‘Why Do I Do What I Do’, or ‘The Horror of Relationships’
There is a question that would appear to haunt all of us at different points in our journey through life. For some it is a question that only ever brushes past like a gentle breeze. While for others it presses down like a heavy yoke. The question might arise early in life, or be raised late in the day. But however much we wish to avoid it there will be times when we ask ourselves why we have chosen the path we are on. The question will haunt us as much concerning the decisions we make about relationships as it will concerning our political commitments, career choices and social activities. Even when these things appear to be going well it is easy to wonder if the path we choose to walk, or the path that was chosen for us (because of other peoples decisions or Fortuna’s careless hand) is the right one.
The question ‘Why do I do what I do’ disturbs the smooth running of our lives because it involves a certain amount of anxiety. Yet, far from seeing its manifestation as a minor disturbance in our ongoing life, perhaps we should see it as a site of truth. As a moment in which the foundations of our decisions are momentarily manifested to us in their underlying contingency.
Most of us do not feel the full force of this question either because we never fully commit to a cause (choosing to travel through life without real investment – allowing the TV we watch and papers we read to experience life on our behalf) or because we attempt to ground our theological/philosophical/political projects, or romantic ones, in some absolute (God, Reason, Destiny, Historical Necessity etc.). In the former we never truly make a radical commitment to some cause, while in the latter we never experience the fear and trembling which such a commitment should engender.
The former can be said to relate to a facile liberalism in which the only real sins are ones such as using the wrong wine glass over dinner (here we ought to remember Nietzsche’s cutting attack on his peers in which he wished that there were more hypocrites, because at least hypocrites believed something they failed to live up to; rather than those who could not even bring themselves to really believe anything in the first place). While the later refers to fundamentalism; where the responsibility of commitment to a cause is effaced by the idea that ones choice is in accord with the Absolute.
Let us flesh this idea out via reference to a marriage proposal. Let us imagine someone settling for a partner they like but are not genuinely passionate about. Perhaps they fear being alone if they do not chose this person, or that this is the best relationship they are likely to find. And so they propose. While such a relationship may blossom into something more the act itself arises out of fear and a lack of passion. In contrast let us imagine a young couple deeply and passionately in love. In their zeal they believe that they are meant to be together (perhaps they believe God has ordained it, or Destiny has demanded it). Here when one proposes to the other there is no fear and trepidation. The act has already been written in the stars and requires no courage to enact.
However, in contrast to these, what if the only truly romantic proposal is the one in which the two people deeply feel the horror and disgust of the commitment they are planning to make. Here we can imagine a couple who know the madness of getting married. They realise that the person they love is only a human being, they know that people change, that divorce rates are through the roof and that the vast majority of relationships are riven with clandestine affairs. And yet they do not cower and hide in the face of this. Instead they resolutely commit to each other in the full knowledge of the tragedy that befalls so many relationships over time.
Is it not this couple who are the real romantics, the ones who know what it is to actually live before they die? In this commitment they neither renounce their passion (because passion is a breeding ground for deep pain), nor do they attempt to protect themselves from its negative effects by attempting to ground their passion in an Absolute. Rather they acknowledge the danger and contingency of what they are doing all the while throwing themselves at it wholly.
This does not, of course, mean that reason is without a place in such decisions. It is deeply important. There are many things that a couple can work out in advance to help them see if they might be compatible (if the person seems honest and faithful etc.). The point is simply that the passion involved will always exceed the amount of evidence that one can gather and reasoning that would be required. If we were to wait until we could know for certain that the person was right for us we would never be able to commit because new evidence could always be gathered. Also, to judge purely by reason would mean that we could only ever commit in proportion to what the evidence and reasoning allowed. But this would mean that we could never unconditionally throw ourselves into the arms of the other, affirming with a joyous ‘yes’ our lover.
It is today very common to see reason opposed to faith in popular literature (with reason or faith being the better depending on which side the apologist sits). The point is not that they are opposed but rather that reason is saturated with faith. In other words, all real decisions, no matter how reasonable, involve a faith act. Neither the facile liberal nor the crude fundamentalist examples mentioned above allow for the anxiety of making a real decision about love, politics or prayer. While the former only ever minimally commits (not making a full blooded decision), the latter knows what to commit to in advance of doing it (thus not making a real decision, as one can only ever make a decision when one does not know what needs to be done – thus making a choice).
