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1.3 Memory and revelation
In this module, James discusses the idea that a big part of being on the receiving end of Divine Revelation is being given a new story about ourselves. Please share your thoughts, comments, discoveries and responses to these questions.
Receiving a new story
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Receiving goodness from God
Let’s prepare to receive the new story shall we? Write some ways you would complete this sentence: “Good people are good because they…”
Also share your thoughts about this question: Why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness?
Food for thought
- James describes our memories as being constructed from our attempts to start to tell a story about ourselves.
- What memories play an important role in your story?
- What truth do those memories convey about you?
- James says that we are “revisionist historians” and that that’s a good thing. What did he mean by that?
- How does the account you give about yourself today differ from the one you gave 5, 10 or 20 years ago?
Wrap-up question
Why do you think the title of the accompanying essay for the first three Modules of the course is, “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”?
- James describes our memories as being constructed from our attempts to start to tell a story about ourselves.
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These are deeply personal questions and I am a bit hesitant to make many answers public. I certainly am a revisionist with my own story and that is definitely good and fitting. The way I tell or see my story now differs a lot from 10 years ago. As for my memories well I was a religious sister and for me now that says that I was addicted to goodness and also vulnerable to abuse. My interpretation of most of my memories is continually shifting especially this year of major revisions… I have traveled a lot since childhood and this means I am open and curious about other cultures and peoples and the world for me is much bigger than America and what happens here.
Perhaps it will be easier to answer this once I have gone on and can come back. -
I realized finally that the missing piece is the essays. I have purchased them and need to read them to understand Alison better.
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Good people are good because they have been shown goodness and are responding in-kind.
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Why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness? Perhaps because we have somehow gotten it wrong? The social other has led us astray or has given us an incomplete understanding of goodness?
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Because we are dependent on the social other from birth – do we initially speak unless or until we are spoken to? We may spontaneously make sounds but speaking/language and dialogue are learned by interaction and imitation – pondering this can prepare us for revelation – the exploding of our normal categories
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Marko, a very belated reply to your enquiry about the essays. James’ written material is the same content as the videos, it is really a question of preference. Some people prefer the videos, some the essays, and many use both, in the sense that they prepare for the videos by reading the essays, or do so after the visual experience.
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Yes, this “I” does seem so real Charles. But as we discussed in an earlier post of yours, the true self of the contemplative traditions opens us to a marvellous detachment that must not be confused with indifference. This detachments allow us to move freely in the world without rivalry or the desire for the approval of others and, offers us the possibility of loving truly, that is, loving others for what they are without the need to be either dependent or dominant. I again refer you to the contemplative tradition which so much reinforces Girard’s thinking on desire, and of course, Simone Weil, whose thinking influenced Girard so much. James’ teaching on the social other and the other other has a great deal to do with the teaching of the “false self” and the “true self”.
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Don’t speak until you are spoken to.
So the idea is that the “I” which I feel is independent and real is actually a response the “word” of the social other. Add this to the idea that all the problems in my life have their roots in this sense of “I” and I can know that to solve my problems (stop my sinning), I must change the “I”. But this “I” is a response, so to change it I must listen for a new voice, something other than the social other to respond to.
Now I am speaking (typing) but these words come from the response to the social other so to find true joy, I guess I better shut up!
Thank you for your words Sheelah. I really appreciate them.
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Charles, the idea that we are interdividuals not individuals can be very helpful. We live in a web of relationships with others and so much or our imitating and desiring is good, natural and harmless. It is when we become rivalrous that we are putting ourselves in danger. We all think of changing our “I”, but the idea that we can do this implies that we are in control. The possibility of “letting go” and allowing ourself to be ushered into another way of being and relating by the Being who loves us unconditionally, is a very joyful prospect! We don’t have to beat ourselves up!
