Rauschenbusch Rules

I ran across one of my all-time favorite Walter Rauschenbusch quotes yesterday... Here is that quote with a few other observations from his book, "A Theology for the Social Gospel."

“Theology needs periodical rejuvenation. Its greatest danger is not mutilation but senility. It is strong and vital when it expresses in large reasonings what youthful religion feels and thinks. When people have to be indoctrinated laboriously in order to understand theology at all, it becomes a dead burden. The dogmas and theological ideas of the early Church were those ideas which at the time were needed to hold the Church together, to rally its forces, and to give it victorious energy against antagonistic powers. Today many of those ideas are without present significance. Our reverence for them is a kind of ancestor worship. To hold laboriously to a religious belief which does not hold us, is an attenuated form of asceticism; we chastise and starve our intellect to sanctify it by holy beliefs."

Rauschenbusch notes that church rulers and the keepers of orthodoxy are generally in a defensive posture. But He points out that “the great religious thinkers who created theology were always leaders who were shaping ideas to meet actual situations.” P.13. He cites Paul’s inclusion of the Gentiles and Luther’s justification by faith as two obvious examples.

Rauschenbusch recognizes the inherent link between Christianity and ethics. He exposes the distortions which inevitably result from non-ethically concerned forms of Christian religious practice. Those forms “nearly all centre on the winning of heaven and immortality. On the other hand, the Kingdom of God can be established by nothing except righteous life and action.” P.15.

I know that Rauschenbusch's whole project was funded by an over-confidence in human ability to usher in the kingdom of God which was thoroughly discredited by Auschwitz and the atomic bomb. However, I still find much in his old Baptist theology which I can learn from, especially when he hones in on praxis.

How to Write for the Web

I love Slate online. There was a funny short article by the editor that noted a bit called "How to Write for the Web" by a guy named Caleb Crain.

"A text on the internet rarely takes for granted your decision to read it or to continue reading it. There is often, instead, a jazzy, hectoring tone. At home my boyfriend and I use a certain physical gesture as shorthand to describe it. To make it, extend your index fingers and your thumbs so that your hands resemble toy pistols. Then waggle them before you, like a dude in a cheesy Western, while you wink, dip your knees, and lopsidedly drawl, "Heyyy." The internet is always saying, "Heyyy." It is always welcoming you to the party; it is always patting you on the back to congratulate you for showing up. It says, You know me, in a collusive tone of voice, and Wanna hear something funny? and Didja see who else is here? This tone is not absent from print; in fact, no page of New York magazine is without it. Certain decorative effects in language may be compatible with it, but it seems to be toxic to imagination."

Heyyy, I think he's onto something.

Pannenberg on the Church

I put Zizioulas down for the week. I'm trying to get through Pannenberg's book on the church this week. Here are my notes from chapter one:

CHAPTER 1 – CHURCHLESS CHRISTIANS

He calls people who supposedly subscribe to Christianity without Christian church involvement “churchless Christians.”

As churches grew more sectarian, and denominationalized. Each denomination began to vie for political power. As they did, no one sect could claim universality and thus religion became a privatized affair. 11

The reformation claimed freedom for the individual and preached tolerance and religious liberty and as a result general civil liberty. So for those who were into civil liberty, didn’t want to chuck their faith, but felt more of a call toward justice, there was sort of a move toward “Christianity outside the church.” 12

“Christianity outside the church is dependant on the churches for its continued existence” 12 for two reasons.”

1. “they build systems of doctrine without which the Christians outside the church could not preserve their consciousness of belonging to Christendom. 12
   
2. “Christian faith needs a community as the context for its life, and only in such a community can it develop.” 15 namely a community of love and social justice.
   

“The Christian community in its life together makes visible the lordship of God, which is the future of the world, the future of all mankind. The idea of God’s lordship is not an optional addendum to the idea that the destiny of human society is life together in peace and justice. On the contrary, the biblical and Christian awareness of God’s lordship is the sole condition for peace and righteousness among men and women. where people govern, the rights of the governed are continually being violated, and peace is shattered. It is only there where, instead of all human rule, God himself rules, that peace and justice can flourish unhindered in human communities.” 16

Here he is making the case that denominations are more concerned with maintaining their own heritage than with serious unity within the body. It's a pretty good point - something which I never even think about having been outside the realm of the denomination for so long.

