A ‘non-religious’ view of Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- #16

Reflections from journal entries

Now for another set of reflections. These reflections have been selected/adapted from journal entries written during the years we lived and worked as a family in rural East Tennessee Appalachia (November 1997-July 1999).

64 [April 1998 journal entry] My transition from ‘insider’ to ‘outsider’ re the ‘religious’ sphere (in which I was born and raised) involved at least the following factors:

1. attending public schools,
2. attending a state university,
3. choosing history as my field of study for graduate/doctoral education,
   
4. being existentially near to my first wife (d. 1987) as she fought multiple sclerosis,
   
5. entering the medical education sphere as a prompter/interpreter,
   
6. focusing on society’s marginalized and dismembered.
   

At least for me, once fully ‘outside’ there is no way back to membership in the ‘religious’ sphere with integrity. I saw too much. I learned too much. Yet this ‘outside’ experience is daunting (e.g., the patience necessary as ‘religious’ language and experience die, as familiar places and relationships diminish, as the number of previous acquaintances with whom to talk shrinks, as what lies ahead remains uncertain).

The ‘outsider’ approach to ethics, spirituality, theology I am following

1. requires a critical/historical approach to Jewish scripture and Christian scripture,
   
2. has the ‘scrap heap’ Job and Ecclesiastes’ Koheleth as the entry/exit points for studying the life of ‘Jesus’,
3. regards organized ‘religion’ today to be equivalent to the organized ‘religion’ in Jesus’ day,
   
4. exercises an existential honesty and a face-to-face posture toward being human in concrete situations, with the focus on the most vulnerable,
   
5. measures ideas/convictions from the perspective of those in greatest vulnerability,
   
6. thinks and makes decisions ‘from below’.

65 [July 1998 journal entry] What would a ‘non-religious’ reading/interpretation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer be?

1. Note the ‘non-religious’ to ‘religious’ to ‘non-religious’ movements in his life story. The ‘non-religious’ perspective at the beginning of his life was not equivalent to the ‘non-religious’ thoughts expressed in the prison correspondence.
   
2. Note interpreters of his prison correspondence who hold positions within the ‘religious’ sphere predictably offer a ‘religious’ reading/interpretation of Dietrich.
   
3. Note Eberhard Bethge’s pointing in more than one of our conversations to the significance of Dietrich’s older brother Karl-Friedrich for the formation of Dietrich’s later ‘non-religious’ ideas.

66 [July 1998 journal entry] Further thoughts about be(com)ing ‘non-religious’:

1. Is the phrase ‘beyond religion’ better than the word ‘non-religious’? or ‘outside religion’?
   
2. Moving from denomination to denomination within the ‘religious’ sphere is not be(com)ing ‘non-religious’.
3. Critiquing ‘religion’ from another sphere is not be(com)ing ‘non-religious’.
   
4. ‘Non-religious’ reflects a set of experiences and/or a decision to see, listen, think, act with unqualified integrity (i.e., not compromised by institutionalized spheres).

‘the ethical dimensions of patient care’ -- #25

[December 2005 journal entry]

Safe and stable medical practices and hospitals expect their physicians to be fluent (in the full/rich sense of vocabulary and syntax so deeply imbedded, instinctive, readily at hand that the speaker/writer can focus completely on the subject and the one addressed) in three professional languages – i.e., clinical/scientific language, legal language, and business language. Fluency in these three languages remains fresh due to daily use with patients, with support staff members, and in peer-to-peer exchanges.

It has been my experience/observation that medical practices rarely expect their physicians to be fluent in a fourth professional language – i.e., what I call the language of caring (e.g., language for reflection on being gentle, minimizing harm, making an appreciated difference, facing failures, respecting self-determination, seeking fairness, acknowledging/resolving conflicts of interest, . . . ).

Perhaps the reason is the time and energy required to maintain fluency in the language of caring. Learning/using the language of caring must not diminish fluency in the other three professional languages. In fact, fluency in the three required professional languages must be exceptional in order for seeking/maintaining fluency in the language of caring not to be criticized.

