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| Martin Luther King removes a blackened cross from his front lawn. |
A while back I discussed the use of tropes; predictions and
mental shortcuts based in story telling. For
this blog post I am going to expose a trope of my own. It’s a trope
particularly relevant to the question of discernment raised in the last post.
Firstly a reminder that tropes are good. Everyday we have to predict the future
which by virtue of it being in the future we can’t directly observe. For simple
questions like whether the sun will rise tomorrow we may not think we need
tropes but in the face of a counter claim from a Doomsday cult for example we
will still use tropes to reject the doubts they raise. Tropes are our way of
“knowing how this story ends”; we locate the events in front of us inside a
type of story we have seen before. In this case a failed Doomsday prediction.
There is therefore no need to investigate every allegation from everyone. Tropes save us a lot of time.
Equally tropes are not so good. Tropes can make enemies of
people who might in fact be friends when we apply our knowledge of “where this
will end” over-cautiously. Imagine
refusing a genuine gift because it was “too good to be true.” Tropes can also
merrily lead us into trouble. A good con-artist will encourage our tropes and
allow us to play the hero or even the con-artist ourselves in line with our expectations.
Our tropes are basically our prejudices with all the pejorative connotations
that word deserve.
I use the word truism to describe the building blocks of a trope. Truisms are
statements about the world which we accept as true. They may be rigorously
tested or blithely assumed. They are not always conscious and making them
conscious can be a great way of exposing a tropes flaws. The truisms which my
trope is composed of are probably the best way to investigate it and can be
laid out as follows. You can use the points to find where you depart with your
own trope about discernment (treat them as wild claims rather than careful
arguments).
1. There are clear Kairos moments in history. Kairos is a term I’m borrowing
from theology where it describes a time in history when “the church” - those people who profess to be the people
of God – must make a decision which will critically decide the legitimacy of their
claim to this identity. The position of the Anglican church on Apartheid in South Africa, or the position of the Lutheran Church
on the Nazi party in Hitlers’ Germany
form classic modern Kairos moments.
2. Kairos moments don’t just occur for the people of God.
There are moments in the life of any institution including the broad
institution of humanity when certain decisions become morally critical.
Notwithstanding some losses in the translation from church to nation we can see
the land-rights movement or even the royal commission into child abuse as kind
of Kairos moments for the community of Australia. A Kairos moment is like
a fork in the road. The relationship of an institution to its most fundamental
legitimacy is at stake.
3. In a Kairos moment the path of righteousness is not clearly lit. It is obscured by
rational and reasonable sounding counter arguments. White people supporting
Apartheid in South Africa
pointed to neighbouring countries in which corruption and violence seemed even worse
under black rule. Mark Twains famous depiction of Huckleberry Finn shows him
comprehending freeing his friend Tom from slavery as stealing him from the
woman who owns him. Even the oppressed
can’t be certain of their tactics or timing for change. The resisters in the
Warsaw Ghettos could never be sure that surrender wasn’t the wiser choice of
action. Our choice in a Kairos moment might cost our life and the lives of many
others and for nothing. Our pursuit of what we think is righteousness might ultimately
condemn us as unforgiving, or naively soft for all we know in the moment of
decision.
4. Just as the right call in a Kairos moment is unclear in
our approach it is painfully obvious in hindsight. Nowadays even the staunchest
western conservative, unwilling to bear the thought of a woman bishop, would
not question a woman’s right to vote. Nowadays even the sad few who cling to
the myth of Aryan superiority deny rather than celebrate the holocaust. Support
for slavery or segregation, once half the debate are now embarrassments for the
church. This means we can take certain historical outcomes in debates as givens
in regard to morality. (I realize this may be my weakest point; matters of
justice that may seem settled briefly can easily become contested again eg. the
Australian abandonment of our obligations to refugees and does a settled
opinion mean anything about its rightness anyway.)
5. Those who made the right call in
historical Kairos moments (and I rely on the above point to claim they can be
clearly recognized) share some commonalities in terms of their process of
discernment. Maybe they nurtured an intimacy with the people affected by the
decision or maybe they could create the distance from the matter at hand to see
things clearly. Maybe they emphasis reason or instinct or balance between the
two or held basic philosophical assumptions in common. Perhaps by comparing each
person side by side we could identity a super tradition or religion each of
these right-callers belong to. Whatever it is there is some definition to the
process by which they managed to be on the right side of a Kairos moment.
6. Likewise we can see from past Kairos moments that certain
processes of discernment were not helpful and served to obscure what we now see
clearly. It may be that we can discount or treat warily forms of authority
based on their uselessness in past Kairos moments. Alternatively we might just
crudely note intellectual vices to avoid.
7. When we stand in a position of ignorance in relation to
our own Kairos moments we can borrow from those who made the right call in the
past, their process of discernment. We can also skirt past the traps that
befell those who made the wrong calls. In this way while we can’t necessarily
know the right conclusion to a contemporary moral crisis (and must ultimately
step forward in faith) we can grow to trust a path to truth and try to find it
in new scenarios.
Before I go any further with this and talk about how I apply my trope to what I
see might be modern Kairos moments (Australia’s treatment of refugees for
example or the global response to climate change) I want to ask you for your
thoughts. Do you agree with the points laid out above? Is the concept of a
Kairos moment a helpful historical one? Am I right to have my doubts about point
4? Is there really any common discernment process to be uncovered as suggested
in point 5?
You could see in this trope what is alluded to by the common phrase “right side
of history”. Perhaps a really fundamental question is whether there can be a
right side of history other than victory? I think there can be at least a side
of history we wish we would have belonged to if we lived in Kairos moments in
the past. We would rather be freeing slaves than slavers for example in the 18th
century. Imagine if we could make even some
small measure of improving our chances of being on the right side of history today. I think that’s
something worth aiming for.