Three Conclusions:

1. “The model of human community which the Christian church is to represent dare not be indebted to human lordship for its unity, but only to the lordship of God himself.” It cannot be trusting in the hierarchy of bishops, priests, elders, etc.
   
2. “Only if the community of the church is based solely on the lordship of God and of Christ can the church be the symbol and instrument of the unity of mankind.” 20
   
3. “The church can have only symbolic significance for the destiny of mankind to participate fully in a community of peace and justice in the Kingdom of God. It cannot by itself achieve this unity in a world where relationships rest on the lordship of some men and women over others…as an instrument for achieving the unity of mankind the church can function only through activities that are expressions of the symbolic nature of its existence as a sign of that unity.” P2

He then goes on to argue that the primary symbol should be communion. It is what has the symbolic power to unite the fragemented sects. But communion is interrupted by the disunity of denominationalism.

“This is Christianity’s most important task in our century. Any other reforms of the life of the church will remain ineffectual unless this problem is solved, unless the separated Christians mutually recognize one another and express this recognition in the common celebration of the Lord’s Supper.” P.22

The catholicity of Being

I'm up to my elbows in Metropolitan John...

Zizioulas is working with the idea that sin is actually a rupture between being and communion, or what he calls the “individualization of our being.” The fall “results from the claim of created man to be the ultimate point of reference in existence (to be God).” p.102 He has already built his case that being is communion (I’ll not rehearse it here fully, but only in part), and is saying that what lies behind the fall is a refusal to make being dependent on communion. Other points of view would say that you first “are” and then you relate. He says that is an individualist ontology (individualization of our being) and is derived from the fall and a denial of the nature of our being: we find being only in communion.

Truth, then is a relational category, and is not bound up in the nature of substance of things. But in the West there is a subject/object structuring of truth. If it is bound up in the nature or subject of things, then we can only ever objectify something before we know it. All of this to record a quote or two:

“In associating the nature or substance of things and with the kind of understanding which is inherent in this individualism of existence, man restricts himself to reaching a relationship between communion and love only after obtaining a knowledge of the “object” of his love. The “other,” whether in the form of a “person” or a “thing,” is present as an object of knowledge before any relationship of communion can take place. Knowledge precedes love, and truth precedes communion. One can love only what one knows, since love comes out of knowledge, (except that this happens in our fallen condition, and ought not to be turned into an element of our metaphysical anthropology or, even less, of our approach to Trinitarian theology)…” p.104

“To be saved from the fall, therefore, means essentially that truth should be fully applied to existence, thereby making life something true, i.e. undying. For this reason the Fourth Gospel identifies eternal life, i.e. life without death, with truth and knowledge. But it can be accomplished only if the individualization of nature becomes transformed into communion – that is, if communion becomes identical with being. Truth, once again, must be communion if it is to be life…being a person is fundamentally different from being an individual or a “personality,” for a person cannot be imagined in himself but only within his relationships.” p.105

“We usually identify a person with the “self” (individual) and with all it possesses in its qualities and experiences (the personality). But modern philosophers recall with good reason that this is not what being a person means….the essential thing about a person lies precisely in his being a revelation of truth, not as “substance” or “nature” but as “mode of existence”…true knowledge is not a knowledge of the essence or the nature of things, but of how they are connected within the communion-event.” p.106

“The person is the horizon within which the truth of existence is revealed, not as simple nature subject to individualization and recombination but as unique image of the whole and the “catholicity” of a being.” p.106

“The mystery of being a person lies in the fact that here otherness and communion are not in contradiction but coincide. Truth as communion does not lead to the dissolving of the diversity of beings into one vast ocean of being, but to the affirmation of otherness in and through love. The difference between this truth and that of “nature in itself” lies in the following: while the later is subject to fragmentation, individualization, conceptualization, comprehension, etc., the person is not. So in the context of personhood, otherness is incompatible with division.” p.106-7

“This identification of otherness with unity is incompatible with fallen existence, into which we are born as individuals with a clear tendency to seize, dominate and possess being. This individualized and individualizing Adam in us is our original sin, and because of it the “other,” i.e. beings existing outside ourselves, in the end becomes our enemy and “our original sin” (Satre). A human being left to himself cannot be a person. “ p.107

I’m trying to pass some of what Franke and Roxburgh have said through Zizioulas. So far I think that it all works really well together. With an individualist ontology, approaching the “other’ can only be done in divisive ways. However, in Zizioulas’ structure, otherness is identified with unity.

