The invisibility of social privilege

"Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye."

- Matt 7.3-5 NRSV.

This is one place where Jesus doesn't want us to be focussed on others. I am to concentrate on my own faults. Correcting others can wait. The implication is that we are very good at fooling ourselves with regard to our own shortcomings. We all have blind spots, issues that we don't notice but which others find obvious. Jesus, with a twinkle in his eye, asks us to imagine having an entire log stuck in our eye and yet not seeing it. That is how blind we sometimes are.

So how can we know where these blind spots might be? Perhaps we should expect them to appear in places where my not noticing an issue ends up making my life easier. My kids are far better at pointing out where an injustice benefits their sibling than when it benefits them personally. And this is true for all of us. We tend to notice when things are unfair and we lose out. Yet we can more easily overlook unfair situations where we gain.

So if I am benefitting from an injustice that I am not good at seeing, how would I know about it? Perhaps I should listen to those who might be losing out as a result. This, then, could be a good principle to apply in many situations. If someone else is saying they are the victims of an injustice and saying that people like me benefit from that injustice, my first instinct should be to assume they could well be right. Of course, my actual first instinct is likely to be to deny it, since who wants to hear that my success is partially due to injustices from which I benefit? But if Jesus is right about my tendency to not see negative things about myself, then it is my responsibility to listen with particular care when someone says I am at fault. Or even when they say that I might not personally be at fault, but I am the kind of person who might be benefitting unwittingly from a larger fault in our culture or social system.

So, if you belong to a group of people who, on average, have advantages over others, it is right to pay extra attention to the claims of those who speak about how the system might be rigged in your favour.

It is possible that their complaint might simply be sour grapes from someone who hasn't succeeded due to their own shortcomings. But how can I possibly know that unless I am completely sure that any logs have been removed from my vision?

Does it have to be this way?

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
   and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
   the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
   the spirit of counsel and might,
   the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
   or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
   and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
   and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
   and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

- Isaiah 11.1-9 (NRSV).

The claim that it doesn't have to be this way, that the seeming inevitability of the status quo is an illusion, is one I have made many times over the last few months. Sometimes, it has been a more or less impotent protest appended to the end of some piece of bad news as a flimsy barrier against a rising sense of despair. Some readers (especially my most faithful and critical one) have pointed out that there is a disconnect between the scale of the problems I've highlighted and the glimpses of responses I've put forward (for example here and here). The threats are formidable; the remedies feeble. It may not have to be this way, but it certainly seems like it is highly likely that it will be.

Nonetheless, I repeat my assertion that it doesn't have to be this way. Ultimately, this claim is not grounded in empirical observation of alternative ways of living, though they can help to fire the imagination and break free from the shackles of the all-too-obvious we associate with business as usual. Ultimately, this is a theological claim, a messianic expectation that depends upon the promise of God. Even when we cannot see any way forward and all options seem like dead ends, even then we must treat all apparent political and economic necessities as only apparent. And when there seems to be only one way forward, we should remain sceptical of the reasoning that forces our hand. To believe in God's future is to remain free from such necessities, it is to refuse to grant ultimate relevance to the hand of fate, or the market, or of might.

This is one of the effects of Christian faith upon the vision of our immediate future. By placing our immediate future against the backdrop of a messianic promise for the renewal of all things, it is not that the present sufferings become irrelevant. Indeed, in some ways, they become worse, because we can never make our peace with them as merely "one of those things". Instead, a hope that does not arise from the possibilities already apparent in our situation means that the present predicament can be seen with fresh eyes. This doesn't necessarily mean that an escape route will open up for those with the eyes of faith, but that even a road ending in a cross may be seen as worth walking.

The Word became flesh: looking again at Jesus II

A sermon from John 1.1-14: Part II
Introduction: What do you see?

Image from hereDo you remember those 3D Magic Eye pictures that were all the rage a few years ago? If you held the book at the right angle and squinted your eyes and looked into the middle distance and thought about nothing and stood on one foot, then you still couldn’t see the image? Or maybe you were one of those frustrating people who could always see it without trying. Or maybe you pretended you were, because you didn’t want to look stupid when everyone else could see it.

Maybe Christianity feels a bit like that to you. Everyone seems to get it, or pretends they do. They speak as if God were real, they act as if it’s normal to think some guy came back from the dead, they tell you they feel God’s love, forgiveness or presence. But you just don’t get it and you’re faced with the choice. Do you admit your blindness and call it all a hoax, or do you go along with the crowd, saying the right words, doing the right things, in order to fit in? Is this a familiar feeling?