Perhaps the reason is the depth/quality of caring to which a medical practice is actually committed. Where in most medical practices does the language of caring appear to be (thought in fact is not) a priority? The marketing and public relations departments. Medical practices striving for profit and/or for their physicians’ lifestyle interests do not encourage or give incentives for meaningful discourse using the language of caring.

Perhaps the reason is the self-examination – e.g., transparency, vulnerability, disappointment, accountability, vision, passion, . . . . Meaningful discourse using the language of caring probes/stimulates one’s sensitivities – e.g., “What is the link between caring deeply and becoming jaded/cynical?” “Can I end up giving less by trying to give more?” “Dare I admit times when my capacity to care is fatigued?” “Can I practice very good medicine without caring for the patient?” “When my capacity to care is low, who around me bear/s the consequences?” “What would cause my spouse and children to think I care more for my patients than I care for them?” “What conclusions about my professional character would be drawn by observing how I handle my most difficult patients?” “How do I protect myself without sacrificing why I became a physician?” “When does scaled back care cease to be care?” “How do I recover my capacity to care?”

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #50

[5/1998] “__________ has such a wonderful attitude.” It is common to hear such said about individuals within the ‘religious’ sphere who, in reaction to devastating circumstances, raise no hard or persistent questions toward or about ‘God’ as understood within the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm. By not challenging/threatening the assumptions and expectations of the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm, such individuals are recognized/honored within the ‘religious’ sphere as exemplary. This approval in turn reinforces their attempt to see devastating experiences as interpreted by/within the ‘religious’ sphere.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #49

[4/1998] The ‘non-religious’ approach to spirituality and ethics I am following necessitates sorting out and relentlessly critiquing the various meanings proposed for the word ‘God’. ‘Relentlessly’ (L., unwilling to melt or to soften in temper/resolve or to become less severe) is an aggressive but not overstated description of the necessary critique.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #48

[6/1996] The story/play Job (specifically the dialogue sections and 42:7) and the essay of Ecclesiastes (minus the last paragraph) have become, for me, the windows into Jewish scripture and Christian scripture.

[Note: Without the series of exchanges between the prologue and epilogue, the 42:7 statement has no logical place in the story/play Job. So the statement is not part of the epilogue that -- together with the prologue -- forms the ‘happily ever after’ short version of the story/play Job. I think the composer surprises the audience with the implied task of searching back through the extended story asking, “What did Job say about ‘God’ that the composer thinks is right?”]

[Note: I started giving Ecclesiastes careful attention during my Louisville years (1976-79) when I saw the similarities with modern existential writings. I remember concluding that Ecclesiastes stands alone in Jewish scripture and Christian scripture in requiring so little commentary to be accessible. When I began offering a systematic theology graduate seminar (1981), the format I chose was to imagine a series of conversations between ‘Jesus’ and the author of Ecclesiastes. For many years, I read Ecclesiastes as the personal statement of Koheleth (the speaker in the text). More recently, I have come to regard Koheleth as a literary device created by the essay’s anonymous author. I see Koheleth as similar to a court fool – i.e., giving rather blunt analyses that those threatened can easily dismiss. Another analogy is Shostakovich’s precarious position before Stalin. Distinguishing Koheleth from the author aligns well with the tenuous place of the essay in the canon of Jewish scripture and accounts for the outlandish, even clownish, statements attributed to Koheleth in the essay (e.g., Koheleth’s excessive claims to know more than anyone else before him and to be the best student by far there had ever been).]

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #47

[9/2005] The senior physician and CEO for the Appalachia community health center where I work and I have volunteered to be deployed by the federal government’s Health and Human Services Department to assist with the recovery efforts in and around New Orleans. My physician friend’s broad training and experience in the practice of comprehensive primary care with a concentration on poor patients would make him a very valuable asset. The volunteer category nearest to how I might assist is ‘chaplain’. My physician friend feels that my special usefulness would be as a ‘chaplain’ to the medical professionals and other rescue personnel as they bear/process truly awful experiences. We both are anxious to help.

Looking closely at human experience -- without sifting or filtering out any events however severe -- makes me aware that my privileges (e.g., health, education, travel, economic liberties, . . . ) separate me from the vast majority of individuals in human history. Gazing at the devastation left behind by Hurricane Katrina has intensified this awareness.

