Living Wittily

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  • To serve God wittily… explanation

    Holbein18

    To serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds….

    Almost every word of this phrase has significance for an obedient following after Christ. At least for me. Unpacking this I use the inclusive ‘we’ – others may not think or feel this way, which is fine. I would be interested though to hear from you what you think it might mean "to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds".

    To serve implies obedience, but as willing grateful surrender, an inner attitude of consistent readiness, from which each action and activity derives its value as an act of devotion following after Christ.

    To serve wittily means an end to naivete, a call to attentiveness and alert observation of the world in which we live and move, and within which we are called to serve. So having  our wits about us will mean, (and this only for starters – feel free to add to this unpacking process)

    1. Not being rendered myopic by cultural assumptions, but rather see the world through the lens of the Gospel – not war but peacemaking; not greed but generosity; not lies but truthfulness; not power over others but power serving others.
    2. Not being pushed around by consumer pressures but rather being intentionally shaped and transformed by Jesus. And what are the economics of the Kingdom; what is it that profits a human being?
    3. Not being morally domesticated by ethical and cultural accommodations, but rather seeking to live in the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God where the only rule is God’s rule. The culture of hard realism challenged by visionary compassion; the idolatry of the bottom line questioned by gestures of sacrificial extravagance; the semantic cosmetics of political correctness superceded by communities of Jesus embodying radically inclusive love.
    4. Not being embarrassed by the evidence of Christendom in decline, but rather seeking and embodying a lifestyle more faithfully rooted in the teaching of Jesus.
    1. 4_1 The tangle of our minds – tidiness and system, an imposed order on life, what P T Forsyth called the lust for lucidity – none of these answer to the sheer messiness and inconvenience of the world, our culture and our times. There is that in the Gospel which resists being combed into shape, style and fashion. ( I use the metaphor as one who no longer has much use for a comb!) My own experience has been that Christian theology, ethics and practice have to relate to a world constitutionally ambiguous, unpredictable, inconsistent – and each human life is entangled in the consequent joy and suffering that is a human life together.

    And it is the tangle of our minds; speaking here only for myself, my deepest theological convictions, and even my most passionate spiritual experiences, are often rooted in the life of the mind. Thought, reflection, consideration, contemplation, reason, understanding, prayer – however deeply I feel the truth of things, they become most real and I own them as life convictions mostly as they are received and welcomed as ideas rooted in experience and expressed in the life God gives me to lead. Loving God with my mind is an essential not an optional devotional attitude and aptitude in my own spirituality – and for better or worse.

    So as a motto, ‘to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds’, provides a number of perspectives on my personal discipleship. 1576871487_01_pt01__ss400_sclzzzzzzz_v11_4 However, in case I get too serious about this, serving God wittily could also mean humorously, good humouredly, and with hilarity. Fun and laughter being an essential presupposition of healthily, gladly, en-joy-ably, serving God. That sets me thinking about the spiritual discipline of fun – is there a discipline of fun, an obligation under God to be a gladness maker?!

  • Hauerwas 1 Matthew Commentary

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    I read Bible commentaries. This doesn’t mean most commentaries are readable – it’s just that I regard a commentary as a conversation partner, and reading it is a form of listening to another voice, a different take on the text, and often a far better informed one than me.

    But this one is by Stanley Hauerwas, on Matthew. This is Hauerwas turning his assertive, perceptive, – at times infuriating and at times utterly convincing – take on things, to the Gospel – by commenting on a gospel. It is in a series which is unembarrassed by being a theological commentary. Which is why Hauerwas, who makes no claims to being an expert textual exegete,(see page 21), took on the task believing that this most theologically ethical of gospels might yield a different kind of treasure if cultivated by one asking different questions, or asking the same questions in a different way. Here’s his apologia for assertiveness as a pre-requisite of the theological exegete!

    I discovered that writing a commentary is an invitation to indulge in assertions. I have not tried to resist asserting what I know to be true. But assertions are not meant to end the conversation. Rather, assertions are intertwined in a manner that hopefully illumines why, faced with the reality of God, all we can do is proclaim the reality of what we have been given. Assertions are the grammar required by the story being told, but the story being told should illumine why the assertions are required if what we say is to be considered true. In short, assertions are reports on judgements that require further enquiry.

    More on Hauerwas now and again, as our conversation continues.

  • To serve God wittily

    For over a year I’ve been a blog voyeur! And the problem with voyeurism is that it quickly becomes a bad habit. The voyeur observes without participating, enjoys without contributing, is a taker without giving back. Mind you, I do now and again post comments – but that is always in response to someone else’s work, their willingness to comment, criticise,amuse, inform, annoy, encourage – and all in an open forum discussion.

    So. Time to kick the habit of getting kicks from playing a spectator sport. This blog is the place where I want to comment, criticise, amuse, inform, annoy, encourage – and do unto others what they have been doing unto me. Every blog writer has a perspective, a sense of what they want to say and how to say it. Me too. The other day I read an article which quoted Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons. Make allowance for the gender specific language of the genre and the period:

    "God made the angels to show him splendour – as he made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man he made to serve him wittily in the tangle of his mind."

    What does it mean to ‘serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds’? Have a think about More’s understanding of what humans were made for. Next blog I’ll try to explain why I think ‘living wittily’ is an interesting take on living wisely (OT) and following Jesus (NT).