AUDIO
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Archbishop Peter Jensen's Christmas Message 2011 on the centrality of Jesus to human history
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Do you find that when someone asks you to talk about yourself you immediately offer your occupation? At least, you do if you are proud of what you do. That we feel pride - or shame - at this point is quite telling. It is our achievements that make us; our lack of achievement leaves us wondering who we really are. Ever been to a school reunion? Well, if you are slightly ashamed of your occupation you probably didn't go, would be my guess. because it reflects on who you are.
The modern world has made human actions the basic compositional unit of the human self. We moderns understand ourselves primarily as acting subjects - as people who do things. In a previous era, family relations or roles may have been the way in people understood themselves and each other.
The damaging consequences of this idolization of the acting self are numerous: from an instrumentality in human relationships (they are only good insofar as they provide me with what I need in order to bolster my C.V.), to a removal of the dignity of those who cannot act, or who are limited in their ability to act (the disabled and the elderly in particular). If it is by action that we establish ourselves as true men and women, then what are we to think of those whose ability to act is limited? Can a person who cannot act be truly good, if they cannot express their virtues in action?
In the church we are not immune from this sort of thinking by a long shot. Of course, we are urged in the Bible to express godly virtues in holy actions. And we certainly feel the urgency of mission in a world that appears deaf to the gospel. How could we not be frenetically busy with every kind of activity in the service of God? But who we are is not a composite of these virtues-in-action.
This where Martin Luther reminds us so well of what Paul taught us: that human beings are not constituted by their acts at all. The gospel of the crucified Christ actually overthrows that path to self-realization! Just as thinking that we are justified by our works is a terrible proud mistake, so is thinking we are most truly expressing and finding ourselves in our human achievements.
Justification by faith explains that it is God who judges, declares and determines; it is he who calls human beings to themselves. It is he who even gives them to themselves. There cannot be self-made people, not really. The extremity of the cross - that the Son of God would need to suffer so - shows us just what proud failures we are in the business of making ourselves.
This then is the basis for a true human agency. We are re-created for a new human work - prepared beforehand for us (see Eph 2:8-10). That is the 'freedom of a Christian' (to recall one of Luther's most famous pieces): an evangelical freedom to do all sorts of good works. Real faith is not another kind of action. It is only the humble act of casting who you are - your very self no less! - into the hands of God, through Christ Jesus.
Do you really believe this? It is one of great challenges of the gospel to our meritocratic culture, but one that is a challenge to we Christians too. Can you resist the obsessive compulsion to define yourself as a person of action, the woman who has achieved so much, or the man who gets things done?
Certainly, there was an ancient way of thinking in which a noble man was validated by his heroic action in the public sphere. But it was for the elite few to act in this way and embody the virtues. The rest of us were just the cheer squad.
In the middle ages, it was instead the contemplative life that was exalted as the path to true goodness.
The gender issue is fascinating, and I hope some women will comment from their perspective. But it seems to me that women today are in general phenomenally busy, and are tempted to imagine that the complete woman is she who acts successfully in all spheres, public and private.
I don't think men are expected to succeed at home.
When I worked P/T to look after my son, I received some very negative reactions from boomer-aged women. You are treated as a freak or a hero. There is no sense that it is 'normal' for a man to see fatherhood as his primary social role.
There is an opportunity for Christians to be counter-cultural here.. but I'm not sure we are taking it.
My wife would also say that when she was a F/T mum, many people (mainly outside the church) treated her as if she was a non-person. This added to her sense of social isolation. The extent of the social isolation felt by new mums is a recent development, post-feminism.
My parents were accepting of me going to Moore when I was aiming to become a minister. But when I "just" did the B&M, I was asked: "How is this going to help you be a better accountant?"
when I introduced this idea in a lecture at Moore, someone questioned my paralleling of 'work' (ie, labour) and 'good works'... can I really make this application of justification by faith?
I think so, insofar as there is now a kind of secular 'salvation', which equates to something like realising one's true self, or something like that.
1. I agree that the church is more accepting of women as full-time mothers. I think they're less accepting and less aware of women as full-time careerists. To me, it feels like you can't be a full-time worker as a woman in the church and want to have a career. You have to be doing it while you're doing something more important, related to ministry. So you're not defined by what you do most of the time, but what you do for the church.
2. It's very difficult to meet people for the first time and not say what you do. But it's to my church's credit that it took years for me to realise my muso friends from church were actually doctors, vets and other tertiary educated professionals. They certainly hadn't defined themselves that way.
3. As someone who has worked in the tertiary education sector for almost 10 years now, I can say categorically that students, unless they come from a particular "Christian" family that supports them just "studying" arts, or philosophy or something, and therefore are secure enough not to be looking for a "career", do, in the very large majority, want a career that gives them a particular job/role at the end of it. They are looking out for what they can work as at the end of their degree. Degrees now are too expensive for students to be just wanting to "learn" as per universities of old.
Mark - the Protestant work ethic, such as it is, stems from Luther and Calvin's 'affirmation of everyday life': they argued against the special character of the monastic life on the grounds that all of life could be given to the glory of God - including work and domestic life. As this stream of Reformation thought loomed larger and larger as a cultural force, it trumped the key insight about justification by faith. Or, justification by faith was never applied to work and identity in the way it had been applied to religious works...
yes, individualism means that instead of pointing to heroic individuals who might represent the virtues I aspire to (and hence my identity) through action, I now seek to assert myself through my own action.
But collective or more relational identities can be no less idolatrous. If anything, the NT is a polemic against thinking that your national identity conveys special status on you vis a vis God. Likewise, Jesus makes quite a strong case against making family relationships the ultimate source of identity. [Which is why Christians should run very fast from talk of 'family values', btw, but that's for another post!]