reading david mccarthy's book the good life again. page 70-71 he discusses how attracted his students were to the story of chris mccandless, the young man famous by jon krakauer's book about him, into the wild. mccandless left his well-to-do east coast family, his college education (he was at emory, where i did doctoral work, at the same time i was there), and his possessions. his family had no idea what happened to him till his decomposed body was found in the wilderness of alaska. he had, it turned out, gone a quest for truth in living. he was an admirer of leo tolstoy and followed tolstoy's renunciation of his family's wealth and privilege. by any account, it is a compelling story.
mccarthy, however, points out how this story, despite its noble elements, embodies the modern quest for the 'true self' shorn from the weight of social identity. in fact, says mccarthy, it takes such a 'seeker' quest to its ultimate conclusion: death. this talented young man went in search of himself and died anonymously and alone. i remember so clearly listening to robert bellah one day in sociology of religion in berkeley. what is the true self? strip away that i am a husband, father, citizen, christian, professor, and pretty soon you lose any way to say who i am at all--those things are me! i am not somehow a 'true' self underneath all those labels. his long body and arms stretching towards the ceiling for effect.
here, it is key to see how mccarthy thinks. the modern utopia seen as a place where the self is free, unencumbered by the burdens of social identity, is just about the opposite of our confession as christians. when jesus says foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests; but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head, he makes clear that his place is to dwell with us and in us, god with us, so that our self becomes turned towards unity and community with god. such a self need not find itself, but finds itself found, blessed, broken, and poured out for the sake of the world. the ancient christian practice of 'otherworldliness' and asceticism press us not to seek our true self, but to seek god. and such a quest is in the end a running towards life that lives in us. our being found as god's own beloved makes clear god's making a home with and in us, and that our offering of hospitality to the world comes out of our living god's indwelling in and through us. mccarthy's book, it seems to me, makes plain some of the implications of what we dont' think (christian life as living within god, or god's indwelling in us) because of how deeply we are shaped by our assumptions (the free self seeking its true identity in radical freedom). but this makes the point exactly that miroslav argues in our work on faith as a way of life: the content of belief matters deeply, and we too often cover other ideologies with a veneer of faith, rather than doing the hard work of thinking deeply into a christian way of thinking about our living.
ah, pretzel thinking, as my friend leann stubbs would say.
anon, and +peace
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