Making People Objects

The issue is not about "people objects", but about how we make people into objects. The point is, people are not objects - we are not concretely representable things, with distinct borders or boundaries, who can be reduced to a certain set of essences. Instead, we are relational beings, or even 'becomings'. And yet, at a most fundamental level, we reduce one another into objects for the sake of convenience: not only our 'enemies', whom we more understandably reduce to a set of negative characteristics, but we even do this to an extent with regards to people we respect - they become a set of characteristics we respect, even if one of those characteristics is "having depth"! My point isn't that we should rediscover some proper sense of woolliness in our appreciation of each other, for there certainly are things to be said about one another; but the point is that there is always more to be said. Relational be(com)ings are not complete. Ok, perhaps the same is true about objects - in a sense - because nothing is perfectly constant in an ever changing world. But this truth is more pronounced with regards to human beings. We should not, therefore, reduce people to "the thief who did a particular bad thing", as though divorced from all the unknowns which constitute the person concerned. I might suggest, as a Christian, that Jesus' injunction not to judge others is the epitome of this observation ... and yet there is a sense that Jesus himself does objectify people at times (for he is not an idealised object himself, but a person on a journey, constituted by relationships with other messy people). For instance, is it an objectification to speak of "the poor" and "the rich", as though they are disembodied groups neatly sitting in opposition? Of course, there are clear examples of each, but we must also open ourselves to the complexity of the inter-relatedness, without belittling the purpose of the apocalyptic dichotomy: there remains a use for "them" vs. "us", to highlight the inequalities, the ways in which "they" (or is it "we"?) oppress and belittle "us (or "them"?) We will always do some objectifying, even necessarily, but the point is to recognise and edit it.

Christians listen to others

Perhaps I'm wrong (it's a real possibility!) but this seems to get to the heart of a serious current issue: I believe that, as well as being defined in terms of what they say about their own faith, Christians ought to be known for the quality of their commitment to hear what others say. So when a woman complained that I had not given a "Christian" talk because I had explained some basic features of Islam to a church group, my response should have been (if I had dared to be truly honest) that enabling Christians to "listen to other voices" is genuinely Christian! It seems, though, that the media has done well: Muslims have been suucessfully defined as the wicked Other, the "race" (as this woman put it) which is to be legitimately feared. And of course, we should not dare to learn about the things we fear, because that might challenge the legitimacy of our fear! It is better, obviously, that the world be divided into knowns and unknowns, black and white, good and bad, because then we know where we are. However, is this Christian? Well, yes and no! The black-and-white thread of Christian faith, which can be traced even to Jesus, certainly nurtures a duality: but what is the nature of that duality? It is not "them" and "us", as in "religious others" and "our own kind", but - if we are to trust the traditions of Jesus - is rather more frequently a duality between the Powers-that-be and their victims, between religious/political/economic powers and those who suffer due to them. For Jesus made concerted efforts to re-integrated "the others", lepers and Samaritans and children feared because of their "dangerousness". Which brings me to the "no" - the duality of Jesus, which admittedly allows for a certain kind of dangerous division, is also the denial of other dualities; for we who are insiders are all-too-easily on the outside, and outsiders often display more grace. To follow in his footsteps therefore means openness to the other - within and beyond. Full stop.

Living with spilt milk

I was going to try and be clever. But the words aren't coming. I wanted to link two things: 1) the fact that I've just read on "The Unlikely Evangelist" website (link to be added soon!) about "the end of the world", about how it's not about the destruction of the world, but seeing the world through different eyes amd working for its re-creation now; and 2) a letter I've received angrily criticising me for forgetting to do something. And they are linked - I think. The letter really upset me. It was right - I had forgotten to do something - but its anger was disproportionate, and the attack was personal. So I have to live with that spilt milk, which I did "cry over" briefly, but I felt better after telling one of the most amazing 70-something year-old women who phoned me back and read a prayer over the phone. Of course, this incident is not the end of the world, and yet on the other hand, it is. I must pray for the person who wrote it, if I want to be part of this 'new world', because that begins to break the cycle of bad feeling - but it's bloody hard! In fact, I should want this episode to be the end of the world as we knew it, to be an opportunity (a kairos?!) for something new and braver. Forgetting things is easily done; I'm sure the letter-writer has forgotten a few things too; so "spilt milk" is all around us; but the trick is to live with it in a new way, with new eyes, with a new prayer: God, help me to mop it up.

