Jesus Manifesto - Latest Comments in The Prodigal Consumer

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:03:24 -0000

I realize I may have made it difficult for you to accept this as sincere, but you raise an excellent and challenging point. Thank you.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:34:37 -0000

Thinking over some of the conversation here, and remembering my observations during my years in seminary, I think I've realized something about the postmodern approach. Its focus on the ways that our personal points of view and cultural frameworks filter our perceptions and influence our interpretations does offer a "lofty" perspective from which to critique, say, the false certainties of evangelicals (quite rightly, I should add). But it also seems to disconnect us from God, in that we can never be sure whether we are hearing God's voice or just hearing our own prejudices or the accumulated formation of our tradition and community.

So we're left with an apparent detachment, which makes it easier to analyze all the various accounts of God's activity in people's lives, comparing and contrasting their confessions with those of others, which might lead us to any number of interesting conclusions about the nature of religion and belief. But what seems to be left out (conveniently?) is the voice of God speaking directly to us. Presenting us with the choice: believe or reject, act or do not act. The "voice of God" becomes an object of detached study, never the prophet Nathan standing before us saying, "You are the man!"

And doesn't that easily turn us into consumers as well? Eagerly devouring and digesting all the various religious confessions and theological viewpoints, churning out our educated theories, without ever having to face the choice, the demand, God's voice speaking directly and clearly to us, his eyes on us waiting for our answer?

Maybe that guy that asked about "theoblogs" had a point...

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:49:39 -0000

I struck that last bit because even with the disclaimer, it seemed harsh in a way I did not intend. I just meant to invoke an incommensurability; I'm not sure we're playing by the same rules on the same field, and we could ferret that out but to be honest I don't have the steam for it.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:34:54 -0000

I think we're at an impasse, because I'm sure I could write something that would make you feel better about things, but I'd be quite aware that we don't really mean the same thing.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:10:20 -0000

I appreciate that confession of trust in God, Ted (that is what you said, right?). But I don't quite understand what kind of trust that can be, if you feel you cannot trust your experience of the God you trust in. It seems awfully disconnected (and I mean "awful" compassionately).

Don't you trust that the almighty God can get past screwed up filters and limited interpreting abilities (or even use them effectively) to actually meet and communicate with you in a clear and trustworthy way?

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:54:34 -0000

Actually, I don't trust it. Nor do I trust community and tradition, or anything else in and of itself. To say that I trust in God is a declaration of faith, and not the presumption that any of my experiences or perceptions is ultimately reliable. (Those are often screwed up, too.)

God is not my experience of God, and to place value on that experience is itself an act of faith and not an ontological claim.

That may or may not be satisfying. It may be a bunch of hooey. Heck -- it might just be my interpretation. :)

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:07:55 -0000

I agree with what you say about our interpretation of our experiences, but I think when you try to apply it to the experience itself (and deny "raw experience") that's a bunch of hooey. Sensation is there, even if I don't understand it. Images appear to me before I interpret them (and I need not do so). Experience is not just the conceptualization that I make of it. And I don't need to do things to cultivate an experience in order to have an experience (especially with God, who seeks us whether or not we seek him).

A mother picks up her baby and moves it and feeds it and puts it to bed and the child doesn't know what to make of all that (having no framework yet to interpret it). Yet it's still real and the child is actually moved and cared for, and experiences that in some way. A good analogy, I think, for how God often interacts with us, even before we perceive or understand what is going on.

I'll be satisfied, Ted, if we can agree about the reality and trustworthiness of "an encounter with God," God's Spirit working within us. It sounds to me like you don't trust it, since it's always filtered through so much of me and my culture, which seems to undermine the whole thing, making us dependent not on God but primarily on the tradition and community that shapes our filters (which are often screwed up). That's what seems to me to be rather "unedifying."

But please correct me if I'm reading you wrong.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:56:47 -0000

FEEL THE POWER!!!!

Okay, sorry. I took the DISQUS link...

"But that doesn't mean the actual experience itself must be interpreted (or mediated), does it?"

