Notes Toward A Possible Lenten Project

 

I'm very good at deciding on thought-projects which I project into almost book-length treatises, but end up being a short post that's pretty much drivel.  But it's Lent and I'm casting about for something to do related to Lent.  I try this every year, and every year the six weeks of Lent break my resolutions, and I end up frustrated and disappointed.  So I may be overreaching myself again, we'll see. But I just picked up this book, and already I'm interested in the possibilities.

...for the first time in history we have at hand the means to eliminate most of the world's poverty, and we have had this ability for at least fifty years.(1)  There will always be natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, and when these occur, we frequently do our best to bring aid.  But there is a vast segment of humanity whose daily existence is in question.(2)

We then write and read in the shadow of the oppressed and ill-used of the world, and I claim that from the perspective of helping the poor and the marginalized, the distinction between a theist and and athiest is not relevant in our present day.(3)  There are many starving people who are being given bread to survive by religious organizations, and there are many atheistic ones who ignore the starving for they are not the stuff of those moving up politically to guide the world.  Yes, we can reverse these claims, atheists helping the starving, and theists concerned only with those with money.  But help is needed and required of us, for each and every person is born to be a philosopher.(4) A degree will not be required for those who are now nourished so that they can think for themselves.(5)  Rather, let us simply recall the endless "why's" of our original wonder at the world.(6)  Does that wonder still exist?  Or has it faded? Have we forgotten that we are unique, one of a kind, irreplaceable?(7)  A saint and an atheist may help us understand this miracle of life, this great happening.  Aquinas (1225-74) and Sartre (1905-80) are separated from each other by several hundred years, but I invite you to let their thoughts recall our original wonder that there is a world and that we are in it.(8)

I just want to annotate that passage.  These are the ideas that occurred to me just as I typed those words out, having read them once already (typing them out does that; it slows you down to notice how odd the ideas actually are, when they are odd).

1)  According to the interpretation of the gospels I was taught in seminary, humankind has had the means for over 2000 years.  "The first will be last, and the last first; and the first of all will be last, and servant of all."  Luke says the earliest gathering of believers after the Resurrection actually put this into practice.  But soon enough Paul, being more practical, supported the Roman model of family (his "house churches" were literally the extended family living under one roof, including the servants; although that didn't do much to disturb either family relationships (pater, mater, children) or servanthood.  See., e.g., the Letter to Philemon).

2) Same as it ever was.  See 1) above.

3) Curiously, the most theistic people who are involved in aid to the marginalized are the ones least interested in distinctions between theist and atheist.  I think specifically of Dorothy Day; or perhaps the late Dr. King.  I don't think of either as being evangelists for their beliefs against the claims of atheists.  Or concerned at all with the claims of theism v. atheism.

4) Dorothy Day was  quite convinced of her calling, and any who wanted to help her had to offer help and support on her terms.  But her terms were not evangelical, and she also wasn't worried with "helping" the poor by "changing" the poor.  She insisted they be treated as human beings with agency; not as objects of our mercy or pity.  I find people like Day to be more appropriately "philosophers" because they approach individuals qua individuals, not as categories or subject to categorization.  Philosophers, after all, are supposed to be "lovers of wisdom."

5) See 4).  Who does "think for themselves."  You?  Me?  Are we distinct from those who don't?  The Christian notion of humility is already offended.  Are those "now nourished" the only ones who can accomplish this task?  Are we implicitly accepting the "hierarchy of needs" as fundamental to the human experience?  Are we then, and already, only creatures, and not in any sense that matters "spiritual beings"?

6) " 'It is good to wonder, said the philosopher.  'Space travel has again made children of us all.' " The notion that if we can simply return to an "original" source and start again, clean of the "corruption" of the world, like a child even, may seem like a particularly Christian idea; but it's actually a 19th century Romantic one.  The idea of Wordsworth, more particularly.  "The Child is Father to the Man" is an idea we now take as axiomatic, but it wasn't when Wordsworth penned those lines.  The idea that children are born and live in a state of grace until adulthood or at least adolescence ("teenagers" is the very modern notion, a notion that really isn't 70 years old, yet we think it, too, is as fundamental as breath and language acquisition).  It was the Romantics that taught us we need to return to an "original source" in order to "recover" what we had lost.  It's essentially a Platonic idea; that we lost track of the Good and only by finding our way back to it can we finally be redeemed and pure.  There are many versions of Christianity, as well as atheism, which have bought into that; and it rolls around again, and again, and again, in Western thinking.  That doesn't mean it has much validity, or is a touchstone for what is true and can be trusted.

7) Again, an idea from Romanticism, rooted in Wordsworth and the uniqueness of our childhood experiences which make us who we are and, being unique experiences to us and to our understanding of them, makes us "special."  Some people think this, too, is Christianity.  But Jesus taught that people were important because they existed, because they were loved by God, because their worth was intrinsic and was distinct from the worth measured by the world.  So when he said "let the children come to me, of such is the kingdom of God," he meant people were inherently good (as is all creation) and inherently worthwhile simply by the fact of their existence.  Their uniqueness?  That never comes up in the Gospels, or Acts, or Paul's letters.  Again, we came up with that after Augustine and then Luther and finally Wordsworth.

8) What is the inherent "good" in what is "original"?  It's not inherently bad, but why do we put greater value there than anywhere else?  The teachings of Jesus are that what is inherently good is God and anyone you meet, if for no other reason than because they are in need and you can help them (clothe the naked person, feed the hungry one, visit the sick and imprisoned), you are serving God.  There is a fundamental distinction there from Sartre's ethic, or even the idea that we have the technology, we can rebuild the world in the image of our idea of "Good."

I don't mean to sound dismissive of this book, or to use these words as a way to flagellate the ideas expressed in them.  I'm actually interested in these ideas.  Maybe this will give me a chance to meditate on them.  And maybe the public meditations will turn out to be worth something.