the pictures not certain about the details of the stories but at least learning the generalities of the stories beginnings, middles, and endings. There was one particular book; it had a whale on the front, so I knew it was Moby Dick, a rather boring story about a guy who gets on a boat to stab whales with spears. I returned to this book often mostly because I thought the funny looking Indian, Queequeg, who smoked a funny looking pipe was interesting. There was also another book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I really liked this one, and in fact I read the actual full length story not long after because I like the pictures so much. Roving in caves and digging for buried treasure sounded like a lot of fun. There were numerous other such black and white comic books, too many to count at the time. It seemed like hundreds. Now I know it was more like twenty. The Invisible Man was another one of my favorites; I’m not certain why. And then there was another book I remember vividly, though I didn’t like it much. But it was so boring and irksome that I returned to it more than twice. It started with a guy walking and talking to himself. Then all of a sudden he pulled out an axe and killed an old lady for no apparent reason! Why would he do something like that? And then all he did was walk around and talk to people. For a six or seven year old boy, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, even as a comic book, was rather boring, but I remember it; something about it struck me even as a young boy who thought it was boring.
In college I rediscovered Dostoevsky. I heard someone mention “The Brothers Karamazov written by Dostoevsky,” and then in an instant childhood memories of that really boring comic book, Crime and Punishment, flooded my mind. Almost simultaneously I had the insatiable desire to read the Brothers Karamazov, and I did. Much to my surprise, it was not as boring as I remembered Crime and Punishment to be. The Karamazov brothers are a lot of things, but they are certainly not boring. The oldest brother Dmitri is in love with the same woman as his father. Ivan writes theological treatises to be ironic, for he is an atheist. And poor Alyosha, the youngest brother, is a monk in training; he is a beacon of purity. In the shadowy corners and cobwebs lurks Smerdyakov, the schemer, the illegitimate son. While reflecting on the Brothers Karamazov, it is sometimes difficult to think of these brothers, their relationships with each other and with others as something fictional. It’s all so vivid and vital.


Dostoevsky’s other novels, though not quite as masterful as The Brothers Karamazov, are nonetheless memorable. The twenty-six year old Prince Myshkin’s, Dostoevsky’s Christ figure (the idiot), relationship with the debauched world is startling and tragic. I am absent minded, and I forget a lot of things. But I will never forget Kirillov’s final scene with Stepanovich in Demons - I am reminded of O’Connor’s wisdom for fiction, “violence is not an end in itself but is an extreme situation that reveals what we are essentially.” There are many memorable people and events in Dostoevsky’s novels. Things happen that won’t soon be forgotten.

My junior year in college I hadn’t a clue what lay on a book shelf somewhere waiting to ambush me. Rediscovering Crime and Punishment in college was something analogous to meeting an old disliked acquaintance who turns out to be a rather formidable foe and indispensable friend. It didn’t take long for me to learn that the first page in the comic book and the first page in Volokhonsky’s translation are two different things. There is discontinuity between the pictures and the words. Perhaps, the pictures weren’t very good, but I think it’s because the world of the words can’t be copied with something other than words without adding and subtracting and thereby creating something different. Raskolnikov, Sonya, Svidrigailov, Porfiry, Razumikhin, and Marmeladov’s story can be told only, it seems, with words.

Unfortunately, I have never read any of Dostoevsky’s novels in Russian, perhaps one day. But even through translations, I think I know Dostoevsky had a way with words, introducing people, recounting tragedies as if they had happened, and drawing truth in crayon for anyone to see, even a young boy who only had the pictures.

Thus far, Dostoevsky has given me much. These are a few such reflections: a person strives to live in a coffin, in the chambers of death, in a prison, in addiction, underground, in rebellion. Trapped by self-imposed death the man underground can’t do anything; addicted to the “next time,” the gambler can’t let go and live; the rebel deceives himself into thinking death is better than life. And yet a person can truly live, only if he dies to death and rebellion. The murderer makes for himself a coffin and convinces himself that it's better to be in the coffin than outside of it. But a person must die to living in death. A person must relinquish death through confession in order to live, to resurrect into new life. The life after death to death is fraught with struggle, but it is truly life. Here is an ironic truth. We feeble humans strive to live according to our own deathly wishes, and yet life awaits to vitalize us if only we would die to death first.

