Breaking and Entering. Liz R. Goodman
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to find their passion, is this: “You don’t have to be original.” Indeed, I don’t think you can be. I think none of us can be wholly original (though each of us is certainly unique). And it’s this: it’s this that made me so very sad in the wake of the girl’s death. This is what had me so stricken—my own conviction that everyone obeys someone, everyone obeys something, that this isn’t some failure to be self-determined but is simply the way things are, the way we are. The questions, then, for us are: What do we obey? Whom do we obey?
This story of Abraham and Isaac in the land of Moriah seems difficult because of that first dreaded command (“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”). But what actually makes it difficult, challenging, urgently challenging, is the fact of the second command—for this would have us search ourselves as to whether we’re listening to the right voice in life and obeying the right commands.
There’s an irony here. The voice we’re to listen to, the commands we’re to obey, would have us question so many of our conventions, defy so many of our habits and ways of life. The voice we’re to listen to, the commands we’re to obey, would have us recognize our assumptions for what they are, and would have us bring them into the light so we can discern and decide whether they’re true and therefore worthy of our obedience, or not.
Obedience as defiance, obedience as pushing forward and outward, finding some new way—who knew church could invite such adventure? Why, even the kids might want to get with this.
Thanks be to the Lord.
Religious but Not Spiritual
Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace. Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 3:13–4:3)
They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. (Mark 9:30–34)
I like the letter of James. It was Martin Luther who had a problem with it. He called it an “epistle of straw”—which I suppose is true enough. He claimed there was too little of Christ crucified in it—which I suppose is true enough. Words of wisdom, words of common sense: okay, it’s not profound, but it is useful. Placed more in the Old Testament tradition of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the Letter of James meant to make clear the sort of attitudes and behavior entailed in living a Christian life, which it does quite well, beautifully, in fact. Preacher Will Willimon has said that reading the book of Proverbs is like taking a long road trip with your mother.11 If so, then the letter of James is as if your mother were a Waldorf method preschool teacher.
Actually, it sort of reminds me of a new book, Religion for Atheists.12 Alain de Botton wrote it, a Swiss-born now Englishman and self-proclaimed atheist. I’ll admit I haven’t read the book, but I did read the opinion piece he wrote for the Wall Street Journal13 and the book review Aengus Woods wrote for NPR.14
De Botton’s central thesis is that secular modernism has resulted in a loss of a sense of community, which he believes is something the great religions of the world managed to create very well. So he means, by his own admission and in his own words, to “steal” from religions the practices that create community. While leaving behind the belief systems that he finds absurd and that he assumes most people guided by common sense would also find absurd, de Botton would like to see a flowering of agape restaurants, for example, wherein people who are strangers might eat together so to become friends.15 Rich and poor, young and old, smart and simple, senator and janitor—all would be welcome, would sit shoulder to shoulder, and would feast.
Incidentally, this is quite a switch from what I’m used to hearing, that people want spirituality without all that religion. Here’s someone who wants all that religion but without the silly spirituality. I have to say it’s refreshing. I’ll admit it’s also irritating. De Botton is going to let common sense be the guide for building a commonly held sense of community.
But the problem, which the NPR book review points out very well, is that common sense isn’t so common. Everyone thinks they’ve got it, and that some other people might have it as well. “[Y]et most of us can usually identify large chunks of the population who conspicuously lack it,” writes Woods. “To make matters worse, in any projected breakdown of global common-sense distribution, we can’t even agree on which folk constitute the haves and [which] the have-nots. However, one thing is always certain: I myself possess it. Definitely. Absolutely. No question.”16
Woods continues, “This conundrum of common sense is what makes a writer such as Alain de Botton so attractive and so infuriating. He is a master of the well-heeled, chatty and above all reasonable tone. . . . But scratch the veneer, and one quickly finds myriad competing common senses screaming to break free.”
Here is one of the competing common senses that scream in my mind to break free: when I gather with strangers at an agape meal: whose voice is authoritative? Whose sense and sensibility will we adopt in common? Alain de Botton’s—so reasonable, so calmly assertive? Well, then I’m not interested. I’ve met educated white guys with a calmly overdeveloped sense of reason. They make me want to run screaming to my nearest women’s studies class.
But about one thing he might be right, though not as sweepingly so as his sweeping statement suggests. He writes, “Insofar as modern society ever promises us access to a community, it is one centered on the worship of professional success. We sense that we are brushing up against its gates when the first question we are asked at a party is ‘What do you do?,’ our answer to which will determine whether we are warmly welcomed or conclusively abandoned.”17 And this reminds me of what the disciples were arguing about as they walked along the way.
It’s surprising that they fall into this argument, isn’t it? An argument over greatness, over what is greatness and who among them will be deemed greatest—that this is where their conversation goes is surprising given that what comes before is Jesus teaching them about his own suffering and death. “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands,” or more accurately translated, “is to be handed over, and the humans will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.”
This is one of three times that Jesus mentions his fate on the cross. Sometimes it’s said that he foretells it—his own crucifixion. This time it’s said that he teaches it. It’s a distinction that I’ll now perhaps make too much of. To foretell it is to tell me about something that’s to happen; to teach it is to tell me about something