True-Believers
I understand the fear of true-believers. Suicide bombers are true-believers. The scary fundamentalists baptists who warp the gospel behind walls of personal and public legislation are true-believers. Ironic distance is a much safer position, avoiding snowballs down mountains that roll and become the Hitlers of our world, it also in a very real sense can seem closer to Jesus.
Because irony of a type, the good type, should be a heavy dose of whimsical self-reflection. We know that we're supposed to know ourselves, our sin, our struggle. But we also know that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. Our personal narrative is not the worlds categorical imperative; at least it shouldn't be.
But there exists those of us who are true-believers in irony. We have no sense of irony about our own irony, and it spirals into pathological cynicism. At that point its not that we don't want to truly believe in something outside of ourselves, we just no longer remember how.
If I remember correctly, the central virtue of doubt, a la the enlightenment, was that it would help us find a strong, un-doubtable foundation. In a very real, very practical, very "in your bones" can't put it in words feel free to damn me for sounding the mystic, Jesus is our ineffable foundation. What He looks like is sometimes as hard to grasp as a wet bar of soap, but what you can't deny is that He is there nagging and harassing and complicating our lives.
At that point I think we more ironical folks, in our menuevering and positioning to be the ironical person, should remember that our Savior has called us to very real things and very real tasks, and we very nearly have the simple responsible to just, well, pick one and go. The people I idolize are those that have done that and gotten somewhere close to the gospel. So there, I'm biased.
Josiah Q. Roe | By Josiah Roe | 08:58 AM
Comments
OK, you know I deeply agree with you on the cynicism thing, but I'm not entirely sure I understand where you're going at the end here. I'm not sure I see earnest Christian living always leading directly to quick, practical action in the "pick one and go" sense. That's part of it, but isn't another part learning to get to the heart of your problems, to let Jesus dig at your soul? I've come to realize that sometimes agressive practicality can be (for me) a way to stay cynical about the spiritual. I separate the two, and am skeptical of anybody who believes in anything transcendent. So you can be a cynic about making spiritual changes, or practical choices, I guess is what I'm a-tryin' to say.
Posted by: mesh at April 28, 2004 02:44 PM
Post a Comment About "True-Believers"
Email "True-Believers" to a friend!
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://chattablogs.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/10904
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference True-Believers:
