Brother,
A few years ago we had a staff inset talk by an expert on IT and the internet in schools. He had some very interesting things to say about Google and the two young billionaires who started it. Most of us with computers will know about Google first hand. It is a simple piece of software that guides us quickly and easily to the web pages we need. Those who don’t waste half their lives sitting in front of a monitor will probably have heard of it as well. Google are big players in the computer scene. The company was recently valued at 100 billion dollars. These two guys started it up and have enjoyed meteoric success. They are perhaps the big winners of the early part of the 21st century.
One of the guys, Larry Page, is quite the inventor. They are both self-proclaimed geeks, but Larry has a remarkable talent for making things. Whilst he was at university, he made a functioning ink jet printer from lego. I remember my one of my brothers, at the age of 3, making a typewriter-like paper feeder using 3 empty toilet rolls but to think that I could add an ink cartridge to a lego holder that is attached to a lego mechanical device controlled by computer instructions that could deliver a piece of A4 accurately enough to print off an image is pure fantasy. I wouldn’t know where to start. But Larry Page is a genius. He can design things in ways beyond mere mortals.
Having said that, I wouldn’t mind speculating that there is one thing I could do. I have enough experience with lego to know that I could probably dismantle Larry’s printer. Bit by bit, I am sure I could take it apart without recourse to a sledge hammer. Well if you could take it apart, surely you could rebuild it. Even with the instructions laid out before me, I have my doubts that I could reconstruct a working lego printer.
The Transfiguration readings for tomorrow have, over the years, been the subject of what has become known as “Deconstructionism”. Taking things apart – or Deconstruction - is the characteristic action of our era. It is the heart of post-modern philosophy. In order to analyse something, you take it apart bit by bit, and in so doing you trace how it was put together. Radical French thinkers like Michel Foucault have made the art of deconstruction their hallmark. They expose the processes by which we express something we believe to be true. These processes are pulled apart, analysed and explained. The truth claim is laid bare. It can no longer claim to be uncontested and absolute. It was constructed around a certain set of circumstances. Post-modern thinkers plot the story and explain why we now believe what we believe.
The same thing happens in society at large, particularly in the media. We have an array of personalities – A list, B list and so on. Some are politicians, some business leaders, some cultural icons. Some celebrity gets married today. When she became famous we began to deconstruct her life. We examine all the evidence we can find to see how she got where she is, why she makes the decisions she does, and what is her driving motivation. We lay them bare in news sheet and TV gossip and inspect the parts of their sum. Whoever we choose, it is not usually a pretty sight. They are fallible human beings who forsake dignity for power and fame – their fallibility laid out for all to see. We no longer see the sum of their parts; they are no longer the heroes we want to look up to.
Christian theologians have spent the past 200 years deconstructing our belief in Jesus. They are still at it. It is not an easy task. There is a lot of uncertainty picking over the life of a relatively obscure figure from 2000 years ago. We could both point to a raft of material which asks why we believe what we believe about Jesus. Theologians try to tell the story; the history of the man from Nazareth, the son of Joseph, the friend of fishermen and farmers transfigured on a mountain top. They go on to look at how the apostles shaped their faith in the wake of their resurrection experiences, how the apostle Paul developed that further into a wide ranging theology. As Churches sprang up throughout the Roman Empire there is much to say about the competing interests between different groups, the rise of the great Church fathers who weighed their Jesus tradition against Greek philosophy. The politics of power had a hand, until finally after almost 400 years, the bishops agreed together a formula describing the divine nature of Jesus. They defined the incarnation, the concept of the embodiment of God in human form. We are going to recite these conclusions tomorrow in a rather detailed form of the creed.
You and I could deconstruct this story. It would take a long time and it would be complex. We may ask difficult questions of the gospel accounts, of the influence of Paul, of the impact of philosophy. We may try to distinguish a Jesus of history from a Christ of faith. God forbid, we may even allow open interpretations of the birth of Jesus or an array of explanations for the resurrection of Jesus!
But how does this process may us feel? We find we have many pieces laid bare before us. Do we feel confident in reconstructing the Jesus who inspires us, guides us and saves us? Could we reassemble the Messiah, the Son of God?
This is a source of real anxiety for the church. Many people who engage in theological study come out of it unable to make sense of their faith. They deconstruct it, and it then lies before them in bits. They seem unable to put it back together.
There was a period in the 1960s and 1970s when this spilled over into society at large. We read the books at university. We called them filthy stinking Liberals. Do you remember? Amusing when I think about it now. Do you remember how many people didn’t like it. At one stage people began to leave the church in droves and some people assumed it was because of this so-called liberalism. Those that remained had to be protected from this process. This time saw the rise of the evangelical wing of the church with its confidence in plain biblical truth and then the great sweep of renewal in the Charismatic Movement. People warmed to the idea of clarity and chose to accept the simplicity of the evangelical approach to the bible, Holy Spirit etc. Perhaps deconstruction is actually a negative process they thought. If you can’t be confident of reconstruction, then you had better avoid the whole exercise.
