Reflection 1

17 September 2009

            What is the character of God?  Is God truly unchanging?  Does God need to be able to see the future to be God?  Questions and possibilities ruminated as I read.  What does the text tell us about God?  During the Adam and Eve narrative in Genesis God portrays God’s self in communion with others like God.[1]  Since Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they become like God and those like God.[2]  Is it possible that God is capable of choice and therefore broken relationships as well?  Is it possible for God to regret God’s own actions?  Does the possibility of authentic relationship with another personal being depend on the vulnerability of both?

            As the narrative moves eastward, there is a sense of God becoming more and more uneasy with God’s creation.  Adam and Eve sought to be too much like God, and now implications of that corruption lead us to the first murder.[3]  As God enters time, God enters relationship.  God reacts.  God makes decisions.  In God’s anguish over Abel’s murder God says to Cain, “What have you done?  Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”[4]  God’s character is revealed.  It is as if God was so closely connected to Abel’s murder that God suffered because of it.  How much has intimacy marked the journey of God with God’s people?  The story of Cain and Abel, the stories of Genesis, show the way God and God’s people heard, related, and reacted together in very human ways.  It is a dialogue through history.  It is a relationship.  Hamilton elaborates on this issue through a very human interaction between God and Cain in The Handbook on the Pentateuch when he says, “After his sin Cain has the opportunity to talk with God.  The dialogue swiftly degenerates into sarcasm on Cain’s part.  He answers God’s question ‘Where is Abel your brother?’ with a question of his own: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’”[5]  Later in the text of Genesis God recognizes humankind’s wickedness and “was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.”[6]  God came to a conclusion.  Creating humankind had not turned out the way God had hoped.

            In my own experience with evangelicalism, I am often frustrated by our obsessive impulse to talk about how great God is and how terrible we are as humans in what turns into an infantile relationship.  In many evangelical circles a question outside the accepted doctrine is looked on in fear that God may be angry with us.  This may be so.  God has the freedom to be, do, and act how God will.  Does this text instead reveal to us a desire for God’s people to be in authentic relationship with a transcendent God that has chosen intimacy with us?  Can I desire a right relationship with a transcendent God; worship that God, and question the motives and actions of that God in the sacred text of my tradition?  I think I can.  And as hard as I may be on evangelical Christianity, I also have seen language that I don’t understand being used by people who desire a genuine closeness with the God of the Bible.  My own life and community experience has shown me a Bible that is much more an act of faithful imagination than a set of certitudes.  However, maybe all God’s people don’t look like me.

[2] Ibid, 3

[3] Ibid,4

[4] Ibid, 4

[5] Victor P. Hamilton, Handbook on the Pentateuch, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2005), 59

[6] Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 4

1.  The social significance of the Gospel requires recognition of the narrative structure of Christian convictions for the life of the church (Hauerwas 9).

(if we are to say that we are trying to communally produce a good life from the scriptures, we would do well to understand that our interpretations take place in the context of stories.  stories influenced and imagined in light of history, politics, social relationships, and future possibilities)

2.  Every social ethic involves a narrative, whether it is concerned with the formulation of basic principles of social organization and/or concrete policy alternatives (Hauwerwas 9).

(Instead of thinking of social ethics as general claims on truth for the masses, we can think of ethics as communal interpretations of stories [at least in part] involving a process containing structures, agents, and interuptions)

3.  The ability to provide an adequate account of our existence is the primary test of the truthfulness of a social ethic (Hauerwas 10).

(Could we use “helpfulness” as a way of understanding whether or not a particular ethic is an “adequate account?”  Instead of timeless truths, an ethic is something under constant critique of the community which holds [no matter how loosely] to it.)

4.  Communities formed by a truthful narrative must provide the skills to transform fate into destiny so that the unexpected, especially as it comes in the form of strangers, can be welcomed as a gift (Hauerwas 10).

