Postmodernism 101 (according to moi)

I take my cues from postmodernism in the discussion of how to "hear" a viewpoint that contradicts your own. One thing I overlooked in this post that should be first is this:

Listen for a long time. Spend time lurking around the viewpoint and resist the urge to comment. So that you can...

1. Get inside the point of view you find repugnant. Find out how that point of view makes sense to the individual holding it. That means setting aside your own presuppositions to adopt theirs temporarily. It means starting from the perspective that their view makes sense to them, is not irrational, is not merely a device to avoid reality or to justify evil or sin.

For instance, if I'm going to look at the pro-choice side of the abortion debate, I have to start by taking pro-choice assumptions: Women deserve the right to choose for themselves whether or not to carry a baby to term as a way to empower women who are at a disadvantage to men because they are the ones who carry babies (men don't), and the baby is not a person until born. These are the starting assumptions. In order to understand the arguments, I have to start there.

Do I have to agree with them? No. I only have to read their point of view with that filter on. Then I can discover how the idea of abortion functions for pro-choice people. I stop arguing and I discover that women have felt held hostage by their reproductive capacities for most centuries. I find out that fathers don't experience consequences for unintended pregnancies carried to term. I learn that the poor are more victimized by unwanted pregnancies than the middle class. I read statistics about women dying on abortion tables when it was illegal... and so on. In short, the presuppositions of the pro-choice side of the debate are the result of a view of history and women's place in it.

I can still not agree fundamentally with abortion (philosophically), but that doesn't prevent me from seeing how this other side, this other point of view coheres, aims to resolve problems my view is less interested in. In fact, I can go so far as to say that the problems the pro-choice view aims to address are important and deserve a deeper look. Simply arguing about whether the unborn are legally persons the way the born are doesn't even address the actual issues pro-choice advocates are concerned about.

Another example: Suicide bombers. To understand why this worldview functions successfully for Middle Eastern Muslim Extremists (note that that is our word for them, not theirs) means to enter and inhabit a world where westernism is seen as the enemy. This shouldn't even be a stretch for most conservative Christians seeing that we have our own culture war in America grounded in religious idealism.

What is a stretch is to understand how and why violence is perceived as a solution. There's no need to simply keep stating that they are crazy. Crazy people can't be changed. They need to be eliminated (hmmmm - sounds a bit like our foreign policy). Yet if we see the world through their eyes, we may come to the realization that what appears irrational from the outside is terrifyingly consistent and a satisfying means of addressing the crisis they perceive.

We might even see some parallels to our own worldview. There are plenty of leaders and pundits who argue that the only solution to the Middle Eastern crisis is the elimination of (fill in the blank) Muslims. We justify our violence as protecting our world, as being "civilized" because it is government endorsed. They justify theirs as defending their religion and culture against bullies.

To understand the worldview just means allowing yourself to get inside the sandals of the other long enough to see that they have successfully justified to themselves what they believe.

So that's step one.

2. Restating the other view using the vocabulary of advocates is a great place to start when attempting to understand a viewpoint you don't hold. This is how I've understood the benefits of reformed theology after listening to tapes, sermons, reading books, interacting online and sharing a mission field with reformed believers:

“The sovereignty of God leads to a place of yieldedness, gratitude and peace insofar as you let go of the burden to make all that is wrong with the world right. Salvation by election as a free gift feels like a mind-blowing, deeply satisfying, cleansing experience that goes beyond working for salvation. Reformed Christians see the glory of God manifested in their midst when people discover the gap that exists between themselves and the holiness of God, which moves them to awe, which leads them to humble worship. They then celebrate that holiness through creeds, through sacraments, through covenantal community, through the recitation of God’s greatness as contrasted with human frailty. This theological system makes sense of a chaotic world, puts God at the center and relieves human beings of the burden of their sinfulness.”

Even if I don't experience Calvinism this way, it doesn't prevent me from acknowledging that many, many people in fact do! And as Mariam said in a comment a few weeks ago, there is a zen-like detachment from the suffering of the world (because of trust in God) that leads to peace and acceptance which is deeply appealing to the human condition.

It is also possible to recognize that the idea of grace, for instance, is a revolutionary, universally powerful meme that has had profound consequences for good in the centuries since the reformation, without also believing in all five points of the TULIP. Restating has a way of revealing one's own agenda (if you can't do it without sneaking in sideways attacks, you haven't let go of your agenda yet). It also helps the other person to feel heard.

