DanSheffield

Identity: self-constructed? socially-constructed?

With a surplus of identity options out there these days, there is a strong populist, cultural assumption that identity is self-constructed. That is, that our identity is self-chosen. We "find" ourselves and tell a story about how we discovered ourselves. We live out, or perform that identity. And performance requires affirmation or recognition, which then, of course, reinforces (or not...) our self-chosen identity. And recognition is essential to achieving the hypergood of happiness. Recognition is important in the moment, because happiness is happenstance. And so one follows the path of continued affirmation.

This is all fine, if our chosen identity is validated by the people around us. It helps with the closed loop. But when our chosen self is not validated, the seeds are sown for the birth of ressentiment, a narrative of injury. A new story we begin to tell about how our quest for finding our true self has been thwarted by someone, or something.

This assumption, however, is a cultural misconception of how identity is formed. Identity is not solely an internal decision born from a self-enclosed feel. But identity is never self-enclosed; it is always formed through some kind of conversation. Identity is more "socially constructed" than self-constructed. That social construction is significantly impacted through our family of origin (for good or ill), by the cultural context within which our family is situated in our formative years, and then progressively by teachers, friends, literature, media, habits, rituals. No identity is discovered in a vacuum. All identities come out of some kind of exchange, with various conversation partners, yes, including our own internal selves. (Joyce Bellous and I wrestle with this notion in our book, Conversations that Change Us, where we tie these ideas to the constrasting opinions of Piaget and Vygotsky.)

When we buffer ourselves from other conversation partners, communities of discourse, and rest on our own sense of self, creating a hidden closed spin, we also buffer ourselves from transcendence. We mock the necessity to move outside ourselves to know ourselves. ("Nobody else can tell me who I am") Until... we are not validated, or recognized, and ressentiment emerges. We find it "safer" to spin things closed, because this gives us control. We concede that the self cannot/should not ever lose itself in "something more." Charles Taylor calls this "the eclipse of grace." In this hidden closed spin, "transformation" via transcendence becomes something to fear, because transformation reorders the self, over against its own volition, but never without its own full participation.

All identities come out of some kind of exchange. The very necessity of this exchange opens up the possibility that discovering an identity can give us ourselves, by taking us outside of ourselves.

This is the profound claim of the gospel, and it's why the Christian faith claims such a deep identity in Christ -- 'I know longer live, but Christ lives in me.' There is such an exchange at the heart of the Christian life that our identity becomes Jesus. We may lose control of our own story, and that is troubling for the populist views of our times.

The above represents my reflections on and co-opting Andrew Root's language in his book The End of Youth Ministry? -- that is obviously so much more than a book about youth ministry. This is a little synopsis of my engagement with education philosophy, social construction theory, culture formation and discipleship through a Wesleyan lens, over the past 30 years, and how it relates to several highly relevant 'hot topics.' 

There are two narratives in Scripture that echo these thoughts. The story of the rich young ruler and his identity search that preferred the closed spin loop. The story of Saul/Paul and his closed spin loop that was blown apart by the emergence of the transcendent, with which he then fully participated for his ongoing transformation.

 

a halfway house

"the church could become a kind of halfway house between the comforts of private life and the challenges of diversity -- but only if it can stay open to strangeness and help us experience our differences within the context of a common faith."

Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers

Reading from the other's perspective

This is the time of year when people compile lists of books read in the past year (I've done that) or their intended reading list (that's always a bit deceptive -- like other new year's resolutions -- good intentions, etc.). But for this year I thought I would highlight the books I've read from authors who were substantially formed by a worldview, culture, identity, experience, that is different from my own. There's one qualifier -- these books were read in English, which may not have been the first language of the author, or have been translated from the original language the author wrote in. So that's a thing. 

I've been reading books written by authors from outside my cultural framework for many years. When we lived in Egypt in the late 80s, I read a lot of Naguib Mahfouz' books; in South Africa in the 90s, Es'kia Mphahlele,  Rian Malan, and Mamphela Ramphele (among many others).

In 2020 about 1/3 of my reading was from "other" authors. 

• Maya Jasanoff (The Dawn Watch)
• Brenda Salter McNeil (A Credible Witness and Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0)
• Tomson Highway (Kiss of the Fur Queen)
• Orhan Pamuk (Snow)
• Soong-Chan Rah (Prophetic Lament)

 

 

A Decade of Reading - the 2010s

It seems that everybody is reflecting back on the past decade, over this past week or so. I thought I would throw in my own List of the 2010s from my reading lists (I've been keeping track of my annual readings since 2004). Most of these years I was reading around 30 books/year. A good number of these books have had their own blog post, because they were so outstanding. My criteria for getting on this list is -- do I still refer back to them, personally, (do they still influence my thought and practice?) and have I recommended these books to others?

