Nice to Meet You, Radical Orthodoxy

In Smith’s final chapter of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? he casts a vision for the Church in the postmodern world, and in doing so is primarily describing a steam of thought/theology called Radical Orthodoxy. Smith’s book on this topic has been crossing my desk at work quite a bit lately, and I’ll have to admit that I took a minute to peruse the table of contents the other day. Apart from that (rather unilluminating) encounter, I’ve really not run across this idea of Radical Orthodoxy as such. Again, I find Smith quite compelling on this point, and could maybe even find myself persuaded if I linger here awhile.

What I’d rather do than write about it is talk about it, so I think you ought to go get yourself a copy of the book (or borrow my overly-highlighted one) and give a read through of at least the last 40 pages. We can then sit down over coffee and muse a bit. What do you say?

One of the most challenging (to me) things that Smith talks about is how what often passes for postmodern theology/philosophy of religion loses any significant confessional nature and “actually shrinks back from the more radical implications of the postmodern critique”. In reaction to the mostly harmful affects of a modern fundamentalist version of the church folks (emergent church thinkers among them) sometimes turn to “religion without religion” as a solution. This becomes a skepticism of dogma and creed and embraces Derrida’s philosophy of “I don’t  [can’t] know. I believe.”  I have a very strong suspicion that this belief in the impossibility of certainty is largely what attracts me to the likes of Peter Rollins (well that and his large vocabulary, talk of big ideas and Irish accent, of course). And this is where Smith calls me out.

He puts it this way

In particular, a common move in postmodern theology is to reject the Cartesian equation of knowledge with quasi-omniscient certainty, instead asserting a kind of radical skepticism that opposes faith to knowledge but thereby actually retains the Cartesian equation of knowledge and certainty. (118)

In accepting Descartes’ equating knowledge and certainty, Smith says, these postmodern thinkers are accepting the modern epistemology on it’s own terms instead of truly engaging it on postmodern grounds. (Oh no, I’ve just thrown around the word epistemology like I know what it means. Eek.)  Smith posits that instead, postmodernism can lead us back to the theology of Augustine and Aquinas. Smith again:

On this ancient-medieval-properly-postmodern model, we rightly give up pretensions to absolute knowledge or certainty, but we do not thereby give up on knowledge altogether. Rather, we can properly confess that we know God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, but such knowledge rests on the gift of (particular, special) revelation, is not universally objective or demonstrable, and remains a matter of interpretation and perspective (with a significant appreciation for the role of the Spirit’s regeneration and illumination as a condition for knowledge). We confess knowledge without certainty, truth without objectivity. (121)

Chew on that for awhile. Pleased to meet you indeed, Radical Orthodoxy.

What appeals to me in this is that it allows for the deep suspicion of “absolute certainty” that I have in my bones (as a reaction against what seems to be the modernism I’ve encountered and been hurt by both in the church and outside of it), but it still gives me grounds on which to claim a particular faith. This is all very challenging to me because, while I haven’t spent much time actively engaged in the discussion, I suspect that many of the leanings of various factions of the emergent church that Smith sees as troubling are things that have a draw to me. It is also very comforting to me because as I test the ice in so many directions, it seems that this direction has the potential to be a solid path to safety.

At this point I’m only through talking about half the chapter. Smith spends some time talking about … oh lots of things. All of which I find very interesting, but perhaps I’ll leave them to another post if the mood so strikes.

The last bit of the chapter “explores the implications of the incarnational affirmation of space along two axes: an affirmation of liturgy and the arts and a commitment to place and local communities.” (127) This is where Smith lays out what he believes the radically orthodox church in a postmodern context will look like. This is where I get totally swept away in the vision. While I’m intrigued by a postmodern skepticism of knowledge and Peter Rollin’s tag-line of “to believe is human, to doubt divine”, the life I suspect is offered by these tenants leaves me feeling a bit stranded. (There’s that feeling of being out in the middle of a lake on thin ice again. Yet another name for what I’ve been feeling lately.)

