In reaction to… discomforts, whites frequently claim to ‘not see difference’. Ignoring race with black people (such as not mentioning slavery or the race of a famous figure) is comparable to ‘that [behavior] exhibited by certain people on encountering someone with a visible physical handicap. They pretend not to notice that the handicap exists and hope, thereby, to minimize discomfort.’ Indeed, as Toni Morrison points out, ‘the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous, liberal gesture’. Yet the will to ‘not see’ these differences, Cose insists, is a costly ‘solution’. Aversive reactions eventuate in practices of avoidance and group isolation, providing supports for an obliviousness that is a denied, thus repressed, will-to-disregard. This obliviousness, importantly, can co-exist with belief in equality and (Christian) inclusiveness.
Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Places of Redemption: Theology for a Worldly Church, (OUP, 2007) p. 20. Referencing Ellis Cose, Color-Blind: Seeing beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World (New York: Harper Collins, 1998), 189-90.
Month: March 2012
The Anger of Jesus and the Grace of God
In the face of seeming Christian indifference about injustice, several commentators have sought to retrieve the force of Jesus’ concern for injustice. Particularly against the portraits which paint Jesus in soft pastel hues with a happy lamb over his shoulders, smiling white schoolchildren at his feet, and happy crowds in tow; commentators have recently noted that Jesus did not always wear a smile. In fact, he had particularly strong words of judgement for perpetrators of injustice, particularly if they were religious insiders. We read of Jesus’ indictment of religious insiders (perhaps the religious teachers of his day) who by their leadership cause their followers to stumble: “‘But anyone who is the downfall of one of these little ones who have faith, would be better thrown into the sea with a great mill stone hung round his neck.” (Mark 9:42 NJB, see Matt 18:6–7, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:1–3). The statement in Luke is preceded by a particularly vivid parable about a rich man named Lazarus who feasts with indifferent extravagance in spite of great poverty just outside his door and as a result experiences harsh judgement (Luke 16:19–31). Similarly, Jesus shows his anger not with words but with action when he physically drove out those who were subverting the worship of God’s people by creating a commercial opportunity for themselves in the temple (see Matt 21:12–13, Mark 11:15–17, Luke 19:45–46). Finally, in Matthew we find another parable which unflinchingly tells of judgement of “sheep” and “goats”: “in so far as you neglected do this [helped the hungry and thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited the sick] to one of the least of these, you neglected to do it to me.” And they will go away to eternal punishment, and the upright to eternal life’ (Matt 25:31–46). Close study of each of these statements in context yields a far more nuanced reading than I have provided here, which in some cases can explain the reasons for Jesus’ harshness. But one cannot deny that there is a measure of forcefulness, righteous anger, and judgement which lies behind these words. In short, commentators note, Jesus was no milk-toast.
I hope that Jesus’ concern for justice has been definitively re-established for our generation, but this is not actually my concern here. There is a further danger behind this (albeit partially authentic) recasting of an angry Jesus and that is that in the midst of our rhetoric we may “lose the forest for the trees.” We cannot appreciate Jesus’ full personality, if we fail to acknowledge the overwhelming measure of grace which he extended to all sorts of people, including those with wealth and power who acted with cruelty and abuse. Failing to acknowledge this, we have simply made the same mistake twice, substituting unmeasured but righteous anger for wimpy grace. Counter-examples abound, including the extending of grace for a cruelly religious Saul who acted in unrighteous judgement (Acts 9) and the tax-collector Zaccheus who made a habit of abusing his public office and extorting people and finds himself hosting Jesus at his table (Luke 19). I also wonder whether this over-correction with respect to Jesus may be a consequence of the failure to correct a popular misreading of the Old Testament which inversely finds only a God of harsh judgement. One cannot fail to note that there are surely stern words and acts of judgement in the pages of the Old Testament, but these exists in the midst of a text that largely expresses an extraordinary measure of grace and a commitment by God to the redemption of the whole creation. Jesus’ offer of friendship and words of redemption were extended to the tax-payer and the tax-extorter alike, just as God’s larger work of redemption is concerned with all persons. How we conduct ourselves is of the utmost importance, but we must not lose sight of the fact that God’s grace is indefatigable particularly for the sake of “overheated” rhetoric about social justice.