Praying Drunk

My friend Isaac had me read a poem the other day, a sentence which feels wierd to write, but it happened. The poet's name is Andrew Hudgins and he's a big deal in the world of poetry and literature. I don't know about all of that, but after reading this poem I'm seriously thinking about pre-ordering his promised book, Shut Up, You're Fine! Troubling Poems for Troubled Children because of the title alone. That would be the second poetry book I've purchased this year - an alarming trend - but I really can't fight who I am... the most recent I can find on Amazon is called Ecstatic the Poison. All I know is that this writer can do things with words that few people in the world can do...he's a freak. Read this poem and if you want more, read some here. This particular poem, "Praying Drunk," is from his book The Never Ending, which seems to be out of print.


Praying Drunk
by Andrew Hudgins


Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,
Poof! You’re a casserole!—and laughed so hard
she fell out of the bed. Take care of her.

Next, confession—the dreary part. At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They’re like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they’re beautiful. But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven’t shot one yet.
I might. When I was twelve, I’d ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats. It’s hard
to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough. The rat won’t pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it’s just a rat. My garden’s vanishing.
Perhaps I’ll merely plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?

I’m sorry for the times I’ve driven
home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist, it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I’ve thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair—
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff. I’m grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things
I’m grateful that I’ve never had to do
without. I have confused myself. I’m glad
there’s not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another’s ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean most anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives. Don’t look! Don’t look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away. Line up, they called. Let’s go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed, and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is—let it be so—a form of praying.

I’m usually asleep by now—the time
for supplication. Requests. As if I’d stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And, also, I want vanishing cream. You know—
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he’s there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that’s clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It makes me think,
sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me.

Roxburgh & Franke Session Four

NOTES:
Roxburgh presented for most of this session. He was saying that instead of asking the practical questions (which is all that most missional church writers seem to do these days), think about what happens if you ask the God questions first. We should first explore the God who is Trinity, relationality and difference. He says that God always comes to us in the “space between,” in the space of difference. There are all of these metaphors he points to in any conversation, emergent, missional, traditional, parachurch, the metaphors are ones of inside and outside. The place of leadership for all of those things are "inside." They are all about how to draw people in to whatever program one is doing or promoting. So the role of leadership is always to make things happen inside. In the inside/outside metaphors the game becomes how to we develop the proper plans and strategies for how.

What if the role of leadership is neither inside or outside, but in the space between (the liminal space) and the job is to provide leadership in the space between church/culture or whatever pair you want. Leadership is in the space between, the liminal space. He’s saying our basic paradigms of leadership are just dead wrong, they are too deeply based in Christendom. If we dwell deeply in the narrative of Christ we see a God who meets people in the space between. When we ask the questions what does it mean to be the church, it’s not a matter of going back to some Acts 2 idea, but asking the question “what was God up to in Jesus.” That always comes as an interaction with the other. We know God in the space between, that’s the space of the church.

The space between us never gets closed…in the midst of that space is where mystery emerges. God’s future is among the ordinary and the present. How do we create environments that call that forth? God keeps showing up in the most “God-forsaken places.” What are the practices of the Christian life which re-socialize us into the community of Christ?

SUMMARY:
What Roxburgh and Franke are arguing for, in sum, is something like this...They see the missional church idea as rooted deeply in the doctrine of God as a plurality in oneness. Drawing on Eastern thought and the doctrine of the Social Trinity, they focus on God's interrelatedness and how in God's essential make-up is this idea of the "other" which is imbedded in the 3 persons, one essence theology. The conclusions that they draw from this are that we always encounter God in "the other," thus this should be the space/environment we try to create in missional leadership. Thus missional leadership is always driven back into the local environment.

