The eCrozier

Not used to talkin’ to somebody in the body. Somebody in a body, somebody in a body.
– U2 in their song Fast Cars

The recent political spectacle in our national life has exposed our growing inability to really listen to another person who is embodied in our time and space. This requires us not to interrupt them or pretend to listen while we’re actually formulating a rebuttal. It also demands that we not the see the other person as an object to be dismissed into a category we’ve already reserved for them, but rather as another human being who has known love as well as heartache, has succeeded in something but has also failed in other things. In other words, they’re real persons, not caricatures.

I’m afraid our facebooked, texted, and blogged culture has further disembodied our sense of self and consequently how we’re present and incarnate in real time with the other person who currently cohabitates our space. For some this gives license to literally depersonalize the other person. As this ratchets up, the other person becomes a distorted figment of what we project on to them from the disembodied distance of our computer or smart phone.

In his amazing book, To End All Wars, Adam Hochschild, carefully documents the run up to WWI. Unlike in many other wars, there was no real provocation. The nations who went to war were eagerly trading with one another. Their respective royal families were intermarried. But a series of miscommunications and misinterpretations about those communications quickly led one side to strike first to avoid what they perceived to be the imminent strike of the other. Soon after came the propaganda campaign that effectively characterized the respective sides as inhumane monsters. Most people were willing to accept the characterization of the propagandists. As Paul Simon penned in The Boxer: “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

One the central truths of the Christian faith is the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. The Incarnation tells us that our matter matters to God. The truth of God gracing human life in Jesus reveals that humanity has been endowed with a worth and dignity beyond creation. St Paul conveys this truth in 2 Corinthians 5. He says that as Christians we can no longer regard one another in a dismissive manner. Since Christ became one of us and has now been resurrected, our perspective on one another must change. No one, St Paul says, can now be seen in any way other than in the light of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Our humanity has ascended to God with Christ.

No one means no one, not even our enemies, our political rivals, or even that neighbor (you know who you are) who has repeatedly ignored our requests to remove that old Chevy up on blocks in his front yard. We Christians need to start a revolution of really being incarnate with other human beings so we can be truly human with one another and not objects of one another’s projections. Let’s start with members of the Church and we’ll work out from there.

+Scott