December Meeting

The next meeting for the cohort is scheduled for Friday, December 14, 8:00 PM.

We met at Bennigan’s this last meeting, and it was REALLY crowded. Does anybody have a suggestion for a different meeting place for our next time together?

November 9th Meeting

Hello, everyone.

Sorry for the late posting. I will not be able to make this month’s meeting due to a scheduling conflict, but Robert has graciously agreed to fill in for me and lead the discussion. Meet him at the Belden Village Bennigan’s at 8:00 pm to engage in some well mannered frivolity (bonus points to whoever can identify the source of that phrase). Below is Robert’s prompt for discussion:

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Deconstruction is a vital component of postmodernity, and it’s been said that ‘deconstruction is love’ (Jacques Derrida). I really resonate with this idea, because deconstruction brings to light the ‘truth’ of the postmodern approach, an approach which is rooted in the acknowledgment that all supposed metanarrative ‘Truths’ are just that- supposed. Deconstruction acknowledges that every text, every speech act, has a bias. This is necessarily so because all texts- even and especially sacred texts, divinely inspired or not- are written at a particular place and time by particular people who are rooted in a particular context. When the writer of any text writes, he or she attempts to capture all of that particularity with words, which are symbols, and convey it to the reader. But then again words are symbols; so it is then incumbent on the reader to decode the writer’s symbols and, if the writer’s particularity is to have any bearing on the particularity of the reader, the reader must then generalize the writer’s decoded, symbolic particularity and person-alize it, inasmuch as this is possible. At this point I think Richard Linklater’s film Waking Life is very helpful. In it, he says:

this is where I think language came from.

I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation…

and have some sort of connection with one another.

And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival.

Like, you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that.

Or, “Saber-toothed tiger right behind you.” We came up with a sound for that.

But when it gets really interesting, I think,

is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate…

all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing.

What is, like, frustration? Or what is anger or love?

When I say “love,”

the sound comes out of my mouth…

and it hits the other person’s ear,

travels through this Byzantine conduit in their brain,

you know, through their memories of love or lack of love,

and they register what I’m saying and say yes, they understand.

But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert.

They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know?

And so much of our experience is intangible.

So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable.

So language is symbolic, and this symbolism works both ways. The speaker or writer has certain biases that are brought to the use of certain symbols (words) in the first place. These biases are contextual and personal and rooted in the experience of the speaker/writer, and the Bible, like any communication, is full of them. Likewise, the hearer/reader has biases that he or she brings to the act of hearing and reading. When I hear God is love, it’s important and means something to me precisely because my mother didn’t love me very well. When I read that “divorce is sin,” I immediately think of how my Dad made himself subject to that law and remained in what was, by all accounts, a pretty awful marriage to my mother, even at the price of the abuse of his children at her hands. Getting back to my point, then (that language is symbolic), this is why I agree that deconstruction is love. Deconstruction acknowledges that every text, every speech act, has a bias, and merely asks that we then “lay our cards on the table,” thus removing the ability of any speaker/writer to hide behind objective claims. Hence, if the “ground is level at the foot of the cross,” this equalizing effect can also be seen for religious (and other) metanarratives in the face of deconstruction. In other words, all of our “big stories” come from somewhere and perhaps are most potent in their ability to convey meaning elsewhere when traced back to their roots. Another way of saying this is to say that any truths we are capable of apprehending can be apprehended only subjectively, and we do best by ourselves and each other when we admit this. This is not to say that all (big) stories are equally good. It is to say that when we make that judgment of whether or not a story is good, we do so with limited information, according to our own contextual particularity, which I suppose is why faith is required for those of us who affirm our participation in the Jesus story. Given all of the above- especially the symbolic nature of all language and the competing particularities of metanarratives- I affirm my participation in the Jesus story with much fear and trembling, clinging to the notion that divine inspiration entered into the equation somewhere. Really, in light of all this, how else could it be so?

One of my mentors, Bart Campolo, would often say that, to be honest, he isn’t really interested in why a person became a Christian. He’s far more interested in why a person is still one. It’s less ‘why did you start following Jesus?’ and more ‘why do you still bother?’. That’s a question that drives me these days, and it’s one that I know others grapple with. So if we’re brave enough, I propose that we wrestle with it together at the next cohort meeting- let’s do our best to “give account for the hope that is within us.” Depending on how the conversation goes, we might also move on to consider what role, if any, “evangelism” plays in all this.