Of course, there’s a third option. To keep looking. To look again.

This series on John’s gospel over the next few weeks is an invitation to look again at Jesus. Perhaps it’s never ‘clicked’ for you, the stories of Jesus seem so many coloured dots on a page. Or maybe church seems too familiar, these services feel dull and lifeless, the readings say what you expect and you’ve stopped really looking. Jesus is like a piece of furniture you no longer even notice. Your spiritual life feels like you’re simply going through the motions. Look again. Whether you’re puzzled by him or have simply grown too used to hearing his name, Mary’s son from Nazareth is worth a second look.

And John will be our guide. Most readers notice that the fourth Gospel is somewhat different to the other three. It is at once more straightforward, and yet contains hidden depths. Perhaps John had reflected for longer on the overwhelming and life-changing experience of living with Jesus. He has thought carefully about how to invite us to look at Jesus, and then look at him again. John is book not only worth reading, but re-reading. Our passage has three key terms and we’ll look at each in turn: the word, the light, and flesh.
Ten points for the first to see the magic eye puzzle.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; X.

Jesus and climate change V

Seeing "creation"
To speak of "creation" rather than "nature" or "the environment" is an exercise in creative fidelity of vision. It is a way of seeing that is similtaneously creatively different to the deadly vision of how we 'normally' look at things (a pile of resources to be exploited, an economic unit of production and consumption) and yet is also faithful to those things as they are, involving painstaking attention with self-critical awareness that results in admiration.

The opening page of the Bible says not only that ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’, but also that what he made was ‘good, very good.’

Here’s a little exercise. Think of things you love: a close friend, your favourite family member, your loyal pet fish, your home and comfortable bed. And think of activities you enjoy: eating a fabulous pasta, reading an humorous poem, hitting that perfect six playing cricket, growing basil on your balcony, learning how to speak Swahili - whatever it is that floats your boat. Everyone and everything you love, everything in which you find joy, is a gift from God. Every breath, every mouthful, every morning you wake up, is God’s gift to you. To think like this doesn’t come automatically. To receive each day as a gift of God’s love takes a certain kind of creative vision. The great diversity and abundance of good gifts, or the problems we face as we try to balance them, can distract us from noticing and remembering the giver. God invites us to live lives filled with thankfulness and dependence, to stop pretending that we are self-made, self-reliant. He invites us to stop being self-obsessed.
Series: I; II; III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX; IX(b); X; XI; XII; XIII; XIV; XV.

God in us

    No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.                                                  - 1 John 4.12

Love is the future. It is how we see the invisible God. We can practice the same tune on our personal instruments and with our little ensembles which the whole orchestra will one day play to make angels weep with joy.

Aeschylus on the getting of wisdom

He who learns must suffer
And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
And in our own despair, against our will,
Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

- Aeschylus, Agamemnon, line 179ff.
(as misquoted/paraphrased by Robert F. Kennedy upon the assassination of Martin Luther King Jnr., and then also inscribed on RFK's grave)

I watched the second half of the SBS documentary on Robert F. Kennedy tonight with a friend from church and discovered how little I had known about him. For instance, I didn't realise how close he'd come to becoming America's youngest president, nor how much he'd already achieved in bringing people together. A vision of a possible future can be such a powerfully cohesive force.

Hart on learning to see

Sometimes we don't see what's under our noses. Sometimes we see but do not perceive. Having one's eyes open and head pointed in the right direction is no guarantee of correct vision. Hart makes an excellent point about the labour of vision that is required in order to see straight in a world bent out of shape:

[A]ll of nature is a shattered mirror of divine beauty, still full of light, but riven by darkness. ... [T]o see the goodness indwelling all creation requires a labour of vision that only faith in Easter can sustain; but it is there, effulgent, unfading, innocent, but languishing in bondage to corruption, groaning in anticipation of a glory yet to be revealed, both a promise of the Kingdom yet to come and a portent of its beauty.

- David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea:
Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Eerdmans: 2005), 102-3.

Learning to see creation rather than merely 'nature' does not mean closing our eyes to the pain all around (and within). Instead, it is to look thankfully not fearfully, seeing abundance rather than scarcity. It is to look caringly rather than instrumentally, seeing beauty before usefulness. It is to look hopefully, seeking glimpses of the glory yet to be revealed.