The vision of the radically orthodox church, on the other hand, feels (at least at first blush) very grounded to me. It offers a life lived in the seasons and body of the liturgy. An engagement with this real, physical world just as it is. It offers a specific commitment to the very place we find ourselves and challenges us to live incarnationally in it. It allows us to live a very specific hope of Christ’s love and redemption as an offering to a world in need. Again, here’s is where my latent desire for intentional community gets a little poke in the ribs.

I love my church. It is large. Its critics have a way of making me cry (or nearly cry, at any rate). It has hurt me. But I love it. I love them. I love the people I meet there. I love the spirit of wonder and hope that drives the spirit of things. I love the ways that I have found myself in the safe arms of a family that loves me just as I am. I love the way this family challenges me to live beyond my current self into the life-to-the-full (eternal life) that God has given us access to. I love the opportunity I get, Sunday after Sunday, to actively remember and engage the Presence of God.

But I have been reminded lately that I must continually put all of this on the alter. I must be willing to give it up, lest it again become an idol to me. I may or may not ever be called to let go, but I have to be willing to at least entertain the possibility. And if that time comes, it is my sincere hope that it is because I am called to join a much smaller body of believers who are attached to place  and who incorporate candles and jazz, poetry and liturgy in their communal life.  I feel a dream in me stirring, and for one so often afraid to dream, this too is a grace.

It took me a very long time to accomplish, but I see now that reading Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? was the right place to be at the right time. I’ve needed this orientation to the modern-postmodern church/culture/world I find myself in. Whether I decide that Smith was right on in all things and follow him fully, or if I  just use these ideas as a map on which to place myself, I am grateful to have had him as a guide.

A Blizzard and Foucault

As I sit down to write this I am fresh off a shot of gratitude for a neighbor with a new toy.  I’m reading that we got around 16 inches of snow in our very own Blizzard 2011 (snowpocalypse, Ground Hog’s Day Dump, what-have-you) and the drifts around my car reach half way up the door. I parked out back (with a great amount of effort, mind you) to avoid getting plowed in, but so far the cars on the street are looking in better shape than my buried one.

And then, in steps Charlie with a new industrial sized snow blower, purchased hours (minutes?) ago. It would have taken us (me and my ever generous roommate) at least an hour to find my car and here’s Charlie all excited to put gas and oil in his new machine and try it out.  My fears about trying to get to work tomorrow are diminishing and my biceps and back have been spared. You may call him an unlikely vessel (you could find several potential disqualifiers if you had a mind to, which I categorically don’t), but I have no doubts: it’s a grace.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I finally finished Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? today–another bonus of a snow day. I read the chapter on Foucault last week and decided not to post about it at that time. It’s a thick chapter, and the first that hasn’t been a second read-through for me. I was hoping that if I just let it marinate I might have a quick something to say without dragging my limited readership through an over-long, ill-informed summary. I’m still not sure what to say about it, but instead of stalling further I’ll try to say something.

“The past is told by those who win, my darling. What matters is what hasn’t been.”

This is a line from a Jimmy Eat World song that came to mind as I began the chapter. Part of what Foucault says, through a series of case studies rather than as a series of propositions, is that “power is knowledge”. Society determines what and how we know, and forms us into the kinds of people we are through various forms of discipline. (Something called “the gaze” comes in here, which has something to do with how if the powers that be are watching, which they always are, then we as citizens by and large behave. Thus as members of society we are never truly free, but instead formed into the sort of people that power decides we ought to be. Something like that.)

There is debate, Smith says, about whether Foucault ultimately was just describing what he saw or actually trying to say that this sate of things is unacceptable. Smith’s reading is that deep down Foucault has an anti-establishment bent and that as such his desire for individual independence falls right in line with Enlightenment thinkers. Thus, Foucault’s way of thinking is deeply modern in it’s individualism, begging the question how modern is postmodernism? (Fascinating, eh?!)

