Recollections

As a high-school student I was very active on the speech and debate team. So active, in fact, that preparing for speech tournaments consumed what seemed like most of my waking hours.

This was not necessarily a bad thing. I credit speech and debate with giving me many valuable experiences as a teenager (including lots of cross-country travel) and with laying the groundwork for subsequent academic opportunities. But leaving debate was also, for me, an important step into a more mature adulthood. During my first year in college, I distinctly remember coming to this realization: On every Saturday afternoon, while I was studying for an exam or hanging out with friends, there were thousands of teenagers across the country competing at speech and debate tournaments, their lives consumed by speech and debate. Those tournaments, a year before, had also defined my life in countless ways. But now, from the outside looking in, their significance suddenly paled.

While the point seems obvious in retrospect, it struck me at the time as a revelation. All the awards I had so coveted in the debate world no longer exercised my thoughts and dreams. I now realized that those who had been “celebrities” in the debate world–the most legendary coaches, the most intimidating competitors–were unknown to “the rest of the world,” of which I was now a contented citizen. Every Saturday, in non-descript hotels around the country, the debate world lived on–an entire constellation of stars, a well-defined hierarchy of achievement, a dynamic and self-contained universe. But it went on without me, and the perspective I had gained from without allowed me to see that debate was not the world, but a world among worlds.

I think it was helpful that I came to this realization when I did, because it has also helped me see my professional life in proper perspective. In many ways, the academic universe is much like the debate world: it has its own baubles of fame and commendation, its own celebrities, its own conferences in hotels. At a debate tournament it was normal to scan name badges, normal to stare in awe and converse in hushed tones about certain teenaged champions. And at an academic conference, it is normal to do the same when in the presence of august scholars–even though those scholars would be no more recognizable or admirable to a person outside academia than a champion debater outside the bounds of Debatedom. By pointing this out, I don’t mean to denigrate the norms and protocols of either Debatedom or academia. I only mean to notice an important truth: that a profession, no less than an adolescent extracurricular activity, is not the world, but a world among worlds.

As a Christian, however, I make a startling claim about the church–that it is not just a world among worlds, but the community, the universe of discourse that finally matters. And I am supposed to proclaim this despite the superficial similarities that the “church” world has with academia and high-school forensics. Like those other self-contained universes, the church has its distinctive values, its particular histories, its own defining stories, its roll of saints and notables who are scarcely noticed by the rest of the world. Yet unlike any other particular community, the church claims to be the bearer of universal truths, a witness to the destiny of the world as a whole.

This is a challenging claim, to say the least. It is always possible for the skeptic in me to whisper that the church world, despite its totalizing claims, is really as contingent and particular as academia, which makes totalizing claims of its own on its members. I can see how it would be even easier for the outsider, looking in, to point this out. Slate columnist David Plotz, who has been Blogging the Bible, recently made this troubling observation while reading through the Levitical regulations on slavery:

Every so often … the Bible nods toward a universal brotherhood of men. These are the kumbaya verses that are quoted by modern judges and heralded by modern civil rights activists. But they are aberrations. Most of the time, the Bible conceives of a tribal world, a world of a Chosen Us, and a nearly sub-human Them–an Us who can never be slaves, but a Them that can be exploited ruthlessly, a Them that is property, a Them whose first-born can be smitten.

Much as I’d like to deny it, there is a sense in which this is true. The Bible does conceive, at least in the beginning, of a “tribal world,” and even though Christians believe that, in Christ, the walls of partition between worlds have been torn down, universal brotherhood came through a series of inclusions, rather than all at once. The gospel was preached, as even Jesus said, to the Jew first and then to the Greeks, the Us and then the Them. The gospel writers are not ashamed of this in the least: indeed, the point courses throughout the New Testament’s theology. The incarnation itself declares God’s decision to work through a particular lineage, in particular places, with particular means, in order to accomplish his a-particular, universal ends.

