Lazy Theology

So I'm in a place where there's some conversation about the importance of denominational identity, the role of liturgy, and other such concerns circulating, and my point of contention and concern has mostly been over the obscuring  of the gospel. With this in mind, I rewatched this video. It is an episode of Extra Credits, a web series I highly enjoy, on the subject of video games (specifically here, propoganda and misinformation in video games). I highly recommend watching it.

I bring the video to your attention for one simple reason: it highlights the responsibilities of any communicator to stand against laziness in any medium. For the Extra Credits crew, the concern is lazy game design; for me it is lazy preaching, teaching, liturgy and pastoral care. Whatever you think is important, whatever is at the heart of the Christian message, any person trusted by the Church to do ministry must struggle with both the explicit and implicit messages of their actions and words. This is the heart of feminist criticism! This is the heart of multicultural awareness! This is the way to at least attempt to communicate what I call the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The vast majority of theological material that crosses the average American ear is extremely lazy, and that cuts across denomination, geography, gender, culture, and ethnicity. Christians have given ourselves a bad name, and we have no one to blame but ourselves and our desire for easy answers to the mysteries of faith. How is Christ present in the Eucharist (if he even is)? What is Baptism? How do we interpret Scripture? What is the Church called to be in the world? These are conversation topics, not prompts for simple, pat responses. Only lazy theology treats them as such, and such lazy theology creates fundamentalism, factionalism, rationalism, atheism, suspicion, and a myriad of theologies of glory. But the most problematic is that lazy theology kills people. That's not hyperbole. One of my teachers would call it killing souls, but I prefer to speak of people holistically. This practice, like that of propaganda, like that of lazy communication in any other medium, takes lives. For one who claims Christ to do so is inexcusable, those very ones who believe this service is necessary enough to have invested their lives into it; what does it say that they don't care to struggle and question and be questioned?

Yes, not being lazy in our ministry and theology is hard. It is a thankless task. It means long(er) hours, lots of conflict and tension, very probably less comfort and money, and possibly persecution. It is also a matter of life and death. And that is why a hard conversation about theological issues, the meaning of the liturgy, the way pastors are educated, and what theology we use to talk about money, is relevant.

Be a Man

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64

When speaking of feminism, I think of something like this video. The focus of the movie is on a woman who masters "manly" skills in some sense, and validates her womanhood through encounter with the world and with males. Now, I do not wish to address this at all - a woman can do that much more competently and probably has. I am more interested in reflecting on the way in which the men - who are not significantly better at being "men" as constructed by this video - are treated by the sequence. The archetypal, athletic, warrior male is held up as the apex of manhood here. As a pacifist, non-athletic, and (I hope) non-archetypal male, I find this somewhat problematic.

Feminists and womanists seem to be address the issue of who a woman is, and how that identity is socially constructed. I sympathize, but wonder how a man is socially constructed. I have received several definitions. My father's definition was that a man is a breadwinner, a general of the house, one who exerts control over the world and masters the systems needed to provide for the family. The definition of my peers from elementary through high school (mostly middle-class and urban youth) was generated around physical prowess and sports, but also included something of attitude and demeanor. In college (which was mostly African-American outside of Newark, New Jersey), the construct of manhood had developed more significantly to include dispensation of violence, confrontation of threats, and a kind of honor code. In all these conceptions of manhood, control is key.

I believe that this is the key to the centrality of the gospel as a liberating force in the lives of men, in a way which might be compared the relationship between feminism and Christianity. For feminists, the rhetoric of freedom focuses on (for example) freedom from servitude, locative structures, purity language which devalues the bodies of women. For males, the same gospel can preach freedom from a need for control and invincibility which are demanded by the structures which surround men. I lose patience with the villianizing of men, just as I become upset by the victimization of women. Rather I suggest that the patriarchal structures which have long grasped many cultures and societies requires the gospel as a liberating force. Maranatha!