My theological project involves attempting to show how this idea is a profoundly Christian one (though it is rarely found in actually existing Christianity). I will be exploring this in my Greenbelt seminar in August; which is entitled ‘The Birth of Christianity and the Death of Meaning’
July 17th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Glad to see you’re feeling better. Thanks for shaking us up again.
Peace, Skip.
July 17th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
thank you for this. it’s perfect reading for me tonight. so cool how God does that… speaks through people.
July 18th, 2009 at 2:29 am
Very thought-provoking and touches a key issue I’m working through. For me the natural tendency is to hide myself in the Absolute, simply needing to find some sign that this is the path the Absolute decrees for me, and that’s that… no hard work, worry (except ‘have I read the signs right?’), no real maturity.
It was only through making a conscious decision to directly disobey an unequivocal edict from on high that I began to pick this apart. I wonder if Abraham would not have been a better model of faith had he disobeyed God’s command to sacrifice his son.
It is a daily journey to make my own decisions and take responsibility for them.
July 18th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Glad you’re able to fill a slot at Greenbelt. Hope you can do so passionately.
July 18th, 2009 at 8:41 am
[...] as if in order (well, it was in order in Google Reader), I came upon Peter Rollins: The question ‘Why do I do what I do’ disturbs the smooth running of our lives because it [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 3:59 am
“Never fully commit to a cause or ground our project in the absolute” does seem to be how many live today. Too many are waiting for their life to begin instead of “living deep and sucking out all the marrow of life” in the words of Thoreau. I appreciate the tension you draw between these two elements.
I’m reminded of a quote by Leonardo da Vince, who reflected that the average human being “looks without seeing, listens without hearing, touches without feeling, eats without tasting, moves without physical awareness, inhales without awareness of odor or fragrance, and talks without thinking.” He could have added, “and lives without ever answering the question why we do we what do.”
Thanks for your words. Peace.
July 19th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
My wife and I were, just yesterday, having a conversation about our lives and “where we are going now”…I will have her read this…it does not point a direction, but rather begs that direction be looked for. I believe that is where we are at right now…needing to look at directions to go.
Sadly I see that for the past couple years we have been in “one place” and somewhere along the way lost the “where” let alone the “why” of our direction. If that makes sense…
July 19th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
just how deep do you believe?
will you bite the hand that feeds?
will you chew until it bleeds?
can you get up off your knees?
are you brave enough to see?
do you want to change it?
Been thinking about this for a couple of days now.
July 20th, 2009 at 3:06 am
Oldmankit – me too. I actually used to be very anti-absolutes until I flipped 180 degrees and went through a phase a few months back of trying to figure out what all the ‘right answers’ were. I’m just getting over that now, although I do acknowledge it as a necessary stage to have gone through.
If you don’t mind my asking, what was the command that you disobeyed? Don’t feel like you have to share if you don’t want to…
July 20th, 2009 at 7:08 am
Pete,
I have a question. i’m not exactly sure to which idea you are pointing when you say, “My theological project involves attempting to show how this idea is a profoundly Christian one”. is it the ability to “allow for the anxiety of making a real decision” beyond liberal non-commitment and fundamentalist certainty?
I had another thought, but wanted to be clear on that.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:35 am
Hey Geoff
Yeah. Basically I want to show that 1. Christianity involves making a passionate decision 2. It involves doing it without any absolute guarantees. I don’t want to merely say that this is what big decisions always involve (and we must therefore impose it on Christianity), but that Christianity exposes this structure.
Now I wait in fear and trembling as you ask me a devastating question!
July 20th, 2009 at 9:15 am
I dont’ know if I have a devastating question. only my boys think i’m so profound, and it usually ends with “daddy, you’re just being silly!”
anyway, I wonder if you have truly exhausted the possibilities of a marriage proposal. You mention the ‘liberal’ non-committal decision which is really just settling and the ‘fundamentalist-romantic’ who believes God/Fate has ordained this pairing. In contrast to this you propose the truly romantic proposal as “the one in which the two people deeply feel the horror and disgust of the commitment they are planning to make.” This seems to link a a horrible realism of failings and frailty coupled with a resolute faith in the face of absurdity.
Now I don’t this is all wrong, and indeed it is especially good therapy for many.