Actually, yes. But it might be more helpful to speak of contingency. I don't mean that a given experience comes to us in raw form but we can't do anything with it until it is interpreted (and thus are aware of the interpretive process). I mean that the experience never actually comes to us in raw form -- it doesn't exist as such -- because having a certain kind of experience is contingent upon our already having been formed and shaped as a particular kind of person, whether this formation is something we have cultivated actively or is merely a product of being born in a particular time and place.

The contemplative experience (and I'll stick with that, which could be a discrete event or a constellation of experiences that help to shape our perception of the world) is contingent in this way. Before we ever approach the cloud of unknowing, before we engage in centering prayer, before the Jesus Prayer leaves our lips, before we take up and read in lectio divina, before we pick up that first straw for the love of God, we have been formed as the kind of person who would do such a thing.

The contemplative experience is contingent upon those practices we engage in as a means of cultivating such experience, and contingent upon being the kind of person who places value on such an experience in the first place. How we understand the experiences that come out of those practices is formed and shaped by the contemplative tradition itself, which provides a frame within which we can understand the experience and without which such an experience might not come to us at all.

This formation, which can happen in a variety of ways but does not happen apart from the practices, habits, and modes of discourse that characterize the tradition, is why we understand this experience to be an experience of God -- and not just God in the abstract, but the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as revealed through Jesus Christ. We could narrate this experience differently, and even the fact that we might not think to do so is determined by our formation.

Contemplatives and mystics in other traditions have similar experiences that they interpret in light of their own traditions. We may or may not consider this to be the same as our experience, but we will do so on the basis of our relationship with our tradition.

If we conclude that this is irrelevant, that this experience only comes to the believer, then we are saying that it is contingent on our faithfulness and obedience, and what we consider faithfulness and obedience to be is formed and shaped by the particular way in which we relate to our tradition.

Our decision to use a particular theological language to narrate this experience, or to avoid language, is likewise shaped in this way.

I will go this far: I think there are experiences available to us that we would both narrate as an encounter with the living God, which you would understand as unmediated and I would not. 99 times out of 100, however, the conversation doesn't need to go there; I suspect most people would not find it edifying.

I'm not sure how you would understand my position. For me, the fact that you see the experience as unmediated is already an interpretation.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:58:15 -0000

FYI, if the missing "reply" option is bothering you, you can respond in these discussions via DISQUS and it gives you more flexibility (go here). And I don't think our droning on is bothering anyone, because I doubt anyone else is paying attention...

I think we might be missing each other because you seem to be talking about knowledge of an experience, i.e. our understanding or interpretation of any experience is always mediated through our cultural/ideological lenses, etc., and if we try to communicate that knowledge then it must be interpreted by others.

But that doesn't mean the actual experience itself must be interpreted (or mediated), does it? The touch, the vision, the feeling? (The contemplative tradition even intentionally seeks to avoid interpretation or language and emphasizes the direct experience of God, simply loving and being loved, inexpressibly.)

It's this actual experience of God that I want others to have for themselves. Not my experience that I offer to them (other than to encourage them that it's possible), but their own experience which connects us not through common language or conceptualization but because we are both actually in touch with the one God.

I only ask that you don't deny that this is possible.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:40:50 -0000

Sorry, I missed the Monty Python reference.

Should we maybe just sing together the Lumberjack Song, and leave it at that? "Oh, I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay..."

(Incidentally, I did happen to use the lava-tree today.)

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:40:19 -0000

I'm "replying" as far down the thread as my browser will let me, so pardon the blog-blanket bingo -- but in regards to the middle sentence, you added it later. I might have reacted to it, but then again I might not have addressed it directly.

Really, there's not much to it: I don't think unmediated experience exists. You do.

But let's say it does. Then what? This is good for you, I suppose, but it does the rest of us little good. We can't have your experience. You can testify to it, but then we have to interpret that testimony -- just like everything else. (I would suggest that you are always already interpreting even the experience itself, and this even before you try to put it in language, but I suspect you don't see things that way.)

I don't think we can totally escape the charge of individualism, no matter how we slice things, because the toothpaste of the Cartesian subject won't go back in the tube (and we don't really want it to). So there is always a personal/individual component to our experience, even our experience of (and in) community.

