Merleau-Ponty on Perception, the Intentional Arc, and the Dialogue between Body and Mind

"For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Primacy of Perception (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 5.

"The body is our general medium for having a world." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. C. Smith (London: Routledge, 1962), p. 146.

Pious Wolves

Mark 12:38-44

As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹ and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰ They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

⁴¹ He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴² A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³ Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴ For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Sermon:

          Through the course of Lent, we have been coloring in the posters that you see around you. Today’s poster deals with the topic of love and towards the bottom of it you can see the scripture that was just read for us. Much of it is probably familiar, but sometimes it’s helpful to hear familiar passages in their original contexts. Often times, the setting of a passage can shed light upon its intent and meaning. This morning I want to bring our attention to the last two section (slides) of today’s scripture – the contrast of the pious religious figures who Jesus damns and the widow who gave everything she had.

          I suppose that I decided to preach on these last two sections of today’s scripture because a classmate of mine (Andy Gill) from seminary published an article on the Christian website Patheos entitled, “MegalomaniacticPastors: What if Your Pastor’s a Functional Psychopath?” The image at the top of the article depicted a scene from the famous show House of Cards where Frank Underwood, President of the United States and noted sociopath, skillfully manipulated a church’s congregation to deflect blame away from his role in the death of someone’s child. Now, I haven’t spent much time talking to the author of this article, even though we went to seminary together, we never really crossed paths. As a result, Mike might know him better than me. However, I do like to read what he publishes online. His writing is insightful and usually quite pointed. I don’t always agree with him, often times I feel like his perspective is shaped by a bit of a chip on his shoulder that he must have acquired in his past experiences with evangelical megachurch cultures, but I do find his writing to be useful reading and this week it connected with the scriptures I was looking to preach on.

          The whole point of my acquaintances article wasn’t really new. Forbes and many other journals have reported on the prevalence of sociopaths in religion for many years now. They even have a ranking system for the occupations that attract the most and least sociopaths, based upon psychological studies. [1]

Most:

1.     CEO

2.     Lawyer

3.     Media

4.     Sales

5.     Surgeon

6.     Journalist

7.     Police Officers

8.     Clergy

9.     Chef

10.  Civil Servants

Least:

1.     Care Aide

2.     Nurse

3.     Therapist

4.     Craftsperson

5.     Beautician/Stylist

6.     Charity Worker

7.     Teacher

8.     Creative Artist

9.     Doctor

10.  Accountant

So, my acquaintances argument wasn’t really a new concern, but it’s one we often face when we turn on Christian television and see preachers asking for ‘seed money’ that will make you rich or even the differences between one of the 20^th centuries greatest preachers, who was undoubtedly a sincere and authentic man of genuine intentions, and a son who makes close to a million dollars a year running ministries based out of North Carolina without many of the ethical boundaries his father was sure to employ.

          I think that there are genuine questions we should have around many of the ‘Christian’ leaders and practices that we have seen in this country. Jesus himself throws shade at these things! So, when we see prosperity gospel preachers entice poor people out of the little they already have, we should be appalled. Jesus told us that these people who use appearances and earthly conceptions of holiness to manipulate others will in the end face condemnation. They are wolves’ intent on devouring their flocks. Likewise, when we see preachers preying on people’s fears or emotions, we should wonder what they’re gaining from that. Are they, in a sense, holding the people they’re baptizing under water for far longer than is necessary just because it gives them that extra little bit of pleasure?

          As someone who grew up around Pentecostal and Southern Baptist churches, I’ve seen a lot of emotional manipulation within the church. In some contexts, a pastor’s success can be tied to how well he pulls at the emotions of the congregation, as though the crowd was nothing more than a marionette in need of deft fingers capable of synchronizing its movements with the choreography of a dance. The words, movements, and lighting can be adjusted to create an experience – perhaps even a high – before the people even arrive.

          But this brings us to an important question. What’s the difference between sociopathic manipulation and art? My acquaintance ended his article with a quote from Donald Miller which said, “I think a lot of […] shame-based religious and political [methodologies have] more to do with keeping people contained than with setting them free. And I’m no fan of it.” Art, like religion, also elicits emotional responses intentionally. It creates things in the tangible world to affect the worlds inside of you, your neighbor, and me. When we go to a novel, a play, or a movie, we are, in a sense, looking to be moved by the force of something – we’re seeking a moment of change or reinforcement. But the question for art, like religion, is intent. When an artist creates a work to confine, rather than liberate, you we might call it propaganda.