Smith then says that while we can learn much from Foucault, we as the Church ought not to be fooled by him into thinking that all discipline is bad. Instead we ought to ask what is the aim of the discipline? The powers that be in society generally narrow us down to one main function (economic animals–consumers–in one case) where as our call to bear the image of Christ leads us into being fully rounded humans. This call to be the image of Christ, however, does not come without discipline. Where Foucault would see the structures of the church as just another manipulation of power, Smith challenges us to see things in another light. I could tease this out further, and try to make a case for Smith’s position (which I find very compelling), but I think I’ll leave it there.

There seem to be many implications for what Smith says and I am still sorting it out. All through the reading of this book I have thought back on my brief experiences with new monasticism, wondering if they are not intuitively (and with great intention as well, I’m sure) tapping into this pre-modern/modern/postmodern milieu as they seek a faithful, incarnational faith.  I feel as though these ideas may have specific implications for me as I attempt to orient myself in this world, but exactly what direction I will travel (am traveling) still seems a bit unclear.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today I spent a long time with Smith’s final chapter which is called “Applied Radical Orthodoxy” and sets forward what he thinks are the implications for the church in light of these thinkers (Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault).  There’s a lot to dig into here and I suppose, given the length of this post already, I ought to call it good. Perhaps a dinner break and we’ll see what happens after that.

Taking Lyotard to Church

I had the urge tonight to put on hold this exploration of postmodernism and to pull out N. T. Wright’s The Last Word instead. It’s probably been a month since the book finally came into the used book department and I promptly snatched it up. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any reading specific to my questions on the Bible and I feel an itch to dig into those again. However, discipline prevailed (at least for the moment) and I finished Smith’s chapter on Lyotard instead. Here’s what I learned.

A postmodern society is one of a plurality of stories, and since the language of logic and reason has been unveiled as just one of the many stories there is no longer one adjudicator of moral claims. Many Christians also lament this fact as the loss of the ability for society to look towards a higher power for moral guidance, but Smith sees postmodernism as a potentially open door for the Church rather than a threat.

He says that “the postmodern critique demands not that modern thought relinquish its faith (a modern gesture, to be sure) but that it own up to it—openly confess its credo.” Thus to the extent that contemporary culture is open to the postmodern critique of modernism (as one type of faith) it will then be open to all views informed by faith. He puts it this way: “The exclusion of faith from the public square is a modern agenda; postmodernity should signal new openings and opportunities for Christian witness in the broad marketplace of ideas.”

Smith says that this frees the church from a Constantinian need to dominate the culture (create a “Christian nation”, say) but allows us to proclaim our unique story boldly in an environment where truth-seekers free to explore multiple stories. Smith argues that the fact that our faith is based on the narrative of Scripture, rather than a modern-like set of propositions and facts, gives us a unique voice in a culture that recognizes the power of story. (I am interested to think more about what this could mean for Christians in the public/political sphere, but I have no conclusions on that as of yet. That is another quest all together.)

Smith goes on to talk about what the church looks like in a postmodern society, which is very fascinating as well. One thing that stood out to me was the idea of corporate worship as a cross-cultural experience. If we travel to a foreign country we do not expect our hosts to act like Americans. We hope, in fact, that they introduce us to many elements of their culture that are different from ours. In the same way, the Church can act as a cross-cultural host for those entering the worship experience as a seeker. The Church will tell the story of Scripture is it is, without conforming it to the culture at large, but it will do so in a gracious way that invites the foreigner into the unique language and custom of church. Thus, a return to liturgy and an emphasis on the unique story of the Bible are not off-putting to a postmodern seeker, but parts of a new culture to be explored.

Smith says more that I will not regurgitate, but I will end with a quote that seemed to sum up how my thinking is shifting in regards to both faith in general and the Bible in particular.