2010

• The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why (Phyllis Tickle)
• When Helping Hurts (Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert)

2011

• Churches, Cultures and Leadership (Mark Lau Branson & Juan Martinez)
• The Abundant Community (John McKnight & Peter Block)

2012

• Jesus and Community (Gerhard Lohfink)
• Modern Social Imaginaries (Charles Taylor)
• Evangelism After Christendom: Theology and Practice of Christian Witness (Bryan Stone)
• Invitation to a Journey (Robert Mulholland Jr)
• Surprised by Hope (NT Wright)

2013

• Divergent (Veronica Roth)
• Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (James K A Smith)
• Mink River (Brian Doyle)

2014

• No Great Mischief (Alistair McLeod)
• Summoned From the Margins (Lamin Sanneh)
• The Permanent Revolution (Alan Hirsch & Tim Catchim)
• Quiet (Susan Cain)

2015

• Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (Ray Monk)
• Pursuing God's Will Together (Ruth Haley Barton)
• Simply Good News (NT Wright)
• The Hare with the Amber Eyes (Edwin de Waal)
• Through Black Spruce (Joseph Boyden)

2016

• The Patient Ferment of the Early Church (Alan Kreider)
• The Meaning of Sunday: The Practice of Belief in a Secular Age (Joel Thiessen)
• Making Disciples: Faith Formation in the Wesleyan Tradition (Sondra Matthaei)

2017

• Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us (Tomas Halik)
• Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission (David Fitch)
• A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (Witold Rybczynski)

2018

• Stranger God: Welcoming Jesus in Disguise (Richard Beck)
• Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision: A Case for Costly Discipleship and Life Together (Paul House)
• Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Simon Chan)

2019

• Worship and Mission After Christendom (Alan & Eleanor Kreider)
• The Day the Revolution Began (NT Wright)
• Evangelism After Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness (Bryan Stone)

 

Top Ten Reads in 2019

This past year (2019) was literally the year I have read the least books in the last decade.  Only 19. On the other hand I have read more academic articles and listened to more podcasts. Even with podcasts, it's about having time to listen. My go-tos for podcasts are CBC Ideas, Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History, The New Leaf Podcast and Stuff You Missed in History Class.

All that being said, here are my Top 10 reads of 2019 (in no particular order):

Columbus and the Quest for Jerusalem: How Religion Drove the Voyages that Led to America (Carol Delaney)

The Kitchen House (Kathleen Grissom)

Evangelism After Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness (Bryan Stone)

The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion (NT Wright)

Worship and Mission After Christendom (Alan & Eleanor Kreider)

It's a Long Story - My Life (Willie Nelson)

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Arundhati Roy)

For the Glory of God: Recovering a Biblical Theology of Worship (Daniel Block)

The Emotionally Healthy Church (Peter Scazzero)

The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community (Ron Wolfson)

a million boring little things

Last fall I read a book referred to me by my friend Evan Garst. Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise by Richard Beck. I read a lot of books related to Christian theology and the practice of ministry. This one will stick with me for a while. One of the lines from the book:

Being like Jesus is a million boring little things -- things like waiting patiently in line at the grocery store, being patient with your kids, listening to your spouse, being a dependable friend.

The premise of the book is rooted in Matthew 25 where the disciples are told they are actually meeting Jesus in the beggar looking for a cup of cold water. God is the Stranger; we meet him when we welcome, extend hospitality to, those who are outside our natural circles of relationship. 

Beck addresses the first thing that comes to many of our minds -- "I don't have time for more people." He says "People are exhausted. Our schedules are totally maxed out. We have no margin. So where are we going to find the time and energy for all this hospitality... our lives are dominated by those feelings of scarcity." Beck is a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University; he says, "I think our busyness and our exhaustion are rooted in a spiritual sickness that runs throughout our society." But he quickly says that addressing that issue isn't the purpose of this book! He suggests that while we figure out how to address that bigger issue, we just work at our practice of hospitality. 

Hospitality is welcoming and being with the people already in our lives: the people we live with, the people we work with, the people in our neighbourhood. 

If we don't have time to be present and welcoming with the people already in our busy lives, we will never be able to greet the strangers around us. [His premise, though, is that when we learn to practice being welcoming and present with the people already in our lives we start to have margin for strangers.]

That's the first half of the book. Good stuff. Then Beck introduces us to Therese of Lisieux and her, "Little Way" and things get really interesting. I won't say much more about Therese (read the book). But Beck wants us to know that Therese's Little Way could be revolutionary (his says atomic) to our practice of the Christian faith. 

Noticing/Seeing Others - nothing can be accomplished by way of welcoming until we notice others. Paying attention, seeing others, is the practice of kindness. 