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I’ve just started this section on memory. He gives it as the foundation to being a self. What I have been exploring recently is the possibility that consciousness itself precedes memory,indeed that memory can be thought of as a content of consciousness. A memory is extremely personal; it is our individual narrative. Normally we think of the self with his story, his narrative, possesses consciousness. Sam Harris has been saying that such a conception of the self is an illusion which will be dissolved if consciousness is directed towards that self; it won’t be found. So A qualitative difference between memory or narrative and consciousness is that the former is personal and the latter is impersonal. If it even make sense talking this way the goal of meditation seems to be to lose a personal sense of memory or history and the illusion of a bound autonomous self. Is James moving in an opposite direction, substituting an improved illusion for an inferior one?
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I think there is a difference between “a memory” and “memory”, Leigh, – the latter is the way our bodies are inducted through our imitative repetitions into being able to negotiate their being brought into being through other bodies. Bodies aren’t an illusion, though many particular ways of holding to them (i.e. selves) may very well be! It would probably be useful to you to look at what Sebastian Moore wrote about this in his last days, concerning his discovery of Eckert Tolle’s narrative of the loss of self. And there is also the ongoing discussion about Sam Harris’ new book on Andrew Sullivan’s website.
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What does James mean when he says “Curiously, then, we’re all used to an entirely fake, apparent, timelessness.” Is it because when I, as a fifty-year-old, as I watch the news I blindly interpret, judge the events without consideration of my past, my history?
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Lee, James treats this at length in the first of the books “Starting human, staying human”. To be more precise, it is the section 2 on pages 13 – 19. “The grammar of escaping from a mentalist world – induction, habits, time”. If you don’t have the four books get back to me and I will reply to you more fully on this topic.
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“We were inducted into hearing sounds”. We don’t speak until someone has spoken to us. I really like James’ comment “It is the ‘social’ other which reproduces itself in and as the body of each of us, thus BRINGING INTO BEING the subsection of the ‘we’ which is a ‘ME’. I find it difficult to go from this “me” to the ME that is forgiven and loved by Another other. Transitioning to this ‘me’ might be easy to do from the head but not so easy to do so from the heart. And from the heart would be the only way to actually “live” as this forgiven and loved me. Maybe through contemplation its possible.
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Yes indeed, I think we all have a problem with grasping this Lee. To quote James, ” It’s not that the “WE” is a collection of “I’s” banded together. The “We” is what enabled the “I’s” to come into being in the first place”. This takes us back to the idea of the autonomous self who believes that all thoughts and desires originate in one’s self, rather than the process of induction that James speaks of, where we learn and absorb from the family, the group, the community; we are not individuals but interdividuals. I think that contemplation is so important in this process, as it teaches us that we are all broken, wounded creatures, as is the person with whom we may be in conflict, rivalry etc. This is how compassion and the recognition of the other as also hurting comes into being. Does that make sense?
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I wrote the following in response to the ‘Receiving goodness from God’ question: “Why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness?”
I’m watching Good Will Hunting (1997) on Netflix, in segments as I have the time. Although it takes longer to watch in this ‘broken-up’ way, I am finding that I remain as involved with the movie, but differently than if I viewed it all at once. It feels more like reading a novel than watching a movie.
Good Will Hunting is about how self-taught, mathematics, savant Will Hunting’s story of goodness gets revised. Will, who is played by Matt Damon, and his therapist Sean Macguire, played by Robin Williams, are the leading characters. Will Hunting greatly needs to revise his “current story of goodness,” and yet he uses his prodigious intellect to deflect personal change. Will’s ‘social other’ connects him with Macguire, who actively listens Will into life-changing, emotional connection.
This is the first Robin Williams movie I’ve watched since his suicide, a viewing experience that touches an aching in me in relation to Williams’s forceful talent. Playing an empathic, healing, therapist in the movie, Williams in his personal life ultimately could not find the healing, the forgiveness for his story, that his character Sean so ably awakened in good Will Hunting.
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How right you are Rich, the unfortunate Williams did not seem to have the tools to bring about his own healing.