(Destiny –  a predetermined course of events often held to be an irresistible power or agency.  I understand this particular thesis to mean that when shaped by a “truthful narrative” we see life, even everyday interactions, as gifts instead of coincidence.  When we can see the stranger as a gift, we do not have to be unnecessarily protective but be shaped by trust and gentleness.)

5.  The primary social task of the church is to be itself–that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence, trusting in God’s promise of redemption (Hauerwas 10).

(a people who have not discovered a superior belief system, but a people who have been “formed by a story” that “provides” by transforming through coming together to collectively and individually trust in a covenant while lamenting without expectation or manipulation the tragedy of life.)

6.  Christian social ethics can only be done from the perspective of those who do not seek to control national or world history but who are content to live “out of control” (Hauerwas 10).

(to say an ethic is “Christian” is to say that the person who holds it has been formed by a community that proclaims God as ruler.  Living “out of control” is a radical trust in God’s promises and a practice in being patient in the midst of uncertainty.  A practice generating compassion and gentleness while resisting any sense of control over history.  Can a political leader hold a “Christian social ethic?”  Though there surely isn’t a feasible yes or no to that question, it may help us see certain vocations as making it much harder to live in tune with a Christian social ethic.)

7.  Christian social ethics depends on the development of leadership in the church that can trust and depend on the diversity of gifts in the community (Hauerwas 10).

(we know together.  this togetherness is a picture of diversity.  diversity is a picture of uniqe individuals.  all these steps can be honored, endured, and celebrated.)

8.  For the church to be, rather than to have, a social ethic means we must recapture the social significance of common behavior, such as acts of kindness, friendship, and the formation of families (Hauerwas 10).

(reworking seemingly mundane relational functions is a delicate dance that the church must engage in together to “be herself”  in the midst of competing ideologies.  social significance can come only partly through academic discourse and partly from relational experience.  To be a social ethic is to be formed by a narrrative tradition rather than a blanket general claim on truth.  Can’t a liberal Christian make the Bible fit liberal ideology as easy as a conservative Christian can make the Bible fit conservative ideology?  To be an ethic is to [no matter how imperfectly] transcend ideology so that we are NOT analyzing our lives with respect to conservatism/liberalism but rather conservatism/liberalism is analyzing their ideas with respect to the church [if they are so inclined].)

9.  In our attempt to control our society Christians in America have too readily accepted liberalism as a social strategy appropriate to the Christian story (Hauerwas 10).

(liberalism –  a theory in economics emphasizing individual freedom from restraint and usually based on free competition, the self-regulating market, and the gold standard.  a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual.    Can freedom be more about being ruled by God rather than being ruled by ourselves?  Should society be governed on general concepts of individual truth, or being individually shaped by a truthful story in community?)

10.  The church does not exist to provide an ethos for democracy or any other form of social organization, but stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ (Hauerwas 11).

(The Bible must have intentionally left out a blueprint for social organization, instead becoming a text of faithful imagination rooted in the memory and future possibilities.  Thus we can be critical of a Christian ethic that sounds like a legitimizing argument for democracy or even uses language like “God and Country” or “God Bless America.”  God must be an alternative to America, while recognizing that America is fallen as are we as individuals.  Should I speak of the brokenness of America without mentioning my participation in that and my own personal brokenness?  Should I not celebrate the times when America gets something right as I expect others to do for me?  I’m simply trying to resist polarization here, while maintaining a critical eye.  easy right?)

***Note:  While I was writing this post, I was interrupted by a phone call from a friend who is grieving a tough time.  I am reminded of the ways in which a thesis on Christian social ethics needs to have room for interruptions for each of our unique yet interconnected and unexpected sufferings.  A vision for Utopian communities will soon take the back seat to a friend who is wounded by pain without answers.  At least lets hope it takes a back seat.

Hauerwas, Stanley.  A Community of Character.  Toward a Constructive Christian Social             Ethic.  University of Notre Dame Press.  Notre Dame, IN.  1981.