But there could be another construal of a marriage proposal, which is auto-biographical in nature. For me, my marriage proposal was not in the face of the absurdity of another human being, at least not principally. Rather it went something like this. This woman is indeed a wretch individual when I look closely. and frankly, her family is pretty screw up too. But, when I look closely, I am an exceed disaster of a person myself, who would want anything to do with me! However (and this is where my account separates, it seems from yours…or at least the version you suggested here), however, in the face my own wretchedness there is a God working on behalf of Life for me for reasons utter mysterious (you could say absurd i guess) to me. Based in my faith that this is the case I can make the passionately reasonable proposal to treat this woman in the same way (as I see her already treating me that way). For me, when I proposed it was neither liberal non-committal, more romantically guaranteed, nor horribly absurd, but a type of a gracious realism of forgiveness and freedom coupled with a faith, not in absurdity (for this is merely negative and the irrational side of every reason), but the mystery or paradoxical extension of God’s love.
Extended into a theological project, I for one agree that fundamentalism short-circuits faith and the commitment of real decisions, and the function of foundationalisms is to secure certainty. But I don’t agree that trust in the Absolute always functions in these ways, nor do I that certain articulations of the God are always onto-theologically fundamentalist.
Maybe it is, but is it a fundamentalist guarantee to say that because God redeems the absurdity and horror of which I am, so too can I relate to the absurdity and horror of my wife? Or rather, I forgive because I’ve been forgiven? Or I give grace because I have received grace. Or instead of horror and absurdity, why not rather I can receive, commit to, and call out the Beauty which is my wife because I have received and been called into the Beauty from beyond?
so I don’t think those are particularly devastating questions, and perhaps you were trying to make a similar point of different way.
grace and peace be with you,
July 20th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Geoff – must we define ourselves as wretched? I just can’t stand that kind of language anymore. I’m so very glad my wife is not wretched – with or without God. I imagine you might back off that language a bit, but why use it at all? I don’t think the rejection of this kind of language means I must minimize the sin and horror in our world.
I think the “horror and disgust” Pete speaks of is found in the uncertainty that things will work out (with or without God). And in the knowledge that for many it does not work out. Also, who will I become? Who will my wife become? What situations will come into our lives? We will make mistakes, but how will we handle them? I’m not sure I can handle them. Etc, etc.
Isn’t your version of the marriage proposal ultimately just another way of saying, “I believe in the end God will make everything alright, so let’s do it?” I think the “horror and disgust” is found in the acknowledgment that everything may NOT be alright. I’m not sure I want to call what you’re saying fundamentalism (and to me, it does seem like Pete calls this fundamentalism), but I do think it misses the point of what Pete is saying here. You are still aligning yourself with God/Absolute in a way that seems to assure all will be ok in the end. If this is true, then why couldn’t we just marry anyone without worry?
Geoff, perhaps you pushed a button for me here, I hope this doesn’t come off as an attack. I’m genuinely interested in how you might respond to this. I may be misreading you (and Pete for that matter). But I will say with some certainty (ha!) that I can’t stand the use of the word “wretched” in describing ourselves.
I’m also interested in hearing more about Pete’s view of fundamentalism. It seems to me to be too broad, to the point that it’s unhelpful.
July 20th, 2009 at 11:37 am
adam,
a couple of things:
first, I agree that Pete’s view of fundamentalism seems to broad. I have usually heard fundamentalism as those who slavishly/literally interpret a text with absolute certainty, and therefore close down all ambiguity. But Pete’s use sound like any relation to transcendence is fundamentalist (but perhaps I’m ready Zizek into Pete’s statment).
Anyway, second, if I pushed a button with the use of ‘wretched’ it was unintentional, and I rare discuss such things with that term. I in just playing along with the terms “horror and disgust” (also terms I don’t generally use). So if you button is connected to a fear of an overly Reformed, total depravity mainframe where salvation is only about being “saved from sin/death/wretchedness” and we should rejoiced that we are the scum of the earth, well, then I totally understand. I prefer to focus on how we are saved unto life, grace, beauty, and openness.
lastly, you wonder if my marriage proposal isn’t still merely just the old refrain of “I believe in the end God will make everything alright, so let’s do it?” It is not this guarantee that God will work it out in the end, but rather than it will work out because i’m living in the way of grace, or on the way of grace. By committing in faith to the way of grace I have plentiful reason to commit to marriage. In this sense, whatever horrible or disgusting thing that might occur, being on this particular way does in a sense ensure that everything will work out, because living in grace and forgiveness does that in surprising ways.
One of my problems is that it seems that “faith” is also too narrow. There is certainly a fundamentalist way of saying “God will make everything work out” which includes hidden premises of “God will make make everything work out (for me in a way I totally understand and discern, otherwise I must be in sin)” But that is not faith in the robust sense. And too often this fundamentalist faith reverses into some sort of existentialist angst: “God may or may not exist but I still have to make a decision and live with it in mode of authenticity which nevertheless knows its own absurdity.” Is this faith or infinite resignation?
