victim mentality

i'm just over a quarter of the way through james alison's knowing jesus, but from the first pages i knew it was going to be a significant experience, similar to my first encounters with henri nouwen and george macdonald. alison has an amazing way of presenting multifaceted truth in wonderfully simple language, and to make it feel revolutionary yet entirely traditional at the same time. this is the best kind of theological writing, drawing and stimulating and inspiring.

the foreward to the book is by archbishop of canterbury rowan williams, and is excellent in its own right. i'd like to quote it at length, because it does a great job of introducing and setting the tone for the book:

[We] do not meet Jesus simply as another human individual; but neither is he just the subject of inspiring stories. We meet Jesus as the resurrected one - the one who, after those closest to him have betrayed him and left him to die alone, returns as the source of grace and hope to those treacherous and fearful friends. What this means is that Jesus 'appears' now as the agency of a completely gratuitous love, right outside the calculations, rewards and punishments of human relationships, outside the complicated negotiations for living space that dominate the 'ordinary' human world, with its underlying assumption that we all live at each other's expense. And this makes clear to us as never before just how deep that assumption goes, and forces us to look afresh at those at whose expense we live - our victims. The resurrection of Jesus makes it impossible to take for granted that the world is nothing but a system of oppressors and victims, [an] endless cycle of reactive violence. We are free to understand ourselves and each other in a new way, as living in mutual gift not mutual threat. We can collaborate in the relations that the resurrection sets in motion, relations of forgiveness, equality and care. And if we recognise our habitual bondage to reactive relations, passing on or returning the wounds we have received, and feel in our lives together the solid reality of relationships that transcend this, then we 'know Jesus'.

...

James Alison is - among other things - restating what some of his Dominican ancestors meant by 'knowledge through participation', and indeed what the whole early and medieval Christian tradition understood as becoming 'divine' in communion with Christ - growing into freedom, beyond the prison of self-absorbed, self-referential feelings, beyond the reactive and repetitive world sustained by sin. But this recovery of older wisdom is given a profoundly contemporary slant in its concern with violence and victimage. As a culture, we have become more alert to the depth and breadth of historical and personal violence, to just how many victims our 'normative' culture creates. But if we are to believe in the hope of something more than just reparation or settling scores, we need the concrete presence of relations that transcend reaction, jostling for space, rivalry; we need Christ and the Church.

...

[True] theology, truthful reflection on what God is and does, can't be done without conversion to a new perspective on yourself and the world. God is not to be known unless we grasp the depth of our freedom and our unfreedom, unless we give up fictions about our purity or our innocence and become committed to searching out those we exclude and suppress, creating with them the promised community of mutual gift. This is the community that depends on the resurrection of Jesus; to belong wholeheartedly to it is to know Jesus - and the God whom Jesus called 'Father'.

Rowan Williams, Foreward to Knowing Jesus, pp vii - ix

there is so much here, and it certainly doesn't need me to add anything to it. the whole topic of "our freedom and our unfreedom" is in itself a huge one. the real gem in this for me, though, is that in bringing to light the victim mentality which is so strong in us. especially in our closest relationships, but to some extent with everyone we come in contact with, we are so quick to "[pass] on or [return] the wounds we have received". it is a natural and automatic response, which we feel is completely justified - after all, isn't it proper and just to punish the wrongdoer? but it is through the resurrection of jesus that we can gain access to "the solid reality of relationships that transcend this," and we can "collaborate in ... relations of forgiveness, equality and care." the resurrection of jesus breaks "endless cycle of reactive violence," and sets us free to live together in "mutual gift not mutual threat."

what a world that will be!

glimpsing the mystery

this quote jumped out at me as i was reading on the train on the way home from work on friday evening:

The paradox of faith and of nature is this: the knowledge we gain will bring with it an overwhelming amount of mystery. One escalates in proportion to the other.

Cindy Crosby, The Reconstruction of a Prairie and a Faith, Mars Hill Review Issue 23, pg 130.

i think it's brilliant. the more we know about the world and in our faith, the more we become aware of how much we don't know. but it's not just about us, an awareness of our own ignorance. if we turn our eyes outside ourselves we catch a glimpse of the staggering depth of mystery out there, that we are part of something huge which for now is beyond our ability to see and understand. it's at once awesome and incredibly exciting.