“By calling into question the idea of autonomous, objective, neutral rationality, I have argued that postmodernity represents the retrieval of a fundamentally Augustinian epistemology that is attentive to the structural necessity of faith preceding reason, believing in order to understand—trusting in order to interpret.” (72)

It seems to me that I am moving from an ill-formed hope of learning to interpret in order to trust into a faith that trusts in order to interpret. It is a hopeful place to be.

***

(This was not the promised biographical note I had planned, but seemed to come first. Stay tuned for a self-absorbed look at the moment I definitively choose story over science.)

Metanarratives–An Attempt

January 1: Sometime in the afternoon

Happy New Year, everyone! I’ve had a long peaceful day, which has given me the freedom to spend an inordinate amount of time digesting about 10 pages of Smith’s chapter on Lyotard and metanarratives. I read, and re-read, and underlined (again). I googled Plato’s Republic and The Cave and searched the recesses of my brain for things I’m sure Dr. Clark taught me in Philosophy 153. I tried to figure out how to pronounce Lyotard (I think it’s mostly like it looks, without the “d” sound…?). I spent long moments staring out the window distractedly, sometimes contemplating metanarratives, sometimes trying to keep the cat off my keyboard and sometimes taking far different rabbit trails only very tangentially related to the matter at hand.

I am not even done with the chapter, in fact, I stopped right about the place where Smith starts talking about what this means for the Church–which is really the whole point. But since I think my brain is full to capacity I’m going to try to do a bit of a dump here and see if I can make sense of anything. This may get long or boring (likely long and boring) and it may not represent Lyotard or Smith well. It will probably rely over much on block quotes. Consider yourself fairly warned.

Jean-Francois Lyotard published The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge in French in 1979. This is the text on which Smith bases most of his analysis of metanarratives. Lyotard wrote that “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”  We often think of “metanarratives” as big stories. Or even big stories about the way things are. Which is part of what Lyotard means by metanarrative, but he also means something beyond this. For Lyotard, metanarratives are large stories that “claim to be able to legitimate or prove the story’s claim by an appeal to universal reason.”

Pre-modern narratives about the way the world is and why were legitimated by the community from which they sprung. A premodern culture believed, say it’s creation myth, because it was a story that was equally accepted by the “homogeneity of a people” (Volk, in German, apparently). When modernism came along (or is it that modernism came along because?) this homogeneity of culture was being lost. When there was not a common culture to automatically legitmating the narrative, Modernity had to turn to something, and that something was science and reason. Modernism “externalizes the problem of legitimation” (66).

This was a light-bulb moment for me. It seemed suddenly clear to me why modernism (and those modernists I love) relies (rely) so heavily on the appeal to science and “universal truth”. The things that were always simply accepted as true by pretty much everyone (in any given context) throughout pre-modern history have now been called into question. There are multiple voices and we have to figure out how to pick the right one. How can we know something is true? Isn’t this one of the deepest questions of humankind? Of course we will look for truth. And of course when our whole foundation is rocked we will look for something irrefutable, something solid. Science! Reason!

This is me departing from the text and extrapolating. Or perhaps b.s.ing, but at the moment it seems to make sense to me. I need often to remind myself that (in my view, anyway) what is at the core of much modernist militancy (whether secular or Christian) is a true desire to find truth. Here, my friends, is my common ground with all you modernists (the theologians who think I’m a heretic, the atheist scientists who think I’m crazy and pretty much everyone in between). We are all interested in truth. Our divergent ideas on how to recognize it may be why it often feels like we speak two different languages and live in two different realities. But, perhaps we’re all after something of the same thing after all. (And maybe you’ll disagree. Who knows.)