It seems there must be a faith that can say, “God will make everything work out, even though everything is definitely screwed up, and I have no idea how even God could make them work out.”
July 20th, 2009 at 11:56 am
This is a very thought-provoking post/thread, thanks. I wasn’t going to say anything because I think Geoff’s post articulates something pretty well already, but I got carried away.
My version of the Geoff’s question would be something like this: what place is there in Pete’s construal of a decision (which is exposed by Christianity) for something that we might call trust?
Does a real decision necessarily exclude trust?
It would seem a little too reductive to me to say that trust is always either: a) a sign of an unthinking and bland lack of real concern/understanding of what is at stake; or b) the act of clinging to an imaginary absolute, a big Other, to avoid thinking about contingency. It seems to me that the most significant, or at least the most common, promise in the New Testament concerns the presence of Christ through the Spirit: I will be with you.
Of course, this promise is nowhere near as comforting as it might be easy to think it is; ultimately the gospel affirms that Jesus wasn’t abandoned on the cross, which means that the promise of presence doesn’t exclude future crosses. But nevertheless, there is an overwhelming sense in the NT that the presence of Christ fills everything, even the worst suffering. So I wonder how this affects how we think about decisions, the turmoil of making a decision, the question of trust, and so on.
Also, on a completely different note, I can imagine how two different people, articulating the experience of their decisions very differently, could in reality be undergoing quite a similar experiences, or falling into one of the common alternatives Pete describes. One person might cling to the idea that God underwrites their decision, refusing them real freedom out of kindness; another person might cling to the idea that their decision is out of reach of critique or troubling assessment after the fact by virtue of being a pure act of groundless subjective assertion, separate from any public scrutiny. Both may be comforting, in deeply unhelpful ways, even though on the surface the ideas look very different.
Anyway, thanks again
-Stu
July 20th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I will go through your comments and add a couple of thoughts at different points,
Geoff
‘my marriage proposal was not in the face of the absurdity of another human being, at least not principally’
- I guess I would want to say that while one may not experience it like that, this is what it is and will at times be retroactively understood in those terms. Take the example of someone going to the doctor because they don’t feel well, then the doctor says, ‘you are depressed’, only then do you realise that you have been depressed for years, you just never knew it. Now I do not mean that marriage is depressing or that absurdity is a bad thing, just that the decision is made without a sacred matrix to ground it, and that this reality peeks through at various times in our life (when it does it bares witness to the truth). However this is a minor point and one that might not be worth spending our time on – also, the fact that you say ‘principally’ makes what you say totally fine. I just wanted to emphase that that caviate is important.
‘However, in the face my own wretchedness there is a God working on behalf of Life for me for reasons utter mysterious (you could say absurd i guess) to me. Based in my faith that this is the case I can make the passionately reasonable proposal to treat this woman in the same way (as I see her already treating me that way)’
- OK there are a few things that I think when I read this. My main one is that this simply pushes the issue back a step or two. If, for instance you feel confident in your decision because God is working for the good in your life then great. But that belief seems itself to have to be a passionate one that cannot be grounded.
However I doubt very much you are saying this as I guess you would acknowledge that this belief does not prevent the possibility of something bad happening in your relationship (sorry for suggesting it!!). Instead I think you might be saying that, by committing yourself to living in the good that you believe is being shown to you (I guess through the gift of life itself regardless of its content – because so many believers lives around the world are horrible and short) that you will find yourself always in the right place (regardless of what happens in the relationship).
If this is the case then I think that the goalposts are being shifted, in a way, however, that I like. If you are saying that we ought to live in fidelity to the event of love in all we do then I say ‘yes’. However we are then still left with the reality that relationships often fall to pieces – even when both parties are committed to it (let us not fall for the illusion that at least one person has to make mistakes). We then come back to the issue I write about – namely the decision to act in the face of uncertainty.
‘For me, when I proposed it was neither liberal non-committal, more romantically guaranteed, nor horribly absurd, but a type of a gracious realism of forgiveness and freedom coupled with a faith, not in absurdity (for this is merely negative and the irrational side of every reason), but the mystery or paradoxical extension of God’s love’
- I would not want to either contrast faith with absurdity nor, as I think you suggest, talk about faith in absurdity. Rather I am saying that faith involves absurdity, perhaps even is absurdity (in the sense of it being the leap on takes without guarantee).
