Next week, on April 15, is the annual National Day of Silence, a day where students across America pledge to be silent for a day in order to bring attention to anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in their schools. Sadly, but also obviously, it is a day not without controversy. I recall a parent of one of the kids in the youth group we led years ago complaining to me about the day and that her (high school) student had to be exposed to such an agenda. Basically she was offended that her son was forcefully made aware of the harassment of people she didn’t like.
I was reminded of that encounter this week as I was reading Rowan Williams’ essay “On Being Creatures.” The essay argues that only a belief that God created the world ex nihilo allows us to embrace our full dependence on God as the source of our identity and therefore stop competitively asserting ourselves over and against other people and the environment in futile attempts to define and create our own identity. For Williams, it is only in rooting ourselves in God that we can be fully human and live responsibly in the world. What most intrigued me though were his conclusions regarding the practical implications of what it would mean for us to trust so fully in God. He writes –
Both the rhetoric and the practice of our defence policies often seem to offend against the acknowledgment of creatureliness – in two respects, at least. First, there is the offence against any notion of ‘creaturely solidarity’ implied by the threat not only to obliterate large numbers of the human race … but to unleash what is acknowledged to be an uncontrollable and incalculable process of devastation in our material environment, an uncontainable injury to the ecology of the planet. Second, there is the extent to which our deterrent policies have become bound to a particular kind of technological confidence: somewhere in the not-so-distant future, it might be possible to construct a defensive or aggressive military system which will provide a final security against attack, a final defence against the pressure of the ‘other’. If I may repeat some words written in 1987 about the problems posed by the Strategic Defence Initiative, the Christian is bound to ask, ‘How far is the search for impregnability a withdrawal from the risks of conflict and change? A longing to block out the possibility of political repentance, drastic social criticism and reconstruction?’
Not embracing our identity as dependent creations of a loving God puts us at odds with the rest of creation. When we assume that our identity is shaped by something other than God, like our own efforts and resourcefulness, we live in competition and not solidarity with others. Others become not fellow image-bearers similarly in dependent relationships with God, but entities competing with us for power and limited resources. Instead of loving others, we set up defenses (or offenses) against the pressure of the other – even to the point that we arrange our world so that we don’t even have to acknowledge that the other exists.
We don’t want to know about starving children, or trafficked women, or ravaged countries if hearing about such things might upset us and demand something of us. We’d rather pretend that people we dislike don’t exist than have to encounter them and see them as human. So people try to ban days like the National Day of Silence. They pass laws prohibiting the construction of mosques in their community. They, as like with what happened to a pastor friend in Wheaton, spray-paint “Go home N***” on a black family’s garage door when that family moves into a white neighborhood. Instead of trusting in God and embracing a ‘creaturely solidarity’ because of that trust, defenses against having to respond to the other are continually built up. And as Williams so rightly points out, when we refuse to even engage the other by building up ultimate defenses against them, we shut down any possibility of being convicted of our sins. If we don’t have to engage the other, then how our actions affect them are above critique. If we’d rather pretend that LGBT people do not exist then we won’t listen to (or even allow) any dialogue regarding how they are treated. But we can never fight against injustice if we refuse to admit that injustice even exists. Liberation and reconciliation will never happen in this world if we refuse to even acknowledge voices different than our own.
But this isn’t what creation is supposed to be. We do not live ultimately in a competitive world, but we live in a world where everything is a gift from God. It is only when we can acknowledge God as creator and therefore trust in God that we can stop asserting ourselves over others and refusing to responsibly and lovingly see them as part of the community of the imago-dei. I appreciated Williams’ essay for reminding me of this practical importance of our beliefs. Our theology of creation matters. Not for some silly science vs. faith debate, but because it defines our very identity and how we live communally as the body of Christ in this world.