Christ became a slave

Literature is, in a strict etymological sense of the word, subversive. It wants you to think about something in a way that you would not otherwise. The same is true of poetry. And sometimes people who subscribe to goodness in a programmatic way are resistant to surprise. Christianity is subversive in that sense. Christ became a slave. That undercuts cultural assumptions about what is valuable, what the hierarchies are. Art reproduces that great overturning whenever it’s good art.

That's Marilynne Robinson in Christian Century, in a dialogue with Rowan Williams. I can't help but think she's right. To say what she does bluntly would, I'm sure, get her in great trouble with the radical right, who know the Truth about most everything, which, in turn, makes screaming about what you believe not only your mission but your heartfelt joy.

They're all around us these days. Next week, Marilynne Robinson will be speaking at Dordt College. They're not happy about that because she's not orthodox enough, which means that Dordt College has, on its own, gone over to the darkness. Follow the path of their reasoning:

Tidbit from our talk Monday night... There was agreement from the defenders of Dordt that Marilynne Robinson would not be allowed to be hired as faculty at Dordt. There was no debate whether she stands firmly against basic biblical teaching on marriage. 

Yet a handful still think she should be allowed to speak. 

That drew the question... what would someone have to say in order to not be allowed to speak at Dordt? 

The defender of Dordt had no response. 

Shouldn't our Christian colleges have standards?

Your answer please. 

Yes, Christian colleges should have standards--in which case, presumably, Marilynne Robinson should be turned away at the Fourth Street entrance or at least not be given a podium. Or No, Christian colleges shouldn't have standards, which is what the writer is suggesting anyway. Nice either/or fallacy.

Apparently, what would please the screamers is a schedule of speakers who stand firm on the principles the screamers believe to be Truth. They know the Truth, and they'll be happy to wield it. 

"Literature is," Ms. Robinson says in the interview, "in a strict etymological sense of the word, subversive," which she defines this way: "It wants you to think about something in a way that you would not otherwise."

That's wholesale abomination to the screamers.

But then, Robinson says, "Christianity is subversive. . .Christ became a slave." In so doing he undercut the rule and the power of the Pharisees, who also claimed to know the whole Truth too.

In the late 1980s, I read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a horrifying futuristic fable about what might happen if the government owned women's bodies. The scenario Ms. Atwood created, I thought, was beyond belief. She was far, far too tough on evangelical Christians, I thought, making them out to be something akin to Hitler's henchmen. 

But today when I read the screamers, I can't help thinking Margaret Atwood wasn't far afield. If the screamers had their way, campus cops would man the entrances, demanding, Gestapo-like, their particular brand of orthodoxy of every soul who enters.

We've been reading Eugene Peterson lately: "A typical reaction to discovering there is widespread evil in the world is to want to get out your broom and sweep the place clean," he says in a meditation in Every Step an Arrival. "Righteous indignation blazes in the heart. Adrenaline flows into the bloodstream. Something has to be done. But the dangers that stem from the action need to be spelled out."

And then this sentence, not easy to take for someone from the Reformed tradition, as I am and Peterson was: "The most perilous action of the human being is the reforming action" because "there are no areas where it is easier to fall into a kind of devastating sin. . .arrogance/hate/self-righteous pride." 

Christ became a slave. That's a lesson for the screamers. 

And me too.