The Self Not Willing To Be Itself

Something is wrong with me and I'm not sure what it is. For one thing, my sleeping habits have come apart. I slept for more than 3 hours this afternoon and I haven't gotten to bed before midnight in a week. And I'll just lay in my dark room with music or a tv show playing for hours. I think I've started clenching my jaw, either in my sleep or just when I'm not paying attention. It makes my jaw hurt, of course, but also gives me head aches. Makes my eyes feel two sizes too big. And this horrible feeling comes over me in the afternoons. It's like hopelessness, but not as sad. It's like frustration but not as angry. It's like depression but not as inactive.

Impotence. I think it's impotence I'm feeling. Like there's some confounded desire I can't manifest.


Our church college group is doing a bible study focusing on Galatians this summer. We're doing the so-called "inductive" bible study, where you Observe, Interpret and then Apply. Aside from the rather glaring hermeneutical naivete of this approach, I'm mostly horrified by its general method: the pooling of ignorance. Why did God give gifts if we're going to ignore them in the name of equality and democracy? Some people are teachers and have knowledge and we should ask them questions and listen when they exercise their work. Others are merciful or creative or whatever the fuck it is, and they ought to be valued for how they testify to their faith through their work. Work the rest of us shouldn't step on by pretending their capacity is less than a gift. Universalizing and vacuous equality is the triumph of envy. "If the foot should say, 'because I am not the hand, I am therefore not a part of the body,' is it then not a part of the body?" Our difference is the occasion for our interlocking unity. Our unity does not come from some substratum which individuates (and, thereby, isolates) us as monads of identical barrenness.

Liberalism makes us alone.

I don't want to be alone.

And now, by way of a hard left turn; a quick look at Galatians 3, as a way of talking about how the Truth of scripture is not necessarily logical. Or, you might say, propositional. Instead, it can be True in a personal or relational fashion.

Galatians 3:1-14
1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard? 3Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?

6Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness."[a] 7Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. 8The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you."[b] 9So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law."[c] 11Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."[d] 12The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."[e] 13Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."[f] 14He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Paul had been told to take the Gospel "first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles." The Jews hadn't exactly lept at the chance to convert, risking significant social stigma and so on. On the other hand, when Paul would go and preach to the Gentiles, they'd convert left and right. Thousands at a time, in fact. As David Milch says, "You wanna talk about 'I Love Lucy' doing well!" So, Paul is writing to this community of Gentiles he had converted. In the intervening time, these gentile Christians had been influenced by Jewish Christians in their area to adopt the signs of the Jewish Covenant (Circumcision, Dietary Laws, etc). After all, Paul was obedient to the command that gave the Jews first chance at the Gospel. So the Christian Jews were not unreasonable to think that these new converts were effectively converting to Judaism, if a peculiar branch there-of, and it was about time they started acculturating.

Paul, on the other hand, has been given a more revolutionary vision of what this Christianity thing is going to be all about. It's not about shrinking the world into the confines of Judaism. Its about exploding the gift Israel had been given in order that "All nations will be blessed" by the fulfillment of their story in Christ and on the Cross.

So, Paul starts this section of the letter rebuking them for being "bewitched" (which is a fancy way of saying deceived) into adopting this upside-down understanding of the work of Christ. He drops the word "fool" in there twice, which is no small thing. Paul is pissed off, but why? If they are new converts and they made a pretty innocuous theological misstep, why come down on them so damn hard? Why not just inform them? Why the Pauline histrionics?

The Galatians are new to this quasi-semitic sect that would eventually be called "Christianity." For them, the Jewish laws that are being foisted upon them are novel and probably a welcome way of concretizing their new religion. Remember, everyone's trying to figure out what the social posture of this community should be, being an amalgam of Jew and Gentile, Slave and Free, so on and so forth. Go back and read all the disputes in Acts. It's complicated stuff. You've just converted and the Jews from down the street who have a head start on the back story of this new religion (because they received some modicum of temple education) say there are some clear cut answers about what God requires of you in daily life. What's one more adjustment in a time of transition, if it offers some peace of mind about God's opinion of you?

For Paul, though, the adoption of the Jewish religious practices is a reversion. It's a step back into a life he's fought tooth and nail to escape. Here's a guy who believed so fiercely in the temple's religious and political system that he was willing to take lives. Now he's fighting to keep Gentile Christians from being beholden to that same system. For Paul, his investment in their adoption of a grace-by-faith posture is deeply tied to his own stability as an apostle. Think of the recovering alcoholic who would go to the mat for someone else in their 12 step group. They need to see others succeed because that would be a witness to their own hopes of salvation.

Paul did murder because of the Law. He's thinking, "If these stupid fucking Galatians can't keep it together (especially w/ all the help I'm giving them!) then how fucked am I?" He's stuck in prison or he's out in the wilderness or otherwise getting shit on for his work as an apostle. The Galatians success is intimately tied to his own, so much so that he'd effectively scream at them out of his fear. "You FOOLISH Galatians!"

And then he plays to their desire to adopt an identity. He says, "okay, fine. You wanna be jewish? Well, our forefather Abraham had faith and that was credited to him as righteousness." He indicts the Jewish teachers misleading them of misunderstanding their own heritage and he gives the Galatians a chance to buy into that history all the same. He says, passive aggressively "Fine, you wanna be a Jew? Here's how you do it. It has little to do with your dick or your lunch." You can practically see his eyes roll.

But it's the last section that is most interesting for our purposes:
Paul is trying to put a bow on his point, using argumentation. He lays down a principle and then backs it up with scripture, much like how we "proof-text" now. The problem is that Paul does a terrible job of it. For example:

10All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law." In a strictly logical sense, that doesn't follow. Relying on the Law curses you, which he backs up by quoting scripture that says NO following the law curses you. Verse 11 kinda works, but the verse from quoted in 12 reads like a non-sequitor. Verse 13 drops in a notion of Christ becoming a curse for us that is backed up by a sliver of scripture and is not at all developed, leaving it nearly meaningless. Now, a good, "saved-by-faith-through-grace" theologian can do some theoretical back flips to make this work, importing notions from other letters and his own sanctification frame work, but he's stopped reading the epistle at that point and he's just reading what he wants to see.

If you really read 10-13, they don't make logical sense. And I contend that isn't a problem.

We see in Paul through those confused and contradictory sentences the struggle of a man attempting to boldly pursue a novel and revolutionary way of life and work. He was so shaped by and invested in his old ways, however, that when he attempts to exhort others to the new way of things, he stumbles all over himself. He's trying so hard to pursue the vision of life and faith bespoken by the Cross, but his old habits sabotage him all the way down to the level of language. His spirit spins against the way he's trying to drive. His desperation to follow Jesus despite himself is communicated to the Galatians (and to us!) through his own frantic rebuking of their missteps.

Paul says, without saying so explicitly here, that our attachment to this new way of doing things is tenuous at best, so I need you to stay strong and true. The deal is that if you do that, I (Paul) will be there for you however I can. Primarily, that means by being with you in the Spirit, cuz these sons-of-bitches keep putting me in prison. And he finally gets that out in verse 14:

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.










I feel just a little less impotent when I do that. Write, I mean. Or teach.

Godspeed.