A Peaceable Faith

Part 3, Replacing Doubt with Gratitude

To recap, at the end of The Authenticity of Faith I had embraced Trade-Off Theory as the way to avoid the worldview defense Ernest Becker predicted would be inevitable from tightly and dogmatically held convictions. If fundamentalisms, of whatever sort, are engines of violence then stop being a fundamentalist. Lighten your grip on your beliefs. Embrace doubt. This will put you in a more hospitable posture toward others.

And yet, as I shared, after many years of living in the midst of this trade-off, I found this space, for me at least, ultimately unsustainable. I felt I needed a different path toward a peaceable faith.

That different path showed up in my book The Slavery of Death. 

I like all the books I've written, for different reasons related to each project, but when I'm asked to name my "favorite book" I pick The Slavery of Death. Mainly because that book helped me break through my deconstruction and started me on the path toward reconstruction. The Slavery of Death remains the "operating system" of my faith, articulating how I think about the Christian life. The Slavery of Death is not a manifesto by any means, but it holds something like that place in my heart and mind. That book is the best articulation of my theological worldview.

So, what do I do in The Slavery of Death to avoid the shadow of worldview defense? 

The main move I make is replacing doubt with eccentricity. Inspired by David Kelsey and Arthur McGill, eccentricity has become for me a master, regulating idea. 

By "eccentricity" I mean that the source of our lives exists outside of ourselves and comes to us as a gift. I first encountered this notion, and a window into the psychological impact of eccentricity, in McGill's description of the eccentric nature of Jesus' life. McGrill describing Jesus' psychology (emphases are mine):

In the New Testament portrayal of Jesus, nothing is more striking than the lack of interest in Jesus' own personality. His teachings and miracles, the response of the crowd and the hostility of the authorities, his dying and his resurrection--these are not read as windows in Jesus' own experience, feelings, insights, and growth. In other words, the center of Jesus' reality is not within Jesus himself. Everything that happens to him, everything that is done by him, including his death, is displaced to another context and is thereby reinterpreted. However, this portrayal is understood to be a true reflection of Jesus' own way of existing. He himself does not live out of himself. He lives, so to speak, from beyond himself. Jesus does not confront his followers as a center which reveals himself. He confronts them as always revealing what is beyond him. In that sense Jesus lives what I call an ecstatic identity.

In all the early testimony to Jesus, this particular characteristic is identified with the fact that Jesus knows that his reality comes from God...Jesus never has his own being; he is continually receiving it...He is only as one who keeps receiving himself from God.

It is difficult to state just how huge these lines from McGill have been for me. (Incidentally, I fuse McGill with Kelsey to describe Jesus' "eccentric identity" rather than his "ecstatic identity.") 

I need to connect some dots here. How does eccentricity face the challenge of worldview defense? How does eccentricity produce a peaceable faith? The Slavery of Death sets out to answer those questions.

You'll need to read the book for the full treatment, but the basic idea boils down to this. When my life and identity are experienced as a "possession," as something I own and therefore must defend, I'm prone to lash out toward anything that threatens my life, status, or resources. If, however, my life and all I have comes to me as a gift, then my anxious efforts to protect and defend attenuate. For if I do not own my life I am never at risk of losing it. Death anxiety, the root engine of Becker's analysis of worldview defense, loses its hold upon me. Eccentricity frees me from the slavery of death.

You see this dynamic quite clearly in the gospels during Jesus' trial and crucifixion. Pilate cannot understand why Jesus isn't afraid, why he is not struggling to save his life. And the answer to Jesus' non-anxious peaceableness is found in Jesus' eccentric identity. Since Jesus knows his life comes from the Father he is willing to offer it back to the Father as a sacrifice of love. You see that surrender in Jesus' final words upon the cross: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." From first to last, Jesus' life was one, entire outpouring of love. Jesus didn't need to fight Pilate, or anyone else for that matter, because Pilate couldn't take anything from Jesus, not ultimately. 

Simply stated, when we live out of an experience of gift our worries for self-preservation lessen, and this creates the moral capacities for self-giving love. Eccentricity creates a peaceable faith because I'm able to give my life away, in mostly small ways but also in large ways. My life is a gift and I give it back to God in love, praise and thankfulness. 

You could say that in The Slavery of Death I replace doubt with gratitude as the path toward a peaceable faith.

And yet, a critic should not be wholly satisfied with this. There are many Christians who experience gratitude toward God who also demonstrate a lot of worldview defense. So the gratitude here is of a distinctive sort. Just expressing "Thank You" to God doesn't get down into the rot. 

I'll turn to that issue next.