‘But I don’t agree that trust in the Absolute always functions in these ways, nor do I that certain articulations of the God are always onto-theologically fundamentalist’
- trust in the Absolute does not, I would agree. But the key word here is trust. Which, as far as I can see, is another way of operating beyond the positions I critqued. The bringing in of trust deepens what I am saying and opens more questions up, but I don’t think it goes against what I am saying – at least I hope not!
‘Or instead of horror and absurdity, why not rather I can receive, commit to, and call out the Beauty which is my wife because I have received and been called into the Beauty from beyond’
- hhhhmmmm, I am always suspicious of this kind of talk as it can seem a little obscure to me. I think you are saying that you respond to the grace you receive from your wife because you first felt grace from some divine source. Well maybe, although it sounds a little otherworldly to me, I would prefer to say that you experience the grace from beyond in the grace you experience from your wife. But the issue for me is still that it does not go against what I am saying – you still need to make a here and now decision. People in the past have been instruments of grace to me (as I have to them), it does not mean that we are now.
Adam
Will just pick up on your comments on fundamentalism. My definition def. moves beyond its historical roots in the mid/late 20th century American movement of literalism etc. And I may use it in too broad a way for those who, perhaps rightly, wish to use it to refer specifically to that movement. However my definition is precise in the sense that it singles out a particular mode of being as opposed to others and thus I think means that it is helpful. Also my definition is a direct outworking of drawing out what I see to be the essential characteristics of that movement and universalising them. I will however say that I believe that, like ‘religion’, ‘fundamentalism’ will be defined differently depending upon which faith tradition you come from.
Hope that is useful – would be good to chat about this some day
Stu
Phew – I am getting tired – so you lose out, but I did mention trust above, and I think it is something very significant for us to add into the mix!
Thanks!!!
July 20th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
pete,
thanks for the response. it seems that we are, as you say, moving the goal posts a bit, and I think in similar, but not exact, ways.
In what sense by trust in God is passionately ungrounded I’ll have to think more about, but that is certainly correct.
three things:
.
1) I guess I’m not too worried about things sounding ‘otherworldly’, but that’s for a different conversation.
2) I’m alright with a different use of fundamentalism, but I’m still not clear what you def. of fundamentalism is.
3) I won’t call you obscure if you don’t call me obscure…
July 20th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
‘Stu
Phew – I am getting tired – so you lose out’
The sheer, unmitigated contingency of this injustice horrifies me. There can now never be any harmony; I respectfully return the ticket.
But for what it’s worth, here is an interview with Robert Spaemann that raises the issue of how the act of making a promise changes its character as the public perception of promising changes, which seems quite relevant to this discussion:
http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/PDF/spaemann34-4.pdf
Spaemann’s very interesting, considering how deeply conservative he is.
Seeya
July 20th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
“This does not, of course, mean that reason is without a place in such decisions. It is deeply important. There are many things that a couple can work out in advance to help them see if they might be compatible (if the person seems honest and faithful etc.)…It is today very common to see reason opposed to faith in popular literature (with reason or faith being the better depending on which side the apologist sits). The point is not that they are opposed but rather that reason is saturated with faith.”
Pete – going on a tangent here, but I’m wondering if this wee bit has any implications for the section of “How (Not) to Speak of God” about ‘The End of Apologetics”. While I agree that the forceful and arrogant use of apologetics needs to stop, I think Christian apologetics still have some use in certain situations. I have certainly benefited from them in my own personal faith journey (eg. knowing that my faith has some basis in fact such as the historicity of the gospel documents etc). I found it important for my own critical thinking to amass at least a certain amount of evidence that Christianity wasn’t just a figment of someone’s imagination centuries ago that gathered steam. So could the above paragraph be taken as a concession that apologetics don’t necessarily need to ‘end’ per se, just that their usage needs to radically change?
July 21st, 2009 at 2:11 am
Apologies for not leaving this alone, but it has kind of stuck with me, and I woke up early, so here’s just a few other thoughts.
“‘my marriage proposal was not in the face of the absurdity of another human being, at least not principally’
- I guess I would want to say that while one may not experience it like that, this is what it is and will at times be retroactively understood in those terms.”
Pete, this flags something up for me, which is the question of what you mean by ‘is’ here. An unfair question perhaps, after all what does anyone mean, ever, by ‘is’? But you seem, here, to priviledge the perspective of the moment, the instant of a decision, as the perspective from which we find out what it is. And you also seem to suggest that this account of what goes on in a decision is the truer.
