existence communication
As we begin an exploration into the next element of mDNA…discipleship and disciple-making, I thought we could start our journey by exploring the idea of existence communication…a little piece of Soren Kierkegaard’s weird but wonderful mind. First consider these two quotes from two very different people.
“We can only live changes: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create.” — Leo Tolstoy
“The greatest proof of Christianity for others is not how far a man can logically analyze his reasons for believing, but how far in practice he will stake his life on his belief.” — T. S. Eliot
There can be no way around the fact that our actions, as manifestations of our total being, do actually speak much louder than our words. There is a clear non-verbal message being emitted by our lives all the time. We are faced with the sobering fact that we actually are our messages.
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, called this “existence-communication” and by that term he meant that our lives—our very existence—is our communication. Our existence as an authentic human being communicates more than what we say or even what we think. Kierkegaard despised the philosopher Wilhelm Hegel who held that all truth could be grasped objectively. With stinging irony he points out that “Hegel builds a magnificent tower but lives in a crappy little hut.” What he meant by this is that Hegel could not live in the real world in the ideological system he had produced. It was all ideas. And that he was not a “player” in that world, so to speak, but a distant observer. In other words, he was not his own message. Living in ideas is the very contradiction to living in actuality, but to live in books is the philosopher’s constant temptation. The only essential sermon one can listen to and appropriate comes not from the pulpit via the minister’s words but from one’s own existence.
This is essentially the message of biblical existentialism. Commenting on Kierkegaard’s thinking, F. Sontag says,
Existence corresponds to the individual, not the concept of the universal. To conceptualize is to dissolve existence into possibility and away from actuality. As far as contact with actuality is concerned, to increase our powers of conceptualization is a step backwards. The aim is to move from possibility toward actuality, that is, to determine a concrete action. For instance, to transform Christianity into “science and scholarship” is an error, since if it succeeds Christianity will be abolished. Its existence lies on another plane of individual decisiveness. Christianity is not a doctrine but an “existence communication.”
This has been the problem of Christendom; the reduction of Christianity into science and scholarship. We need to take seriously the fact the medium of our lives conveys very definite messages, ones that are being read all the time by the people around about us. This is a rather disturbing truth as it has already been noted that “our actions are so loud I can’t hear your words.” So what is the message of my life? Am I being read as a disciple? Do people see a clear picture of Jesus through my personhood?
Forgotten Ways, The: Reactivating the Missional Church - Alan Hirsch
Forgotten Ways Handbook, The: A Practical Guide for Developing Missional Churches - Alan Hirsch, Darryn Altclass
ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church - Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch
The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church - Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch
Good, this is going to go on for a bit. I think it is a worthwhile discussion. For all of us.
CS, you say that the biblical basis for the discussion is needed. I agree. And, I think a basis for understanding even the text of the Bible is understanding more of the culture to which it is written. Alan does a very good job of laying the foundation for this with Mike Frost in one of his books.
I agree with you when you say that our current culture (I would lump most of us into the western european descendents here) tends to emphasize individualism over conformance. That is very much a tenant of the post-modern mindset, my truth being as valid as your truth and all of that.
However, I would also say that Paul talks equally about personal (read that individual) responsibility versus group responsibility. Romans 12
opens with a cry to individuals to take the whole thing a little more seriously in their walk with God, to not be just a group member and go along with the Joneses, but to step out and go into a serious individual training process with a sacrificial attitude.
The other cultural piece in the New Testament is the process (for the first time in Jewish history) of mixing non-Jews into the culture of the church and formulating a new community culture, some of which was typically Jewish, like hospitality, and much of it not, especially as Paul is writing in Ephesians to some not originally Jewish. This is also true of Romans. Their ethic was much more individual than that of the Jews and they did not tend to band together ethnically as the Jews did.
Much as the diversity of our cultures today tend to make cross-cultural ministry difficult, due to different practices and societal issues. Paul is speaking to a similar set of problems, in a violent time. Many of the sub-cultures present in the 1st century church did not mix with other cultures. They were even more class conscious than we tend to be and this was of course detrimental to the process of creating a cohesive story to tell.
Each of us has a context. Mine is of a group that is so comfortable within the group that they do not act. The leadership is so cognizant of supporting the group that they are unwilling to allow people to leave the group willingly, even for a missional purpose. This then is a group which is out of balance with the individual calling. We need balance…and leaders willing to be servants of others rather than directors of others. Shepherding is different than discipling. Being an apostle to a culture is not a group activity. Both are critical, and not at cross-purposes within the bigger picture.
Firstly Richard,
I agree with some of the essence of what I think you are getting at, my concern is NOT that there is no such thing as an individual, but that it is rare in the Bible and it is the ONLY reality in our culture. I disagree that “Paul talks equally about personal (read that individual) responsibility versus group responsibility,” his writings are vastly adressed to people in plurality - the Greek terminology is plural with very few exceptions. If we are to be Biblical we need to redress the imbalance and I don’t see that happening in much of the discussion going on anywhere in Christian contexts. We are being sucked away from what the Bible is saying.
As an example, I don’t understand how you can consider that Roman 12 begins “with a cry to individuals to take the whole thing a little more seriously” it is the continuation of a letter to a church community - it addresses people plural in their plural context. The only way this can be viewed from the perspective you suggest is if we read that into it, which is what I contend we are all guilty of and it needs to be addressed if we are ever going to effectively develop authentic ecclesia int he 21st century.
We will not build the church of Jesus Christ, if we do not seek to understand the concepts of community that the church is intended to be built upon, and do not address the rampant unbiblical individualism that we read into the Scriptures. In Ephesians 4
Jesus gave “some apostles, some prophets…” again there is not the individualisation that we impose on the text - I would contend that there is much more support biblically to consider that apostleship IS a community venture, since you cannot apostle without apostlees. Leadership does not exist without followers… there is a whole communal context that we are missing and I’d suggest that is one reason why the church in the western context is dying.
And Richard I was once part of a culture you describe… I felt that God called me out precisely because I was unable to be who He created me to be. Seven years ago we started a small community of faith with two other families and we continue to journey as a community. I could not be who I am and I could not do what I do without the community that God has built me into…
Slainte
A Celtic Son
Ahh, CS is on fire! And I am way too jetlagged to respond meaningfully at all. Actually, I am not quite sure it can be easily settled in a blog setting. And actually, I am not quite sure how we quite got to this point, but I am too tired to care right now. I will try have a go some time later. Please forgive me.
But I will say tha I did not mean that perichoresis rightly understood is mumbo jumbo, but it certainly can lead there. I think it is historically sound to say that that has been the western theological trajectory. And I have to say CS that it DOES sound gnostic to me. I am happy to be in the wrong about this, but I have spend a whole day chatting to Baxter Kruger and I fail to be convinced. But that’s me…
Hi Alan,
I have thought that this discussion did not reflect your usual clarity and hope that you recover soon…
I have listened to Baxter Kruger teach and in fact debated him on his conclusions - I questioned him on his concept of “belief” in John’s gospel and his answers were very unsatisfactory. I concluded that he draws his argument beyond its limitations and it has led him to universalism.
I’d suggest instead of relying on Baxter Kruger’s perception of perichoresis, that you’d find more legitimacy in the way that Barth refers to perichoresis, Moltmann refers to perichoresis, Pannenberg refers to perichoresis, Torrance refers to perichoresis… I’m not surprised that it may sound gnostic from discussions with Kruger, but rightly understood it doesn’t lead to mumbo jumbo… by every legitimate measure it is orthodoxy my friend.
Slainte
A Celtic Son
I hear what you are saying CS. And I do not disagree with some of the emotions and issues that you have experienced have brought you closer to Christ.
I am coming from the other end of the spectrum. I have been a part of a community for the last 25 years. I have been told that what we had was the top of the heap for the Christian experience and that community was what God had for us. And the Holy Spirit has made me miserable! Because the community is ‘us four and no more’. And since I do not happen to be part of the leadership of the ‘community’ since I do not have a theological degree (getting one now), and am not on staff, it is do what we say and we will lead you to the right stuff…
There is a growth ethic. But, it is not personal except to the degree to which you are ready to go where they want you to go. If you have a teaching gift, that is nice but you only teach the basics. The do the rest, maybe.
My issue is this: community as the goal of the Christian life looks and sounds a lot like the epistles of Paul as he teaches them how to survive when they are together. But, it does not look and sound a lot like the Gospels. When Jesus was with them, there was a modicum of community, as He taught them, then He sent them out. The last command He gave was a sending and building command, not a stay and pray command.
This process does not totally take place just in community. The learning and training part usually does, but not the rest. The current church options (except for some that are not as well known) do not seem to offer good answers. They are too numbers minded to get to the meat. I want meat!
