We Don't Know Better


I have come to the conclusion that the prophets can only be understood if you understand that their context is an ideological totalism, that intends to contain all thinkable, imaginable, doable social possibilities. That totalism always wants to monopolize imagination, and it wants to monopolize technology, so that there are no serious alternatives that seem on offer.

(...)

The first prophetic task is to be clear on the force and illegitimacy of the totalism. And what we have to recognize is that almost all of us, conservative and liberals — almost all of us, clergy and laity — are to some extent inured in the totalism. We take it as normative. And to take that as normative is a great narcotic that makes us passive and apathetic. Becoming clear and unambiguous about the force of the totalism is a teaching point that we really have to work at.

The second task of prophetic imagination that I could identify is that we have to pronounce the truth about the force of the totalism that contradicts the purpose of God. That's called prophetic judgment. And my sense is that in the institutional church we are very quiet about prophetic judgment, because we and most of our parishioners are too deeply committed to totalism, and you really are not able to talk that way.

(...)

So the first task is to identify the totalism. The second task is to identify the contradictions that put us on the route to death, because one can see that we now live in a society that is engaged in its self-destruction...And the third task of prophetic imagination is to articulate the alternative world that God has promised, and that God is birthing before our very eyes. If we have eyes to see it.


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Dear Kate,

I wonder the night they took my neighbor Mrs C away how it was done.

Was it an ambulance that came or her family driving her to--presumably to her I presume, a care facility?  Was she frail enough to know she was not coming back? her mind lucid enough to concede with no struggle?  Did her husband Mr C say Bye to her, and if he did, how did he say it?  Matter-of-factly, I imagine, knowing him, and just the same how Mrs C acknowledged his one-word farewell, knowing her?

What do I know?

I know I will probably stay in this house until I die.  I wish I will be well enough to walk out of my front door when I walk my last.  I don't want to make a scene, especially in this quiet neighborhood, grabbing the two side of the door frame, screaming and kicking and flying midair when the paramedics try to hold on to my legs and pull me out of my house.  Very comical indeed; glad to make the world laugh for my last time.  I will try to cultivate the same resignation Mrs and Mr C have grown in their lifelong garden together, and maybe find a nice bridge to jump off before the stretcher comes.

Someone told me their friends have just purchased their sixth property.  When you have one house and you want one more you call it an investment.  When you are onto the third greed is taking over.  By the time you are working on your sixth and still couldn't see the pure nutcase in the morning mirror you are in too deep to ever come back.

We all have two hands, functional if they are granted so at our threshold between life and death.  If we so want to grab on to a door for the last time as our ultimate protest, screaming and flying midair into what comes next, we could choose at max two sides of one same door to anchor our final tragicomic stance.  When you have six doors under your name, which one are you going to grab?  And what the hell, you will be thinking, is gonna happen to the other five?  Bellowing out your final wish to command your kids to grab them for you?

Man has to be the smartest creature to know how to get six houses for herself.  Man has to be the dumbest creature to live as if he could keep any for himself.  And that, is precisely what we see everyday in our world, the smartest men and women going around doing the dumbest things, spectacularly wasting away.  That kinda makes us more pathetic than a dog sticking out its tongue to everything, cos, you know, the beast doesn't know better.

We don't know better.

Yours, Alex

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