We have therefore a real dilemma. Like the lego printer, Christianity does actually work. Here we are. We pray together, we support each other, we serve others in need, and fundamentally we do all this because the person of Jesus inspires us to do so. We are strengthened by God’s presence, and are encouraged that God is with us. It works. It is real. But the moment you engage in a process of analysis; the moment you deconstruct the story of our faith - you face this challenging dilemma. You may struggle to regain what you started with.
I don’t know about you but I don’t think deconstructionism is always a bad thing. I have spoken of it in a rather negative way, but fundamentally I believe it opens for us a dynamic conversation. We look into our tradition and it comes alive. It allows us to reappraise our Christian tradition in the light of our present circumstances. If we look back and see how that tradition was formed in the face of its various past challenges, it helps us to see how we can face with confidence our own present challenges.
Take for example the way we have dealt with the empowerment of women in the church and in society. If we relied on a fixed interpretation of the Christian tradition, then we would not have taken steps forward to recognise the contributions women make to every aspect of life. In deconstructing that tradition – how it evolved in its particular circumstances - we have realised that in many senses women were from the time of Jesus empowered from their traditional roles.
A few years ago we had a staff inset talk by an expert on IT and the internet in schools. He had some very interesting things to say about Google and the two young billionaires who started it. Most of us with computers will know about Google first hand. It is a simple piece of software that guides us quickly and easily to the web pages we need. Those who don’t waste half their lives sitting in front of a monitor will probably have heard of it as well. Google are big players in the computer scene. The company was recently valued at 100 billion dollars. These two guys started it up and have enjoyed meteoric success. They are perhaps the big winners of the early part of the 21st century.
One of the guys, Larry Page, is quite the inventor. They are both self-proclaimed geeks, but Larry has a remarkable talent for making things. Whilst he was at university, he made a functioning ink jet printer from lego. I remember my one of my brothers, at the age of 3, making a typewriter-like paper feeder using 3 empty toilet rolls but to think that I could add an ink cartridge to a lego holder that is attached to a lego mechanical device controlled by computer instructions that could deliver a piece of A4 accurately enough to print off an image is pure fantasy. I wouldn’t know where to start. But Larry Page is a genius. He can design things in ways beyond mere mortals.
Having said that, I wouldn’t mind speculating that there is one thing I could do. I have enough experience with lego to know that I could probably dismantle Larry’s printer. Bit by bit, I am sure I could take it apart without recourse to a sledge hammer. Well if you could take it apart, surely you could rebuild it. Even with the instructions laid out before me, I have my doubts that I could reconstruct a working lego printer.
The Transfiguration readings for tomorrow have, over the years, been the subject of what has become known as “Deconstructionism”. Taking things apart – or Deconstruction - is the characteristic action of our era. It is the heart of post-modern philosophy. In order to analyse something, you take it apart bit by bit, and in so doing you trace how it was put together. Radical French thinkers like Michel Foucault have made the art of deconstruction their hallmark. They expose the processes by which we express something we believe to be true. These processes are pulled apart, analysed and explained. The truth claim is laid bare. It can no longer claim to be uncontested and absolute. It was constructed around a certain set of circumstances. Post-modern thinkers plot the story and explain why we now believe what we believe.
The same thing happens in society at large, particularly in the media. We have an array of personalities – A list, B list and so on. Some are politicians, some business leaders, some cultural icons. Some celebrity gets married today. When she became famous we began to deconstruct her life. We examine all the evidence we can find to see how she got where she is, why she makes the decisions she does, and what is her driving motivation. We lay them bare in news sheet and TV gossip and inspect the parts of their sum. Whoever we choose, it is not usually a pretty sight. They are fallible human beings who forsake dignity for power and fame – their fallibility laid out for all to see. We no longer see the sum of their parts; they are no longer the heroes we want to look up to.
Christian theologians have spent the past 200 years deconstructing our belief in Jesus. They are still at it. It is not an easy task. There is a lot of uncertainty picking over the life of a relatively obscure figure from 2000 years ago. We could both point to a raft of material which asks why we believe what we believe about Jesus. Theologians try to tell the story; the history of the man from Nazareth, the son of Joseph, the friend of fishermen and farmers transfigured on a mountain top. They go on to look at how the apostles shaped their faith in the wake of their resurrection experiences, how the apostle Paul developed that further into a wide ranging theology. As Churches sprang up throughout the Roman Empire there is much to say about the competing interests between different groups, the rise of the great Church fathers who weighed their Jesus tradition against Greek philosophy. The politics of power had a hand, until finally after almost 400 years, the bishops agreed together a formula describing the divine nature of Jesus. They defined the incarnation, the concept of the embodiment of God in human form. We are going to recite these conclusions tomorrow in a rather detailed form of the creed.
