Subjective Authenticity
I think we had a fruitful discussion last week regarding the buzzword "transparent." I know I learned some things, and perhaps when I'm finished with this series, I'll compile some final thoughts on each of the words.
Let's next turn our attention to the term being used by every allegedly culturally relevant church: "authentic." I was recently listening to a Mars Hill Audio CD and Ken Myers made the point that "authenticity" has traditionally meant that something is objectively and verifiably genuine. For example, an authentic Persian rug would be a rug that is genuinely from Persia, and made by Persians.
But it seems that the current use of the word "authentic" refers not to something objectively and verifiably genuine, but rather to something which is subjectively and relativistically true to one's inward feelings. For example, a church would say that they have "authentic worship," meaning not that they worship God in the ways in which He has objectively required of people, but in a way in which we "sense His presence" and "feel His closeness." Being a Christian is no longer about faithful obedience (since that is so pharisaical and hypocritical); it's now more about being real and sincere.
But if we are truly authentic in this sense of the word, what happens when, as an authentic Christian, I don't feel like coming in to work this morning? If I come in anyway, I'm being a hypocrite. The more authentic thing for me to do would be to stay home. In fact, maybe I already am a member of one of those authentic churches, but because I don't feel like going, and don't really like them, I've never attended. Cool.
Am I way off here? Is this a straw man argument? What do you think?
Let's next turn our attention to the term being used by every allegedly culturally relevant church: "authentic." I was recently listening to a Mars Hill Audio CD and Ken Myers made the point that "authenticity" has traditionally meant that something is objectively and verifiably genuine. For example, an authentic Persian rug would be a rug that is genuinely from Persia, and made by Persians.
But it seems that the current use of the word "authentic" refers not to something objectively and verifiably genuine, but rather to something which is subjectively and relativistically true to one's inward feelings. For example, a church would say that they have "authentic worship," meaning not that they worship God in the ways in which He has objectively required of people, but in a way in which we "sense His presence" and "feel His closeness." Being a Christian is no longer about faithful obedience (since that is so pharisaical and hypocritical); it's now more about being real and sincere.
But if we are truly authentic in this sense of the word, what happens when, as an authentic Christian, I don't feel like coming in to work this morning? If I come in anyway, I'm being a hypocrite. The more authentic thing for me to do would be to stay home. In fact, maybe I already am a member of one of those authentic churches, but because I don't feel like going, and don't really like them, I've never attended. Cool.
Am I way off here? Is this a straw man argument? What do you think?
posted by DrewDog at 1:21 PM
4 Comments:
Hello, Andrew,
I hope I don’t find myself in front of the stampede here. I’m old and creaky and don’t run that fast.
What caught my attention in your ponderings here is the notion that some contemporary worship mavens would seek to design services in which we "sense His presence" and "feel His closeness." For the first 1500 years in the Church, and for a majority of Christians in the past 500 years, it has always been a simple matter for any Christian to “sense His presence.” As far as “feeling His closeness” is concerned, these same Christians have been as close to Jesus – in the most literal and tangible sense – as they have ever been close to something they ate or drank. It is only the relative minority of poor souls in America for the past couple of centuries who have needed to look around for some way to “sense His presence” or to “feel His closeness.”
If you asked any Jew for about 1500 years “Where is God?” they would respond without hesitation “Why, he’s between the cherubim, where the Ark is.” No, they would not deny what we could call omnipresence; that too they would affirm. But, there was a presence of the Lord in the Holy of Holies that was other than His general presence everywhere else. That’s why you went to where the Ark was to offer gifts, sacrifices, prayers, praises – in short, that’s why the Law commanded all men to appear three times where God made his name to dwell (see the “locality” of this idea?), so they could worship him.
After Jesus’ resurrection, he promised to be with us until the end of the age. No, that’s not a warm, fuzzy, indeterminate “Atta, boy!” kind of sentiment. He showed us what he was talking about when he appeared to his disciples on the Emmaus Road. In the sacrament of his body and his blood, we sense his presence and feel his closeness, except in a way so literal and tangible as to make the modern worship mavens recoil in gnostic horror. He expressly told his disciples at the Last Supper that this is how their fellowship with him would manifest itself, and he had previously told them the meaning and the effect of this observance in John 6: “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. 56 He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.”
If this is not feeling his closeness or sensing his presence, I do not know what is! Is it any wonder, then, that those who, like the disciples who turned away from the Lord on that occasion, now find themselves trying to conjur up his presence so they can sense it, or to summon from somewhere his closeness so they can feel it? The way Jesus said he would come to them is exactly what they will have nothing to do with.