To me a person is only open to the charge of individualism if he or she regards the individual as more important than or ontologically prior to the overlapping social matrices in which identity is forged. Simply acknowledging our subjectivity is not individualism.

I'm not sure the individual even exists, as such, apart from those matrices. But now we're in super-squishy territory (that was for Nathanael) and nobody wants to go down that rabbit hole. I don't. Actually, I'm getting tired of reading my own writing. I can only imagine how the others feel... :)

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:58:09 -0000

I wasn't going for fair -- I was going for comedy. I just needed something with roughly the same contours in order to make fun of us. I considered a line where one of the other usual suspects chimes in to ask when we're going to shut up and roast marshmallows, but I opted for the Monty Python reference instead.

And yes, invoking Pentecost was clever -- even elicited a wry smile from me. But you didn't think I'd let it go at clever, did you?

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:21:52 -0000

You left out the second sentence (or I added it after you quoted me):

I'd say that faith is relinquishing control of that, depending completely on the Spirit (the Someone Else), and letting ourselves be guided in the comparing and testing and discernment. Guided spiritually, God's will pressing on ours ("unmediated"?). Which is not individualism at all, but submission to God.

I thought you'd question that middle line the most.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:17:36 -0000

I think the reason I didn't think the fire/wood analogy is fair was because fire is not an independent being, it is a chemical reaction of which wood (fuel) is a component. But God (the Spirit) is an independent being.

And I think Pentecost works well (and was pretty witty, I thought) because there fire was a symbol of the presence of the Spirit in the disciples. A gift given to them, something sudden and powerful and real, not just the accumulation of their cultural, social, religious experiences (though, yes, God was also in those, too).

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:16:49 -0000

Of course I'm not. The outside observer was hypothetical, natch. And yes, there are problems with the wood/fire business. This was just for comedy, and I tried to construct it to more at my expense than you, but of course you're along for the ride. Maybe it wasn't funny.

As for Pentecost, were you there? Me neither. And probably not the author of Acts. So we're getting it at least secondhand. And the fire in question went -- where? Into (or onto) people? Involving language? And the event then had to be interpreted by Peter in light of Joel's prophecy? Seems like an awful lot of wood there.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:08:32 -0000

"I'd say that faith is relinquishing control of that, depending completely on the Spirit (the Someone Else), and letting ourselves be guided in the comparing and testing and discernment. Which is not individualism at all, but submission to God."

How does this come to us? Where and how do we learn that such surrender is what we need, and how to do it?

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:06:49 -0000

Um, Ted? You're not an "outside observer"...

And I don't think the fire/wood analogy is quite accurate, but I'll go with it for fun. Can I suggest my own response?

Ted: Well, okay, but we don't experience fire apart from the wood.

Paul: What about Pentecost?

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:58:32 -0000

This might impose on your good humor (and the patience of others), but here's how our conversation sounds to the outside observer:

Ted: I need wood to keep warm.

Paul: No, what you need is fire.

Ted: Well, okay, but we don't experience fire apart from the wood.

Paul: But the wood can't keep you warm. You need fire.

Ted: True enough, but I only know this "fire" you speak of because the wood is burning.

Paul: The "wood" is not enough. In order to keep warm we need Fire. The Fire alone warms us.

Ted: Look, I'm assuming the "fire" bit, okay? It's not like I was going to build a lean-to or anything. But we still need the Wood.

Paul: What good is the wood without the fire? There's some really wet wood out there.

Or maybe it sounds more like this:

Ted: He could grip it by the husks.

Paul: It's not a matter of where he grips it...

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:54:28 -0000

Something Else is fine, because I did mean that (or maybe Someone Else).

Okay, test them against each other, yes I agree. But then if it's me, the individual doing that comparing and testing, deciding what material (scriptures, traditions, other voices) to work with in the discernment and determining when a satisfactory conclusion is reached... aren't we back to individualism again?

I'd say that faith is relinquishing control of that, depending completely on the Spirit (the Someone Else), and letting ourselves be guided in the comparing and testing and discernment. Guided spiritually, God's will pressing on ours ("unmediated"?). Which is not individualism at all, but submission to God.