Smith seems to sum up the modern metanarrative and postmodernism’s incredulity to it in this dense little paragraph:

“However, because the homogeneity of the premodern Volk has dissolved, we have no immediate or previously agreed-on consensus. In Lyotard’s terms, we do not all share the same language game. As such, modern legitimation has recourse to a universal criterion: reason—a (supposedly) universal stamp of legitimation. This move generates what Lyotard famously describes as metanarratives: appeals to criteria of legitimation that are understood as standing outside any particular language game and thus guarantee universal truth. And it is precisely here that we locate postmoderinity’s incredulity toward metanarratives: they are just another language game, albeit masquerading as the game above all games. Or as Lyotard puts it, scientific knowledge, which considered itself to be a triumph over narrative knowledge, covertly grounds itself in a narrative (i.e., an originary myth).” (67)

Alright. Here is where you may want to take a deep breath and walk away because it only gets longer and more convoluted from here. Or you may desire to  refresh yourself on Plato’s allegory of the cave (should you need refreshing) and plow through. If I was up to my neck already, I am now far beyond my depth. What I am about to say takes about two pages for Smith and took me at least an hour to understand. I typed it up while I was reading just to help myself to keep track. Here’s the rest, for what it’s worth.

January 2: sometime early in the evening

Well, as it turns out it was at the exact moment that I was finishing that paragraph that my friend Jenna stopped by and what was going to be maybe an hour-long chat on the couch turned into an invitation to taco night and a game of Ticket to Ride. Good times at Infinity Farms! (That’s still the name of the homestead, right Jenna?)

I considered making these two separate posts, but as the order in which you read all this  is important I decided to just finish off here and make this one monster of a post. I’m in a different head space than I was yesterday, but hopefully things will remain coherent (as coherent as possible, at any rate).

***

Right at the time when Smith seems to be coming to his point, I started to get a bit lost. He goes back to Plato’s Republic and the allegory of the cave as a beginning of science’s turning to narrative for legitimation. This all has something to do with the theory of how we know (epistemology). I think he is saying that even science has to tell itself stories about how it knows what it knows. Stories about what knowing is.

I think it goes something like this: Plato tells us that in order to truly know we have to give up the stories we tell ourselves about what is true (the names we give to the shadows we see projected on the wall of the cave) and turn to look at the actual object that produced the shadow. This is the beginning of enlightenment (turning from the narrative to the real object). (And I seem to recall that enlightenment continues with the enlightened person eventually crawling out of the cave to see these objects not just as objects meant to cast a shadow in a puppet show, but as they actually function in the real world…but that’s just me making up something I may or may not remember from Philosophy 153. Dear Dr. Clark, I’m sorry I did not truly appreciate your teaching methods at the time you delivered them. Perhaps I learned something despite myself.)

So, Lyotard says,  enlightenment “knowledge is thus founded on the narrative of its own martyrdom.”

At this point I’m grasping at straws (or perhaps abstract ideas), but I think the claim is that this giving up the illusion for the reality is in and of itself  a narrative, and thus science/modernism is founded on a narrative of its own non-narrative-ness. It is not the narrative-ness that Lyotard takes an exception to.  It is the denial of narrative that bothers the him. Thus the metanarrative is the story that there is no story. Lyotard sees this as disingenuous and thus in need of exposure.

I still don’t fully grasp what the narrative of science is, but without spending more time than I’m willing to devote to this particular chapter I’m going to go with what I’ve got. Smith puts it this way:

“’Metanarratives,’ then, is the term Lyotard ascribes to these false appeals to universal, rational scientific criteria—as though they were divorced from any particular myth or narrative. For the postmodernist, every scientist is a believer.” (68)

This idea of the scientist as a believer is another thing that just makes intuitive sense to me. While I may not be able to fully grasp all of the philosophy that leads Lyotard to this point, I can at least grasp that sense of things. The scientist believes in his or her objectivity and the scientific method as the true ways to find truth. These things are so self-evident to person of science that they are not even considered beliefs. The postmodern, however, sees the modern way of looking at the world a belief system on par with other belief systems.

Now, as he starts to talk about how Lyotard’s ideas of metanarratives might interact with the Christian faith Smith reminds us that “Postmodernism is not incredulity toward narrative or myth; on the contrary, it unveils that all knowledge is grounded in such.” (69)

He claims that postmodernism does not have to be antithetical to the Christian story, because in fact, the Church recognizes that it’s belief system is built on story/narrative/myth. This is all very fascinating to me and I hope to revisit it shortly. (And by shortly I mean both in the near future and with far fewer words.)