Wendell Berry on the Modern Home
But nowhere is the destructive influence of the modern home so great as in its remoteness from work. When people do not live where they work, they do not feel the effects of what they do. The people who make wars do not fight them. The people responsible for strip mining, c1ear-cutting of forests, and other ruinations do not live where their senses will be offended or their homes or livelihoods or lives immediately threatened by the consequences. The people re sponsible for the various depredations of “agribusiness” do not live on farms. They-like many others of less wealth and power-live in ghettos of their own kind in homes full of “conveniences” which signify that all is well. In an automated kitchen, in a gleaming, odorless bathroom, in year-round air-conditioning, in color TV, in an easy chair, the world is redeemed. If what God made can be made by humans into this, then what can be wrong?
The modern home is so destructive, I think, because it is a generalization, a product of factory and fashion, an everyplace or a noplace. Modern houses, like airports, are extensions of each other; they do not vary much from one place to another. A person standing in a modern room anywhere might imagine himself anywhere else-much as he could if he shut his eyes. The modern house is not a response to its place, but rather to the affluence and social status of its owner. It is the first means by which the modern mentality imposes itself upon the world. The industrial conquistador, seated in his living room in the evening in front of his TV set, many miles from his work, can easily forget where he is and what he has done. He is everywhere or nowhere. Everything around him, everything on TV, tells him of his success: his comfort is the redemption of the world. His home is the emblem of his status, but it is not the center of his interest or of his consciousness. The history of our time has been to a considerable extent the movement of the center of consciousness away from home.
Once, some farmers, particularly in Europe, lived in their barns and so were both at work and at home. Work and rest, work and pleasure, were continuous with each other, often not distinct from each other at all. Once, shopkeepers lived in, above, or behind their shops. Once, many people lived by “cottage industries” -home production. Once, households were producers and processors of food, centers of their own maintenance, adornment, and repair, places of instruction and amusement. People were born in these houses, and lived and worked and died in them. Such houses were not generaliza tions. Similar to each other in materials and design as they might have been, they nevertheless looked and felt and smelled different from each other because they were articulations of particular responses to their places and circumstances.
From Berry, Wendell. “Living in the Future: The “Modern” Agricultural Ideal.” In The Unsettling of America. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1986, 52-53.
My (Digital Humanities) Manifesto
1. Nothing is really free
Seriously. I have no desire to ride the google-is-going-to-save-the-world-train.They are a multi-billion dollar marketing company and history shows us that benevolence always has its limits. I pay for blog hosting, which is why you won’t see ads here.
2. Contribute to projects that are: scholarship and software can be open and accessible
3. But don’t be afraid to pay software developers who have made something great
4. Technology should (only) be used to enhance student learning and scholarship
Like fish in the sea
In modern life we swim deep in a sea of technology, surrounded by artifacts and patterns of our own making. These artifacts and patterns, like water, are often transparent to us. They are everywhere and nowhere to be seen as we fin our way along chasing after whatever is new, stylizing and restylizing our lives. Yet something feels wrong. Leisure leaves us stressed. Time saving leaves us with no time. Freedom amounts to deciding where to plug into the system. Nature is pushed aside. Even our sense of who we are is transformed in relation to this surrounding sea. So we dart anxiously here and there trying one technological fix after another. It has not occurred to us yet that, like fish in polluted water, what may be wrong lies closest to us.
From: Light, Andrew. “Borgmann’s Philosophy of Technology.” In Technology and the Good Life? Written by Eric Higgs and David Strong. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, page 19.