Today I started reading through an anthology of selections from Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics. Early on, Barth confronts the particularity of Christian revelation, and he admits that to the world it seems like “naivety.” For the Christian to believe that Israel, and then the church, were The Elect, seems as immature, from the world’s perspective, as the high-school debater’s obsession with his own private universe of meaning. Yet the church proclaims that “the King of Israel,” in all His particularity, is simultaneously “the God who rules all things.” And “to apprehend and affirm [that] idea we have to think of definite periods in human history” as uniquely important to all humanity.

We have to think of definite places–the land of Canaan, Egypt, the wilderness of Sinai, Canaan again, the land on the two sides of Jordan, Jerusalem, Samaria, the towns and villages of Judaea and Galilee, the various places beyond in Syria, Asia Minor and Greece, and finally Rome. We have to think of definite events and series of events which according to the witness of the Old and New Testaments actually took place at this periods and in these places, relating them always to the spoken and actualised ‘I am’ (Selection, p. 33; CD, III, 3, p. 177f).

As Barth concludes, “in the biblical witness the divine world-governance is related to the King of Israel. From a philosophical standpoint the naivety with which it does this is highly objectionable.” That’s an understatement. This same naivety is also objectionable from a psychological standpoint, since, as I’ve explained, it seems like immaturity to think that one small world is really the world. And it seems objectionable from a sociopolitical standpoint, since from the perspective of some, it is precisely the exuberant attachment to the very concrete places and events that Barth enumerates which fuels the world’s most intractable conflicts.

Yet Barth also argues that “it is in this naivety that its real strength lies,” because the biblical witness never has to step outside of its self-enclosed world to make the case for its own legitimacy or for the existence of God. It proceeds from the particular to the universal, instead of from the universal to the particular. Still, the tension between the two is hard to reconcile, and it can only be embraced with faith.

This post makes it sound like my experiences of debate and academia–experiences which make me self-deprecating about the totalizing claims of both “worlds”–stand as an obstacle to my fully accepting the biblical witness. But maybe I should turn this around, just as Barth does. Maybe my experiences of these other small “worlds,” which seem(ed) so much like the only worlds that matter(ed), were less like outright falsehoods than like approximations of the truth–the truth that there is a world that is not just one among many, but the world. If it is easy to understand how one person could be king of a country, it is possible to understand one country’s God as the king of the entire world. If it is possible to understand how one small community could overwhelming claims on one’s identity and activity, then it is conceivable that one community, one world, could in fact be the truly significant One.

Still, the particularity of the Bible–its contradictory message of parochial universalism–is sometimes a stumbling block for me, for many of the same reasons it is to Plotz. Parochialism is not smiled upon in our late-modern or post-modern world; it strikes us, as my former life in debate now strikes me, as adolescent and vicious, the opposite of a mature and cosmopolitan worldview.

The Bible does not flinch at this, however. It says that to enter the kingdom–or even to entertain the idea that one kingdom is the kingdom–we must become like children. Perhaps I must become more like my teenage self again, a person willing to give unstintingly to one world and one cause. Perhaps I must, to paraphrase Barth, view the “naivety” of the biblical witness as its true “strength,” and embrace that naivety in my own “thinking and utterance.” If this is true, though, I must surely start with this prayer: “Lord, increase my faith!”

“Instead of complaining that God has kept himself hidden, you will give him thanks that he has made himself so visible. And you will give him further thanks that he has not revealed himself to the wise people full of pride, unworthy of knowing so holy a God.”

— Blaise Pascal

One of the hardest things that Jesus ever says, if we are to judge by the reaction of his disciples, is found in Matthew 19:23: “it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.” To my shame, however, that saying never strikes me particularly hard, mostly because I am able to deflect it. It’s easy to tell myself that I don’t qualify as a rich person, even though by global and historical standards I am among the top 1.43 percent of the richest people in the world. And aside from being easy to deflect, verses like Matthew 19:23 also tickle my preexisting political opinions: it’s easy to use the passage as a flail against American Christians who proclaim a gospel of prosperity and laissez-faire theology. It’s easier, in other words, to point out the blindspots in other people’s range of vision than it is to accept that their blindspots might be my own, which reminds of another of the hardest things that Jesus says.

