“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
- “The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
Like Berry, I sometimes feel despair grow in me like a bloating carcass. I see lives ruled by anxiety and frustration, anger and disappointment. I feel the pressing weight of unfulfilled expectations, burnout and a swelling sense of helplessness. And as a pastor, I am not sure life in the church looks much different from our surrounding society. In my darker moments, I, too, fear for what my life and the children of God’s lives may be.
This has led me to look into the dynamics of modern life, investigating our learned posture toward the world. Thankfully, I came upon the work of Hartmut Rosa, who identifies the root of the issue: we moderns constantly strive for control.
This has been extremely helpful as a pastor and as a theologian. You see, life in the church is fundamentally uncontrollable.
The Uncontrollability of the World
German sociologist and political scientist Hartmut Rosa has spent a lot of time examining modern life and our shared relationship to the world. He stands alongside other such thinkers, like Charles Taylor and Peter Berger, trying to understand the symptoms of modernity and chart a path forward. His short book The Uncontrollability of the World (2020) is particularly accessible and illuminating toward the dynamics of modern life.
His main contention is:
[Because] we, as late modern human beings, aim to make the world controllable at every level—we invariably encounter the world as a “point of aggressions” or as a series of points of aggression, in other words as a series of objects that we have to know, attain, conquer, master, or exploit…. This in turn leads to anxiety, frustration, anger, and even despair, which then manifest themselves, among other things, in acts of impotent political aggression. (4)
This antagonistic relationship to the world and with others becomes a battle of wills aimed at “expanding our share of the world” (10).
That is to say that the modern conception of the “good life” revolves around bringing more and more of the world under our physical and intellectual control. This is the fundamental posture of modernity, an ever-present impulse to dominate for our own pursuits.
All this serves to reduce chaos and the threat of danger, but at the expense of mystery, wonder, and resonance. It ultimately alienates us from the world we inhabit, the people we know, and the Creator we worship.
Controlling the Church
Now, when I talk about the uncontrollability of the church, I am not suggesting that no one is in control of it.
Rather, the point of control is with God. He is the head, the bridegroom, the shepherd, the true vine. It is because of God’s sovereign control that we may wholeheartedly embrace our own lack of control. We do not need to increase our share of the world, for it all rests in God’s trustworthy hands.
Though I commend the entirety of Rosa’s book, his summary in chapter 7 is particularly helpful. In it, he expands this pursuit of control by naming a few basic trends that may be observed across the structures of modern social life. These provide a helpful rubric for evaluating how much this drive for control has crept into the patterns and structures of the local church.
The Compulsion to Optimize
“Optimization means achieving the best possible result in the shortest possible time, while maintaining constant control over the processes involved.”
Has the wise stewardship of resources morphed into a hyper-fixation on production and efficiency? Has this led to overemphasis on KPIs and metrics? How can the widow’s mite be optimized (Luke 21:1-4)? What is the measure of efficiency when it comes to visiting the sick and the needy? What is the best prayer-to-productivity ratio?
Such questions hyperbolically highlight the limits of such thinking in a church setting. Yet the promise of “hard” data and the temptation towards metric fixation are pervasive aspects of contemporary life in the church. Every other aspect of our lives is to be optimized through data collection (e.g., sleep, fitness, productivity). It’s no wonder, then, that our approach to ministry is the same. We just need the right statistics to perform the best (church) life hacks.
But life in the church actually “requires engaging in processes the very occurrence of which is uncertain and the outcomes of which remain open-ended” (87) (e.g., evangelism!). The church is not dependent on data, nor is efficiency its guiding virtue.
Give us, this day, our daily bread, Lord.
The Logic of Bureaucracy
“A network of legal and administrative regulations endeavor to make all the vagaries and vicissitudes of life a priori controllable in this way. It must be clear which rules apply when, where, and to whom” (91).
Is decision-making governed by exacting criteria and the gridlock of committees and councils? Is the protection of resources (“people would take advantage!”) prioritized over generosity and flexibility? Are those in need found to be “disqualified” for benevolence? Are fairness and consistency the guiding virtues?
We are currently navigating the challenges of coordinating meal trains across our community. To do so, we must answer certain questions: which circumstances qualify? Who initiates? Is there an appropriate level of reciprocity involved? But is this the organic care for one another that the New Testament depicts? That is yet to be seen.
As a systematic thinker, I believe there certainly is space for systems and processes within the church, but it becomes too easy to hide behind bureaucracy and deny the constant need for personal and communal discernment, wisdom and responsiveness. God does not seem to be as concerned with fairness as we are.
May your will be done on earth, Lord, as it is in heaven.
The Spread of Commodification
“The commodification of nearly every aspect of our relationship to the world—the fact that nearly every object and process is on offer in late modern society as a service or as a commodity—implies a legal right to controllability” (95).
How much of church life is manufactured to produce some sort of religious experience? Should the local body of Christ create and manage a brand to secure a specific segment of the spiritual market share? Is tithing a transaction, entitling someone to certain privileges and services? Where was Jesus Christ’s business plan with analysis on the Judean market and financial projections?
I recall overhearing a former elder at a previous church saying, “The church is essentially a business.” I could not hide my shock! How could this leader not understand the implications of such a statement? Doesn’t Jesus’ violent repudiation of commercialization in his Father’s house (John 2) check such an assessment of the church? The permutations of this statement are legion: consumer Christianity, sales-pitch evangelism, worship entertainment, CEO pastors, prosperity gospel, church shopping, and more!
Yes, the contemporary church has certain business-like aspects. But, at the end of the day, the church is not a business. It’s not pushing a product. Business logic does not equal kingdom logic. Business technique does not plug and play into a church context. The body of Christ operates in a different economy; one characterized by redemption and givenness.
Lord, forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
Holding the Uncontrollable
And so, I write, like us all, as a child of modernity.
I like predictability, knowability, accessibility, manageability, and useability. Inside me, there is the impulse to put God, others, the world into neat little controllable boxes. But my biggest moment of growth in the past few years occurred when I realized that the task of theology and the art of ministry center on taking the tops off of our little boxes and becoming open to a reality that far exceeds our grasp, a reality that derives its being in the uncontainable and uncontrollable Triune God. Rosa was an important voice in this development.
And so, we must slowly learn to hold the uncontrollable. It is not a matter of new technique but one of different posture. We should not grasp too tightly, for like water, it will pass through our fingers. Rather, we must cup our hands to receive and to know “the presence of still water.” Then, we may come to experience new depths and new resonances in Christ and among his people.
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