          Likewise, when faith is used to confine, restrict, and exploit you we can justifiable call it sociopathic. Religious sociopathy exists not just in the leaders who seek extraordinary amounts of recognition, honor, and financial gain, but also in institutions that care more about building empires than healthy lives. When a church community loses sight of the larger picture of how faith fits into the whole human experience, it loses a central element intrinsic to the power of the Gospel. Faith touches all aspects of our humanity – our emotions, our intellect, our spirits, and our social lives. When we lose sight of helping each other grow on all of these fronts, we fail to truly exhibit the love of God – which is what we are called to live into. Our lives should be shaped by a love that affects every aspect of our humanity. If we can do that, then we too can be like the widow who gave everything. Our submission to the movement of the Spirit, which elicits love in everything it touches, is what empowers and saves us.

---

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/01/05/the-top-10-jobs-that-attract-psychopaths/#1424f81d4d80

Abraham Kuyper Prize for Public Theology

Thus far, I haven't weighed in on Princeton Seminary's decision to abstain from awarding the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Public Theology to Tim Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. However, I would like to be very clear. I support the seminary's decision to rescind it's decision to award the Prize to Keller, yet retain it's invitation for him to speak. I have no issues with inviting like Keller to Princeton to speak. He is, after all, a very successful pastor.

However, I do think that it is appalling that the Abraham Kuyper Center for Public Theology decided to award him with a cash prize and formal honor without carefully considering the message they were sending. As Mainline Protestants, we can respect our conservative brothers and sisters as fellow Christians, but we should never give the impression that we endorse their bigotry, racism, homophobia, or other exclusionary ideologies.

I signed the petition to reverse the decision to award the Kuyper Prize to Tim Keller precisely because I do not want my alma mater to be associated with those things. We already live in a society where the Gospel is seen as an oppressive force intent on repression and exclusion, where white heteronormative narratives even define common conceptions of soteriology, we don't need to reinforce those perceptions and blur the lines between those who endorse those views and those who do not. Dechristianization will deliver it's blow to American Evangelicalism in good time, that process has already begun, and there's no need to fight evangelicals or conservatives. Such a tactic is fruitless.

However, progressive Christians should retain their distinct identity because it is that identity that can survive the progress of dechristianization. A postchristian America is not going to turn towards Tim Keller's message. It will, instead, turn towards a far more robust post-Christendom faith of inclusiveness. Refusing to endorse Keller is important precisely because it is his Christendom that must fall in order for the Gospel to be reborn.

I support my female colleagues and I support the LGBTQ community and I do not believe that Princeton should endorse those who seek to silence and oppress them.

Merleau-Ponty on What it Means to be Human

"Merleau-Ponty sees the body and perception as the seat of personhood, or subjectivity. At root, a human being, is a perceiving and experiencing organism, intimately inhabiting and immediately responding to her environment."

Havi Carel, Illness: The Cry of the Flesh, revised edition (Durham, UK: Acumen, 2013), pp. 24-25.

Fromm on Social Pathologies

“The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make these vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same form of mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society, 1955

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

A Poem by Dylan Thomas:

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Poetry

"The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." Matthew Arnold, "The Study of Poetry" Essays in Criticism, 1889.

Love: A Sermon from Feb 19th 2017

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

“Set me as a seal upon your heart,
    as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
    passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
    a raging flame.
⁷ Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
    all the wealth of one’s house,
    it would be utterly scorned.”

Sermon:

          Some of you may not know this, but one of Dorothy’s jobs is to sit and listen to the random and often crazy ideas of her boss. For quite some time now, I’ve been going on about how I’ve been wanting to teach on Song of Solomon. And as you might expect, she’ll sit there and nod her head and give that look that says, “Sure, I understand. But are you sure that’s a good idea?” When that happens, I usually imagine myself standing there then laugh and walk back in my office wondering if I should really do something so foolish. After all, there’s a reason most preachers stay clear of this book.

          But I suppose that my interest in teaching this book comes from two sources. First, no one ever touches on it. For me, that’s a fun challenge to be surmounted. There’s something exhilarating about doing something different and perhaps even a bit scandalous. Second, I picked up a commentary last year that has had me pretty jazzed. It’s entitled, Exquisite Desire: Religion, the Erotic, and the Song of Songs and it’s written by Carey Ellen Walsh. If you ever come to my office I can show it to you, and the first thing you’ll notice is that the cover is well suited to the content of the book it studies. The cover illustrates the genre of it's subject - religious erotica.

          The tipping point in my resistance to touching on this book of the Bible finally came this week with the celebration of Valentine’s Day. When I came to the office on Tuesday I had to come up with a sermon topic so it made sense for me to preach about love. I’ve preached on love before, of course, but never romantic erotic love. As most of you know, the Greek New Testament has a number of words for love and each carries a different connotation. Greek, unlike English, distinguishes between different types of love. Many of us are probably familiar with the term agape which refers to the kind of love that God or a parent may have for us. Nearby we have a city with a Greek name – Philadelphia is drawn from phileo which is the kind of love one might have towards their close friends, think David and Jonathan.  But there is, of course, another type of love, namely eros. So today I want us to think through this kind of love.