But your question ‘why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness? Well, James tell us ‘that someone whose sins are being forgiven is someone who is being let go of being tied in a certain way, and being given a whole new perspective from which to hold themselves in relation to their past. In other words a massive, and ofter initially painful revision of their story is being given by someone else. The revision is not, however, the enemy of truthfulness: it is because we are revisionist historians that we are able to become truthful. Without this the notion of forgiveness of sins would mean nothing’.
I am a little confused by your use of the term ‘social other’ in this text. Who exactly is “Will’s ‘social other’ who connects him with Macguire”. Could you explain this to me?
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Last week as I watched the 2013 movie Nebraska on Netflix, I reflected on the relation between memories and individuals’ narratives. I find the idea that memories have the individual, rather than the individual having memories a tough one to integrate into my thoughts and actions.
Nebraska’s storyline is about aging Vietnam Veteran and father Woody, who who takes a road trip from Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska with his adult son David. Woody believes that a Million Dollar Prize is waiting for him in Lincoln, because a junk-mail letter that he keeps with him throughout the movie tells him so. Woody is determined to walk to Lincoln if he must in order to get the Prize. Filmed in black and white, Nebraska contrasts Woody’s incoherent longing for the Million Dollar Prize with David’s lifetime of dealing with his father’s addictions and denial.
On the way to Lincoln Woody and David stop in Hawthorne, Nebraska to visit relatives. Woody grew up in Hawthorne, went off to war in Vietnam, and then returned to get married and to begin raising his own family in Hawthorne. Both Woody and the now adult David encounter Hawthorne’s social other, which Woody’s inarticulate, unacknowledged, deeply anguished personal narrative has denied. David discovers details about Woody’s Vietnam experiences, and also about some of the formative events in Woody’s life with his own family of origin. Consequently David can and does begin revising his understanding of Woody’s personal history. The insights gleaned in Hawthorne lead David into growth in understanding and in forgiveness both for his father and for himself.
In spite of, or perhaps because of the darkness in Nebraska, redeeming themes of recognition, repentance and renewal flow beneath the mostly cheerless cinematic surface; which brings to mind Psalm 139:11-12: “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is a bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
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Again Rich, who is Hawthorne’s social other who both Woody and the now adult David encounter? Do you mean by this Hawthorne’s society? This is a wonderful redemption story that you tell here Rich, it is really in the wilderness, not the promised land that we learn self-knowledge. This is a our desert experience.I have not seen this film, but you seem to be describing the process of the recognition of the pain and brokenness of the other here, leading to reconciliation, forgiveness and healing.
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Why do you think the title of the accompanying essay for the first three Modules of the course is, “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”?
“Don’t speak until you’re spoken to” reflects the conundrum of autonomous individuals interacting with other autonomous individuals. What I learned from this chapter is that we are given our individual ‘selves’ through an anthropology of mimicking the intent of the social other. The saying captures therefore the ironic truth of human culture’s denial of our true, given selves.
“Don’t speak until you’re spoken to” is ironic, because the saying arises from the fact, as James laid it out in the chapter, that we cannot speak until we’re spoken to! Both our language and our memory arise from the inherently physical human necessity of imitating the intention of the social other over time. Language and memory invent us. It is not we who invent them.
“Don’t speak until you’re spoken to” double-binds both the speaker and the compliant listener. The speaker, who in reality is as given by the social other as is her listener, asserts the autonomy of a good-self to command the listener. This idol of a good-self cuts-off knowledge of the real source of her being. A silent, compliant listener denies his behavioral need to imitate the speaking of the other, and not able to cut-off his need to imitate, learns the wholly selfish (as opposed to holy selfless) intent of the speaker.
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I am actually not sure what I am being asked to reflect upon. It may be my starting point or it could be that I am so familiar with Rene Girard and the work that I am a bit puzzled as to how to say how I see this stuff showing up in my life.
For example, I accept that the other forms me! I have never, from the earliest ages believed that a person is self made etc.
When I think about what has been talked about I think most about the continued tension I feel between formation and ritual, habit etc.