Well, if you made it through that, congratulations. I’m considering injecting a brief biographical note as a next post just to pull things out of the head a bit. For now, mull over metanarrative and let me know if you think I shot some of my ideas way off target.

Nothing Outside the Text

Do you ever hear something and think, “That is exactly what I have always thought, I’ve just never had the words for it!”? That is the feeling I had while reading much of James K. A. Smith’s chapter on Derrida in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? (Baker Academic).  I’ve been realizing for quite some time that for whatever reason I am primarily a postmodern, and reading this chapter confirmed these suspicions. If you want a succinct and lucid treatment of Derrida, I highly recommend Smith’s book. It’s silly for me to attempt to repeat it all here, but this main idea that “there is nothing outside the text” seems to make perfect sense to me.

While modernism hoped to find objective truth (unmediated by language perhaps, as dreamed of by Rousseau) Derrida claimed that there was no way to observe the world without simultaneously interpreting it. When we see a fork we see a fork rather than a hair comb because our culture has conditioned us to do so. (Thanks, Mr. Smith for the reference to the Disney version of The Little Mermaid, despite your belief that Ariel is “corrupted by a consumerist desire”.) This idea that everything is an interpretation seems so second nature to me that I’m not even sure how to defend it. I’ll just leave it there.

Smith says that those Christians who are afraid of postmodernism as an erosion of truth “conflate truth with objectivity”, which is a fascinating statement to me. This idea of truth as objectivity is a very modern idea and relies on a belief in objectivity as something universally knowable by all people, at all times, in all places. Derrida instead believes that our context informs our interpretation and that there is no way of ridding ourselves of context. Even should we all see the same event (say, the resurrection) we would still have varied interpretations of what it actually means based on so many factors.

According to Smith, believing that everything is interpretation does not mean that we believe nothing is true, just that we recognize that what we believe to be a true interpretation is still one of many possible interpretations. That is, I can believe that the world is created and that humans are made in the image of God, and I can believe that this is true. But I still have to acknowledge that a Buddhist will have a different interpretation of the nature of the world and the nature of humanity. What is required, then, is not objective proof that our belief is correct, but the tools to make a good and true interpretation of our world.

One of my favorite quotes from this chapter is this:

“Acknowledging the interpreted status of the gospel should translate into a certain humility in our public theology. It should not, however, translate into skepticism about the truth of the Christian confession. If the interpretive status of the gospel rattles our confidence in its truth, this indicates that we remain haunted by the modern desire for objective certainty. But our confidence rests not on objectivity but rather on the convictional power of the Holy Spirit (which isn’t exactly objective); the loss of objectivity, then, does not entail a loss of kerygmatic boldness about the truth of the gospel.” (51)

Kerygmatic, I learned basically means having to do with preaching. Perhaps more specifically preaching of the gospel in a “the gospel as the whole story of everything” way. (I may  have just made that part up.  It’s based on something I read, but I’m not sure what now.)

What Derrida claims and Smith seconds, is that we come to a good interpretation not simply on our own in our own heads, but in community. Our context is shaped by community, by culture. Smith argues that as the Church our interpretation is molded by the story of Scripture, the tradition of the Church throughout all of history and the witness of the contemporary global church. (This sure gives us a lot of material to work with, and plenty to ponder!)

Smith presents a picture of postmodern belief that gives us an alternative to the dominant interpretations of the contemporary world. Postmodernism allows for voices from the margins. We now do not have to believe that, say, Wall Street’s view of the world is “just the way it is”. Wall Street gives us one interpretation of the world, but we can live out of another, one that finds value beyond economic status and power. We don’t have to argue our faith on the terms of the modern world,trying ceaselessly to prove its objective truth, we can live an alternate story and invite in those who are seeking a new vision.