I do have a plank in my own eye, though, that’s not so easy to dissolve. Jesus warns that it will be hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, but he also warned (implicitly) that it would be hard for adults. And one reason is that adults know too much — or think they do. For that reason, Paul also warns in some of his earliest recorded writing that it will be hard for the wise or the learned to heed the calling of God:

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe … Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. (1 Corinthians 1:20-26, NKJV)

It will be hard, in other words, for the wise person to enter the kingdom of heaven. It will be hard, James also says, for a teacher to withstand the judgment of God. And that’s a harder camel to swallow than the line about the rich man, for me at least. Although by objective standards I am a rich person, I don’t define myself subjectively by my bank account. That is, I don’t see myself as a person whose aspirations and ambitions are defined by the pursuit of wealth. (I’m an academic, after all, and you don’t get into this business for the money.) To a significant degree, however, I do define myself by the pursuit of wisdom. That’s what I’m inclined to see as my vocation, as “who I am.” And for that reason, wisdom and learning and schooling can be as dangerous to me as worldly possessions, which is also what (in a sense) they are.

I used to think that what Paul meant in this passage to the Corinthians is that it’s hard for the wise to be called simply because their superior minds prevent them from believing. That is, it’s hard for intellectuals to come to faith because of the intellectual problems that faith poses. But I’m seeing more and more that this is also a deflection, a way of making my academic training or my intelligence or my learning a cross that I have to bear. And nothing stinks to high heaven so much as a non-martyr with a martyr complex. Perhaps Paul isn’t saying, though, that the wise have to crucify their intellects because reason poses a unique challenge to faith. The wise must crucify themselves for the same reason that all of us must, which is why the passage in 1 Corinthians also lists a series of other binaries alongside the prominent one of wisdom and foolishness. The cross is not just a goad to the wise, but also to “the mighty,” “the noble,” and, most comprehensively, to “the things that are” (vv. 26-28).

The reality is that wisdom poses roughly the same obstacles to the kingdom of heaven as wealth. In the first place, wisdom — like wealth — easily becomes a baneful source of pride. Pride, ultimately, is what makes the eye of the needle so narrow for the rich and learned alike. And wisdom — like wealth — encourages attachment to the things of this world. My ambitions may not be defined by stock portfolios, but I do have career ambitions that ground me in this world, and more particularly in the world of academia. If asked to give up those ambitions, I become as sorrowful as the rich young ruler who was told by Jesus to give his possessions to the poor. So the wisdom that is according to the world poses the same challenge to the would-be disciple as wealth: it encourages a love for the things in the world. It sets the same snare that everything in the world does: the snare of confusing the lust of the eyes and the pride of life with the will of God that abides forever.

“Then who can be saved?” “For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

This blog takes its title from an essay in Thomas Merton’s classic, No Man is an Island.  In common usage, to "recollect" something means to remember some past event.  But in Merton’s essay, "recollection is a change of spiritual focus and an attuning of our whole soul to what is beyond and above ourselves." I’ve started this blog as part of a larger attempt to change my spiritual focus.

More accurately, this blog is an attempt to gain spiritual focus.  As it is, my ideas, my ambitions, my thoughts, my desires, and my dreams feel as if they are scattered in too many different directions, few of which are Godward.  Although I have been a practicing and professing Christian for my entire life, in the last half dozen years my attention has been divided and distracted from spiritual things.  So "recollecting" myself means gathering the scattered pieces of my true self and centering them again on the one thing that is truly needful: a life lived joyfully in obedience and gratitude to God.

The point of changing my spiritual focus is not to achieve change for the sake of change, but to be more truly who I am.  As Merton writes:

A man is a free being who is always changing into himself.  This changing is never merely indifferent.  We are always getting either better or worse.  Our development is measured by our acts of free choice, and we make ourselves according to the pattern of our desires.

If our desires reach out for the things that we were created to have and to make and to become, then we will develop into what we were truly meant to be.

But if our desires reach out for things that have no meaning for the growth of our spirit, if they lose themselves in dreams or passions or illusions, we will be false to ourselves and in the end our lives will proclaim that we have lied to ourselves and to other men and to God.  We will judge ourselves as aliens and exiles from ourselves and from God.