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Good people are good because they…”
I think that is a funny way to begin a statement. However, good people are good precisely because goodness is what they were created to be. It might be just as interesting to suggest that bad people are good because. . . .. That is, who determines the narrative, who tells the story. If the gift that we receive is a definition of ourselves does goodness come because of how we receive the gift— I think not— goodness is the essence of the gift—- our reception of it doesn’t define anything more than our character but not our essence.
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Yes, Michael that really is a bit of an enigma, I suppose we could say that people are good because they received positive models. However, I think that what James is really trying to tell us as we progress with the course, is that we come to realise that being good or bad is not what it’s about. It is about being loved.
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: why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness?
I think the predominant story of the Latin West is a dangerous story. It is story wrapped up in the dualism of good and evil. I cannot image God is too awfully happy with how we have interpreted the creation narrative.
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Perhaps we should see this question in the light of our personal story, or the narrative we have of our lives, which changes as we mature and experience more and more things. And how memory holds together our personal stories. And yes, Michael certain aspects of the Latin West are indeed dualistic as you say, however, what James is teaching us is not at all.
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James describes our memories as being constructed from our attempts to start to tell a story about ourselves.
What memories play an important role in your story?
Church in childhood, meeting my ex-wife, birth of children, growth of children, near death of a child, work with students at University, learning to be honest about my self, divorce, fatherhood as a single man,
What truth do those memories convey about you?
Aloneness– the truths about myself, which are often constructed truths are rooted in my aloneness.
James says that we are “revisionist historians” and that that’s a good thing. What did he mean by that?
Our narratives are evolutionary and interpreted. There is no such thing as pure history- all history has the lens of experience and emotion.
How does the account you give about yourself today differ from the one you gave 5, 10 or 20 years ago?
I talk of being single! I am far more creative than I have ever thought out myself in the past.
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Why do you think the title of the accompanying essay for the first three Modules of the course is, “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”?
For me speech is a learned and mimicked practice. You cannot speak until words are formed within you.
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In United States at least we use phrase like “I am a person of habit!” So for example at certain food establishments I always eat salmon. I always mow my lawn on Sunday. My habit is to read the Obits and the Comics. Habits are not seen as rituals albeit they are.
Rituals, are reserved for particular space or concepts– the Lord’s Prayer is a ritual and can be dry, where the fact that I always have sex on Tuesday at 9 pm is not a ritual but a habit. Ritual holds all the formative negative power whereas habit is just who and what I do.
In my work with student ritual and habit are seen as very different constructs– even though they are not in social or psychological concepts.
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Well Michael, yes, this is true. There are different (and interesting) uses of the words in question going on here – but I think you would agree that an habitually excellent driver being a safer choice for a ride than one who is constantly thinking of what (s)he must do next. The key distinction at work here is that which is done without stopping to think about it, and that where someone is constantly stopping and giving mind to what to do next. Would you agree?
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— Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Yesterday evening* during a Sunday School class I was leading, one participant put forward a reading that was incompatible with the one I had put forward. The specifics are immaterial to us here (I believe), but I’ll mention them so as not to burden my story with too much abstraction. I read the second half of Genesis 25 aloud and had Esau sounding quite gruff and demanding when he asked his brother to feed him some of the red red stuff. My aunt, however, suggested that Esau truly was famished (as the narrative voice says in the preceding verse) and that Esau was not being obnoxious or insensitive (as I had him sounding)—but that he really was at death’s door. I responded to my aunt with skepticism and referenced a translator of this passage who has remarked that the word for ‘feed’ is only ever used to refer to animals being fed—and never to humans reclining at mealtime.