Ack. Well, there’s more to say and I’m sure I’ve butchered most of anything Smith said, but those are a few thoughts for now. Up next, metanarratives! (Isn’t just the word itself delicious?!)

Courage to Write

Last weekend I finished that chapter on Derrida in Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? and tried my best to write a blog post. I could never find traction, however, and eventually gave up. Partly writing is just hard, especially on philosophical matters, particularly for a person not well versed in philosophy. (I’m sad these days that I did not partake in more philosophy classes in college, but at the time asking questions such as “Do I exist?” seemed rather beside the point.) But I also realized that I’m afraid. I’m afraid of at least two things.

1) My fear of ignorance.

As I mentioned, I’m no scholar on matters philosophical. I like to think, and I like to think about ideas but I’m just a beginner. Anything I say on postmodernism, for example, will mostly be a parroting of Smith along with my own gut instinct on the topic. Sure my gut instinct has been informed by an education at Calvin that stressed ideas of worldview and by many conversations over the years about such topics, but I certainly don’t have systematic training in this area.

If someone who really knew philosophy or theology read my post he/she would find it woefully ignorant. It’s hard to think of putting my ignorance on display.

2) My fear of confrontation.

Somewhat entwined, but also completely separate from my ignorance is my difficulty with confrontation. This begins with the very specific knowledge that I do not have enough training to make any sort of real defense of postmodernism, which my posts will mainly present as a given. If questioned either from a modern philosophical perspective or by a theological one I would come up short. I don’t have the training for debate.

But also I don’t seem to have the stomach for it. I’m interested in ideas many of which are controversial, or at least debatable, but I tend to shut down in the face of debate. I’m still trying to sort out why this is. Why is it that I hate confrontation so much? What harm do I really think a challenge to my ideas can do me? Why does a challenge to any of my ideas feel like a direct attack on my person instead of just an exploration of the rich faculties of the human mind?

If I’m going to write about postmodernism, faith or theology I’m sure to face objectors. The idea of confrontation scares me.

*   *   *

I finished The Lacuna this week and also had a mind to write about it. I did not have the time, but I also realized that I would find myself faced with some of the same issues as I ran into while trying to write about postmodernism.  At the moment I am most captured by the question of who the real narrator of the story is. Is it Harrison Shepherd whose journals and papers make up most of the text, or is it Violet Brown who compiled and framed these writings, presenting them to the public to read? I seem to be left pondering one of the main themes of the book, does God really speak for the silent as Shepherd claims? I suspect that I would end up coming down in the same place as Violet Brown on this: if God speaks for the silent it is only through his instruments (i.e. those of us who have a voice).

This is all well and good (lovely, really), but I know I cannot fully talk about this book without also discussing Harrison’s sexual and romantic preference for men. Here again I realize that whatever it is I say will probably not suit most people.   I won’t go activist-y discussing the repression of homosexuality in America in the 1940s and today. But I certainly won’t go conservative either condemning this character for simply being who he is.

Instead, I want to engage Harrison on a heart level. His pain and loneliness speak to me in a powerful way. I am always grateful for writers who can, without melodrama, speak to the pain of unrequited affections and the loneliness of living as a thoughtful, sensitive person in this world. Homosexuality is a topic with much theological and political currency, and as such deserves attention on those planes, but I’m not inclined to go take it there at the moment. I just want to see Harrison for who he is and accept him with eyes of compassion and brotherhood.

*   *   *

In pondering all these things this week I realized that the real question posed to me is: will I have the courage to write? I’ve always wanted to be a person who took a stand, who gave myself to a cause, who stormed the gates of something or other. And yet here I am, afraid to put down in words just a few small thoughts to an incredibly small audience. If I’m going to learn courage it’s got to start somewhere and so I’m choosing to write. I’ll put my ignorance on full display. I’ll face criticisms I can’t refute. I will engage the world with my heart.

And so, here is my admonition to myself: have the courage to write.