Peter Rollins's Blog, page 46

Getting the Joke of Christianity

On the 8th January I will be giving a talk in Belfast (at the Black Box) that delves into some of the themes I introduced in Insurrection. By drawing together Laurel and Hardy, David Brent, the Crucifixion and Gargoyles I will be attempting to outline how the heart of Christianity exposes the reality that we are the brunt of a huge cosmic joke while simultaneously inviting us to laugh along rather than being its comic foil.

I will also be arguing that the actually existing church has largely repressed the reality of this cosmic joke, refusing to see it and thus remaining its victim.

So if you would like to find out what the joke is sign up here. And if you are expecting this to be a stand-up routine you will be sorely disappointed!

Also, if there is anyone out there who can record the talk that would be a real help.

New Years Resolutions: How to Change When Things Remain the Same

The philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche once asked his readers to imagine that their lives would repeat over and over again across the ever expanding arrow of eternity (the myth of Eternal Return). Then he posed the question concerning whether this notion was something we could accept and affirm, or whether the very thought of it caused us to recoil and crumble.

In many ways Freud showed how this myth plays out in our everyday existence by exposing how we actually do repeat some basic part of our life over and over again (expressed in the Fundamental Fantasy). Something that is manifested in our relationships, dreams, fantasies and interactions with others. The faces might change and the context might be different but he showed how the same scenarios from our past tend to play out in different forms throughout our present. As the analyst Adam Philips once wrote, the challenge we have is making the past history (i.e. the most significant parts of our past tend to remains with us, stuck like a limpet to the present).

Perhaps then, as we stand at the threshold of 2012, we should avoid making resolutions about undergoing some fundamental change and rather admit that we are likely to repeat many of the same situations we have before. But rather than giving up the possibility of change entirely we can do something. We can resolve to try and repeat the situations we keep creating in a different way. Reacting to the dilemmas we relive in a novel manner; one that opens up new, more liberating and enlivening possibilities.

Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Happy New Year

Black Box, Belfast, UK

I will be giving a talk entitled "Getting the joke of Christianity" followed by a discussion. There will also be some music and an open bar.

 

Black Box | 18-22 Hill Street

Doors 7:15pm | Start 7:30pm

Donations

Black Box, Belfast, NI

I will be giving a talk entitled "Getting the joke of Christianity" followed by a discussion. There will also be some music and an open bar.

 

Black Box | 18-22 Hill Street

Doors 7:15pm | Start 7:30pm

Donations

Trinity Seminary, Columbus, OH

For more information visit the Trinity Lutheran Seminary events page here

 

 

Vintage Fellowship, AR

I will be speaking at the Vintage Fellowship communities morning gathering at 10:15am. This will be followed by lunch at 12:00pm and a Q&A at 1:00pm. Everyone welcome. The address is 3416 N. College Ave, Fayetteville AR

 

Who Stole My Happiness?

One of the first problems that we confronted with concerning the "Thing" which we imagine will bring us fulfilment (money, fame, health, relationship etc.) is, of course, that we can't seem to ever get our hands on it. If we do reach out and grasp we open our hands and find out that it isn't actually the "Thing" after all (because it has not satisfied in the way we fantasised). This is not to say that a form of happiness and satisfaction is beyond us, just that the imagined fulfilment of desire is an impossible dream (that would turn out to be a nightmare were it ever possible). The belief in something that can fulfil us (in theological terms "the idol") is then oppressive because it always seems out of reach, robbing our current situation of meaning.

This is, of course, a rather mundane and well-documented phenomenon. However what is reflected on less is the way that we imagine others having the "Thing" and how this affects the way we relate to them.

Take the example of a minister standing in front of his congregation preaching against the sexual sins of the world. Let us imagine him working himself into a sweat about the orgies, sex parties and deviant behaviour going on just beyond the walls of the church. One of the striking things about this is the way that all of his pent up emotion and moral indignation often seems like nothing more than a thin veil hiding the truth that he is jealous of all the fun they are having. They are having so much pleasure while he is not, they have the "Thing" that he doesn't.

To approach this from a different angle I recently talked with a woman who broke up with someone and subsequently felt bad because she knew that he was very unhappy as a result of the split. She told me of how, a couple of months later, she found out from a friend that he was much better and in a new relationship. When she heard the news she expressed joy to her friend. However she admitted to me, and herself, that the initial "sorrow" she felt at him being unhappy actually contained a form of hidden pleasure while the "pleasure" she had at thinking he was happy veiled a sorrow.

Her feelings had nothing to do with her disliking the man or not wanting him to prosper; it was rather connected to her (implicit) belief in the Thing.

This is also seen to play out when someone breaks up with us. It is not uncommon to imagine that the other person is out partying all the time, meeting new people and generally having a ball. All the while we are unhappy, unstable and unable to leave the house. They appear to have the pleasure that we lack and we resent them for it, even wishing them harm. More than this we are willing to hurt ourselves in order to rob them of their pleasure (the most extreme form being suicide – where we will end our own life to rob them of the Thing).

The point of these brief comments is to draw out how our belief that there is something which can satisfy our desire and render us whole is not only oppressive because we can never seem to grasp it but also is oppressive because of the way that we think others have. When we are truly able to see the other as being just as riven with desire and lack as we are then reconciliation becomes more possible.

This is a subject that I go into in much more depth in my next book (due out October 2012).