This is really good stuff, though I'm not sure I understand all of it. I'm so predisposed to read this sort of theology favorably because of my previous encounteres with the theologies of Hope. Obviously Moltmann was working with this missional idea, as was Rahner, far before these guys came into the picture. Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Rahner all pre-date Newbigin (the missional theology patron saint) and they were all thinking about missional theology. Moltmann, especially, draws many of the same conclusions that Franke and Roxburgh are working with. He worked out the theological underpinnings of these concepts in a much more well-developed way, even in some of the ways it should be worked out in practice, before Newbigin was really writing much yet. I think his theological construct is a little tighter than Newbigin's. I sort of wish these guys would interact with it a little more. I often felt like they were drawing conclusions that Moltmann already has drawn and calling them their own ideas. Still though, I think Franke and Roxburgh are focusing in on some really important nuances of missional theology and shining a light on them.

QUESTIONS:
I’m really intrigued by this idea of the "space between" and that this is actually the space where the church comes alive and God's future breaks into the present. "Space between" as the place where we interact with God. I think that I like that for the most part. I'm still trying to wrap my arms around it. Here are a few of my questions:

I wonder if there an extent to which we emphasize this "space between" at the expense of the deeply rooted New Testament themes of oneness, solidarity? We can emphasize the difference only to the extent to which we emphasize the unity. If we don't, do we not run the risk of ignoring the 1 in favor of the three (the reverse of the mistake of the West which ignored the 3 in favor of the one). Turning toward the "other" is fantastic and makes sense to me, but the "space between" stuff seems, at least to my mind, to need more work in how it is conceived and communicated. But I think the intuition is right...I'll mess with it a little more here.

I'm struggling a bit with what appears to be a mixed metaphor emphasizing both "crossing boundaries" and "space between." If I'm meeting somebody in the "space between" that person and my person, then the only boundary I really cross is the boundary of my "self?" How exactly would one do that? If I don't cross that boundary then am I crossing the boundary of some other person's "self?" If the answer is that I'm not crossing any boundaries of personhood, just physical boundaries in history, then we are simply talking about community and conversation using the language of "space for the other," to describe an ongoing conversation. I'm struggling a little bit with how to appropriate these metaphors.

I'm trying to anticipate the answers to my own questions:

Q: What boundary am I to be crossing?
A: The boundary between yourself and the "other"

Q: How do I cross this boundary?
A: By creating space for the other.

Q: Where does this space exist?
A: It is liminal space, space between.

Q: Space between what and what?
A: Space between two persons.

Q: What is this space like?
A: It is a space of alterity.

It seems as though Roxburgh wants to grant liminal space ontology. I think that is problematic. The boundary of the self is one boundary that I cannot cross - I am always subjective as a "self" or as a "person," this is good Newbigin (Cappadocian) thought here. I will never escape my own self-ness or subjectivity, nor can I exchange my subjectivity for another's. The boundary of the self is precisely the boundary that the doctrine of the social Trinity tells us we cannot cross as well. How do I cross into the space of the "other?" Isn't the assertion "I only encounter God as the other" just Barth's wholly other stuff from the doctrine of God writ smal for humanity to emulate, much in the way the social Trinity holds keys to human relatedness? Is there any relatedness apart from "otherness," and if so, how can that be? I cannot relate to sameness except for internally. So, is this liminal space internal to the person or exterior to the person?

If the experience of God is always in the "space between" myself and the "other" then do we reduce God to pure transcendence - always the wholly other - never immanent in any fashion? I know I can come up with a number of different kinds of experiences with God that might be simply between a human person and God; semi-private encounters. However I get the feeling that they would cast these things as experiences of the other. I think that is probably right but it brings up anothe question (next paragraph). What about human interactions, aren't they always an interaction with the other. But if that is the answer, then I'm struggling what sort of human interaction could be conceived as not an interaction with the "other." If every human interaction is an interaction with the other, and the gospel or any experience of God arises in the space between the person and the other, then that isn't really saying anything. If that is the explanation, then the "other" that they are talking about is simply consciousness or life.