Postmodernism III: an Alternative?

What have I done? By denying Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Sartre and Camus as proponents of postmodernism, have I gone off the deep end? Perhaps, though I do not think so. I mentioned before truncated explanations for this. If these folks are not genuinely postmodern but are criticizers of modernism, then who is genuinely postmodern? For modernism to be felled, someone must offer an alternative and then operate according to the assumptions within that alternative. Folks such as Kierkegaard and company have been associated with postmodernism previously, but I suggest that Kierkegaard and company did not offer an alternative to modernism, and they continued to operate according to certain modern assumptions. Furthermore, postmodernism itself had still not fully emerged and taken shape - though it continues to do so even now. If it had not yet taken shape and they never offered a genuine alternative, then how could any of them be associated with postmodernism? They were associated in generality because they critiqued and indicated the need for something other than modernism. But saying somebody is sick and writing a prescription are two different things.

I suppose we could say that postmodernism is merely a critique of modernism and therefore include the aforementioned folks. However, I think when we all use the term postmodernism we are referring to something other than modernism, thereby excluding the aforementioned folks.

Who then is postmodern? Is anyone? I think there are some folks who genuinely are.

Again, this inquiry is motivated by clarity seeking to answer the question, “what is postmodernism anyway?” It seems in fashion to refer to anything disliked or especially liked, off kilter or especially keen, hip or fancy, culturally alternative or muddled as postmodern. Just about any new shiny or unconventional thing is considered postmodern. But that seems rather silly. Thus, there’s a need to do some dusting. I shall trace briefly a few seemingly genuine postmoderns - I will be brief and be forced to use generalities, unfortunately making me a bit of a hypocrite. But, perhaps, sketching a few genuine postmoderns will distinguish postmodernism from Kierkegaard and company and common generalities.

Again, modernism is characterized by preference to reason, universality, individualism, autonomy, and foundationalism, among other things. These tenets involve all areas of thought in the optimistic modern era.

Nearly three hundred years after Descartes made his fateful declaration, there emerged a few folks who genuinely departed from the Cartesian tradition. To merely namedrop and not fall into thorough explanation ( I recently wrote a “school paper” involving some of these chaps, so I have little desire to recapitulate), Quine, Lakatos, and MacIntyre, among many others, give thorough and clear departure from the modern project - Wittgenstein may be grouped with these folks though he was nearly sixty years ahead of his time perhaps even a hundred years ahead of his time. They go beyond mere critique and reconsider previously held assumptions. Nancey Murphy indicates in several of her books the tectonic shift from modernism to postmodernism, involving changes in language and epistemology and “metaphysics.” More than critique is at play here. Epistemology (entrapment within the vague throne of "mind"), for example, is not “first philosophy” for postmoderns as it was for moderns (halleluiah!).

Postmodernism is not merely a critique but an alternative, a new canvas. Murphy regards epistemological, linguistic, and “metaphysical” holism as a postmodern alternative. For example, the epistemological holism requires not that we determine what is certain but what is “unsurpassable” so far and that we consequently appropriate whatever it is that is currently “unsurpassable” as part of our system.

To show the stark difference between modernism and postmodernism, a series of hypocritically general contrasts may give clarity. The moderns give preference to reason, and the postmoderns give credence to tradition/community. The moderns sought universality, and the postmoderns acknowledge locality. The moderns fell to individualism, and the postmoderns are communal - e.g. relationships are crucial for identity and social conventions are the determinate for language. If moderns’ theory of knowledge was something like a layer cake, postmoderns’ theory of knowledge is something like a fruitcake. I tend to like layer cakes but...

It seems that the modern foibles have lasted long enough and have been supplanted. I wonder if humans merely found themselves weary of Cartesian nonsense and decided to play a different game, one involving common sense, one in which we are able to affirm things such as interaction in the “external” world.