          In a moment, Marie is going to start a clip that might help us think through this topic. Some of you may not be very familiar with some of the references, but I think you will get the overall message anyway. I think that there’s a central lesson to be learned.

          Our society, or perhaps even most societies, is in a constant state of flux over the question of what love really means. We don’t really know how to answer the question definitively. It’s a bit of a mystery really, and yet I think there are some things we can know. First and foremost, there are always mythologies that play into our concepts of love. We have the fairy tales where a noble knight rides in in chivalric prose to save the fair maiden from some sort of evil. We have the idea of soul mates – the idea that there was one specific person God created for you to marry. We have the mythology that couples are supposed to feel the same feelings they felt on their wedding day 40 years later, as though no one ever feels the seven-year itch or that ‘happily ever after’ somehow comes easily.

          In some ways, the Song of Solomon is like these things. It’s a poem that “portrays erotic love between two young people who are not yet betrothed and whose union is not yet recognized by the young woman’s family.”[1] Pastors aren’t normally drawn to preach on texts that hint strongly at premarital hanky-panky. But maybe there’s a lesson in our history with this book. Christians have an interpretative tradition that’s nearly two thousand years old now, wherein we read this book of the Bible allegorically. In other words, we have often realized that we can’t really fit this book of the Bible together easily with our traditional views about what a young couple should be up to before they get married.[2] So, we’ve decided to read a rather long poem, unsurprisingly, in a rather poetic way. We’ve said that this poetry foreshadows the love Christ has for His Church – that it’s true purpose is to highlight the final union the two will have when Christ finally returns. This approach harkens back to the famous phrase Paul gave us when he said, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

          I think there’s truth to this point. I believe that it is an edifying and hopeful lens we can take towards our future. However, I also think that it obscures the value that the Song of Solomon might have in itself, some intrinsic worth that it might have apart from our attempts to explain it away through the words of Paul or other Biblical writers. The video we just watched talked a lot about how the old chivalrous ideas of love are falling away in the age of online dating – how ‘excarnation’ is eroding the concepts of love we developed in the late middle ages.

When I was much younger it was easy to point out the flaws of the fairy tale love popularized by Disney movies, but maybe there is a value in the fairy tale even if it’s not true. Maybe it was never intended to tell the truth we find in history or science. Perhaps it’s possible that the Song of Solomon was never intended to serve as an ethical treatise for how we should go about dating, marrying, or instructing our children. Poetry isn’t usually intended for those purposes, is it? We don’t go to the Psalms to learn how we should treat others. If we did, we’d all probably be quite violent! No, we go to the Psalms and Song of Solomon because they both speak to something in us that is definitively human – they speak to our souls.

I think that it is possible that in a day and age when we’re experiencing massive levels of objectification and ‘excarnation’ we might need the fairy tales to remind us of the ideals we should strive for. One of my favorite philosophers is the Swiss-born Alain de Botton. In his novel The Course of Love, he writes about our shallow understanding of real-life intimacy: "What we typically call love is only the start of love."[3] And yet this is one of the cruelest games we play on young couples. We suggest that this transitory high is supposed to last, as though it will never change with time, experience, and strong personalities. It’s as though we don’t want to tell them that they’re going to be tested. It’s as though we don’t want to let them in on the secret that they’re going to have to work hard later on. Sometimes, I wonder if it’s as though no one wants to spoil the surprise.

For most of the people in this room, this was the big challenge. Most of us have had to face the crumbling façade of expectations that we thought we knew, only to be challenged to rise up to the occasion of trying to figure out what love means beyond the fairy tales, beyond the myths, and beyond the images of our youth. On the other hand, those of us who are a bit younger are facing a completely different monster. I, like most of the millennials here, have live not only at the tail end of the chivalric period we all share but also the beginning of the new era that we just learned about in that video. Our society has moved away from the dreamy land of shiny knights and fair maidens and landed in a world where we draft lists of what we want in a partner. As the video pointed out, these lists can often reflect an element of our own narcissism. Or, if we set aside our dreams, we shut ourselves off emotionally and go through the dating process trying to stimulate ourselves without becoming emotionally vulnerable. I think that it’s fair to say that we haven’t really made any progress. We’ve just added a bit of sophistication to our chaos.

This is why I wish more people told us about a deeper kind love, the long-term kind. The one forged by compromise, patience and accepting other people as they are, not as we wish them to be. I’m particularly drawn to the words of Paul, where he says,

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Cor. 13:4-8)

This is why the canon is so important. As Christians, we read our texts in the context of the whole Bible. If we stuck to the words of Song of Solomon alone, we probably wouldn’t have much of an ethical outlook on how we can erotically love someone ethically. We’d have some really explicit erotic literature, but we wouldn’t have a larger context to place it into.