Another question. Does one encounter God in the space between themself and God? How can there be a space between me and God? Certainly God is other. But do I have any participation in God or is it always an experience of the other?

It seems that their answer is not that I cross into the space of the other, but into the space of the in between. Thus, this "space between," seems to be given ontology and I'm not sure that makes any sense to me. Even if we do grant it ontology, how can I unrooted from my subjectivity as a person to enter into the "space between," without negating personhood? Don't I encounter them in "space between" precisely as a person?

If we don't want to grant liminality ontology, then it seems to me that we encounter the other while still rooted into our self-ness. If personhood is related to uniqueness (Zizioulas) and not merely biology/psychology, then isn't everything I relate to the "other?" Isn't all relating, a relating to the "other." So we're really just describing what it means to be a person. Thus "creating the space for the other" is something which happens internally, within my own self-hood and it is simply a natural part of being in communion with other beings. (Being as Communion is Zizioulas' book BTW) In that case then we are not really forging new ground here. Were giving old ground new names.

I think there is still some work to be done in the way they describe their theology, or more likely in the way I understand it! Either way, I think they are barking up the right tree. I have a lot of hope that when their thought matures, it will be a great blessing to the people of God.

Roxburgh & Franke Session Three

They are looking at the idea of Gospel & trying to figure out if it is something external to culture that exists in the mind of God which we then have to figure out how to translate into a given culture. OR is gospel something that we actually encounter and discover as culture. We had quite a bit of discussion about this.

Essentially we were having a conversation about what the gospel is. We talked through truth as “event” and my question was whether we can think of gospel as event. Thinking of Gospel as event makes it so all of our words to describe “Gospel” helpful but they can never “be” that event. There is always much more to the story.

AR “The gospel is what we discover together in a particular time and place about what Jesus is up to. We only hear the gospel through the ‘other.’” Much of what Roxburgh is basing this on is rooted in Trinitarian thought. It’s really solid stuff.

“What we’re saying is that if we ask questions of who is this God and what is this God up to, that in 2008 in North America (not china elsewhere) you can only answer the question of what is an ecclesial theology if we cross boundaries and listen to the other, otherwise we’ll never be missional.“

Roxburgh & Franke Session Two

SESSION TWO:

Dr. Franke’s Introduction…

He told the story that he heard on NPR of Phillip Jenkin’s and his trip to Africa. While he was sitting in this church meeting word spread that a prominent American church leader was there and word got up to the pastor and so he invited Jenkins to come forward, not to speak off the cuff, but to perform that week’s exorcism. The reason they did is because “they believe the bible.” But we all would probably shrink back from a church that performed a weekly exorcism, but it seems OK for them to do that. He faked his way through the ceremony thinking that it would have been rude NOT to have attempted to do the exorcism.

Franke then talked about how he read a story about this particular village or region where a “witch hunt” had taken place and dozens of women, mostly elderly ones, were attacked and killed with machetes because they were witches.

He’s just using this as an example of the power of culture.

Question: what is the church?

Lots of times the idea of the church is this impulse to get back to a previous era – pick your era. You can say get back to the faith of the reformers, or medieval faith, or more often its an idealized view of the church in Acts…you can’t look back and say “let’s get back to what the church was like in this given era.” The reason you can’t is because God’s desired is that we should be looking ahead.

(I think this is just Pannenberg’s idea that the KOG is proleptically actualized in Christ).

Our primary commitment is the relationship between Gospel and culture.

We have no stake in the way church has to be done, we’re not trying to preserve the way that church has been done in the past. All modes of doing church are particular reactions to a particular time. We’re always engaged in this commitment to Gospel and its relationship to new cultural situations. There is tremendous range of responses to culture. Think about the different responses given in the early church, medieval Roman Catholic church in Spain, 18th Century British church, Irish monastic community in 19th century, or an African church in present day…all of these would look so different so as to be almost unrecognizable as the same faith. But we should see each of those things as a faithful reaction to their environment.

