Apologia
October 9th, 2007 -- Posted in Believe, Speak, Think | 4 Comments »I’ve been reminiscing this afternoon about a statement I made over the phone way back in 1999. Strange, that I could remember a simple phone conversation way back then.
It was a conversation with a Growing Families International employee. I was conducting some research as a grad student (in Robert Orsi’s Children and Religion class) with families that followed Gary Ezzo’s parenting advice, and this man was on my list of about five. I don’t remember now how I found him, but I remember his tone.
He was absolutely angry with me for having the unmitigated nerve to talk to Ezzo parents at all. At that time, lots of journalists were focusing their attention on Ezzo’s following. I explained that I was a fellow fundamentalist and was trying to be fair and academic. The concluding paper was, in hindsight, a love fest.
I remember saying, “What can I say to you that will make you understand that I am not out to get you?” He was silent. No answer.
Thing is, there was nothing I could do or say to convince him that I was not the enemy. I was an outsider; therefore, I could not be trusted, my words could be twisted, and no apology or explanation was accepted.
I remember thinking, “This is my first time to rhetorically analyze one of my own. I want to get it right.” I didn’t really get it right as my personal history has proven. But I don’t think you can “get it right” within frames of rejection that are too brittle, as Burke would put it. The tragedy is easy with the lines are so concrete.
And since the hardened borders demand tragedy, words are never enough. There must be punishment. Pain must purge and expunge. Brittle lines are the stuff of the stories of ungrace, those pagan litigious sorts that creep into every corner of the human condition. It’s all the Myth of Redemptive Violence. The Christian narrative of grace, however, features porous frames since it reminds us that we are undeserving and gifted children of the King.
Technorati Tags: Walter Wink, Ezzo, Robert Orsi, Religious Studies, apologia