After class, I realized that my “argument” wasn’t all that strong; I had merely cobbled together some factoids from Robert Alter and Brown Driver Briggs and then presented them in close proximity to a “conclusion” that wasn’t actually an entailment. As far as this Hebrew dilettante can say, the peculiarities of the trilateral root l-‘-T don’t preclude my aunt’s reading. Perhaps conjuring the imagery of a domesticated animal in need of sustenance was precisely how Esau chose to express the extremely dire straits his hunger was guiding him toward, i.e. Esau’s looming death from malnutrition was making him more instinctual and animalistic than human—and Esau knew it! If this were the case, Esau is using the most appropriate word. I don’t know enough Hebrew use vocabulary to choose between my aunt’s reading and mine, and I shouldn’t have made it sound AS IF I DID during the class. I told this to my aunt immediately afterwards and plan to make it a topic of discussion during our next class.
If I insist on winning an argument over two incompatible readings of a passage, then I risk transforming the text into a tool by which to undermine an opponent. If I dismiss her reading out right, without a sound argument to do so, then I’m no longer reading the text—I attempting to wield the text for some aggressive purpose. If I were to dominate the role of interpreter and force-feed my position to listeners (who should ‘only speak’ when they confirm my position), one might start to wonder why the class needs to be there at all!
In short, I can’t read scripture by myself. When I pretend that I can, I’m no longer reading scripture.
*I wrote the first draft of this about a month ago, that’s why “yesterday evening” was a Sunday. The next week, my aunt was off listening to her granddaughter play the cello, and no one else in the class even remembered our exchange concerning Esau’s state of nutrition. I tried to refresh the discussion, but people’s eyes were glazing over. It’s difficult enough to present an audience with a position that is incompatible with their own in a non-threatening manner so that the tension is not felt as a danger; it’s nearly impossible to present the tension between two incompatible positions as palpable when the audience doesn’t really give a hoot one way or the other. So, unfortunately, I don’t think I managed to hit home the full force of what it means to say “I can’t read scripture by myself” for my Sunday School class. Hopefully it fares better in this discussion forum.
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Andrew, please excuse my tardiness, I have been travelling. What you have written here is beautiful, ‘if I insist on winning an argument over two incompatible readings of a passage, then I risk transforming the text into a tool by which to undermine an opponent.” Absolutely ! For me, the most transforming aspect of James’ teaching is learning to link the head to the heart, and the realisation that Christianity is not about being right, but about being loving. We learn to find God in “the other”, and in all others, not just those with whom we agree.
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— Write some ways you would complete this sentence: “Good people are good because they…”
… can (i) wrangle other people’s aggressions with creative dexterity and (ii) reject the excuses people regularly make when they want to vent their frustrations on another. I think the Bible calls the first one grace and the second one mercy.
— Why might God want to gift us with some revisions to our current story of goodness?
If we confused good and evil, we’ll end up hurting someone. Eve was indignant we she “learned” that God had pulled one over on her and Adam. Of course she didn’t actually learn any such thing; she merely believed this subtle accusation when it was presented to her by the serpent. Acting on this falsity, she decided to eat from tree. She knew it was “bad” to eat from the tree, but on this occasion it would be “good” for something, viz. showing God that nobody—not even God—was going to get the best of her. Knowing how to make a bad thing good for something will—left unchecked—lead to a death. If our understanding of goodness were one that led to death, a god of life would want to revise it.
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Yes Andrew, that is a good way of looking at it. James tells us that “The gospel story is a story told by people who are not good, about something which happened in their midst and which shook up their previous sense of goodness, giving them a longing for a quite other sort of goodness, which they found themselves becoming at the hands of someone else”. I think we call this ‘other sort of goodness’ the new creation in Christ.
And James also tells us that memory holds together our attempts to start to tell a story about ourselves and that narrative is not an extra in our lives; it is constitutive of our lives. We revise our story as we go along, and if we didn’t we would be less truthful, not more truthful. We are all revisionist historians.
As you undergo this course, what James hopes will happen is that you will be able to relax into the realization that being good or bad is not what it’s about. It’s about being loved.Have a blessed and joyful Easter, Andrew.
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– James describes our memories as being constructed from our attempts to start to tell a story about ourselves. What memories play an important role in your story?