“There is no notion of church apart from this reaction…gospel & culture.” what forms of life together will be faithful to live out and bear witness to the gospel in this time and place. Communities that follow this gospel and culture engagement, faithfulness to God in this particular time and place, are Missional churches.

We broke up into groups to ask very pragmatic questions about what it means to be a Missional people.

“How to we become midwives of missional activity that is already there. How do we become poets such that we can put words to what is happening. How do we become more and more attentive to the things that are happening off stage, as opposed to what is happening on stage.”

Sometimes when I hear those kind of statements it just trips my bull-shit meter.


Dr. Roxburgh

Returning to the context of the Trinity.

Newbigin in India, sitting amongst the “other,” is trying to understand this gospel. Previously the gospel had been English, Colonial, conquesting, etc. So for Newbigin this was a time of liminality. The narratives of his English life game him all kinds of habits, values, etc. The liminal space is how do I make sense of the habits and practices of mine when they no longer seem to hold in this space. The liminal space is not giving them up, but listening to the other while still holding them.

For some of us we’ve been trained in this whole way of life and we can’t make sense of it anymore because of the environment we live in. This is what happens with Newbigin. When he started reflecting upon it, he did so through the Cappadocians. Newbigin is reading them, they are Greek thinkers who are converted, who are in liminal space as well. The more they lean into the idea that Jesus is who he says he was, then God is not primarily one, but three.

So with that as the background he’s going to talk a little bit about the question “who is God?” He is saying that the social Trinity is such a big deal these days because there is so much anxiety about relationship. The language of the Cappodocians is confessional.

If God is Trinity and that means that the very essence of creation in the image of God is relationality, then the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the father, etc. So we are confessing that the basic name for reality is difference. (Alterity?) The core nature of reality is difference in this model of thinking.

Jesus comes to us as the other and as a stranger. That is in fact how God is done. The only way we can know God and experience God is in and with and through the stranger who is not us.

Paul, Newbigin, Cappadocians all live in liminality as do we.

He’s poaching this idea of “alterity” from Emmanuael Levinas, whose liminal space was created by the holocaust. Roxburgh asks the question, is the 20th century epitomized in Adolf Hitler, is this merely an epi-phenomenon, a mistake that happened which is not really part of the core DNA of who we are as modern, western, Christian people. Levinas says it goes all the way down. It isn’t an accident we can sluff off, it is part of the modern Christian experiment.

Why? Because modernity is really about a method that was formed to impose control over the environment in which we live. That method was so successful that it was then applied to everything. What happens in the western imagination is that not only do we turn nature into objects of our own ends, but we turn human beings into the objects of our own ends. For instance we teach courses like contagious Christianity. They teach us how to identify a prospect’s readiness for saying yes to Jesus. You teach this course without being aware of the fact that you have objectified people and are using them toward your ends. So at the core of modern Christian identity and what we call the gospel is the objectification of the human being. So how do you explain Hitler? Once you live in a narrative whose primary goal is to get control, it’s not very far to go to say that this object is not lining up with where we are trying to go, it’s not a big step to get rid of that object. He says, that’s the holocaust.

In stark contrast the gospel is about welcoming the other, the stranger, then we understand that we can never turn the other into objects of our own ends.

The whole idea that he’s pushing is this question, how do we engage the other. He says it is important because engaging the other is in the very fabric of the universe and it is essential to what the gospel actually is. We encounter God as the other.

If the other can never be objectified, then there is no program I can overlay and say to my church, here is how we become missional. The question is how do we create a space where people have the freedom to risk free speech. There is an unspoken idea that “this is not a safe place to speak.” What you’ve got going on in many of our churches. It’s as concrete as “gas prices are going up and I might lose my house.” Or “I love my church but I live too far away and I don’t know how much longer I can do this.” How do we allow free speech so that their narratives can come forth. In those narratives we begin to have experiences of the other.

He’s not prescribing a psychological thing, but the poetic listening of other folks. He says that this has to happen first inside the church. We have no idea how to listen to the other until we can practice that experience in the church. How do we create environments in our midst where the other is heard and encountered?