Yet more on "1984" - Going barefoot

The telescreens, in Orwell's slightly prophetic satire, churn out all kinds of statistic and facts asserting the effectiveness of Big Brother's regime. One example is fantastic. The people are told how many boots have been produced, and it's always more than how many were projected to be made, showing that Big Brother's methods are even greater than their goals - though sometimes the records of earlier reports have to be revised (secretly) because the goals often exceed the outcomes, and such discrepancies between one reality and another aren't permitted ... but then comes the shattering thought of Winston, the hero: "Very likely no boots had been produced at all. All one knew was that every quarter, astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population went barefoot." And the people don't question it. It's a bit like globalisation, is it, with countless tonnes of commodities being overproduced while millions go hungry, but still the sheer gap between one reality and another remains awesome. What does it take, then, for those of us with shoes to put ourselves in the non-shoes of others? How might we take off our sandals before walking on the sacred space of other peoples? How can faith communities be at the forefront of this movement to engage with reality - not least, the all-pervasive challenge of inequality, with its morally compelling calls for transformation? After all, we don't live under Big Brother - no matter how much our satiricists might say we do, we remain free to make a real difference. While others go 'barefoot', we must then act.

I'm reading "1984" self-righteously! Help me!

George Orwell's book is exciting me - and I'm finding myself inhabiting its world, where a totalitarian regime, "Big Brother", does not merely host a few housemates for 13 weeks, but governs and monitors the lives of the whole nation. As Winston sees it, in the story, the only privacy he has is limited to the few centimetres squared inside his head! And even that is under threat, as the newly constructed language 'Newspeak' sets out to squeeze the number of words, so that Thought itself will be increasingly limited and confined. But I'm all too aware that this sharp political satire is giving me tools for criticising things outside of myself - the 'orthodoxies' to which other people are attached unconsciously; the way other people exercise "doublethink", simultaneously believing 'two contradictory opinions which cancel each other out'; the way the world outside of me directs its discontentment towards petty grievances rather than focusing on the larger evils of genuine poverty, prejudice and oppression. But might it be possible that I too am in the thralls of an orthodoxy which obscures me from particular oppressive realities? Might I too be complicit in doublethink, aware of my privileges but not quite committed to risking their end? Could it be true ...?

The risk of consensus

It's a strange thing to complain about, because it's certainly hard to achieve. But I'm a bit wary of a neat consensus. After all, even when it appears to have been achieved - as in certain kinds of church meetings - the appearance is often quite superficial ... it's amazing what people agree to, or acquiesce to, for a quiet life. I'm much more interested in solidarity than consensus, because while consensus presumes agreement, a nice and tidy point of completion, solidarity allows for differences - we can be in solidarity with people we disagree with. So with the recent terror stories. Thankfully, most people resist the simplistic consensus which places "us" against "the Muslim other", because most people seem to recognise that extremists are quite different from moderate majorities. But there is the danger of another consensus, which could form if we allow ourselves to be pressurised into believing there is only one way of defeating terrorism, and which relies on a certain kind of confident assumption: that the suspects are evil, while our ground is unmovable. Hopefully, most can understand that this anxiety is not about justifying or even explaining terrorism - there must be a consensus against it - but how it is tackled must remain subject to criticism. How we handle these delicate balances certainly isn't easy, which is perhaps why I remain worried about any hasty consensus. Having said that, it is helpful to think of such destructive ideologies as 'fascistic', because it points to the human contexts out of which such deformed world-views emerge - angry young men who see simply in black and white - and yet there is always more to it ... and many people suffer under such threats all of the time, reminding us to be in solidarity with sisters and brothers of many creeds in all parts of the world. So, no easy solutions, which may itself be part of the method for addressing the conflict.

A Solidarity of Others?

I am fascinated by the ideas in a book by Anselm Min, a Korean American, called "The Solidarity of Others in a Divided World: A Postmodern Theology after Postmodernism". He argues that the church as 'the Body of Christ' is called to be a solidarity of 'others', in the sense that we are all 'other' to one another, we are all 'different' from each other. It is a great vision of the church, but more than that, a great model which is offered - in humility - to the world. For we set out this vision, admittedly imperfectly, trusting that the world may witness it as good news: that very different people can nevertheless live together peaceably and justly. But it doesn't seem to work quite as we would hope! We need to be better at promoting a couple of things: first, the diversity of people already in the church, which is often overlooked or directly suppressed (because diversity is messy); and second, the idea of solidarity, a mature way of handling differences, which ain't easy! If we don't work at those things, it'll be difficult to offer it as a model for (other) others ...

Kairos vs. Kyriarchy! (power to the people!)

The theologian Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza gives us the really helpful term "kyriarchy", literally meaning 'rule by lords'. But she means by it the very many ways in which some people 'lord it' over others - whether it is men over women, rich over poor, the West over the South, the bourgeois over the underclass, or whoever. What is shocking is the way in which Christians have so often allowed "Jesus as Lord" to be co-opted by the world's kyriarchical structures, even though the very point of Jesus' Lordship appears actually to have been the denunciation and subversion of kyriarchy. To put it another way, we read the Bible and exercise our faith as though all power-arrows ought to point towards Jesus, because he is exalted as our "ultimate Lord", whereas what he was about was dispersing the power-arrows, pointing them towards the relatively powerless. Power to the People! What is so shocking about this for Christians in churches is simply how radical it is: because it urges people to throw off dependency, to overcome our sense that changes are incremental, believing instead in the kairos - that the time for anti-kyriarchical discipleship is right now! Ouch! The New Community is at hand!