Summarizing, in The Authenticity of Faith I embraced what would later be called Trade-Off Theory. This is the path of doubt and deconstruction embraced by many progressive Christians. If you hold your beliefs more lightly and provisionally you're better positioned to approach difference with curiosity and hospitality.
But as I described in the last post, in The Slavery of Death I turned from doubt to embrace eccentricity as the better path forward in dealing with the temptations of worldview defense. The idea is that if I receive my life as a gift I have the capacity to give my life away in love and do not have to lash out aggressively toward those who threaten me. Gratitude helps me escape the death anxiety that drives worldview defense.
And yet, as I mentioned at the end of the last post, a skeptic might raise some questions here. For it seems that a lot of Christians, who appear very grateful to God, still display a great deal of intolerance and hostility. So pointing toward gratitude isn't a magic bullet here. What more is needed?
Well, the first thing to say is that gratitude isn't the end but the means. The goal isn't merely to be thankful. The goal is giving your life away in love. So the critical issue is gratitude for. Gratitude for self-offering love.
Diagnostically speaking, if we observe Christians who are "thankful" to God but who display worldview defense, we can surmise that their religious beliefs are still, at a deep psychological level, operating defensively, as described by Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death. You're "thankful" but your posture toward your life remains one of proprietorship. You've been given a gift, and you're thankful, but you're now treating that gift as your exclusive property, to be defended over against the claims of others. You're hoarding your gifts rather than generously sharing.
Consider, as a diagnostic example, what it means to be thankful for your nation. You could be thankful in a proprietary way. This country has been given to Us--Thank God!--and not to You. Conversely, you could be thankful in a way that promotes generosity, sharing, and hospitality. Since this country is a gift I want as many as possible to share in its blessings. Gifts aren't to be hoarded but shared. Consider here the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. He is given a great blessing and gift, but refuses to pay that blessing forward. The servant is grateful, but in a proprietary way. Mercy is for him alone, and not for others. His gratitude in the face of the gift is narrow and selfish.
So, again, what we're looking for here is more than mere "Thank You." We're looking at how gratitude loosens your anxious grip on life, prompting sharing, generosity, and love. In the language of Philippians 2, we're looking at how receiving your life as a gift translates into kenosis. Are you anxiously clinging to your life, fearing that you might lose it? Or are you letting go of your life in self-emptying love? That is the critical contrast, clinging and grasping versus sharing and letting go. Going back to the last post, what we're looking for here, diagnostically speaking, is an economy of gifts. God gives us life and we surrender our lives back to God in acts of service and love as an offering of thanksgiving and praise.
And yet, a critic still might have some questions here. Being a loving person isn't exactly dealing with worldview defense, how we grow threatened and wary in the face of difference. How, then, does eccentricity help us on this critical point?
I say more about that in The Slavery of Death, which I'll turn to that in the next post.