3. Agreeing to disagree is not satisfying. What feels better is to know that the other person has heard how what you value functions in your life and that you are honoring the truth as best as you currently understand it. The problem occurs when two different points of view must cooperate in a single context (a church, a marriage, a family, a business).

The scale of difference in point of view invariably leads to relational crisis. And it usually means changes of some kind. What is never helpful in any setting is pushing one set of presumptions/assumptions as normative for everyone when that is no longer the case for one or more. The more coercive the environment becomes, the harder it is to keep the relationships together.

We've managed to keep our marriage together when the big changes occurred, but I wasn't able to stay in our church. I've found a place in our homeschooling community, but I had to let my online community go. I've gotten closer to some of my old friends and lost some. It's always tough to face changes in relationship due to changes in beliefs. It's made me want to honor the centrality of others people's belief systems even when I don't agree with them... and I avoid intruding on contexts where my beliefs aren't welcome.

These are a few of the things that have worked for me.

De-centering the self: Michael Dyson

One of my favorite pomo expressions is: de-centering the self. It's one I've spent a lot of time contemplating. Most of us live in our own bubbles of comfort, culture and "correct" thinking. We interpret the world through the lens given to us by our parents, our race, our socio-economic backgrounds, our Englishes, our educations, our faith traditions (or lack of them), our gender, our topo-geographic localities, our relationships, our pains, our abuses, our joys... all of these wrapped together create us, shape how we understand the world and each other. As we become competent in our worlds, we gain speed at navigating the requirements (passing tests, earning degrees, getting jobs, managing money, initiating relationships, respecting the tax laws, obeying the rules of the road, shopping, dressing up and down and when, showing respect and disrespect including knowing when and how to do each, having sex, managing the level of technology your world affords and/or requires... and so on).

One of the reasons going to a foreign country is so often recommended as an "expanding" experience is that in deliberately leaving behind what we know, we are suddenly de-centered. The way we know the world is no longer "normative" but in many cases, an impediment to successful living. For instance, my history degree didn't help me bake bread or wash my clothes by hand in Morocco. I was seen as a flawed married woman without the necessary skills, not as a highly educated "prepared for adult life" individual.

What I took for granted (knowing the price of postage, counting change, finding a store open at hours you expect, locating the bus line, weighing vegetables, lighting a stove, hooking up a telephone, daylight hours, flavors, words, etiquette, smells, the shapes of buildings, toilet flushes) suddenly cost me energy. All day long I was bombarded by ineptitude... my own.

It's not uncommon to need naps when you move to a new country. It's also perfectly normal to develop irrational fears and judgments: What if I get lost downtown? How will I find the right bus? Why does that man look me in the eye? Didn't she just snub me? Why do they do it like *that* when it would be so much easier to do it like *this*?

The advice to people who face culture shock (or culture stress, as it is more commonly called now) is to let go of the old expectations. The quicker someone immerses self into this new reality, the faster she becomes happy. The more language a person has, the more fluency in all aspects of foreign living. Over time, the expatriate not only learns that there are other ways to successfully live on the planet, in some cases, the new ways become prized as more valuable than the formerly most comfortable ways.

What is really remarkable about living abroad is that you have no option but to recognize that your way is not the only way. Hearing about a foreign way of life is no approximation for how it actually feels to live it. When your senses are overwhelmed, you are obligated to either have a breakdown or figure it out. You must yield to the reality that there are multiple ways to live that give people the things we all crave: love, belonging and competence.

Last night, Jon and I attended a lecture given by Dr. Michael Dyson. We've heard him before. He's what is known as a "public intellectual, teacher and cultural critic." Dyson speaks from his personal space of being black, of interpreting and representing what are black issues today and he does so in an almost Robin Williams-esque style (freely flying between ebonics, black speak, white speak, intellectual-ese and rap).

We arrived at Xavier about five minutes before the start of the lecture. The hall was already filled with audience members... virtually all black. It hit me. I'm used to Xavier being white with a smattering of other ethnicities. Yet last night, Jon and I found two seats smooshed in the middle of the hall surrounded by blacks. I was not troubled. I was aware. This must be how it feels all the time in the suburbs for blacks. When a black family joins our homeschooling co-op, they know that their kids' friends will all be white, that they will be the only blacks in the room much of the time.