Slow down, stop, practice being interrupted. When Blind Bartimaeus called out to Jesus, Mark 10 says, "Jesus stopped." If you follow Jesus, he will make you late.

Approach, seek out, offer a smile, a kind word to someone who isn't being noticed, who you might tend to make a detour around. 

That's it?! Yes.

We will "widen the circle of our affections" (hospitality) by the intentional and disciplined practice of seeing, stopping for, and approaching people whom we otherwise would avoid or ignore.

... a million boring little things.

2018 Reading list

On my blog here, (left sidebar) I always post my accumulated reading throughout any given year. Then I archive the list and start new from Jan 1 of the new year. Been doing this for more than a decade. 25 books read this past year.

Here's my summary from 2018 (in order read from beginning of the year)  * highlighted books are highly recommended; books that will continue to challenge my thinking and practice.

*Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology

Ken Wytsma, The Myth of Equality

George Verwer, Drops from a Leaking Tap

Peter Brett, The Core

Mandy Smith, The Vulnerable Pastor

Linda Ronstadt, Simple Dreams

*Paul House, Bonhoeffer's Seminary Vision

J R Woodward, The Church as Movement

David Roberts, The Pueblo Revolt

Thom Rainer, Becoming a Welcoming Church

Sandra Maria Van Opstal, The Next Worship

Thomas Cobb, Shavetail

Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You

Scott Daniels, Embracing Exile

Lee Beach, The Church in Exile

David Liss, The Day of Atonement

Wessel Ebersohn, Those Who Love Night

Steven Saylor, Wrath of the Furies

David Csinos, Children's Ministry that Fits

Randy Woodley, Shalom and the Community of Creation

Joe Gannon, The Last Dawn

*Richard Beck, Stranger God

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane

Gary McGugan, The Multima Scheme

Bernard Cornwell, Warriors of the Storm

 

From the Margins to the Centre -- new book

The Tyndale Intercultural Ministries Centre (TIM Centre) in Toronto (connected with Tyndale Seminary) has just released a book to which I contributed a chapter. I have been involved with this learning community for almost 15 years. The collection of authors have contributed greatly to my understanding and practice over these years.

From the Margins to the Centre: The Diaspora Effect.

From the Amazon blurb:

This book is a collection of essays written to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Tyndale Intercultural Ministries (TIM) Centre (1998-2018). Each chapter is written by a reflective practitioner engaged in ministry to, through and beyond the diaspora. They write, not as leaders who have all the answers, but as servants of God who are “building the bridge as they walk on it.” The TIM Centre is one of the key pieces of Tyndale’s Open Learning Centre, a strategic part of the ministry of Tyndale Seminary, located in Toronto, one of the most multicultural cities in the world. Believing that mission is not one-directional, “the West to the rest,” TIM Centre sees mission as from everywhere to everywhere, beginning on our doorstep and going to the ends of the earth. As you read this book one theme is constant throughout: We are living in a changing cultural context where the proven solutions of the past no longer relate to the questions being raised in the present. This book challenges us to be aware of the assumptions we bring to our ministry context and to be willing to evaluate them as we engage the global community that now resides in our neighbourhoods. This will require a spirit of humility to listen and learn from people of different cultures that God has brought to our doorstep.

through black spruce and identity politics

Several years ago I read Through Black Spruce, by Joseph Boyden. A film adaptation of this story premiered at TIFF recently. It's a powerful story of contemporary indigenous life set in both Northern Ontario and several mega-cities. At the time of the book's release in 2008, it was highly acclaimed. As was his previous novel 2005 novel, Three Day Road.

It was only after the release of his 2013 novel, The Orenda, that Boyden began to be questioned about his claimed aboriginal identity. I have a suspicion that the shaming of Boyden began because certain elements didn't like the content of that novel. There is so much to be explored in the story of his shaming -- the "real" issues behind the APTN "expose" of Boyden, and the white liberal, neo-colonialist progressives who made the story "popular," etc.

But what really grabbed me this week was this CBC conversation with Tina Keeper, one of the aboriginal producers of the new film. She's a personal friend of Joseph Boyden. The article touches on an issue that I raise frequently, "who gets to tell whose story?" Keeper is aware that working on a project like this involves a cooperative, collaborative process in an industry where indigenous people are in short supply. She says:

"There are some cultural elements that need to be addressed and how we work together, absolutely. I'm not talking about those things, I'm talking about how do we collaborate and work together," she says. "Because I know [Indigenous people have] been so discarded and so dismissed in the history and the cultural memory of this country, so I just feel that it's important for us to understand all of that when we're collaborating."