          More than anything else, love is an act. It’s something we choose to do. Up behind me there are four quotes, one of these is from the French Existentialist Albert Camus. As you can see it reads, “What does love add to desire? An inestimable thing: friendship.”[4] I think this is, perhaps, the most essential lesson. It’s easy to figure out that the two most important things for a marriage are kindness and empathy.[5] This is true not just for romance, but for all relationships. Love isn’t just about chemistry. Chemistry is a great start, but it’s not the most essential part. Love is about building something beautiful.

          This may be a but abstract, but I think it’s pretty essential. Beauty and love are intricately connected and I’m not just referring to how good looking the person next to you might be. No, I’m talking about what you can build with the person next to you, your spouse, your friends, your children. There’s a reason the Bible often refers to the beauty of Creation when everything is going well and its ugliness when God’s mad at what we’ve been doing. There’s an inherent value in what we can build together. That’s why we gather here together in this place, or with our families, or with our friends. We’re trying to live into the possibility of building something beautiful to live within both in the present and in the future.

          I don’t want to get into Plato too much this morning, although I’m sure that you all know that I’m tempted, but I think this is important. Why would the creator of the universe create our world at all? He certainly doesn’t need us. Perhaps the answer is the same as the answer any artist would give. Beauty is always valuable, particular when it’s present in relationships – be they romantic, fraternal, familial, or even church-based. As one author, I read this week wrote:

“Beauty either of an individual, or indeed of anything else we value as supremely beautiful, is the creative environment in which we try to secure some share of whatever we deem to be of value for ourselves.”[6]

All of us here together, that’s beautiful. It’s valuable. When we build something together with our partners that too is beautiful – it has inherent value. It’s made stronger by the guidelines and teachings that we can find through the Bible.

          But I think it’s important to remember that beauty isn’t just about ethics. It’s not just about our lists of what to do and what not to do. Beauty can be the thing that drives our efforts to do the right thing. The act of creating can push us in the right direction. So perhaps it makes sense that we get the Song of Solomon before we ever get Paul. Maybe we’re human before we’re ever civilized. Maybe we need fairy tales to guide us through the long lonely nights and push us towards the kinds of acts that make us a better species. Maybe we need a weird little book smack-dab in the middle of the Bible to remind us that the ideals and naivety behind a little hanky-panky might actually be what makes us truly beautiful. Should that be guided by wisdom and experience? Of course, but maybe there’s a little wisdom in the Song of Solomon after all – a testament to the ideals towards the passions that should drive us all to make the world just a little more beautiful. After all, I’m pretty convinced that God is in the business of transforming broken things into things of wonder. May we all strive to live and love into the example Christ gave us – to be moved to build and create relationships of beauty. Amen.

---

[1] Michael V. Fox, “Introduction to The Song of Solomon” in NRSV Study Bible.

[2] Many of these traditional views aren’t actually drawn from strong Jewish sources, but Stoic ones that began to influence the Ancient Near East roughly 200 years before Christ, culminating around 200-300 AD. This was, in a sense, a sexual revolution. See: Michel Foucault, The Care of Self: Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1988).

[3] Alain de Botton, The Course of Love (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), p. 8.

[4] Albert Camus, Carnets III (1951-1959).

[5] Emily Esfahani Smith, “Masters of Love: Science says lasting relationships come down to – you guessed it – kindness and generosity” in The Atlantic, June 12, 2014; and Jake Newfield, “Why Empathy Is Key for Your Relationships”, The Huffington Post, November 20^th 2015.

[6] Frisbee Sheffield, “Why There Is No Such Thing as a Soul Mate: Reading Plato on Valentine’s Day”: http://www.thecritique.com/articles/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-soul-mate/?utm_content=buffer1d699&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Philosophy and Tyrants

"The philosopher's every attempt at directly influencing the tyrant is necessarily ineffectual."

Alexandre Kojève, Tyranny and Wisdom in Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth, eds., Leo Strauss, On Tyranny: Including the Strauss-Kojève Debate (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 165-166.

Proud Pastor

I couldn't be prouder of my congregants. A week ago my ladies boarded a bus at our denomination's headquarters in Valley Forge and rode down to Washington D.C. to join the protest. Two of them are featured in this American Baptist Home Mission Societies article:

http://abhms.org/about-us/mission-stories/american-baptists-share-reasons-for-marching-in-d-c/

 

The Hegemony of Pop Culture

"They live in the unreal realm of the mega-rich, yet they hide behind a folksy facade, wolfing down pizza at the Oscars and cheering sports teams from V.I.P. boxes... Opera, dance, poetry, and the literary novel are still called 'elitist', despite the fact that the world's real power has little use for them. The old hierarchy of high and low culture has become a sham: pop is the ruling party."

