Hauerwas and Sept. 11
When people say, "The world changed on Sept. 11, 2001," we have to say "No, the world changed on 33 A.D." The question is how to narrate what happened on Sept. 11 in light of what happened in 33 A.D.
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That statement reminds me of a NT Wright statement. When asked about the Anglican Communions ability to stay together, he said:
Leslie Newbigin, whose name you will know, a wonderful man I was privileged to know in the latter years of his life, was once asked whether he was optimistic or pessimistic about some issue. He said, "I'm neither an optimist nor a pessimist. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead." I think that's the only answer you can give. I don't have any runes to read, I don't have any tea leaves to read. I can't tell you which way this might go.
We ought to embrace this kind of logic as the church rather than resorting to patethic versions of political realism. We are, after all, pilgrims and strangers.
I have read and re-read that quote from Hauerwas about 15 times since I first saw it up on your blog. Really, it is the answer for not just 9/11 but every tragedy, every cultural or ideological shift, every innovation or evolution or even collapse that passes in our moment of history.
We, as people who follow the Crucified and Risen Master, must see the events of our world in light of the Gospel and not the other way around.
Perhaps the driving force of the growing rift between the Progressives and Evangelicals is that neither has really learned that lesson yet. Maybe we are all trying so hard to make the Gospel make sense TO us that we've forgotten how to let it make sense OF us.
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