For me, that is a positive "way forward" approach to navigating our differences. Being aware of our own "stuff," paying attention and listening authentically to others, and then collaboratively finding a way to work together -- because together is much better than separate or oppositional.

holy ambivalence and Christian community

Interesting reflections on the social and cultural milieu that we find ourselves in -- in this book review/essay by Brad East, Holy Ambivalence, in Los Angeles Review of Books. And what it means to be the people of God in the midst of these times. His question, What to do about Liberalism?

There are four basic approaches. First, retrenchment: liberalism has problems like anything else, but it’s nothing a little more liberalism can’t fix. Second, ambivalence: liberalism has endemic, insoluble problems, but it’s what we’ve got, and the status quo, however bad, is better than any known alternative and thus worth ameliorating in whatever small ways we can. Third, rejection: liberalism is an abject failure, unworthy of being propped up any longer, though admittedly there is no ready-made substitute for it. Fourth, replacement: liberalism has reached its end, and there are far more just political forms available if only we would have the courage to open ourselves to radical change

East is writing a review of Patrick Deneen's book, Why Liberalism Failed. 

In short: “Liberalism has failed.” But “not because it fell short, but because it was true to itself. It has failed because it has succeeded.” Indeed, “the ruins it has produced are the signs of its very success. To call for the cures of liberalism’s ills by applying more liberal measures is tantamount to throwing gas on a raging fire.”

Apart from its effects, what is most insidious about liberalism is the way it hides itself as an ideology. It is so deeply interwoven with our life and thought that it has become the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the operating system we take for granted — until the whole system crashes. We are, Deneen argues, in a version of Plato’s cave, so mesmerized by the movie-set backdrops on the walls that we don’t realize they are two-dimensional projections. We need to get out, to seek the light. We need to expose our condition for what it is.

...

Liberalism was sold as a rescue from the state of nature, in which isolated individuals languished at war with others to secure their interests. But no such state ever existed, nor its lonely human protagonist — until liberalism’s triumph, that is. The liberal state created the subject it purported to save.

East then examines James K A Smith's recent, Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology, where ensues a discussion about how Christians should conduct themselves in our interactions with the public space. 

We are first of all, not thinking or believing creatures, but desiring animals. And what we love above all we worship. Such worship is neither individualistic nor disembodied but enacted in corporate rituals of ultimate concern. These practices habituate us, forming and redirecting our loves to objects that constitute visions of the good, of what it means to flourish as human beings. Such routines of the body do most of their work at an unconscious level; the mind follows the heart, and the heart directs the body, which reciprocates in kind.

Smith's classic illustration of this (from earlier works) is the shopping mall; our weekly trips habituate us to consumption; and the vicarious habits of screen-viewing (whether FB, gaming, TV or Netflix)...

Smith’s answer is threefold. First, the church is called and sent by God into the world to love its neighbors, serve the common good, and bear witness to the way of Jesus. So there is no avoiding the encounter, because it is divinely mandated. Second, the church’s own liturgical practices are the heart of its life for a reason: centered on the worship of God, who alone is worthy of it, they have the power, through God’s own action, to form, equip, and commission believers for faithful life and witness in society. Their loves properly ordered, Christians are empowered by the sacramental practices of the local worshiping community to resist the liturgical capture of the state — though this contest of loves ought to be made explicit, the better to know where the danger lies.

That's what I have appreciated about Smith's suggestions over the years -- the church needs to proactively provide an alternative formation to what we are already formed by -- the social and cultural milieu in which we swim/navigate each day.

In sum: Worship as “the civics of the city of God”; mission as the motivating force for participating in the earthly city; holy ambivalence as the character of such participation; hope in the heavenly city as the tether suspending its citizens here below, as they await the return of the King.

That's the phrase that caught my attention -- holy ambivalence. I've voted on the left side of the political spectrum all my adult life, and will probably continue so. There is just as much "disconnect" from a Christian worldview in conservative politics as there is in liberal politics, so I choose the vision that "up-front" says we should care for the vulnerable among us. But my personal stance is one of ambivalence -- there is no perfect political system conjured by human beings. In the end it is how we conduct our personal lives and the community of people we do that with, that makes any real differences.

I have found the understanding of human psychology and sociology (the human condition) that Christian Scriptures describe to be very accurate in my own experience. I find the loving, sacrificial, others-orientation of the Jesus story, as a response to the human condition, to be both challenging and transformative. And "in the meantime" (as we await the better world we all desire), we are called, as the church, to provide an alternative formation -- habits and practices consistent with the notion that God, who is Other, needs to hold our attention and shape our attitudes and behaviours better than we have been managing.

East concludes his review and reflections with:

But whatever strategies we devise, whoever comes our way, the waiting will continue. Smith, with Augustine, is therefore right to hallow patience as the church’s central political virtue; right to remember that Christian hope has no earthly term. There is no living beyond one’s time: perseverance does not mean impatience. Even liberalism can be endured.