Alex Ross, "The Naysayers: Walter Benjamin, Theodore Adorno, and the Critique of Pop Culture", The New Yorker, September 15th 2014.

Adorno on Truth and Suffering

"The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject."

Theodore Adorno, Negative Dialectics (Routledge, 2003), p. 17.

John Dewey on the Threat that Totalitarianism Poses to Democracy

"The serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here - within ourselves and our institutions."

Erich Fromm citing John Dewey in Escape from Freedom (Avon, 1965), pp. 19-20.

Societal Disintegration and the Rationality of Narratives

Earlier this year, in a sermon about postmodernity, I preached about Foucault's inversion of Sir Francis Bacon's "Knowledge is Power." For Foucault, power is knowledge. But what does this mean? It means that the social disintegration we see around us, particularly in the increasing bifurcation of our political worldviews, can be explained by Foucault. "Post-truth" politics seems to be the phrase of 2016, but Foucault predicted this and even suggested that it undergirded our systems of rationality nearly four decades ago. The increasing separation of our worldviews (Republican and Democratic) is a reflection of the structures of power, and their constituent methodologies, that create and sustain the narratives and news-cycles that we consume. Without a common enemy, like the Soviet Union, our competitive worlds have turned on each other, rather than unifying behind a singular methodology - like the kinds of journalism we saw under the Cold War.

Academics and Ministry

One of the pastors who had the largest impact on my own development just started a sabbatical in the American Southwest to write poetry. It's one of his great talents. Sometimes it even makes its way into his sermons. I've always been inspired by spiritual mentors who try to live holistic journeys, full of a rich mixture of curiosity and empathy. For me the academic side of ministry isn't a retreat into obscurity, but an engagement with all of life's riches. If we're called t...o walk alongside and hold people as they face their own joys and trials, shouldn't we strive to understand them as much as possible? God sees the depths of our joys, our discoveries, and our pains. Christ lived them. Part of our task as Christians is to strive to be like Christ to those around us, even in the depths by which he drew near to people. That's my thought, perhaps dream, for this evening.

Marcuse on Nonalienated Labor

"The real danger for the established system is not the abolition of labor but the possibility of nonalienated labor as the basis of the reproduction of society."

Herbert Marcuse, "Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society" in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).

Benjamin on Marx's Project

"When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalist mode of production this mode was in its infancy. He went back to basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself."

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Shocken Books, 2007), p. 211.

Hobbes on Freedom

"A Free-Man, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to doe what he has a will to do."

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 146.

Jürgen Habermas on Communication

"Liberation from hunger and misery does not necessarily converge with liberation from servitude and degradation; there is no automatic developmental relation between labour and interaction."

Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Beacon Press, 1973), p. 169.

Erich Fromm on Marx's Fetishised Labour

Spinoza, Hegel, and Goethe all held that, "man is alive only inasmuch as he is productive, inasmuch as he grasps the world outside of himself in the act of expressing his own specific human powers, and of grasping the world with these powers. Inasmuch as man is not productive, inasmuch as he is receptive and passive, he is nothing, he is dead. In this productive process, man realises his own essence, he returns to his own essence, which in theological language is nothing other than his return to God."

Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 26.

Horkheimer on Utopia and Schopenhauer's Wheel of Ixion

"The ensnarement of humanity in eternal nature and an unswerving struggle against temporal injustice are already central in his thinking. As essential as he finds it that the 'unjust distribution of goods' be abolished, he nevertheless wonders if the fulfillment of the boldest utopias would not leave the 'great' torment untouched, 'because the core of his life is... torment and dying."

Alfred Schmidt, 'Max Horkheimer's Intellectual Physiognomy', in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, ed. Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bonns and John McCole (Boston: MIT Press, 1995), p. 26.

Horkeimer's Spring

"I feel sorry for you, you now know the truth... Nut it is not enough to take off the rose-tinted glasses and then to stand there confused and helpless. You have to use your eyes and learn to walk in the colder world. Intoxicate yourselves and praise every minute that you spend without being conscious, for consciousness is terrible; only Gods can possess it clear and undistorted and still smile."

Max Horkheimer's vagrant speaking to the young couple in  Spring as cited in: John Abrometit, Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge University press, 2011), pp. 31-32.

Marcuse on Liberation

"All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own."

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. 7.

Thinking about Peace in Times of War, Injustice, and Dehumanization.

December 4th, 2016

Isaiah 10:1-11

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,
    who write oppressive statutes,
² to turn aside the needy from justice
    and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil,
    and that you may make the orphans your prey!
³ What will you do on the day of punishment,
    in the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help,
    and where will you leave your wealth,
⁴ so as not to crouch among the prisoners
    or fall among the slain?
For all this his anger has not turned away;
    his hand is stretched out still.