And, so they sing songs with phrases “Let us bow down” when not a single person will lower so much as their heads, or “let us kneel before him” when no knee in that assembly will ever touch the floor. It begins to sound like a game of words, an incantation to invoke the mental notion of a reality which was always there, if they would have it.
BQ
Thank you for your thoughts, BQ. I agree with your statements (which I think go far beyond the scope of my original post, in a good way, mind you), but I also want to know if you think I am missing the point with regard to the use of the term "authenticity." It may in fact be the case that I am building a straw man argument, and I want to avoid this.
Also, you have such clearly articulated thoughts and beliefs; I'm wondering why you don't have a blog (you haven't posted on yours in a couple years)? Would you be interested in joining the blinklings over at the bird and babe, and becoming a contributor? If so, email me @ andruja@gmail.com so I can send you an invitation.
Cheers
Hi, Andrew,
No, you are not erecting a straw man in this blog entry. Because ...
1. “Authentic,” as you suggest requires a standard, a set of criteria, against which something may be judged authentic (i.e. compliant with the standards) or inauthentic (failing to conform to the standards).
2. Modern worship – however it is described – looks to nothing in the past, except as a collective backdrop against which modern worship is judged to be “modern,” rather than authentic. Said another way, it is almost impossible to call anything really novel authentic. It simply is what it is, with no reference to anything that has gone before.
Where you may be going off base (I can't judge very well at this point) is here: identifying what it is that the word “authentic” is supposed to evoke when used in a phrase such as “authentic worship” and when we know that this phrase cannot be referring to some historic standard.
What does the modern worship maven mean by this term? He ... well, probably she ... likely means something similar to what you've proposed. I'm uncertain mostly because I do not read a lot or very deeply in their published works. In general, modern notions of worship are exclusively subjective – worship is what happens in the interior, unseen areas of a worshiper's soul, and the task of the worship leader is to create, develop, and culminate that interior experience. It all sounds sort of erotic, except it's not happening in a bedroom, but a sanctuary. Those worship leaders in the Temple of Dagon or Ashtarte's Temple were onto something!
So, again, you're not creating a straw man vis-a-vis the notion of authenticity. Nothing truly modern can be truly authentic. Authenticity demands a historical context for its meaning.
As to my cob-webby blog, that turned out to be a bridge too far. I set myself to doing it as a kind of “task” that would give me occasion to spin out thoughts on the psycho-spiritual dynamics of liturgy (there's an inauthentic term for you!). I came into liturgical worship from the outside, relatively late in life, seeking something I could only dimly perceive in the pages of the Bible. And, then, I was gobsmacked by the power of it.
The classical Anglican liturgy conveys an amazing amount of sinewy spiritual power to which those who were born to it seemed oblivious. For months after we began attending Rite I services in a fairly orthodox ECUSA parish, my wife and I evaluated each Eucharist in terms of the number of hankies we required to get through it. Most were one or two hanky Sundays, some three, every once in a while four (those around us were probably getting worried those mornings!) If you knew me, you'd know I'm not one of those fellows who cries easily, and wiping eyes and blowing noses is not what I go to church to do. But, there it is.
What to think of this? How to understand it? Sundays eventually became no-hanky affairs, but not because the liturgy had lost its power. Rather, I had matured, or grown up, or somehow gotten strong enough somewhere in my soul so that I could take the 1,000 octane worship without blowing all my emotional fuses. Maybe that's as good an analogy as any – I “developed” stronger fuses. The worship service was no less moving, or powerful, or challenging of my pathetic spiritual stamina: but, I had gotten stronger.
I digress ... the blog. I started it just before launching a new parish here in town, and I quickly found my schedule overwhelmed. I should have canned the blog immediately, but I was engaged in four or five off-blog conversations which the blog had sparked. So, I left it there, and ... well, I still get some annoyed emails reminding me I haven't posted something in a while (!).
A final irony about worship: my “reaction” to Rite I Anglican worship in the '79 Prayer Book was EXACTLY what any modern worship maven would have given her eye-teeth to generate. If everyone had been reacting as I did, it would have been something straight out of the First Great Awakening. No Doo-dah Doo-dah-day charismatic extravaganza could have surpassed it. But the service was “dead ritual,” right? Pppffffft.
Let me graze through the Bird and Babe and get back to you on that later.
BQ
Thanks for clearing that up! You da' man.
Cheers
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