Periphery or Center?

2/28/2023

Christians lament being pushed to the periphery of society. They complain about being marginalized. They fear they may soon be singled out. Perhaps even hunted down.

Christians long to return to a time when they occupied the center of society. When they were the ones doing the marginalizing, the singling out, and the hunting down.

At the very least, Christians yearn for security. If nothing else, they dream of establishing safe spaces where Christians can be Christians without the threat of being marginalized, singled out, or hunted down.

Christians today loathe peripheries. They do not feel secure on the circumference. They long to reoccupy their place at the center because they believe that is the only way the they can be safe and the only way the world can be saved.

Christians today should forget about being safe. And they should certainly forget about saving the world.

Jesus didn’t pray for the world. Why do you?

Christians should also consider that the spiritual center is no longer synonymous with the social center. On the contrary, the spiritual center now begins on the social circumference and extends beyond the peripheries of ideal objectivity into real subjectivity.

Christians should also consider that Christ Himself was always on the social periphery despite being THE spiritual center.

Still, Christians insist they can only be Christians when they are safe, and being safe means being in the center of society.

In reality, Christians today are only safe when they are free. A Christian who is free knows he is at the center of the spiritual world. As such, he cannot be pushed to the periphery of anything.

9 Comments

bruce g charlton

2/28/2023 22:06:48

A compelling take on things. The point about safety is a tough teaching, but well made.

Maybe it is indeed easier for serious Christians to model (in imagination) their condition by comparing it with that of Jesus and the disciples -- who like us lived in a non-Christian/ anti-Christian society and world - where their church was against the truth, as now.

Francis Berger

3/1/2023 08:59:26

@ Bruce - The further we wade out into these End Times, the more I am convinced that our primary spiritual task now is to realize a another link between man and God -- one that is beyond conventional external considerations and the anchoring or submergence of Christianity into "society". Returning to conventional ideas about Christian societies does nothing to resolve the antithesis of objective and subjective, and I believe this is precisely the antithesis that we must overcome, primarily via thinking.

A recent blog post you wrote on the topic of subject-object addressed this point very well. Objectivity causes subjectivity to react, but the task of subjectivity now is not simply reaction, but refinement - refinement that "creates" or realizes "new" objectivity. This "new" objectivity cannot be realized if we insist on returning to old, standard forms of objectivity.

3/2/2023 10:39:50

Something interesting that has just struck me - is that the Fire nation is the one example of a place that has seen a major revival of its church over the past thirty-plus years - and continuing.

This seems to suggest two things. One is that the FN includes a different kind of human consciousness, and probably with a somewhat different destiny.

Secondly, that I suspect that what is emerging in the FN in relation to he church will Not be a 'return to old standard forms of objectivity' - but something else new and unprecedented. What that is, I don't know - but it would be an interesting subject for study (albeit not by me, but someone who knows that culture from the inside).

Ingemar

3/1/2023 20:11:13

This post sounds like it's calling out Anti-Gnostic specifically.

Nevertheless, "Christendom" and the Faith of the New Testament seem to be at odds, since the former seems more concerned with establishing a geopolitical bloc and the latter takes a more jaundiced view of secular politics, nevermind rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's.

When I was a Protestant, I believed that the official adoption of Christianity as the Roman Imperial cult was one of the worst things to happen to the religion. Today, even as a Catholic, my view is essentially unchanged. The Imperialization of Christianity in my view tamed the Faith and put it on the leash. But the Early Church's origins as being on the peripheries is what I think will ultimately save the Christians who want Christ alone and not simply giant, pretty and empty cathedrals.

3/2/2023 07:47:17

@ Ingemar - I sympathize with AG, but I believe it is crucial to look beyond the social/political aspects of Christianity in this time and place.

Anti-Gnostic

3/2/2023 17:38:42

<i> But the Early Church's origins as being on the peripheries is what I think will ultimately save the Christians who want Christ alone and not simply giant, pretty and empty cathedrals.</i>

This is Protestant antiquarianism, as if there's a pure faith out there circa 33.5 AD that's just gotten progressively more corrupt until, like the Protestant, we must schism down to the individual level.

The only reason Christianity became the faith of the West was because of the Roman Imperium, which would seem to dovetail with God's plan to universalize worship of the God of Israel.

In any event, increasing numbers of people are taking your advice and leaving the cathedrals that only a few suckers and their bequests, apparently, are left to support. Do you really foresee a "Romantic Christianity" revival? It doesn't really seem to have anything on offer other than meditations for elderly people.

3/2/2023 18:44:44

@ Anti-Gnostic - I believe Imperium Christianity or Christendom or centralized organized Christianity served a valuable and necessary purpose, but it also served a particular form of human consciousness, which I will refer to here as heteronomy - the spiritual and material condition of strong traditional norms, and values that were supported by stern and rigid external demands upon the individual and suppressed individual freedom. Within this framework, loyalty and obedience are the highest virtues, while freedom is a lesser virtue that is quickly sacrificed for tradition, God, or the greater good. This form of consciousness slowly began to fade in the West around the time of the Renaissance and has been fading ever since.

I interpret this to mean that God desires that we abandon this form of consciousness and move toward greater freedom, personality, subjectivity and creativity. Moreover, I believe he desires for us to begin understanding Him on these terms. People have been doing this for centuries, but it has been mostly a movement of "free from" God rather than "free for" God. Without God, the shift toward greater freedom, personality, and creativity collapsed back into a form of godless heteronomy, complete with its own inverted value system and external rigid demands. Exchanging our current demonic totalitarianism for a return to some form of Christian totalitarianism would do more spiritual and, potentially, worldly harm than good.

I don't believe God's ultimate plan for humanity is universalized worship of Him under the yolk of heteronomy. I believe God's ultimate plan for humanity involves humans becoming divinized co-creators with God, but the success of this plan is not up to God alone -- man has a say in it as well.

In this sense, I think Romantic Christianity has far more to offer man in this time and place than any revived Christendom ever could.

3/2/2023 10:47:57

@ Bruce - Yes, I agree. The revival in the FN reflects a different unfolding of consciousness -- something a little less individual, perhaps a little more collective (cultural, national) in nature, yet still based on freedom. I think this is inherent in Orthodoxy and the 19th-century idea of sobornost (assembly-ness or gatheringness). I think Berdyaev tackles this subject in his final book, The R Idea, which I have on my shelf but have not brought myself to read yet.

3/2/2023 17:24:54

Christianity is regressing to the longtime parody of the lone Protestant with his KJV.

It's not "being on the periphery." It's outrage at being forced to tolerate and subsidize evil, which requires a terrible moral calculation which I'm not convinced is soluble just by being an atomized Christian.

Christianity is becoming Shakerism and the effective message to your children is they shouldn't have been born.

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