‘Catastrophe’ . . . ‘disaster’ . . . ‘tsunami’ . . . ‘edge of the abyss’ . . . ‘nightmare’ . . . ‘tragedy’ . . . .

Where do you go in Jewish Scripture to find such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation? Several of the prophets lamented, groaned. Habakkuk ventured a protest. But they eventually returned to ‘God’ language within a theological paradigm that implicitly if not explicitly attributed devastating events directly or indirectly to “the Lord’s hands”. Only Ecclesiastes and the extended story/play Job – hardly weight bearing texts within the ‘religious’ sphere – persisted in questioning the intent/character behind “the Lord’s hands” and the underlying theological paradigm.

Where do you go in Christian Scripture for such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation? A slave army’s fight for freedom had been crushed. Rome had burned to the ground. Herculaneum and Pompeii had been buried. Jerusalem had been destroyed. What does it mean for there to be no trace of such events in Christian Scripture? no lament, groaning, protest? The theologians – Jewish or Christian – to whom one seeking a ‘face to face with the world’ spirituality and ethics can turn are the few for whom such raw expressions of trauma, agony, desperation keep the ‘God’ question open.

I am very hesitant about the ‘God’ language used -- especially toward the evangelical and fundamentalist end of the theological spectrum -- in reacting to or interpreting utter disasters. I wonder, “Is such ‘God’ language used to relieve the one/s speaking? to capitalize on the survivors’ plight? to defend or ‘clean up’ after ‘God’?”

The attempt to exclude events of immeasurable suffering (e.g., in modern times the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, American slavery, the carnage of World War I, the Nazi Holocaust, Hiroshima, Cambodia, the 2004 Tsunami, . . . Hurricane Katrina) from the reality within which each day is lived can seem worth the effort/cost to those experientially detached from such events. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics fights against this temptation, determined instead to seek deeper consciousness of such events. The liberty (even instruction) in the ‘religious’ sphere -- especially toward the evangelical and fundamentalist end of the theological spectrum -- to keep faith/theology disconnected from and untested by events of immeasurable suffering results in such clashing statements as “The Lord had his reasons” (for permitting/causing Hurricane Katrina) and “We are caring for the evacuees because God expects us to”. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics disagrees with this insulating method, being anchored instead by the resolve to hold only to ideas that are not overwhelmed by such events. The noble and generous expressions of compassion toward survivors when immeasurable suffering is compressed into specific events tend in time to wane as the initial burden of the harmed/displaced is met and as attention returns to less disturbing matters. A ‘face to face with the world’ approach to spirituality and ethics finds in such acute events of immeasurable suffering a reminder that similarly immeasurable suffering is encountered in all directions (diffused throughout) every day.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #46

[7/1995] I want to live consistently with a human-affirming vision that does not require ultimate loyalty to any particular sphere (i.e., the missing character in the story/play Job). Freedom from all spheres (including ‘religion’) is necessary to be this sort of person.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #45

[1994] The Congregational Church in Norwich, VT, where we lived invited me to guide a discussion about ‘remembering’. I prepared the following thoughts based on the story/play Job –

Prior to a devastating series of tragedies, Job held an exemplary and defining position within his various ‘communities’ (i.e., religious, family, economic, political, social). The meta-narrative within his ‘communities’ presumed that upright (merciful, fair, respectful) living resulted in blessed circumstances and that sinful (callused, manipulative, selfish, base) living resulted in cursed circumstances. Gathering with and around Job increased their sense of security. After a devastating series of tragedies, Job lost his exemplary and defining position within his ‘communities’. To them he was obviously cursed. He no longer confirmed the meta-narrative. To remain in ‘community’ with him would have threatened confidence in the meta-narrative. Those with shallow and quite conditional loyalty to Job ridiculed him, ignored him, gawked at him, spit on him, expected him to ‘repent’. Those more invested in Job – his wife, his family, and his closest friends – eventually failed him. ‘Communities’ must cross a critical and radical threshold in order to remain in community with a ‘scrapheap’ Job. That threshold entails the ability and courage to permit presumptions about the meta-narrative to be challenged. The ‘scrapheap’ Job refused to take this pressure off his ‘communities’. He maintained his innocence . . . and his integrity. When his closest friends began to speak, they knew only the language and responses characteristic of the meta-narrative. They did not know how to be with their friend. The story/play Job is so composed in its canonical form that the ‘communities’ receiving the story can remember without rethinking what it would mean to remain in community with a ‘scrapheap’ Job. The story ends with Job’s ‘communities’ gathering again around him. No doubt they had heard report that he had said, “I repent”. The socio-economic indicators of favor had returned to him. They interpreted this reversal to mean that the meta-narrative had been proven true and dependable. They are not forced to see that, for ‘communities’ to be able to risk remaining with a ‘scrapheap’ Job (and, thereby, to remember him with humility and gratitude), they must be modest in their presumptions about life’s meaning, grasp the place doubt, be penitent, be gathered by a cause/identity that makes holding together as ‘communities’ a significant but secondary goal, appreciate the art of silence.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #44

