When talk becomes noise

The Christmas holiday is for me a time to meet up with family and friends, so for the last weeks there´s been quite a lot of talking going on with the people around me. Now, talking is not the same as writing, and for me especially I can feel slow beyond disbelief. I know exactly what to say in any given situation, half an hour after the event in question. More importantly, the subject matter shifts considerably to things mundane and worldly. I wouldn´t want to say this is bad since we do live on this world and have to get along with it, and speaking about things spiritual does not necessarily make anyone one ounce more christian than someone completely obsessed with chatting about, say, curling (which, incidentally, the Swedes are recent world champions in).

But I do notice that those people have widely different attitudes to talking about “important” stuff. Some are only too keen to discuss world poverty, poetry, sexual morals, drugs, religious freedom and such (I guess I myself tend to fall into this pit at times), while someone very dear to me says that such talk is “tiresome” (I asked if he believed in God, which he didn´t, or anything else, which he also didn´t). Now to those that would accuse me to be pain-in-the-ass like Jehovas Witness with cramming my opinions down other peoples´ throats, let me tell you that we had spent an entire evening playing cards with bad telly smack in the background, carefully avoiding basically anything that mattered on any level whatsoever. Which we do always.

It seems to me that generally the people who most like talking are the one whom it affects the least, it just runs right off them like water from a goose in an oil slick. While others cry out: Be still and silent!, when anything in the slightest provocative comes up. So what good is talking? But it must be in some way effective if people fear it. And for those that don´t fear the word, it´s useless. However, I don´t believe one single person is entirely beyond the redemptive reach of God, just that sometimes some avenues are blocked, and others remain open. The way I´ve heard it, what we do then is persist in loving, and keep on praying. I have nothing more intelligent to add to that.

Anyway, it just so happens, that during one of these talks someone said something that actually stuck in my mind. This is a rare occurrence, more due to the fact that I listen badly than to that I should be surrounded by fools and ignorants. It was about existentialism and the fact that we humans have a tendency to “verfallen in das man(n)”, appearantly something from Heidegger. It doesn´t translate well, since the English language doesn´t use the neutral form as a substitute for the first person (she, he, it instead of I) in the germanic way, or indeed the Swedish way. My attempt at translation would be: falling in to “one generally”. One generally dies in the end. One generally doesn´t drink and drive after parties. One generally doesn´t lie, etcetera. This is a tendency to keep things abstract and at a general level, where it doesn´t affect me personally. This is the enemy of existentialist living, or to quote Jean Paul Sartre: “Man is always a teller of tales. But you have to choose, live or tell.”

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. James 1:22
This is existentialism in practice, we are doers of the word, not to please God, but lest we deceive ourselves, i e lead unauthentic lives. Deceiving God is not a relevant option.

It struck me that this is just what christian conversion is about. The point where Jesus Christ didn´t just die for people in general, but for me personally. The point where he also resurrected from out of the clutches of death, not only with his own soul, but with mine as well. And what I really like is what this is something that existentialism, as outlined by Kierkegaard and others after him, help us to get to terms with that awkward thing, righteousness by faith. Forgive me for calling it awkward, for it´s a true gift of grace from God. However it does leave one asking: “But what do I do with this amazing/fascinating/disturbing/boring/painful life that I live now, if everything was accomplished on the cross?” We live it in an authentic manner as it is, we answer with those friends from past ages, who didn´t duck, but fought with man, beast and God, simply because it was incumbent upon them to do so.

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak."
But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
The man asked him, "What is your name?"
"Jacob," he answered.
Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."
Jacob said, "Please tell me your name."
But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there.
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." Genesis 32:22-30

Sometimes I despair as to the good my words can do. I get the feeling that it takes words of actual spiritual aggression to reach certain human beings in their current state. I want to yell: You´re naked and don´t see it, you´re broken and think you´re standing, you have nothing and think you´re rich. But that would hurt. That must hurt and break down and demolish the walls and towers they´ve constructed around them, or else they´re words in vain. But until such a time comes when I can say those words and see those persons in a love burnt clean with holiness rather than in self-righteousness, there´s little else to do but to speak generally...