Sunday, July 17, 2005
Talking To One Another from Neil Dhingra
In a question-and-answer session last year, Archbishop Rowan Williams spoke of the “dismissiveness” and “rawness of anger” in some of the e-mail messages sent to him. About the “vitriolic” tenor of the disagreements in the Anglican Communion, Dr Williams said, “Somebody some day ought to write a thesis on the spirituality of e-mail because that has something to do with all this.” Perhaps one day somebody will also write a thesis on the spirituality of blogs. But more generally, how should Christians speak to one another? I’d like to look at a recent popular work by the Presbyterian minister, Thomas G. Long - Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian.
It might be easy to conclude that it doesn’t really matter how we speak to one another, as long as we say the right things. But, as Dr Long tells us, we often figure out what we believe by first saying things out loud. “The most effective Bible study groups, for example, allow for a free flow of honest conversation, questioning, probing, exploration, and even skepticism, because it is the experience of such groups that putting ideas into words in dialogue with others is an important aspect of how we come to know and believe the wisdom of the Scripture. When we talk about our faith, we are not merely expressing our beliefs; we are coming more fully and clearly to believe. In short, we are always talking ourselves into being Christian.”
In order to “talk ourselves into being Christian,” we will first need to avoid letting “God” stand in for political ambition or conventional wisdom. We’ll have to abstain from any cheapening of the Holy Name – Thomas Merton once complained that “God is Love” was being used so thoughtlessly that to say it was like saying “Eat Wheaties.” To speak and hear about God, we might instead have to prepare ourselves for a disconcerting experience – the amazement of the people of Jerusalem at the “boldness of Peter and John” (Acts 4:13). Dr Long asks us to remember when Harvard asked Alexander Solzhenitsyn to speak at their commencement. Instead of the usual inoffensive clichés, Solzhenitsyn, resembling an Old Testament Prophet, claimed that the “spiritual life” was being destroyed by the “ruling party” in the East and “commercial interests” in the West. We should always have the sense that Christianity is a distinct (and sometimes disturbing) way of speaking patterned after the testimony of Jesus Christ, always marked by the sense of constant pilgrimage. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news,” St Paul says.
If we let the way we speak be shaped by being on this “Way” (Acts 9:2), we can’t merely speak of God “as a pious form of marketing” either – our words must not be reduced to the measures of church growth, institutional self-perpetuation, or cultural success. Again, our speech must always be a testimony or witness to Jesus Christ, “the faithful witness” (Rev 1:5) whose own testimony was validated by the Resurrection and whose return we await. You must learn to speak in this way just like you would learn to speak Spanish (if not elvish). You cannot become a Christian by merely reading a catechism anymore than you can become a Texan by watching John Wayne movies. This process will often require following rules – the Rule of St Benedict carefully instructs the monks on how to speak (“gently and without laughter, humbly and seriously, in few and sensible words”). You have to “talk yourself” into being Christian; you yourself have to follow this “Way.”
But what does this Christian speech, this “testimony,” actually look like if it isn’t merely a matter of being doctrinally correct or using religious phrases? Think of Merton’s “second conversion,” when on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville he was “suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that [he] loved all these people.” Merton wrote, “I have the immense joy of being human, a member of the race in which God himself became incarnate.” What Merton had always professed in worship had suddenly become real even on the very ordinary streets of Kentucky. “Christian speech” is speech that has been shaped by the experience of worship. Many Christians begin services with the words, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth; worship the Lord with gladness.” Christian speech testifies to the holiness and neglected epiphanies that lie around us. Worship involves a confession of sin. Christian speech has the honesty and courage to face our own brokenness, and testify to the realities of forgiveness and reconciliation. In worship, we hear, “Once you were no people, but now you are God’s people” (1 Pet 2:10). Christian speech testifies to the dignity and value of those whose humanity is being threatened. Even, I daresay, when Christians are talking about politics.
Christian speech also must not be selfish, because we know that joy comes from abandoning self-absorption. As Thomas Merton said, “In an age where there is much talk about ‘being yourself’ I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.” This is especially true in prayer, as it is surprisingly easy to “heap up empty phrases” (Matt 6:7). Christians will be unwilling to distort the truth even for a good cause, always aware of the mandate to empty themselves (and their lesser goals) before the greater reality of God and the neighbor. Selfishness remains a temptation, even if we are saying the right things. Dr Long recalls a Christian radio talk-show during which the host was trying to “prove” the truth of Christianity to a hesitant listener with “unassailable proof,” no less. Dr Long worries that the host’s sense of urgency about conversion prevented him from taking time to understand the listener – she had become an object, a potential statistic. Dr Long even conjectures, “When we ourselves are plagued with doubts, one tactic is to turn that energy outward and to fortify ourselves by seeking to persuade others,” because most beliefs, even for supposedly rugged individuals, are socially maintained. For the host, the ultimate purpose of his “unassailable proof” might not have been to give his testimony to another, but to use the listener’s submission to reinforce his own precarious self-conception as a convinced Christian and a gifted evangelist. Christian speech sometimes means letting go. Once Henri Nouwen confronted a seeker (who wanted the famous author to solve all his problems) with the simple truth, “Christianity is not for getting your life together.” Instead, Nouwen wrote, he could only offer hospitality, “not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.” The seeker eventually came around.
Nouwen’s renunciation of a sort of powerful guru-status was an act of humility, but we should not confuse it with accommodation. Christian speech “offers them space where change can take place” by courageously, if at times quietly, offering testimony that, in Rowan Williams’ words, “History does not ultimately lie in the hands of the slaughterer,” that the simply naivety of the Golden Rule is worth remembering even in the midst of warfare. The avoidance of testimony, whether through the safe recitation of “unassailable proof” or a compromised silence, comes under judgment – “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account of every careless word you utter; for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matt 12:36). This judgment is real, even if it is the judgment of the God who loves us.
When we converse at St Blog’s, does the way we speak testify to the realities of holiness, reconciliation, and the sheer gratuity of the Father’s love? Is the very shape of our speech marked by the humility that offers others “space where change can take place” on our collective pilgrimage? Do we speak like Christians? Or do we really have some work to do?