I’d have a very difficult time telling a single story about myself. I’ve lived in several different places among discrete communities that know very little to nothing of each other. They each have stories for me, and their respective accounts are largely incommensurable. I’d say this make me feel fragmented; but I suspect Alison would have me say something different, i.e. that this is just what it is like to be human. There never was an “I” to get fractured into various selves (drewman, Dru, Dede, Nur id-Diin, Idriss, etc); rather, the true “I” is what is being called into being out of this chaotic swirl of incoherent narrative.– What truth do those memories convey about you?
The truth conveyed by my memories (of Kentucky, Indiana, Tennesse, Bolivia, France, Morocco, etc) is the story told by the others who were beholding me at those times and places.– James says that we are “revisionist historians” and that that’s a good thing. What did he mean by that?
Communist revisionist historians were looking to achieve a desired future, and so they concocted a past they believed could help propel them there. This is dishonest. If we look backward and our retrospection allows for us to see what was unseen when it happened, then we too are rewriting the past—but it’s not dishonest, because we are revealing something to which we were formerly oblivious.– How does the account you give about yourself today differ from the one you gave 5, 10 or 20 years ago?
Today, my story about myself is: “I’m a great big ball of confusion” (c.f. answer to the first question answered in this post). This is different from stories I’ve told myself in the past, but–as I said above–these were only the stories others were telling about me anyway. So maybe the “great big ball of confusion” story is only what I’ve picked up for those around me now. If that is so, then the account I give about myself today differs from the one I gave 20 years ago only in that I no longer trust one bit that it is actually my own account of myself. -
Yes, Andrew the true ‘I’ is being called into being, but in your case it seems to be from a narrative that is extremely rich and varied. As James indicates “ our Memories are produced in us over time by repetition in imitation of the gestures and sounds produced by others” and as you say “by the others who were beholding me at those times and places.”
Absolutely, as ‘revisionists’ we are revealing something to which we were formerly oblivious. A revelation is something happening outside of your control, but which is going to lead you into a process of discovering things about yourself and others that you didn’t know before.
I am sure you are not a “great big ball of confusion’, Andrew, but someone who is emerging into a different way of being. Let me quote here what James has to say of the ‘Jesus the Forgiving Victim’ course. “One of the really interesting things about theology, and the thing that makes it relevant to our lives, is that it contains within it an anthropology. This means that while theology is the academic discipline of making sense of who God is and what God is about, we can’t talk about God without remembering that it is human beings who are doing the talking. So while many theology courses jump right to the God talk, leaving considerations about who we are as human beings implied or unspoken, Jesus the Forgiving Victim begins by bringing the anthropology out into the open from the start. The questions guiding the first Part are these: What is the shape of God’s communication with us? And what is the effect on us of being on the receiving end of an act of communication from God? To answer those questions we begin with an understanding of communication on a human level. We will explore how human beings receive and are shaped by acts of communication from each other. For if God is communicating with us, it will not be in some form unsuited for us. God will not reinvent the communication wheel, so to speak, but will communicate with us at a very human level – hence the title of Part One: Starting human, staying human. To understand how God is communicating with us through Jesus and through the Bible, we need at the same time to understand ourselves”.
I think that we all feel like ‘great big balls of confusion’ when we begin to know and understand ourselves. I think Andrew that it just means that you are well on the way to doing this.
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“To understand how God is communicating with us through Jesus and through the Bible, we need at the same time to understand ourselves”. I agree with this culminating statement and all that James said leading up to it. However, let me point out two ways of reading the language he uses: one I find I can accept quite comfortably and the other is—for some reason or another, and I’ll take a stab at why below—remarkably discomforting.
(i) “To understand how God is communicating with humanity through Jesus and through the Bible, we need at the same time to understand what made humans human and what being human necessarily entails.”
(ii) “To understand how God is communicating with me through Jesus and through the Bible, I need at the same time to understand who Andrew really is.”
The former strikes me as an assertion that theology is best investigated obliquely as a sort of concavity perceptible in the output of anthropological research—and I concur, thankful to James for giving me the language to express with clarity what I’ve long struggled to wrap my head around. The latter strikes me as self-indulgent and most unlikely to bear fruit.