How well we are able to do this (our faithfulness) usually has much to do with the honesty and completeness of our submission to God, and our experience (maturity) in being guided by his Spirit. That's what I've seen, anyway. But then I'm often surprised by how God can make himself heard even when I'm trying not to listen or submit.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:18:23 -0000

Re-reading things (I'm an incorrigible re-reader), I see that you used "something else" and I wrote "Something Else" and I just want to say I wasn't trying to be cute with that -- I wasn't consciously copping and altering your phrase for polemical purposes. I'm not above it; I just didn't happen to be doing it this time.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:03:15 -0000

This makes sense, Paul, and we would seem to agree more than I had assumed. I completely agree, for instance, that all of the various and varied ways in which God comes to us have to be interpreted and tested.

Your language suggests, however, is that there is Something Else that we test these things against, where all I can see is that we basically test them against each other, and trust that in the aggregate process we end up where we need to be. I don't think this is far from Kierkegaard's leap of faith, for instance. Now maybe this aggregate is that Something Else, and I'm just stubbornly refusing to start there or use conventional theological language to narrate it.

I'm not particularly offended by expletives, but this is a public forum. :)

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

paul munn — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:43:34 -0000

I'll try not to be exploitive, Ted (though you may need to forgive me the occasional expletive).

I don't think I've ever suggested a faith without context. What I said was that the contexts you mention—tradition and community, but also prayer and scripture—are not dependable (worthy of faith) in themselves, and always need to be interpreted or tested.

My point is quite a practical one, actually (reinforced by experience in community). Voices in tradition say many things. Voices in community say many things. And sometimes, even when those in community around us are speaking with an apparently unanimous voice, what they are saying is not coming from God, is not the voice of God. So their voices must always be judged, tested, interpreted, and cannot themselves be the basis for this judging.

I'm saying there must be something else that we can trust to help us discern the voice of God in these things (not apart from them). That something else is the Spirit of God living and active in us. Given for precisely that purpose.

And trust in this Spirit is exactly what we are called to: faith, trust in God.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:29:01 -0000

I would assume the blogs themselves to be inanimate and therefore not amenable to being constructed as consumers.

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

TW — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:52:16 -0000

are theoblogs consumers?

Re: The Prodigal Consumer

Ted Troxell — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:20:22 -0000

I assumed you were in Christian community -- in fact an examination of our respective lives might open me to charge that you are more committed to community than I am. There's a deep irony there I trust you will be kind enough not to exploit. Likewise, I presume you don't think me incapable of independent thought. :)

I'm also not, just to be clear, attempting to reduce our differences to the vagaries of our personal histories. That's a part of things but hardly the whole story. I think there are some pretty significant gaps in our respective epistemological and phenomenological perspectives -- but this isn't the place for that.

I do not question the primacy of Jesus, nor do I deny the importance of faith in God. You bring that up a lot, and I'd like to point out that I'm not suggesting that we don't need faith in God. But let me push a bit here: how did you know it was Jesus you were seeking? Or, more pointedly: where is this faith in God that exists apart from everything else? I quite literally have no way to conceptualize that. To be honest it starts to sound like magic to me -- which I'd like you to read as saying more about me than it does about you.

So, faith in God: of course. We agree on this. I do not reduce this to the communal context, but I cannot imagine faith without that context (on some level). So it makes no sense to me to posit faith in God over and against community and tradition, nor (on my side) is a fetishization of community and tradition (which happens often enough) tantamount to faith in God. (C&T being a shorthand for a larger constellation of factors -- hopefully you're tracking.)

Perhaps I've been unclear -- I'm not trying to play one against the other, but argue that they cannot be separated. Even when a given expression of community goes badly, and we must offer critique and/or prophetic witness, we do so from a place that is (I presume) informed in some way by the larger tradition and offered (on some level) to protect the integrity of the body.

I'm not throwing down a gauntlet here, but I don't think you can identify a single way that we know or experience God, or faith in God, that I can't narrate as being related to or contingent upon our participation in and formation by community and tradition. This doesn't prove anything, except maybe my own recalcitrance, but it might help your understanding (and/or confirm some of your suspicions).