[1994] What did Job have left – his integrity. And his closest friends were pressuring him to compromise his integrity.

The ‘scrapheap’ Job -- #43

[1994] Does the Job 6:14 vision of friendship relate to every relationship? to one relationship? to what number of relationships?

[Note: Translators/commentators have debated the proper translation of Job 6:14. My work with this text with the guidance of a Hebrew language and Wisdom Literature specialist has led to this translation – “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friend even if he (i.e., the despairing man) forsakes the fear of the almighty”.]

Fragment -- #60

[2/98] Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep are difficult aims to achieve with full integrity. Envy, jealousy, . . . inhibit rejoicing. Insecurity, fear, shock, . . . inhibit weeping.

Fragment -- #59

[2/98] Words without power (i.e., substance or significance) are without power due to their source and their center. Therein is one reason for my attention to a Quaker-like emphasis on silence. Meaningful and powerful words emerge from an ‘engaged silence’ approach to life. Therefore, what happens in ‘silence’ is critical. One only speaks out of what is experienced in silence.

Fragment -- #58

[2/98] A key difference between C. S. Lewis and me (not to speak of numerous obvious differences!) is that I went through the trauma (spiritually and theologically) of a spouse’s chronic/degrading illness/death before and then simultaneous with my graduate education and subsequent thought formation whereas Lewis developed his thought and became ‘larger than life’ via his writings before his experience with his cancer-inflicted wife revealed to him the ‘house of cards’ weakness of his by then internationally acclaimed thought. (The writings that had made Lewis an anchor for faith for so many around the world – e.g., Mere Christianity, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, . . . – were written before Lewis married Joy Gresham in 1956. Her health was failing when they married. She died of cancer four years later. Lewis died in 1963.) His A Grief Observed – in which he admitted the hollowness of the views he brought to the experience of his wife’s illness/death -- is, for me, his most helpful writing. He had little to say after his wife died. (Question -- What effect did his World War I experiences as a soldier have on him?) I continue very intentionally to add to the initial experience with tragedy in my first wife’s illness/death (e.g., Down syndrome victims as with Ginny Elkins, Charity Hospital patients, abused children at K-Bar-B, cancer patients, University of Miami/Overtown cocaine-abusing women, Appalachia poverty, . . .). One consequence is my hesitancy to share with others my thoughts/views.

Fragment -- #57

[2/98] Are certain individuals innately gifted with the ability to handle confrontation? Perhaps to a degree, in that some personality types (e.g., more introverted or more structured) have additional anxieties about confrontation. However, everyone will be confrontational about what matters most to them. Otherwise, the subject does not matter so much after all. Variables that work against taking a stand are fatigue and loss of vision.

Fragment -- #56

[1/98] What is ‘after modern’? ‘Post-modern’ implies some meaning for and involvement with ‘modern’. At issue is paradigm decay. All paradigms – being human constructs -- must be subject to questions and criticism in order to avoid idolatry. The erosion of a paradigm does not in and of itself undermine the paradigm until a certain threshold of decay is recognized. ‘Post-modern’ points to deficiencies in the understandings of ‘modern’, but does not yet provide direction re what is beyond ‘modern’.