Of course (i) and (ii) are related. I am a human, and as I learn more about humanity and human nature I will learn more about the Andrew who posts on online discussion forums. All the same, while I suspect there are marvelous lessons to be learned in pursuing (i) that can never be touched if we restrict ourselves to (ii), and while I don’t want to neglect where (i) and (ii) overlap, … I don’t actually (at this point) believe there is anything of value to be uncovered in (ii) that can’t be found in (i). This means that the only things left to be found in the part of (ii) that is only (ii) and not part of (i) are the fantasy worlds romantics make of themselves. That’s why I described (ii) as discomforting. I don’t see what it has to offer. I fear it leads to losing sight of one’s neighbors, which would mean living human life poorly.
I suppose this could just be one of Andrew’s irrational fears sired by a lack of self-confidence, and perhaps I’ll get over my discomfort as I proceed through the lessons. But it’ll be difficult because, as of now, I can’t imagine addressing a lack of self-confidence since I don’t actually believe Andrew has an individuated self to put confidence in. And I believe that I’m quite like everyone else in this respect. I don’t think any of us has an individuated self we could sort out so as to better communicate with God. I do, however, believe that for every possible “we” there is a collective self which, when properly oriented, speaks the Word of God.
Do you suppose it’ll cause me to lag behind the JFV instruction if I stick exclusively to interpreting James as I did in (i)?
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Andrew, this is a process. We learn how God is communicating with us through Jesus and the Bible, and in so doing we gradually learn who we are, and how we are made in the likeness and image of God, and loved unconditionally. This is not instantaneous, but a gradual ongoing conversion in which we and inducted into the new Creation of Christ and a new way of being. This Imitatio Christi is a time of change and growth and ultimately of self knowledge.
Our ‘I’ is part of the “WE” This is how we humans become human. We are separate and complete beings who are communal at the same time. We are not a collection of “I’s” but an “I” belonging to the “WE”. Our humanity, spiritual growth and self knowledge comes from our contact with the ‘We” or social other in our lives . We learn to handle the difficulties of daily social contact, the jealousies, resentments, conflicts, judgements etc. of our family life, our working and social life, as well as the kindness, forgiveness, generosity, non-judgement and self-giving etc that we can also experience in family and community. This contact with our “WE”and social other enhances our spiritual growth and self knowledge, as we aspire to handle all these situations in a Christ like manner. This is our spiritual journey towards self knowledge. It is how we become human.
No Andrew, not at all. (1) will not make you lag behind. Remember to link your head to your heart and allow yourself to relax into this new way of being.
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Why do you think the title of the accompanying essay for the first three Modules of the course is, “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”?
The command not to speak could be taken to mean the one giving the command is taking charge of a situation.
I think Alison’s point is a bit different. The command not to speak until spoken to entails consciousness of the fact that someone else is always already speaking before we do. If we spout off believing ourselves to be the first voice in the room, then we have passed over another voice without acknowledging it. In other words, speaking before you realize you have been spoken-to means there is an “unheard voice” to which you are not listening.
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Yes, that is a very good point Andrew, there is an “unheard voice” to which we are not listening. I don’t think this is a command from James, but more a quaint way of expressing that we are about to hear something extraordinary.
James begins with Hebrews 1: 1?2 which describes an odd form of communication from God. In talking to us through Jesus, God is communicating as someone who appeared in the middle of history, but who is also somehow involved in the creation of the world.
This course is about beginning to become habituated to being the sort of people who might be able to hear God speaking through the Son whom he appointed over all things.
Putting theology aside for a moment, the course begins with a basic anthropology.
Rather than grasping onto a theory, human beings learn by being inducted into a set of practices over time such that we find ourselves knowing from within how they work.
Christianity is the process of finding ourselves on the inside of an act of communication that is developing in us a new set of practices. This means that we discover from within what the ideas really mean as we discover ourselves becoming something, or someone, we scarcely knew before.
Does that make sense?
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