Christian Know-How

2 Timothy 3
Oct. 21, 2001

 


The Weekend Journal of the Wall Street Journal for last week boldly features an article on “In Search of Safe Havens.” In light of recent events, from the attacks with jet planes to the attacks with microbes, people are fleeing to seemingly more safe environments. I suspect people will be out in these parts, looking for a safe haven with no tall buildings or international airports.

But is a safe-have a place or a state of being? Is there some place we can run away to where all will be well? Suppose we run away to a seemingly safe place with an aching soul and profound puzzlement about the meaning of human life? Suppose we move to that seemingly safe cottage in the foothills but we neither forgive nor are forgiven.

As Christians, ours should be a story-based world filled with wonder and awe. When we read a great story, we live in the story. That's why summaries or "Reader's Digest" versions inevitably shortchange us. If we live in a shorter story, we get shortchanged. When we live in the full story, we live with the fictional characters, we enrich our passions and dispositions, we extend our competencies with regard to the human experience. Great stories don't so much describe reality as extend it.

What's required to deal with the real world cannot neatly be summarized in a theory, or by facts or by mere education. The rich range of complex and subtle skills we need can only be acquired by living in a complex set of situations and cultivating the raft of abilities such complexities require. Living in the life of the church, in her parables, in the gathered community, extends our competencies and, in a word, our Christian know-how.

My father, a man who worked with his hands and grew up on a farm, used to disparage those who taught instead of those who did. In recent years, with me in the teaching profession, he has said fewer things about the difference between “them that teach and them that do.” We are in the business of teaching--and even more importantly, living--Christian know-how at St. Mary’s.

Ethical and religious issues in the twentieth century were often cast in theoretical terms. Confusion reigned in ethics, and soon a distinction was made between ethics and meta-ethics, with the hope that philosophical analysis of ethics might shed light. But becoming moral is not a matter of possessing the right theory, just as appreciating a poem is not a matter of the right literary theory. Being a good Christian is not a matter of appropriating the correct Christian facts.

Friends, Knowing and Doing

I have a friend I have known for many years who did his doctorate in ethics. He knows all the theories of ethics, all the arguments--in fact he teaches courses in ethics. But he was unfaithful to his wife, he physically abused her, and now, not surprisingly, they are divorced. Increasingly, I find him mean-tempered and difficult. He has plenty of theoretical knowledge but it does not translate into know-how.

I have another friend whom I have know since age 12. I haven’t seen him for a number of years now but we keep in touch by phone and email. He goes to church twice a year, at Easter and Christmas. When I gently encourage him to attend to his faith life more, he tells me knows all the Christian claims and accepts them. But his life seems to be in tatters and when I wanted to see him last August, when we were both in Hawaii, he begged off. A friend in common says he is reluctant for old friends to see him because he has changed so much. The years have not been kind, as we sometimes say. In fact my friend reminds me of a person who knows all the physical education facts and rarely gets off the couch. My friends knows that, he knows all the facts, but seems uninterested in deep Christian know-how.

On the contrary, as we come to a deeper appreciation for parables and literature, as we live in communities of faith, as we savor the treasures of great music, we might well come to grasp--against the major currents of the twentieth century--that we ought not expect facts and theories to deliver us the world. They do not. They cannot. They give us limited representations that are useful in limited domains. Literature, liturgy, the parables of the Bible, and great music make us ready to navigate the world in Christian wisdom.

No theory can put into words the depths of artistic exploration. We increase our artistic depth by becoming more experienced, more seasoned, more appreciative, more discerning, and more discriminating--by experiencing the arts. Theories cope badly with surprises. Resilient Christian people, by contrast, cope gracefully, even elegantly, with surprises owing to cultivated capacities and sensitivities. What we mean by terms such as "astute" and "seasoned," when we charactize a person with such accolades, is that the person is able to cope skillfully and gracefully with that which has never appeared before. Think of flattened sky-scrapers, and people fleeing in fear from our nation’s capitol building.