The Revolutionary Potential of the Actually Existing Church

I was recently reading Slavoj Zizek's excellent essay "The Ambiguity of the Masochist Social Link" and was struck by his reflection on how symptoms can represent forgotten failures to act. I would like to reflect upon this in relation to what we see in so much of the actually existing church today.

In order to approach this subject let us begin by taking the example of a man who drinks to excess, neglects his children and mistreats his partner. What do these symptoms betray? All too often they are the direct manifestation of a previous (forgotten) failure to act. Let us flesh the example out by imagining that this individual once, as a young man, had dreams of being an artist, that he married a woman he deeply loved hoping that together they would travel the world and that he longed to create a culturally rich environment within which a child could grow. In this fictional example let us imagine that the first year of their marriage was difficult. That they had a child before they were ready, lacked resources to travel and had to get jobs they detested in order to make ends meet. At different times decisions could have been made, risks taken etc. that might have taken their lives in a better, more emancipatory, direction. But these were missed and now an unhealthy relationship exists, one full of pain, suffering, self-abuse and the abuse of others. The symptoms then testify to something missed, to past failures that now make themselves know in oppressive material actions.

The revolutionary move here involves the courage to bring to mind the failures to act that lie behind the present symptoms and repeat history: attempting to relive those moments, but this time without the failures to act. Of course, it may well be impossible (just as it may have been impossible in the first place; the point is that we often have to fail many times before we stand any chance of actually succeeding).

In the same way the violence and destructive behaviour that one sees in so much of the actually existing contemporary church should not be so quickly dismissed as evidence of a poison at the heart of Christianity itself, but rather can be approached as the sign of a revolutionary potential at the heart of Christianity which has been missed.

Often the people who engage in the most destructive and reprehensible behaviour are the ones who began with the biggest dreams of transformation. Behind the drunk at the local bar, or the cynical money-maker who would step over anyone to get ahead, there is often a story of some idealistic youth who believed that the broken world could be rendered wonderful with a little work. In such situations it is the failure to enact such a world, to be a part of its birth, that leads people to the darkest of places (while those without such utopian ideas just potter along without the highs of success or the lows of failure).

When we see the church institution engaged in the most horrible of abuses we should rightly be sickened and want to see it implode. However some of us also see, in the very abuse itself, the hint of a failure to act, a failure to embrace some elusive liberating potential.

It is this that lies at the heart of the 'pyro-theology' I explore in Insurrection. There is no doubt that the book is critical of the actually existing church in its dominant form, but the wager is that the symptoms we see played out are not evidence of a rotten core at the heart of the Christ event, but rather hint at the failure to live into the radical, emancipatory space it opens up.

The underlying argument then is that we must repeat the church so that we might repeat the moment of where the failure to act happened and then act. The danger, and it is a danger of the most extreme form, is that we will simply repeat the failure to act and become as destructive and reactive as the Institution we attempt to overthrow (at best we achieve a little more than before and fail to act elsewhere – which can be seen to be taking place in the various moments of historical reformation). But I for one am still willing to take the risk. And if we fail? Well let us hope that those who come after us, our children, our students, our disciples, will not.

Mars Hill, Grand Rapids, MI

I will be speaking at 9:00 and 11:00 in the main service. For more information about Mars Hill visit - http://marshill.org/

Invading the Other's World: "What Are You Thinking?"

There is a question that often comes up in relationships. Indeed even when it does not it is often because the people have had to make an effort not to say it. While it might be asked at any time it is often sprung when two people are sitting quietly together on a given evening. It is, very simply, "What are you thinking?"

There are various possible feelings related to this question, both for the one asking it and the one being asked it. Depending on the dynamic between the two people the question might communicate love, suspicion, frustration or concern. It might feel like a welcome expression of desire or an unwelcome invasion into ones inner world. Indeed it might make one feel deeply frustrated: "how do I know what I am really thinking, I am as in the dark about that as you are!"

One of the things that such a question renders visible however is the way in which the other we are with is also separate from us… other to us. By asking this question we express an explicit desire to bring the others inner world into the room, to render it manifest (although this explicit desire is often a manifestation of an implicit desire – don't tell me what you are really thinking, tell me something I would like to hear).

Such a question carries with it a certain level of anxiety. For there is always the possibility that what one hears will be something we don't want to hear,

"What are you thinking dear?"

"Oh I was just thinking that I wish you would die horribly and leave all your money to me. Would you like a cup of tea honey?"

The anxiety might be minimal (for example if you share a deep connection with your partner), but no matter how deep the relationship the others inner world is no more yours than it is theirs and so you are always in danger of finding something you would find difficult to hear (just as they are). The others inner world is a pulsating, untamed universe that we should only approach with great caution.

This means that we rarely actually answer the question truthfully,

"What are you thinking dear?"

"Oh I was just thinking that I wish you would know how much I love you. Would you like a cup of tea honey?"

The point, which I have touched on elsewhere, is not that we lie to the other, more fundamentally we often lie to ourselves. Covering over our real desires with things we find more acceptable.

So then "What are you thinking" is a dangerous question, very dangerous. To really ask it, or to actually attempt to answer it, both have the potential of throwing us off course, breaking current patterns and opening up new and scary trajectories. In a Derridian sense it has the potential of opening us up to the impossible. The possible here being the direction we can predict, the well-lit road we are currently treading, the safe path that is lined with the familiar. The impossible being that which throws a spanner in the works, casting us adrift once more and placing us again onto a narrow, unlit path.