⁵ Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—
    the club in their hands is my fury!
⁶ Against a godless nation I send him,
    and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
    and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
⁷ But this is not what he intends,
    nor does he have this in mind;
but it is in his heart to destroy,
    and to cut off nations not a few.
⁸ For he says:
“Are not my commanders all kings?
⁹ Is not Calno like Carchemish?
    Is not Hamath like Arpad?
    Is not Samaria like Damascus?
¹⁰ As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols
    whose images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria

shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols
    what I have done to Samaria and her images?”

Sermon:

          In 1954, amidst the fear and terror of the Cold War, a German-Jewish exile named Herbert Marcuse wrote that, "The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the retreat - in the realm of thought as well as in that of society."[1] It’s a statement that refers to the many faces that dehumanization and horror can take on. At that time the world was facing the possibility of nuclear annihilation, a possibility and terror that we are perhaps too eager to forget about these days. Ten years after writing those words, Marcuse went on to express his fears about how interrelated productivity and destruction are. The more we produce and consume, the more waste we generate. Rather than encouraging schools to embrace curriculums that focused on individuals we had begun to move towards a system where our hopes, thoughts, and fears became attached to institutions like governments, mass media, and corporate interests. The outbreak of the New Left and the student protests of the 1960’s were largely a product of a search for individuality – of young people crying out for a place for subjectivity – the ever-pressing question of “who am I?” and “what does it mean to live an authentic life?”. And in the midst of this also stood the same dark specter that we see in our world today – “misery in the face of unprecedented wealth.”[2]

     Much has changed, yet little has too. It’s a paradox of our contemporary life. Each of you can recount the thousands of ways your lives have changed over the years. Yet, if you think about some of the fundamental things, a lot has changed very little. The world still faces the abyss of nuclear annihilation, war, famine, and the existential angst of realizing that “our lofty ideals about the rights of the individual under democracy have in fact yielded a society in which ‘choice’ – at least for a certain demographic – is the difference between two forms of scented body wash.”[3] To put it another way, we’ve come to a place in the history of civilization where ‘uniqueness’ and ‘individuality’ have been commodified. So much so, in fact, that varying degrees of uniqueness are a privilege that come with geography, education, parentage, and exposure. As the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu argued, we don’t choose our tastes so much as the micro-specifics of our class determine them.

     All of this can be encompassed under the realization that some things haven’t changed for the better 1964. Some things certainly have, but many of the problems that we faced back then still exist now. In some respects, they even exist in more extreme forms. In the 1960’s young adults rose up in an attempted revolt against many of the societal ills they saw around them. Other did not, but many did. Today, millennials have a derogatory label that they sometimes throw at people. If a girl wears a particular kind of outfit, behaves a particular way, and gets a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks every morning she might be labeled “basic.” It’s a label that implies that she is boring and not creative enough to be interesting. Now, I think that’s interesting not only because it’s an incredibly dehumanizing thing to say about another person, but because it also flips the behavior of the beatniks and hippies right on its head. Rather than rejecting consumerism, wastefulness, or other extremes, today’s hipsters judge people on the basis of the ‘authenticity’ or ‘uniqueness’ of their purchases and hobbies. Classism and stigmas have not disappeared, they have only taken on new – ever more consumeristic – forms. Our society still faces the threats that Marcuse listed; they’ve only changed clothing.

     Most of us probably assume that the book of Isaiah is paired with Advent and Christmas because he provides us with a lot of the foreshadowing, prophecies, and imagery we use for the Baby Jesus. I think that’s true. Yet, I also can’t help but notice the irony in pairing this particular prophet with a season that has become all that it has become for us as 21^st century Americans. Let’s list out all of issues that the lectionary provides for us as we reflect on the theme of peace. Isaiah lists:

• Evil and unjust laws and political actions.
• Indifference and a turning away from the needs of the poor.
• Robbing the poor of what is justly theirs. In the context of ancient Israel, that would have included the right to basic things like food as well as fair treatment before the law.
• Isaiah, speaking for God, condemns those who prey on widows and orphans – the weakest in society. God is in the business of getting mad when people take advantage of those who are most vulnerable.

Isaiah even goes so far as to goad those who have committed these crimes. He insinuates that their money and privilege will not protect them from the wrath that God will unleash upon them. The wonderful thing about the prophets is that they show how thoroughly enraged God can get with those who commit crimes against other humans. He is, after all, a God of justice. So, when we get to the second-half of today’s lectionary text for the season of Advent – the season where we celebrate the coming of God – we hear about God using another nation (Assyria) as his hand of wrath, even though they too are evil. God does not like it when any nation or people, regardless of size, behaves evilly. However, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that he regards the bad behavior of his own people as an even worse offense.