[Note: As several journal entries re ‘post-modern’ indicate, I struggle with the term – both ‘post’ and ‘modern’. ‘Post’ strikes me as too detached, too categorical, too dismissive. Otherwise, how could ‘pre-modern’ fundamentalists be emboldened by ‘post-modern’ postures against ‘modern’? Otherwise, how could political operatives such as those who have been driving the Bush administration be so unrestrained by facts and true debate, choosing instead to ‘create reality’? And is not every dominant paradigm ‘modern’ in its time/place? Perhaps ‘Imperial/Colonial’ or ‘Scientific’ or ‘Cartesian’ or ‘Capitalist’ or ‘Holocaust’ or . . . would be more to the point re the ‘modern’ in ‘post-modern’. Some innovations in method and interpretation since the eleventh century in Western Europe continue to be revised and used; others have been tested and discarded. And since the end of World War II, a monopoly on political voice/power has steadily slipped away from the presumptive Western nations. I would argue that the future of humankind depends on an unconditional commitment to critical reasoning. Would ‘post-modern’ proponents agree?]

Fragment -- #55

[12/97] It seems to me there is a size beyond which cities cease to be ‘human’ or ‘natural’ (as self-interest, lack of accountability, anonymity dominate actions and encounters). Is ‘community’ (as I am coming to understand such from a ‘non-religious’ perspective) inherently in tension with a large-city social structure?

Fragment -- #54

[4/1997 journal entry] The approach to ‘spirituality’ I am seeking has to do with what energizes a person, with what gives orientation, with that without which one begins to shut down existentially and ethically.

Fragment -- #53

Fragment -- #53
[3/1997 journal entry] Most individuals still seem to be unaware of (or, in other words, take for granted) the paradigm within which they interpret life experiences. The paradigm is thus not subject to questioning. Once aware of one’s own paradigm (and, therefore, aware that others also interpret life experiences within some paradigm), most individuals continue to use a paradigm as long as the paradigm permits them to feel sufficient balance (1) through the greatest number of life experiences or (2) through the most difficult life experiences.

Fragment -- #52

[10/1996 journal entry] A reality that transcends the human is essentially without or beyond language, forms, institutions. I would argue that symbols (1) must serve to awaken a spiritual experience (past or present) and (2) should arise from within the experience of those sharing in that to which the symbol points and which the symbol opens. Corollaries are (1) that such language, forms, and institutions should be permitted to fade/die as well as be born and (2) that no competitiveness should occur about such symbols. As examples of such symbols, see Bonhoeffer’s reference to the gift of Barth’s cigar and his references to ‘the parcel’ in the prison correspondence

Fragment -- #51

[9/1996 journal entry] Why am I drawn toward silence as a centering spiritual exercise? (1) A Berdyaev-type analysis of ‘God’ language. (2) An Otto-type approach to ‘the sacred’. (3) A Habakkuk-type experience of being painfully/disturbingly conscious of the tragic, offensive, violent, hopeless, . . . .

[Note: The reference here is to Nicolai Berdyaev (1874-1948) – a controversial Russian philosopher and theologian who lived as an exile in Paris from 1922 to his death. He wrote prolifically. He stood with the French resistance against the Nazi occupation. He is usually classified as an existentialist, though he called himself a ‘personalist’. I first encountered Berdyaev’s thought (especially through The Philosophy of Freedom and Truth and Revelation) in the late 1970s as I prepared to teach a course on trends in current theology. He insisted that ‘spirit’ is that which is impossible to define, that which is situated beyond the limits of thought. He extended my critical analysis of ‘God’ language by sensitizing me to the sociomorphic and cosmomorphic (in addition to the more familiar anthropomorphic) critiques/limitations of ‘God’ language.]

[Note: The reference here is to Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) – an influential German Lutheran theologian and political activist who advocated liberal strategies for international peace and justice and who worked tirelessly for a renewal of Protestant liturgy. I included Otto’s 1917 Das Heilige (published in English as The Idea of the Holy) in the readings for a classics in spirituality literature course I taught. I especially appreciate his description of ‘the sacred’ as, beyond ideas of goodness, a ‘mysterium tremendum’ – ‘mysterium’ leading to silence and ‘tremendum’ leading to awe.]