Last night, I felt it. Not just that I was white-skinned, but culturally white. When Dyson would talk about the way their "mammas and daddies" raised them, he talked about teaching kids that they have to rise up and overcome obstacles. He talked about two languages: the ebonics of the home and the standard English of the outside world. He quoted Marvin Gaye and the Temptations and found the audience finishing his sentences. He rapped like Jay-Z and the college kids rapped with him. Jon and I laughed our heads off with the crowd, but we were not a part of it. We had entered that other world where the assumptions I have mean little to the gathered.

It was a lot like visiting a foreign country.... only different in one important way. When I go abroad, I'm deliberately choosing to place myself in the mode of "learner." I know I will not "know" how to be, do, talk, live. I choose to be open to learning. When I'm in my country, I don't want that experience thrust on me. I expect to feel competent, at ease. Last night, I was reminded again of how important it is to deliberately seek to be out of my comfort zone, to listen to the points of view of those who even see me as a threat, an enemy or an impediment to their competence and success in the larger culture. In other words, I realized that for blacks, they spend a lot more energy than I do accommodating the largely white culture I come from... every day. I dipped into it for about three hours one night.

I don't know how else we ever get to that place where we know and honor each other's experiences unless we de-center the self regularly: like jogging, like eating right, like holding back bad words, like de-cluttering the house, like taking medicine or vitamins. Self-discipline to give up my right to be comfortable and right.

Valuing other viewpoints

I started this as a comment and it got long. I'm going out of town in ten minutes so chat amongst yourselves. I just wanted to throw this out for consideration:

To understand/value other viewpoints, I try to find the passionate, articulate representatives of that view and read them. I sit with those views. I live with them for a while. I try to imagine life through that perspective. I read various viewpoints not to find balanced thinking about a variety of perspectives, but to understand the "otherness" of a particular viewpoint. I ask how my previous view has been altered by this direct encounter with a different perspective.

One of the things postmodernism has contributed to us is that each one of us has a view and that perspective impacts every evaluation, every thought, every reading. It's like you can't get away from it. There is no neutral zone, no dispassionate reading, removed reading. The way to incorporate other views into your own worldview is to allow them to be other, to value by acknowledging their internal coherence (sometimes frighteningly so - like trying to get inside the logic of suicide bombing or holocaust).

Through a diversity of readings, I discover the interior logic of viewpoints I don't hold. That is not the same thing as agreement. But it may approximate understanding or empathy or even reaction (as in, contending for an alternative). Usually I read other views to sit with them, to allow them to live in me for a bit and to see how they impact my former understandings.

When I've written about valuing multiple viewpoints, that doesn't mean always balancing one's own viewpoint. It means actually standing in the shoes of the other and "getting it" - letting go of your need to control the outcome.

However when articulating one's own viewpoint, it's equally important to reveal the conditions that create it, to own up to your biases, loyalties, "agendas" and so on. So my purpose yesterday was not to alienate, but to allow you to see inside what animates me and what purpose this blog serves beyond the chatty window into my daily life. If someone is interested in how Christianity looks to ex-fundamentalists and ex-evangelicals, then you'll get that here.

I'll go one step further, then I'm off. There is a vast difference between insider critique and outsider reaction. It's the difference between you criticizing your family and someone else doing it. Another example. Those who leave a job, for instance, will have much to say about the conditions that provoked the leaving. Those who stay have a stake in protecting the benefits of that space. Totally reasonable.

I read your blogs (and many others!) who write about being happy, satisfied Christians and enjoy them, learn things, have my views modified. I read and participate at Jesus Creed most weeks even while differing on almost every doctrinal point. Why? Because it is useful for me to stay in touch with why and how Christians believe and what benefits they get from those beliefs.

On balance, I think we all have something worth saying, and all of it taken together gives a rounded picture.

Missional.... Those emergents and their lingo

Missional, when I first heard it, sounded like mis-speak. It's not a word according to the dictionary and my newly downloaded Firefox upgrade spell checker (thank you, thank you, thank you Mozilla). But it's certainly a buzz word in emergent circles so I toss it out here for consideration.

Do you know what it means? What do you think its definition is? What should it be? If you were to guess its meaning, what ideas does it conjure?

The word mission has clearly been a big part of my biographical lexicon. The whole idea of missions appealed to nearly everything about me as a young twenty-something: to be a blessing to the nations as God has blessed me (us); to do the most noble, rightest, goodest, truest act, not for money or even for this-world's glory, but for God, for eternity, for truth (and to keep decent human beings out of eternal flames and gnashing of teeth) - well how could you beat that as an ENFP? The only better combo is mission and Irish rock star. (Freaking gorgeous....)

