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.
[tags]Walter Wink, Ezzo, Robert Orsi, Religious Studies, apologia[/tags]
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4 thoughts on “Apologia”
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I guess when you are attacked on a continuous basis, it must take a LOT to trust anyone that has just stepped into your life or who is asking questions on the very subject of the attacks.
I’m a former Ezzo-ite, myself (“former” being the operative word).
Two comments–perhaps self-contradictory comments on Wink’s piece to which you linked.
First, to the extent the world peddles a “Myth of Redemptive Violence,” let us ask where it came from. It came from the altar outside of Eden, from Passover, and even from Calvary. It is Satan’s counterfeit of the One True Story of all time. Remember, Satan is many things, but he is not original, and the lies he tells are constrained by human nature. Our Redemption did require Someone to be crushed for our iniquities, and Satan is just twisting that story because he cannot come up with a better one on his own.
Second, I think Wink overlooks three important facts about life in the world: Total Depravity, Total Depravity, and Total Depravity. We like in an evil world, primarily populated by evil people who must be controlled by force (or at least consequences) or else every man will do that which is right in his own eyes. Often it is one evil government that must “bear the sword,” as Paul himself says, to restrain anarchy. That troublesome German you’re fond of citing made this point during the Peasants’ Revolt.
There’s nothing *redemptive* about this violence, at least not in any normal use of the term *redemption.* It’s simply a restraint on evil. The pain is not about purging, but staving off chaos. Absent force from the cops, street crime rises. Absent force from the SEC, corporations would be even more corrupt. I could go on, but I think I make my point. There are not pleasant truths, but brutal realities about how the world around us actually works. When there is no leader, anarchy reigns. Think Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, New Orleans after Katrina, and above all, Lord of the Flies.
I’d like it to be different. But that’s the result of a world full of depraved people where, as Mao said, “political power grows out the barrel of a gun.”
That said, life in the City of God is, or should be, far different from life in the City of Man.
Also, Christine has a vey good point, of how hard it is to trust someone from the “outside” after you are subjected to an endless series of exaggerated and unfair attacks. Ezzo might be a rotten teacher (I take your word on it). But I don’t blame someone from fearing a “questioner” any more than I blame an inner city minority from fearing the cops even if the cop in question actually is a good guy trying to help, or an homosexual who reacts in a hostile manner on learning someone is an evangelical, or, any church who is contacted by the media. I’m not saying that any of these reactions are *right,* and of course they are not productive, but I think we can, and should, understand how hard these “lines of tragedy” are to break.
Caveat: my own views (like anyone else’s) are shape by my profession. I’m a lawyer. Day after day, everything case I see is a result of Depravity. If people weren’t basically selfish, there wouldn’t be lawyers. Hence some of my views on how the world works.
You and Wink are having a heated agreement, Dave. You should read more of him. Essentially, Wink is describing Burke’s tragedy but within a Christian frame. The Myth of Redemptive Violence is tragedy through and through. We must kill, expunge, and punish in order to be pure. Burke thinks that tragedy has its roots in Christianity. Wink proves otherwise. It’s paganism pure and simple. That’s why I like Wink. He’s a corrective to Burke; he puts tragedy at the foot of paganism and saving comedy squarely at the empty tomb.
It’s not that I can’t understand people having a knee-jerk response. It’s that there are many who have only *one* response and it always looks like a knee-jerk one and it always involves a fearful ugliness. We do not need a spirit of fear. At all.