Horse Beating

In order to set the proper tone for this blog, i have provided what i take to be an accurate description of my feelings toward certain Christianisms.




I hasten to clarify that i do not believe that 'to the glory of God' or 'what a blessing' or phrases as such are in their very essence evil things. Neither objective claims nor universal proclamations concern me at present. My point is an aesthetic one, and by implication, an affective one.

As it happens, Walker Percy agrees with me, at least provisionally, if i am permitted to recast his offhanded remarks with my own, religious preoccupations. His principles are two-fold: 1.) The poet revitalizes the meaning of an object simply by renaming it. And 2.) we are not conscious of a thing until it has a name. Therefore, the better the poet, the better the naming.

Take John Milton's description of God the Father on his throne:

"from the pure Empyrean where he sits enthroned far above all height"

This phrase supersedes the normal phrase "God sits on his throne" because the eccentricity of the language commands our attention. To be overbearingly precise, our affective states reflect our tastes, and our tastes pique whenever the language employed creates meaning. Humans are, on Percy's view, meaning mongers. We are not homo-sapien, we are homo-symbolificus.

Now, we have all enjoyed listening to our favorite song. And, in the same tone, we have all experienced the disappointment of listening to our favorite song too much. There is this universal phenomenon whereby repetition ruins the qualitative aspect of aesthetic experience. C. S. Lewis gives the best treatment of this phenomenon i know of in Surprised by Joy, but my concern with it at present is not why it happens, only the fact that it happens.

So what on earth does all this have to do with Christianisms? My fear is that in communicating 'the gospel' 'to the glory of God for 'the salvation of the world' we are sometimes not communicating anything at all. I am not suggesting that we tell a different gospel, i am suggesting that we tell the gospel creatively. I do believe that through the foolishness of preaching people will come to Christ. I do not believe that through the foolishness of bad preaching that they will. The Bible does act as a two-edged sword, Christ is the word precisely because of the relationship between language and humans. God chose scripture as a primary mode through which to reach us because he knew in creating us, that through symbolic interaction with the text, meaning is infused (whether consciously or no) into our minds.

This post, then, is only cautionary. The simple truth of the matter is that we should take something like ''to the glory of God' as seriously as possible at all times, and not merely participate in Christian mention-making-isms. Say it when it means something, say it differently to make it mean something, or don't say it at all. Else, i suspect we may be in danger not only being boring but of taking God's name and actions in vain.