When I first began reading feminist theology, Schusseler-Fiorenza and Welch drew my attention to how language, particularly patriarchal language, shapes not only abstract theological concepts, but also the everyday, practical matters of the Christian life. Among other things, we assume male dominance in the masculine pronouns we use for God, even though we classically maintain God is neither He nor She, but Spirit.
Though I could continue to criticize the church’s use of vocabulary in the oppression of certain peoples, the ecclesiastical rhetoric I want to appraise presently is the church’s employment of the vocabulary of the Empire – particularly its economic verbage.
I often hear Christians refer to “investing” in either non-believers or people whom they are mentoring in the faith. The language of investment is procured, obviously, from the economic world referring to putting money to use in order to gain a potentially profitable return. That is, one invests in order to gain a return.
But is the return what Christian friendship is really about? It is supposed to be what I can gain from my time and effort spilled into another person? When we “invest” in a non-Christian, what we often mean is that we spend time with them in order to make them Christian! When we “invest” in a disciple, we mean we spend time with them in order to elicit the return of sanctification!
But is the return at the heart of Christianity? Is my primary agenda in befriending a non-Christian that they might buy into my product? Does this language not dehumanize and objectify our “investment”? Does this language not communicate that this whole Christianity thing is about what I can profit, or God can yield? Being friends with people outside the Christian faith is not about investment, it is about being genuine friends! Genuine friendship, for sure, involves demonstrating God’s love to the other. But this demonstration of love is not artificial and contrived; it is not about reciprocation or return. Consider my friendship with JR.
I would never say of JR that I am “investing” in him. That would entail certain things which are not inherent in sincere friendship. It would imply that I deem him spiritually below me or that he needs me in his life to be spiritually fruitful. It also implies that my agenda is to correct his spiritual imperfections, and because of my investment, I expect that he will provide a certain return. In the end, the language of investment doesn’t appear to be a natural part of genuine friendship.
But, in the end, this is not even the most dangerous aspect of investment rhetoric.
For me, the most dangerous part of the church’s employment of economic language is that we have taken the language of America’s dominant deity (economics, consumerism, materialism), and leaving it unchanged and unchallenged, we have taken it into our communities like a long lost brother. But as long as the economic rhetoric involved in America’s one true religion is warmly accepted by the church, we will never be able to counter the influence of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, or just plain-ole Mammon in our lives.
Now from where I sit, it appears we have two options. First, the church can completely rid itself of economic language. We can completely drop the language like a deflated stock. No more language of investment or any other kind of rhetoric that smacks of capitalism.
The second option, and one that requires a bit more creativity, is to continue to use economic language, but subvert it by investing it with distinctly Christian meaning. This option falls in line a bit more with what we see in the New Testament. The Gk. word we translate “fellowship” often referred to partnership in business agendas in the first century. Also, and more obvious, the word we translate “redeem” means to “buy back.” It too is an overtly economic word.
I like this second option the best, but there are two difficulties with it.
First, are we creative enough, or even powerful enough, to change the way Christian people generally employ economic rhetoric? Like Wal-Mart in a small town, economic language dominates our American landscape. Completely subverting it and changing it is a nearly impossible task. We may try, but in the end, our use of language is merely a text which is interpreted and misinterpreted by our hearers. Just because I invest economic rhetoric with new meaning doesn’t mean my hearers will observe that investment.
Second, when the New Testament writers reinvested economic language with Christian meaning, they were not using the language of the dominant deity of the Roman Empire. So, even assuming our hearers will understand our new meaning, might we be safer in simply abandoning the language altogether?
So, that’s as far as my thoughts have taken me on this topic thus far. I’m looking for some help getting past this roadblock. What do you think? The bottom line is that Jesus did not heal people for his own glory, and he even healed some who never even thanked him or his Father. It doesn’t seem like his investment in people was only about what he or his religion can get out of it. What about just showing people the love of God for its own sake?
2 Comments
I hear you Tom, I they have helped me notice how language impacts how we view the world. Meredith and I were talking about this very thing this past Sunday on our way home from Church.
What is lacking in economic language is the implicit value judgment of what is being described. Money, capital, etc are always tools to gain something else, something that is really of value. When you invest in something, it is not for its own sake, but what you are getting out of it. It, in and of itself, is not good enough.
So long as we only look at non-Christians as potential notches on our conversion score-card, they are nothing but commodity fetishes, things that satisfy our larger desires and not things that are valuable in and of themselves.
I think that JR’s talk on the Other at least realigns how God wants us to look at and deal with those outside our Christian communities.
With that said, you talked about how this language implied that the use views herself as superior and the other person as in need of improvement. I am not sure exactly how to deal with these two, especially as it relates to those outside our communities.
Firstly, I think that most of the readership here would say that it is better for a person to be within the Christian community (or saved, or whatever term you wanna use) than to be outside (or damned, or a non-Christian, etc). There is no inherent superiority in terms of inherent value, but I think you can say there is a preferable (i.e. superior) position.
Secondly, I do seek to be improved, I also seek to help others when they ask for it (and perhaps the asking for it is key here). I seek this out of my friendships. I think there are biblical mandates to building each other up. The term "investment" applies in part, but not in whole here. Maybe that is the problem, it only addresses one part of the relationship between two people. The term is incomplete, inadequate to accurately describe interpersonal relationships.
Economic language does describe growth, change, and even creativity, to some extent. When I talk about the time I have invested in people and relationships, I am really talking about the role I have played in helping foster growth in a person. Fostering growth and creation in the world are duties and desires placed in Us as a result of the Image of God. I don’t see it as a consumerist desire, this talk of investment, but as one of our most basic, god given drives, the cultivation of that which is most important, other people.
But, given the above, do we throw out this economic language? I think so. Not only is it bound to ungodly consumerism and is therefore interpreted through that lens, but it also is inadequate in the ways in which it describes what we are really wanting to express. It is fine when we are only speaking about certain aspects of our relationships with people, but can never to justice to relationship as a whole.
I’d flinch at talk of investing in people too, but you’ve made me think… In business it sounds OK (training rather than exploiting), and it may carry a similar resonance in religion (people rather than buildings). And that recent sense of "investing" derives from the sense of dressing people up anyway, which again sounds OK (other people making my time and effort meaningful). Not to mention Matt.25.xxx… so now I’m also uncertain! (Maybe part of the problem is that recently the problem of evil has become more important, whence we may tend to think of the big picture as being about getting a good return, ultimately compensating for all the evils?)