But this ignores the question of changing context, and in particular the way in which understanding of public realities like marriage changes. So, a couple deciding to get married in, say, 1950 is a different kind of thing to, say, 1970, and different again to 2009. Because ‘marriage’ is a not simply an event between two individuals, but a publicly changing (and publicly failing) reality. But the way you describe the underlying reality of a decision almost suggests that our particular context, in which the public understanding of marriage – what it is, what it’s for, why it’s a good idea – is weaker than ever before, is actually closer to the truth of a decision than someone making the same decision in a context with a far stronger public understanding. But I want to ask, why see it like this?
The decision seems far less grounded, to us, but this is at least in part because of the changing public perception and reality of marriage – i.e. we don’t have a great sense that marriage is a gift, something that makes sense somewhat apart from our own subjective intentions regarding it, a convention to be affirmed publically (and religiously) not simply privately, etc. But if one had a stronger sense of marriage as a sacrament, as a structure that one participates in and that has its own benefits, etc, then one’s experience of the decision would be very, very different.
I can’t act as an apologist for marriage, being unmarried, but however one frames the above change, the point is that the sense of ungroundedness you describe is closely related to this change, I think. I don’t think it’s a formal characteristic, underlying all the changing social realities, waiting for the erosion of unconscious public concensus so that it can be revealed. I don’t mean that our current experience of a decision to commit is somehow ‘inauthentic’, and that what is needed is a return to a greater uncritical acceptance of something like marriage as having an inner structural integrity that lessens the burden on our decision.
But I think that it’s too easy to see our current experiences as kind of definitive, as if our traumas are traumas that speak of the essence of things. But what if it were the case that some sense of publically shared understanding actually helps us understand a decision better, not worse?
I think something similar is true of the commitment to Christ. Paul was already a passionately committed Jew, with some notion about a coming Messiah. The surprising thing was not that, having encountered the Messiah he made a passionate and ungrounded commitment to this Messiah, but that he encountered the Messiah as a recently crucified law-breaker, somehow living in the bodies of those he was persecuted.
I suppose what I’m saying is that this way of seeing decision, commitment, etc, seems very shaped – as I guess it should be – by our particular cultural and intellectual context, in which individual decision is far less related to publicly shared norms than ever before, and so the pressure on the subjective moment is greater. Do we have good enough reasons to think that this shows us something essential about commitment in general?
To return to the original point: why not say that the retro-active understanding is truer? The collapse of shared public understanding also means that we are less able to see a decision, or any individual moment, from the perspective of others who are older, more experienced, etc, so that we can acknowledge that there are depths to our actions that we are not aware of, that, as Hauerwas says somewhere, ‘we are not the sort of person who could make this decision, but we could, with a little help, become this sort of person’ (that’s a paraphrase).
Where there is a stronger interaction between generations, there is, it seems to me, more possibility of seeing one moment in context, through being aware of other perspectives that are less fully immersed in this moment and its terrifying contingency. So my question, again, is of whether what you’re saying is really that the erosion of this kind of possibility actually reveals the nature of commitment more fully, so that we see things in their contingency more clearly than someone could in 1950. And if so, why? It seems a little as though what you’re saying could be interpreted so that passionate commitment becomes purer – more passionate, more committed – the more you isolate individuals from shared understandings.
I’m not yearning for some kind of golden age, here, in which we all sit nodding appreciatively while some old person (man) tells us how good marriage is, and we all nod appreciately, before putting our money in the plate, I’m just trying to point out that our experience of these things is very particular, and we have to ask whether it helps us see these kinds of things more or less clearly.
I have to confess, I recently read ‘A secular age’, and all this is pretty much a re-hash of what Taylor says about Derridean ethics (around p. 694, I think).
Anyway, time to start the day.
July 21st, 2009 at 5:20 am
Hey – Never again will I say you said something obscure Geoff, we write in continental philosophy speak so I guess everything we say is a little obscure!
Just want to pick up on what you say Stu in your last post. In some respects it is because of my agreement with you in the latter half of the post that I affirm this moment of ‘why do I do what I do’ as the site of a universal truth. I mean this in the sense that I think that it is this moment which draws out the genealogical nature of our decisions. So it is at this moment that, for instance, one realises that the commitment being made in 1014, 1740 or 2009 is related to cultural factors which are ungrounded in an absolute.