     So why all of this on this Sunday? Why did the people who composed the lectionary choose this passage of scripture to talk about peace? I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this particular passage dates back to medieval use. However, I can say that I think that this passage can help us reflect on the message of peace in a way that is critically important. Peace is not just about the absence of violence. Peace is something that flows out of justice and righteousness. There can be no peace when the poor and vulnerable are being exploited. A person or society that commits injustices can not only not have peace with God, but cannot realistically claim to have peace in any real material sense either. I believe that there is good reason to believe that the Bible tells us economic violence and exploitation undermines peace in a material and ontological sense as well. If one segment of society is stealing from, or exploiting, another part of society the people who are responsible for that not only have to face the fact that they’ve violated God’s laws, but they also have to face the fact that they’ve undermined the trust and peace that helps the different components of a society work together cooperatively – the peace between peoples who may share a common language, culture, religion, or geography.

     Today we’re celebrating the coming of the true Prince of Peace and that’s a powerful thing. It’s a title we probably think about less than we should. When we invoke it, we might glance at it and just assume that it means that one day there won’t be any more warfare. I think we miss something very fundamental to a biblical conception of peace when we do that. Sometimes it’s helpful to really sit with a biblical idea like peace and look at the contexts in which it is used.

     Even if we think about the usage of the term “holiness” what are we really referring to? Many of us probably have a number of extrapolations as to what it means, but in the Biblical context it’s really just a referral to God’s removal from the taint of everything we’ve just been talking about. Holiness, when it is applied to God, is a recognition of his transcendence; and in that respect, it is related to the concept of righteousness and majesty. God is absolute and complete, totally self-sufficient and non-contingent. As a consequence, God is not affected by things like insufficiency. God is, in our faith, good and pure; and consequently righteous – incapable of doing evil. We are obviously very capable of doing evil. Holiness is really an issue of that distinction between us, beings capable of atrocious things, and God who is not.

     Peace is a similar thing. God is peace in the fact that there is harmony within the trinity; one substance expressed in three persons who are not in conflict. We are not blessed to have the luxury of having a substance that we all share. However, we do have a common humanity, so peace for us is inextricably bound to righteousness. Our task is to be at peace God and one another. We cannot have one without the other. Its our acts of right and wrong that have an effects upon the peace we see in the world. Acts of physical, emotional, or economic violence remove us from the kind of peace that God calls us to – that Jesus embodies. Words that we may express that dehumanize other people also destabilize the peace that God calls us to. In a sense, we fall short of peace whenever we fail to be just. That’s why we read Isaiah this morning. The coming of God is about the coming of peace.

     Today, we’re celebrating a different kind of future. We’re celebrating the opportunity to live into a different future – a future where each and every one of us strives to imitate Christ and make the world a more peaceful place. Jesus doesn’t just redeem us and offer us forgiveness. He demonstrates what a more perfect humanity can look like. Following Jesus is about following that example. May we strive to make the world a better place, to live lives of love, and to act justly. If we can do that, we can make the world a more peaceful place.

---

[1] Herbert Marcuse, "Epilogue," Reason and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433ff.

[2] Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction to the First Edition," One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. xlv.

[3] Anne Helen Petersen, “What We’re Really Afraid of When We Call Someone ‘Basic’: Breaking Down Why We’re Actually Dismissive of All Things Pumpkin Spice” (Buzzfeed, October 20^th 2014): https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/basic-class-anxiety?utm_term=.mp4rN9jnP#.mmWVaYEZL

Marcuse on the Need for Change

"... the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever before. Needed by whom? The answer continues to be the same: by the society as a whole, for every one of its members. The union of growing productivity and growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the surrender of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth constitute the most impartial indictment - even if they are the raison d'être of this society but only its by-product: its sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth, is itself irrational."

Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction to the First Edition," One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. xlv.

Marcuse on Totalitarianism

"The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the retreat - in the realm of thought as well as in that of society."

Herbert Marcuse, "Epilogue," Reason and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433ff.

Benjamin on Capitalism

"Capitalism, was a natural phenomenon with which a new dream-filled sleep came over Europe, and, through it, a reactivation of mythic forces."

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Belknap, 2002), p. 391.

Schiller on Play

"Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word a man, and he is only wholly Man when he is playing."

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man: A Series of Letters, trans. R. Snell (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1965), p. 80.

Marcuse on the Practical Element of Philosophy

"Only when [concrete philosophy] influences existence in the public sphere, in its daily being, in the sphere where it really exists, can it hasten the movement of this existence in the direction of truth... At the end of every concrete philosophy stands the public act."

Herbert Marcuse, "Über die konkrete Philosophie," Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 62 (1929): 124, 127.

Marcuse on Marx's Rejection of the 'bios theoretikos'

"... historical necessity is realized through men's activities. Men can bypass this activity - recent history is full of such bungled revolutionary situations - and can degrade themselves from subject to objects of history. The task of theory is to free praxis in light of the knowledge of necessity."