Christian Formation

Christian story enlarges our sensibilities by acquainting us with people in all their lived richness and complexity. Sensibilities will become malnourished on a facts-only diet. This should be no surprise to us. Literature extends our experiences and, therefore, the sensibilities of the reader. There are too many conflicting theories, both too much and not enough evidence, for us to deepen our sensibilities this way. The world supposes that mere education will help our children find their way in the world. The richer word instead is formation. Formation is both education and the shaping of the entire person so that he or she is deep in resources for coping with a world that is sometimes evil.

When we live in a good story, we expand the scope of our lived experience. We extend our experience, deepen our pathos, intensify our passions, sharpen our wits, and, in the process, become more competent in things human. Living in Christian liturgy expands and deepens our competencies so that we can encounter the world with know-how and not simply knowing that.

It's the difference between the knowledge of a seasoned driver and the new driver who scored 100 on his written exam. We have no difficulty identifying who is likely the better driver. It simply is not possible to distill the know how of a twenty-year veteran of New York streets into a driver's manual. Yet we are sometimes content to give our children driver’s manual educations when we need them to have the Christian street smart--the Christian formation--on a par with that of a New York taxi driver.

Liturgy and literature give us a command of life because it is capable of presenting lived human experience in all its lived richness. Literature traffics in the affectively significant, not in the sense of shamelessly displaying emotion but in the sense of presenting subtle story contexts that evoke complex emotions in the reader. We learn largely affectively, and good literature increases our capacities by immersing us in affectively riveting stories.

It is persons that know or don't know, it is people that have or don't have the capacity for forgiveness or courage, and it is women and men that possess or fail to possess wisdom. When we are dealing with virtues, capacities, and wisdom, we are dealing with virtues, capacities and wisdom embodied in people. Becoming a knower and becoming a wise person is not, as we have seen, a matter primarily of theories and laws, but a matter of capacities and facilities--to discern, to recognize and to understand.

Wisdom and Virtue

The wise person is one who seeks knowledge but understands its profound limitations. Knowledge is a too-simple take on a complex world and wisdom means we understand that the world is always more subtle than our best theories and interpretations. The wise person embodies knowledge in part tacitly, seeking a kind of fit with the world. Our fittingness with the world is a part of wisdom and comes when we have cultivated the raft of Christian sensibilities wisdom presupposes.

There is no formula for virtue because we must develop capacities for virtue that accommodate the uniqueness of the individuals that comprise the world. When you come into my presence, I ought not consult my formula for treating you appropriately, or rush to read Aristotle or Kant, or even the 10 Commandments, so I understand what it means to be in your presence, one person with another. You would think me memorably maladroit if I rushed to Aristotle's texts each time I met a new person. A physicist consulting a calculator in busy New York traffic is a physicist who is going to experience Newton's "laws" in a disconcerting way.

The virtues do not constrain our behavior but, instead, enable the unique expression for which our lives are destined. Genuine individuality is possible in the virtuous life because virtues cannot be captured in formulae. Each moment, each experience, and each person can be approached uniquely yet virtuously because virtues are capacities rather than lists of rules or other abstractions. When graciousness becomes habitual, ingrained within a wise person of deep experience and compassion, the approach of another person requires no rules. The gracious, wise person intuits quickly how to handle a new situation with a new person. When graciousness becomes habitual, moreover, a raft of capacities countenance a person's skilled behavior. Such a person is gracious even in sleep.

How do we instill in our people here at St. Mary’s the deep virtues of which I have been speaking so that we are prepared to navigate an increasingly treacherous world?

St. Timothy's Counsel

Notice what St. Timothy's word for today says about knowing from childhood. Our Biblical mandate is clear: we are to instruct our children in Christian know-how, know-how that will serve them well as they strive to navigate a troubled world. We are to attend to the sacred writings which can instruct us. When we live in the texts they live in us. Why?

“Because all scripture is inspired by God is useful for teaching and ... for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be ... equipped for every good work."

St. Timothy is also clear about what we are to do:

Under the leadership of our stewardship committee and our vestry, we are striving to make St. Mary’s, as we have said, a beacon of Christian grace and hope in these difficult times.

Will you stand with us?