Richard,
I hear your pain and it resonates. I was once at your end of the spectrum… perhaps more than you’d think. Ten years ago I was a staff pastor in a large church, which my wife’s father had been instrumental in starting. I came to the realisation that where the church was heading was not consistent with what I was reading in the New Testament. I tried to redirect things, but it created conflict for me with the Senior Pastor. Like you I had been told something and now I knew it was not true…
With my wife expecting a baby I chose, with her support, to give up my salaried position, all the kudos that goes with that, and to leave the church I had come into when I was first caught up into Christ and that my wife and her family had been in for 30 years of her life. After a few months of sporadic part-time work, having turned down offers from a number of other churches to join their staff, I took on work as a self-employed audio visual consultant.
I spent two years processing my anger and disappointment, including revisiting the Senior Pastor and discussing my concerns with him - not particularly successful, but I could then lay it down. Towards the end of that period two close friends and their families joined with my wife and I and our baby, as we began a journey to follow Christ as a community. Without salary or all the rigmarole of denominational church, we sought to be a missional community and have been on that journey now for seven years. There have been many challenges, but a great many blessings… and we have been able to be a blessing to our broader local community in many ways…
The passion in my posts is something that I have fought not to lose and that I fight to maintain. Despite the pain and disappointments of church life, I remain committed to living in community…
Eberhard Arnold wrote;
“we have been overwhelmed by a certainty – a certainty that has its origin and power in the Source of everything that exists. We acknowledge God as this Source. We must live in community because all life created by God exists in a communal order and works toward community.”
He wrote that as a man who preached what he practiced, I attempt to do likewise. I pray that the Lord clarifies His purpose in your circumstance and His plan for your life…
Slainte
A Celtic Son
Richard,
I think you will find many here who have the same experience…I join CS is sharing that my own circumstance was the same–and it doesn’t necessarily get easier when you are on the pastoral staff…even if you are the Senior Pastor!
And so I have also left “paid” ministry and have followed our wild and free Lord out into the liminal edges…and in the chaos communitas is forming.
I join CS in his prayers for clarity in your circumstance–confident that God’s grace and mercy are sufficient….
Be blessed.
Alan, I so much agree. This is hauntingly good. We can say the good, right words, yet our lives for one reason or another may be saying quite something else. I find this true in my own life.
Alan,
You quoted F. Sonntag:
“As far as contact with actuality is concerned, to increase our powers of conceptualization is a step backwards. The aim is to move from possibility toward actuality, that is, to determine a concrete action.”
I was just thinking that up to a point, conceptualization of a change can be very helpful, especially if that change involves a paradigm shift. But beyond a certain point we can specify numerous parameters and come up with endless “meaningful” variations of our concepts that we are compelled to think through as we also try to account for the impact of many “significant unknowns.” This process becomes a step backward when it slows us down from acting or even causes us to freeze up with indecision.
I was thinking that a good metaphor for this need to transistion from conceptualization to actualization is the relationship of a car engine and its starter motor. The starter motor is of vital importance to the functioning of a car. But after a certain point, if you leave the starter motor engaged, it severely limits the usability of the car. I am not suggesting that at a certain point we disengage our brains! Rather, that at a certain point we transition from conceptualizing an idea to actualizing it. As we then adjust our concepts based on actualizing them, they will become more usable by more others than if we continued to try to universalize them in our heads.
The Bible was never meant to be a source of universal principles such that if we were to identify and think through the ideal system of principles, we could then act on them without ever having to think again. In the end, it is a very subjective, lazy, undemanding way of thinking that can be used to justify self-righteous, judgmental, and wayward actions. I know because I am guilty of having done this. How could I have been so blind. By God’s grace, I am beginning to see things differently now. By God’s grace, not all my efforts in the past have missed the mark.
Wasabi, Kierkegaard is given to radical overstatements. That is juts part of his style. And part of the reason why people react to him so fiercely (as we have seen)
He sees himself as a ‘corrective’ to the sins of his age. And for him this meant dealing with the intellectualization of the Christian faith. He has been read as being anti-intellectual, but I don’t think this is the case…he is against intellectual-ism.
I’m going to be simple here. I already have a headache. In America we do a great job believing the truth, but few actually live it. We say we believe the truth about our role in kingdom expansion but rarely act on that belief.
If our belief results in not action than our belief is just a passing thought. (I can’t believe I just came up with that.)
Bob,
I like your statement, “If our belief results in not action than our belief is just a passing thought,” in addition to being thought provoking, it is quite biblical:
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” (James 1:22-24
)
The point is, if we forget what we look like after looking in a mirror, why bother looking at all? If our belief is just a thought that immediately passes out of our mind, what good is it to believe at all?