Herbert Marcuse, "Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism," Telos 4 (Fall 1969): 6.

Marcuse on the Problem of Reification/Alienation and Inauthenticity

"Everything is an endless sum of activities, one after the other, yet all are inextricably interconnected and determined. All these activities are divorced from the agent who is not part of them, but only deals with them, minds his own business, or - the ultimate absurdity - must undertake activities in order to live. It is 'the metamorphosis of personal into material powers,' which has left behind 'abstract individuals, deprived of all true vitality,' so that man's own activity confronts him as an alien power. This penetrates to the very foundation of capitalist society. It goes beneath the economic and ideological forms of the 'reality of an inhuman existence.' On the other hand, it confronts this with the reality of human existence demanding radical action."

Herbert Marcuse, "Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism," Telos 4 (Fall 1969): 6.

Marcuse on a Revolution of Affects

"[T]he existing society is reproduced not only in the mind, the consciousness of men, but also in their senses; and no persuasion, no theory, no reasoning can break this prison, unless the fixed, petrified sensibility of the individuals is 'dissolved,' opened to a new dimension on history, until the oppressive familiarity with the given object world is broken - broken in a second alienation: that from the alienated society."

Herbert Marcuse, Counterrevolution and Revolt (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 16-17.

MLK on the Relationship Between Science and Religion

"Softmindedness often invades religion. This is why religion has sometimes rejected new truth with a dogmatic passion. Through edicts and bulls, inquisitions and excommunications, the church has attempted to prorogue truth and place an impenetrable stone wall in the path of the truth-seeker. The historical-philological criticism of the Bible is considered by the softminded as blasphemous, and reason is often looked upon as the exercise of a corrupt faculty. Softminded persons have revised the Beatitudes to read, 'Blessed are the pure in ignorance: for they shall see God.'"

"This has also led to a widespread belief that there is a conflict between science and religion. But this is not true. There may be a conflict between softminded religionists and toughminded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the march of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."

Martin Luther King, Jr. "A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart," The Strength to Love.

Marcuse on the Weakness in the Chain of Exploitation

"However, the exemplary force, the ideological power of the external revolution, can come to fruition only if the internal structure and cohesion of the capitalist system begin to disintegrate. The chain of exploitation must break at its strongest link."

Herbert Marcuse, “Solidarity” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 82

Marcuse on the Sovreign's Enforcement of Language

"The existing society defines the transcending action on its, society's, own terms - a self-validating procedure, entirely legitimate, even necessary for this society: one of the most effective right of the Sovereign is the right to establish enforceable definitions of words."

"The language of the prevailing Law and Order, validated by the courts and by the police, is not only the voice but also the deed of suppression."

"the established vocabulary discriminates a priori against the opposition - it protects the establishment."

Herbert Marcuse, “Subverting Forces - in Transition” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp.73-77.

Marcuse on the Agression of the Oppressed

"This is the aggressiveness of those with the mutilated experience, with the false consciousness and the false needs, the victims of repression who, for their living, depend on the repressive society and repress the alternative. Their violence is that of the Establishment and takes as targets figures which, rightly or wrongly, seem to be different, and to represent an alternative."

Herbert Marcuse, “Subverting Forces - in Transition” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), p. 51.

Marcuse on Appropriation, Liberation, and the Intrinsic relation of Autonomy and Beauty

"No matter what sensibility art may wish to develop, no matter what Form it may wish to give to things, to life, no matter what vision it may wish to communicate - a radical change of experience is within the technical reaches of powers whose terrible imagination organizes the world in their own image and perpetuates, ever bigger and better, the mutilated experience."

"However, the productive forces, chained in the infrastructure of these societies, counteract this negativity in progress."

"Released from the bondage to exploitation, the imagination, sustained by the achievements of science, could turn its productive power to the radical reconstruction of experience and the universe of experience. In this reconstruction, the historical topos of the aesthetic would change: it would find expression in the transformation of the Lebenswelt - society as a work of art. This 'utopian' goal depends (as every stage in the development of freedom did) on a revolution at the obtainable level of liberation."

"In other words: the transformation is conceivable only as the way in which free men (or rather men in the practice of freeing themselves) shape their life in solidarity, and build an environment in which the struggle for existence loses its ugly and aggressive features. The Form of freedom is not merely self-determination and self-realization, but rather the determination and realization of goals which enhance, protect, and unite life on earth. And this autonomy would find expression not only in the mode of production and production relations but also in the individual relations among men, in their language and in their silence, in their gestures and their looks, in their sensitivity, in their love and hate. The beautiful would be an essential quality of their freedom."

Herbert Marcuse, “The New Sensibility” An Essay on Liberation (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1971), pp. 45-46.