I quote this passage at length because it conveys succinctly what I feel with an uncomfortable frequency these days: a feeling of being alienated from myself, of living multiple lives and wearing multiple faces, instead of presenting one unified self to God and the world. So long as I am living a divided life instead of being true to myself, so long am I in exile from any kind of rest. Thankfully, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob always promises that exiles will be followed by happy returns. In Merton’s terms, when my "inward life" does not line up with my "outward self," "my senses, my imagination, my emotions, scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth.  Recollection brings them home."

People are too complicated to talk as if they are easily divided between an "inward" half and an "outward" half. But I do often feel as if I have two halves: One half of me is a practicing academic who recently completed a doctoral degree in the humanities. The other half of me is a practicing Christian who was raised within the arms of the church and who hopes one day to rest in the arms of God.

I am surely not the first Christian academic to feel as though these two halves exist in nearly perpetual rivalry with each other, thanks to the fact that the contemporary academy does not take religious faith very seriously as anything other than an object of study.  Let me be clear here: I am not one of those Christians who disdains the "secularism" of university life.  I have immense respect for the academy and have chosen to live my professional life within it.  So by pointing out its general hostility to Christian faith, I do not mean to raise another ridiculous banner in the culture wars or complain that I am somehow marginalized or persecuted because of my faith.  I simply mean to state what my own experience has been: in the world of academia, I often find myself feeling embarrassed by my lifelong membership in the world of Scripture and song that I celebrate every Sunday with the church. Because I have been shaped by the habits and virtues of the secular academy, I find myself feeling ashamed of this other world of faith.  But because I have also been shaped, more deeply and for a longer period of time, by the rituals and stories of the church, I find that shame even more profoundly shameful.

"Recollection" means trying to put both halves of me back together again. And in a sense it also retains some of its original meaning.  I’m trying to recollect, on a daily basis, who I was before I started to forget who I am.  I’ve been so long living in two worlds, and presenting a different aspect of myself to each, that in some ways my true self needs recovering.  It’s not just that in my "academic" guise I often hide a strong Christian faith, but that I’ve started to forget what my faith actually is. Parker Palmer, who has also written about the challenges of living an undivided life as both an academic and a Christian, pinpoints this problem perfectly in his book, A Hidden Wholeness:

Here is the ultimate irony of the divided life: live behind a wall long enough, and the true self you tried to hide from the world disappears from your own view!  The wall itself and the world outside it become all that you know.

In this blog, then, I’m trying to recollect who I was before I started living behind a wall that keeps my "true self" hidden from my academic peers. Starting this blog may seem like a strange way to do that, particularly since I already have another blog which talks primarily about my academic interests.  Dividing my spiritual and academic lives into two different blogs may seem like a poor way to start trying to live an undivided life.

It may also seem disingenuous that I do not plan to blog here under my full name.  My reason for doing this, though, is less a desire to conceal my identity than to retain the semi-privacy of this space.  Putting my full name on this blog (or using my full name in connection with it) would expose it irreversibly to the eyes of Google, and I’d prefer to have the freedom to think things out here without my posts always popping up in searches for my name.

Obviously, I am not keeping these posts fully private, since I am sending them into the blogosphere.  But I have reasons, as well, for wanting this blog to be semi-public.  For one, because I have been reading blogs for a long time, I have found a variety of writers online who have helped me "re-collect," and I’m hoping that quest might be easier to continue while in the presence of their community. Second, I’m aware that one of the most important things for me to do, if I am serious about changing my spiritual focus, is to nurture some spiritual disciplines — disciplines which I sorely lack.  I’ve tried various regimens of regular prayer or private writing, but (and I don’t think this is to my credit) none of them has "stuck" as well as the habit of blogging.  I might as well try to use that habit to good purpose: if it takes a blog to get my spiritual attention, then so be it.

Finally, as I’ve already said, part of what I’m trying to repent of (that is, to turn away from) is a shameful fear of being who I really am in some contexts.  I realize that my blogging here somewhat anonymously, instead of simply including spiritual reflections on my already existing blog, is just further evidence of the way I’ve tried to build a wall between my "outward self" and my "inward life."  But recollection has to start somewhere. You can’t return from exile in a day.