Stealing Thunder

Not really.  Catchy title though.

This is a post for a little reading group I’m in, currently reading Bonhoeffer’s Life Together.  Ben hasn’t posted for this week though (not that I’m rebuking him on this – he’s pretty much been a sole reader so far), so I thought I’d post.  Exactly: stealing thunder.  Or a small bang.

Chapter Four is titled “Ministry” (he means serving, not an institutional role), and so covers some basic areas of life in which Christians who are living within a community serve one another.  Everything from not talking, to helping one another in mundane tasks.  It’s challenging reading, in fact: Bonhoeffer has a deep insight into the way people seek to get an upper edge on each other, and wise words for reminding one to refuse such a struggle.

The one that I think challenged me most was that of “listening”.  After holding one’s tongue, and after being helpful in day to day tasks, one can also listen.  But too often I’m impatient, or unwilling. Every time I read Proverbs, and the way it relates foolishness to being unduly talkative, I realise just how much I blabber on.

There were tonnes of wise pastoral insights in this chapter – I don’t think I could sum them up very well.  It’s very much worth reading.  In fact, even if your not Christian you might find it interesting reading as a fascinating picture of how people can live together.

Filed under: Bonhoeffer, Christian, books, experiences , Bonheoffer, Christian life, Life Together

Athens & Jerusalem

Athens and Jerusalem they say, philosophy and theology. Perhaps not accurate names (but what names are?), but certainly suggestive. A tense relationship, a twisted relationship maybe, an inseparable relationship? I don’t know, I’m no expert.

However, I am a Christian, who finds himself embarked on a PhD in philosophy, so it is perhaps not an inappropriate domain for me to attempt to explore. Anyway, this is to say that I hope to talk about being a Christian more often – a subject I have shied away from here sometimes. Not out of any ulterior motive, but simply to give account to the issues that trouble me from time to time. I claim no theological expertise; I’m just trying to think hard about life, which happens to be from a Christian point of view.

A conversation on Sunday: Macquarie Uni’s emblem has a star upon it – I had forgotten this. The wise men followed the star and discovered Christ, my friend said. Where is the university following its star to? An insightful question, I thought. Education is, after all, the gospel of the liberal dream – to extend the classroom to the stage of the world. I wonder where it gets us.

Technorati Tags: philosophy,theology,Christian life,liberalism

Filed under: Christian, Philosophy, experiences, random thoughts, theology , Christian life, liberalism, Philosophy, theology

End of Memory II

I began some thoughts on Miroslav Volf’s book, The End of Memory, here.  This post continues them.

Volf argues that we have a moral obligation to remember truthfully.  At first read, this struck me as quite odd.  Afterall, do you trust your memories?  Counterintuitively though, perhaps, Volf points out that if we remember anything, then of course it is remembered truthfully.  We can’t remember something that has not happened.  The question is not if we remember truthfully or not, but whether or not our memory has been adapted, embellished, warped, or just plain old imagined. 

Volf, who isn’t starry-eyed about our memory and ability to recall without contaminating it, makes a key distinction.  There are those who claim their account as the truth, and those who seek for their account to be truthful.  For Volf, there is all the difference in the world between seeking the truth, and possessing the truth.  Someone who claims to possess the truth is all the less likely to entertain the notion that someone else’s account might be a truthful witness to an event as well.  They are unlikely to exercise a ‘double vision’, whereby they can see from another’s perspective, which might provide a vital aspect to the truth of a situation that they themselves do not possess. 

This double vision is key for Volf.  For, particularly in the question of how we remember wrongs that we have suffered – the instigating question of the book – Volf argues that we are to seek to remember these truthfully as well.  This means being able to be generous to the wrong-doer in the act of remembering.  To be able to remember the situation which might have led them to commit such a wrong. 

Similarly to the way in which forgiveness includes an accusation of doing wrong, this kind of double vision, rather than papering over a wrong, is somewhat uncomfortable for us in its confrontation with it.  It’s so much easier to write the wrong-doer off, to imagine them as a devil.  But if we are to redeem our memories, if we are to finally release them as no longer being painful to us and to consign the trauma to oblivion, then thinking well – and truthfully - of our neighbour who has done us wrong is an essential step along the way. 

For Volf, this is imitating the way Christ acted for us – placing himself in our shoes, covering over the wrong we have done, not by ignoring it, but by confronting it, and dealing with it truthfully.   For Volf then, remembering truthfully has a purpose in loving your neighbour.

These are by no means abstract questions.  I recently listened to my wife’s Grandfather tell of his experience during the Japanese invasion of China, and the utter havoc that this caused.  In simple phrases he explained the trauma, but also his forgiveness, and the memories that remain.  A few weeks later, a friend visiting on holidays from China told me of the hatred that people our age - young enough for even their parents to have not seen the war – still bore for Japan.  The way we remember matters.

Filed under: Christian, books, memory, theology, truth , memory, Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory, theology, truthfulness