I will also most definitely affirm that this question (’why do I do…’) will be more clearly drawn out in some historical conditions over others (for instance, more so in a pluralistic society where we encounter difference a lot). Indeed I can imagine highly uniform, enclosed communities where this question is minimal because alternative possibilities are not presented.
However, while I am very much an historical thinker, I am not historicist in the sense that I think that the truth of our historical embeddedness is an insight that we can assert as a universal truth (while discovered within history it is that which grounds our understanding of historical development). Hence my claim that ‘why do I do what I do’ is the site of a truth over and above historical contingency.
Do you think that works?
July 21st, 2009 at 6:58 am
I wish I knew what works…
It’s interesting – I just re-read the original post, and realised that in a lot of ways I wholeheartedly agree, but for some reason there’s still some niggling discomfort with it, which I am extrapolating out in an awkward fashion.
What exactly (or inexactly, in fact) is the ‘truth above historical contingency’?
I have difficulty with the way you use the word ‘contingency’, I guess. I sense that this is a big one, philosophically, that I’m not really qualified to tackle, but I think that I would take the saying ‘not a single sparrow falls to the ground outside of the Father’ to mean that in a sense, there is no contigency in the Christian worldview, because everything, from the most mundanely random occurrence to the most horrifically arbitrary injustice can be taken up into a redemptive story, is not far from God, not outside God. And if this is always possible, for God, for whom all the impossible is possible, then I’m not sure how we’re then supposed to understand the idea of contingency. Perhaps we need to be Chalcedeon with contingency/necessity.
I did a talk at an Alpha course last year – the ‘Why did Jesus die?’ one – where I started off by saying: “For no good reason. Jesus died for no good reason.” I.e. there are no good reasons to crucify itinerant preachers of peace, just as there are no good reasons to use forced labour on cocoa plantations, no good reasons to sell weapons into conflict areas. Then I said that in a sense this is what the cross is about – that you have the most horribly meaningless, irrational act of power-assertion, and the claim that it’s God re-claiming its meaning, through the resurrection.
They haven’t asked me back! But I guess that’s perhaps how I think of historical contingency, or how I imagine the New Testament encourages us to see contingent historical circumstance – that it’s never really contingent, or that ‘contingent’ doesn’t really capture this sense of arbitrariness being part of God’s purpose and therefore redeemed from its arbitrary nature. God redeems the arbitrary, and so there is no arbitrary. And this is obviously an incredibly precarious truth, one that slides off one way or the other straight away, just like every important Christian idea.
And so, when it comes to decision, and the disturbing sense that historical context is so varied, the effects upon us so seemingly ungrounded in any underlying principle, I guess I would imagine saying something similar. That if a meaingless crucifixion can be woven into a story, then all historical circumstance can be seen as gift.
I guess the really important question for me is then: can this be something ‘believed’ in advance, or is it really the kind of thing one has to discover? So, retroactively, as you put it, one can see that arbitrary circumstances were nevertheless opportunity and gift, but perhaps understanding the world in this fashion in advance may actually shield you from finding it to be true.
But then, I wonder about this, about whether it’s a bit too heroic. Certain kinds of experiences may actually be only possible if one already has the expectation, the trust, that they are waiting. Simone Weil phrases this question in terms of ‘the void’: one must contemplate the void, without trying to fill it with false consolation. And if one does, one finds, as if by an inrushing of air filling a vacuum, that grace fills the void. But, in order to wait in the void, one needs grace. What form can this grace take? Perhaps, she rather unwillingly admits, it might take the form of a belief, an idea that encourages one to wait in the void by affirming that the void will be filled. For example, whatever belief Jesus may have had when in the garden of Gethsemane.
So… all this is a roundabout way of suggesting that it might not necessarily be as good as it seems to actually affirm contingency, to explicitly state that our decisions are always without sufficient reasons, etc. There is a perspective from which this can be seen as true, but there is also a perspective from which it is not the whole truth – i.e the contingency miraculously ‘woven’ into a story/’all things work together for the good of those who love him’ perspective.
So the question then becomes, what is the effect of our speech, in this area? For example, if someone says, to a friend who is making an important decision: “don’t worry about it, God has it all sorted”, this could not only be true or untrue, due the precarious nature of the Christian idea about God’s use of freedom/history, etc, but also it could be helpful or unhelpful, depending on the character of the person (i.e. if they were inclined to think too much or too little – assuming we know how much is the right amount of thought!).
But the same goes with saying something like what you’re saying here, I think. What does saying “our decisions are ungrounded” do, and how does it relate to the precarious, paradoxical nature of Christian truth?