The point is (where were we again?) that the ideals of "mission" appeal to an innate desire to be of good use to others. Today's missional Christians have expanded the mission of God to global warming, the environment, voting for the occasional democrat, serving the poor, building homes for Habitat for Humanity, giving away groceries to the poor, free ESL lessons, day-care for single mothers and more. They've added a social justice vision to the idea of missions, but the heart beats the same blood.

The insidious side of the missions appeal is the need to be the one bringing the help, ergo, the one who is doing the glorious work. When the task is combined with an unwitting sense of superiority (no matter how humbly cloaked) the experience of mission Dei (I can use Latin too) can lapse into dangerous territory: the land of "I know more than you, what you need for you."

Keren, in the comments in the previous post on the "pursuit of happiness" pointed to an article by John Barlow where he states:

Having a sense of mission has served me extremely well, even better than I thought it would when I wrote Adult Principle Number 15 and bound myself to purpose rather than its by-product. Often I would have been hard-pressed to define mine and it has certainly taken on many different manifestations in the course of my careers, but I have taken a lot of happiness from a sense - often grandiose and sometimes illusory - that I am, by my various actions, helping create a future that will be more free, more tolerant, more open, and more just.

And herein lies the rub. We do take a lot of pleasure in being of use (grandiose and illusory even). Bono knows that absurdity better than the rest of us (which is why he is so cuddly and adorable).

Still, for recovering mission-aholics like myself, the danger of "seeing" self in a role of Significant Helpfulness is that I mistake my happiness in helping for real help. In other words, I don't know how to be content when others lead the way, shape the future, change the course of their lives nearly as well as when I have a hand in doing it for/with/to them.

For me, the Gospel and postmodernism have flipped all that on its head. The addiction to being of use, to being in a role that changes lives, that brings love, that serves, that acts as change-agent, that "embodies the heart of God for all peoples".... all of that feeds a dangerous self-concept that says "my life has meaning insofar as I impact yours for the better." That means I have to determine the better for your life and be about impacting it.

Grad school showed me how addicted I've been to mattering, to being important in someone's universe. I recognized what a truly lousy listener I've been in a "global" way, in a specific way. I show little interest, for instance, in what Muslims are doing to make the world a better place and think about them in terms of their deficiencies, what they do wrong. I thought my role in racial reconciliation was to be a leader, to figure out how to fix race problems in my city. Then I found out that blacks would like me to shut up and listen for a change... and let them take the lead. What a notion!

Here's a thought. Instead of white churches attempting to create churches that "welcome blacks," what if those whites closed up shop and attended black churches? They could be members and let black pastors and congregation members lead. That would be a whole lot different than having a mission of "racial reconciliation... over at my white church led by my white pastor."

Postmodernism requires us to see that our angle of vision cannot be the only and right one for everyone. The formerly silenced get to lead, speak, take the initiative. We deliberately make space for that to happen in our own lives, if we are to be true to the values of tolerance, openness, generosity. I don't know how to do that and be a change agent in other people's lives at the same time. Postmodernism encourages us to stop teaching and start learning.

So I ask: What if serving and loving and giving meant giving up my right to have a mission? What if the detox program for junkies like me (in order to get a glimpse of what Jesus might have been about) is to give up my right to matter, to make a difference? Maybe letting someone else be in charge and figuring out how to fit in is more "missional" than planting a church or starting a dialog group or leading someone to Christ? Wouldn't it be a total flip if we let someone lead us to yoga.... really lead us not so we could find its errors and use those as opportunities to pounce with the 'good news' but so we might grow and be benefited by that person's gifts? Period.

I don't trust the word "missional" in the hands of Christians because Christians are hooked on power. Power makes mission into a drug that feeds self-importance, no matter how many toilets you scrub to show God's love in a practical way.

The Gospel is about divesting oneself of power. If we give up our right to change the world and instead find those nooks and crannies where we can shut up and listen, learn and be changed, support and admire the good works of others, we might not only find happiness, but get the heart of the Gospel tossed into the bargain.

Get a question—Get a life!

Today's UPI column is another of the postmodern virtues: questions over answers.

Enjoy.

The believing game

It's easy to dog your opponent with her inconsistencies. Much harder to get inside her skin and see the world the way she does ... especially when you're sure she's wrong. (Part 4 of a series.)

Here's today's column.

Who decided hard work is a virtue?

After two weeks off, my UPI column is back!

The titles are challenging to come up with so this one comes from my editors. This is Part Two in the series on Postmodern Virtues. Part One can be reread here.