You and I could deconstruct this story. It would take a long time and it would be complex. We may ask difficult questions of the gospel accounts, of the influence of Paul, of the impact of philosophy. We may try to distinguish a Jesus of history from a Christ of faith. God forbid, we may even allow open interpretations of the birth of Jesus or an array of explanations for the resurrection of Jesus!
But how does this process may us feel? We find we have many pieces laid bare before us. Do we feel confident in reconstructing the Jesus who inspires us, guides us and saves us? Could we reassemble the Messiah, the Son of God?
This is a source of real anxiety for the church. Many people who engage in theological study come out of it unable to make sense of their faith. They deconstruct it, and it then lies before them in bits. They seem unable to put it back together.
There was a period in the 1960s and 1970s when this spilled over into society at large. We read the books at university. We called them filthy stinking Liberals. Do you remember? Amusing when I think about it now. Do you remember how many people didn’t like it. At one stage people began to leave the church in droves and some people assumed it was because of this so-called liberalism. Those that remained had to be protected from this process. This time saw the rise of the evangelical wing of the church with its confidence in plain biblical truth and then the great sweep of renewal in the Charismatic Movement. People warmed to the idea of clarity and chose to accept the simplicity of the evangelical approach to the bible, Holy Spirit etc. Perhaps deconstruction is actually a negative process they thought. If you can’t be confident of reconstruction, then you had better avoid the whole exercise.
We have therefore a real dilemma. Like the lego printer, Christianity does actually work. Here we are. We pray together, we support each other, we serve others in need, and fundamentally we do all this because the person of Jesus inspires us to do so. We are strengthened by God’s presence, and are encouraged that God is with us. It works. It is real. But the moment you engage in a process of analysis; the moment you deconstruct the story of our faith - you face this challenging dilemma. You may struggle to regain what you started with.
I don’t know about you but I don’t think deconstructionism is always a bad thing. I have spoken of it in a rather negative way, but fundamentally I believe it opens for us a dynamic conversation. We look into our tradition and it comes alive. It allows us to reappraise our Christian tradition in the light of our present circumstances. If we look back and see how that tradition was formed in the face of its various past challenges, it helps us to see how we can face with confidence our own present challenges.
Take for example the way we have dealt with the empowerment of women in the church and in society. If we relied on a fixed interpretation of the Christian tradition, then we would not have taken steps forward to recognise the contributions women make to every aspect of life. In deconstructing that tradition – how it evolved in its particular circumstances - we have realised that in many senses women were from the time of Jesus empowered from their traditional roles.
I think we are taking the process further in a way that is consistent with Jesus’ groundbreaking steps forward. We are not stuck at the point at which the apostle Paul wrote, or at which the Roman Church formed, or at which the Reformation brought fresh insight. We have continued the journey in confidence that we are consistent with the early trajectory. Deconstruction gives us insight into the formation of truth, and allows us to see how we might interpret that truth in contemporary life.
The real dilemma with post-modernism is that whilst it provides the tools to deconstruct truth, it provides nothing to reconstruct a sense of meaning and purpose. It is this dilemma that can also afflict our analysis of the Christian tradition. We have to be secure in our faith to allow ourselves to ask deep and complex questions.
I don’t know what gives you confidence in God; what makes you feel secure in your Christian faith. For me it is the person of Jesus. He was no ordinary person, but one who mysteriously reflected the divine light that we all seek within ourselves. In Jesus we see something of God, as the disciples did on the mount of transfiguration.
I will almost certainly flirt with some occasional bits of deconstruction here and there – maybe the less controversial bits. But otherwise you will see me playing rather safe – as the wider church does so often these days.
Suffice to say that in Jesus we see the grace and love of God. That is the rock of our faith; Jesus the son of God. It is our statement of faith which no amount of logical analysis could prove objectively true. The church further expresses what it means by this statement of faith in the words contained in our creed. It may have taken a long time getting there, but the truth it contains will endure.
The real dilemma with post-modernism is that whilst it provides the tools to deconstruct truth, it provides nothing to reconstruct a sense of meaning and purpose. It is this dilemma that can also afflict our analysis of the Christian tradition. We have to be secure in our faith to allow ourselves to ask deep and complex questions.
I don’t know what gives you confidence in God; what makes you feel secure in your Christian faith. For me it is the person of Jesus. He was no ordinary person, but one who mysteriously reflected the divine light that we all seek within ourselves. In Jesus we see something of God, as the disciples did on the mount of transfiguration.
I will almost certainly flirt with some occasional bits of deconstruction here and there – maybe the less controversial bits. But otherwise you will see me playing rather safe – as the wider church does so often these days.
Suffice to say that in Jesus we see the grace and love of God. That is the rock of our faith; Jesus the son of God. It is our statement of faith which no amount of logical analysis could prove objectively true. The church further expresses what it means by this statement of faith in the words contained in our creed. It may have taken a long time getting there, but the truth it contains will endure.
Construct a wonderful Sunday tomorrow
Mark
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