Good grief, I am sickened by how much of your blog I have taken up. I hope there was some kind of sense in all that.
Seeya
-Stu
I think it’s the implication that the truest decisions would necessarily be the ones with the most unpleasant feeling of undecideability. I guess it seems to me that this experience can be profoundly important,
July 21st, 2009 at 7:30 am
Oops, that last bit should have been snipped. Feel free to complete the sentence in any way you wish.
July 21st, 2009 at 8:50 am
lol – Thanks for that (and I LOVE what you did for the Alpha Course, wish I could have been there to see how that went down).
Will just say something small about contingency and necessity. Something you play with above that I like. Basically I see necessity as retroactively postulated. At the time of a decision I act with the sense of it all depending upon me (heroically). Then when I look back and can place my decision within a wider whole of cause and effect (’not a single sparrow falls…’).
So in a way I think that the best way to approach ‘what God’s plan for my life is’, is retroactively. I never know at the time, but only after the dust has settled.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:55 pm
pete says: “However, while I am very much an historical thinker, I am not historicist in the sense that I think that the truth of our historical embeddedness is an insight that we can assert as a universal truth (while discovered within history it is that which grounds our understanding of historical development). Hence my claim that ‘why do I do what I do’ is the site of a truth over and above historical contingency.”
and, “So in a way I think that the best way to approach ‘what God’s plan for my life is’, is retroactively. I never know at the time, but only after the dust has settled.”
geoff says: I can whole heartedly get behind both of these statements. I take this retroactive recognition as the heart of Augustine’s narrative in his “Confessions”. Only after the fact could he see that God’s grace had been pursuing him all along, that his ‘free will’ and choices worked seamlessly toward his deliverance, and that even the episode in the garden (”Take and Read” sing the children) is conspicuous in its absence of a ‘decision’ to be converted. The only decision really was that he interpreted God speaking both through the children and through st. paul. besides this, all he narrates is that “a peaceful light streamed into his heart” (Conf. bk 8.12.29) Hence Augustine always says, “You converted me”, but never merely “I was converted”.
July 22nd, 2009 at 4:17 am
I had a sudden renewal of faith experience of faith 6 years ago which I cannot concretely identify as the grace of God as per Geoff and the Augustine covversion or, pychological reasons etc – it is a mystery to me why it happemed yet it was something from out of the blue that overcame me rather than a rational decision om my part…..I think a lot of faith conversion stories echo this
I guess the personal decision part involves trying to be a follower of Christ daily rather than retreat to the middle class comfort zone that so many have done from my middle aged generation ….an ongoing challenge!
Rodney
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:28 am
Pete, you said, “So in a way I think that the best way to approach ‘what God’s plan for my life is’, is retroactively. I never know at the time, but only after the dust has settled.”
So shouldn’t this post be entitled “Why I Did What I Did”?
In the post, regarding a marriage proposal, you said, “Rather they acknowledge the danger and contingency of what they are doing all the while throwing themselves at it wholly.”
Amen!
This is the balance between faith and reason.
Shalom
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:30 am
You need to fix your smiley set up…those big faces are scary.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
This reminds me of a reading we had at our wedding, taken from a book by Robert Farrar Capon:
Marriage is a paradox second only to life itself. That at the age of twenty or so, with little knowledge of each other and a dangerous overdose of self-confidence, two human beings should undertake to commit themselves for life – and that church and state should receive their vows with a straight face – all this is absurd indeed. And it is tolerable only if it is reveled in as such. A pox on all the neat little explanations as to why it is reasonable that two teenagers should be bound to each other until death. It is not reasonable. It happens to be true to life, but it remains absurd. Up with the absurdity of marriage then. And up with the marriage service. It is full of death and cast iron. And it is one of the great remaining sanity markers. The world is going mad because it has too many reasonable options, and not enough interest or nerve to choose
anything for good. In such a world, the marriage service is not reasonable, but it is sane; which is quite another matter. The lunatic lives in a world of reason, and he goes mad without making sense; it is precisely paradox that keeps the rest of us sane. To be born, to love a woman, to cry at music, to catch a cold, to die – these are not excursions on the narrow road of logic; they are blind launchings on a trackless sea. They are not bargains, they are commitments, and for ordinary people, marriage is the very keel of their commitment, the largest piece of ballast in their small and storm-tossed boat.
July 25th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Wow… an amazing piece. And perfect for a wedding! Though sadly I doubt has been used before or since.
July 27th, 2009 at 9:02 am
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