I need no further convincing as regards the myth of objectivity. Ministry offers countless lessons, no doubt. A few of the more important ones have to do with the myth of objectivity. Ministers are introduced to this particular myth everyday in a variety of situations and circumstance. Not all of us will see them, and some of us will try in vain to deny them, but the lessons are before us everyday. Ministry, if it hasn’t already, will teach us all that interpretation is an exercise in divergence, and that total objectivity is a fanciful idea at best, and that we all bring our own cumulative assumptions, presuppositions and past experiences to the interpretive task. This is true not only on an individual level, but also the communal.
I have an example that was born from my own pastoral experiences this past week.
Worship. Worship is a big deal in churches. It’s a big deal in our church. We are an emerging church community. We have very serious thoughts about worship expressions. More than a few of us have experienced Christian worship as big production, overtly-emotional, charismatic, and even manipulative. We also have more than a few musicians in our community who lead bands, write their own music, and play local clubs. Musicianship is a high priority for many of our people; they are an incredibly talented and gifted bunch. That said, no one in our community has any desire to lead production-heavy, emotion-laden, or, god forbid, manipulative worship. None of us wanted to create another Sunday morning show. So, we decided, from day one, to keep it as simple and as basic as possible. Yes. We usually have two or more musicians leading on Sunday. Yes. They have guitars. No. It is not a big production or show. I assure you. I know what “the show” looks and sounds and feels like; this ‘aint it.
One person’s stripped down worship service can be interpreted as a “big show” by another person, no matter how stripped down it really is, depending on the culture, experience, and, yes, personal suppositions.
This past week, a wonderful, incredible and all-around awesome couple shared their interpretation of our community’s worship with me. They expressed discomfort with our worship and style. Their discomfort with our worship expression was serious enough. So serious, in fact, that they have decided to attend elsewhere. Now, our worship is probably not the only reason they have or would cite for their attendance elsewhere. Things like our identity (which is still in formation and probably always will be) and our kid’s program are reasons too. I am, however, focusing on the worship issue because of how that particular issue exposes us as people who are indeed shaped in countless ways by our own experiences, settings, culture, and unconscious/unspoken idiosyncrasies. Further, I think it is important to note how all of these things cumulatively affect our interpretations of things, in this case the thing is a worship service.
So, this couple thinks our worship is a show of sorts. We think it is as stripped and as basic and as creative as it could possibly be. So, who is right?
Maybe we both are right? Let me explain.
On one hand, the majority of us who have experienced big, production-heavy, corporate worship see what we are doing as stripped down and basic as it could be for us; on the other hand, the couple, who are coming from many, many years spent worshiping with The Old Order River Brethren (the singing is a cappella and is characterized by a slow, regular cadence), interpret our worship as a big show.
Who really is being objective in this case? I would say no one! Hasn’t the worship service itself been shaped and in fact interpreted by everyone involved according to past experiences, presuppositions and assumptions? Is our worship completely objective? Hardly. Neither those of us who believe we have stripped it down to the bare essentials, nor the couple who think it all a big show, are being completely objective about the worship expression itself. Our expression of worship was born from our own past experiences – which are completely limited to our own culture; their expression was born from their own. Our final interpretations of our worship service were totally affected and in fact shaped by both.
None of us are objective about anything we are doing on Sunday mornings. We all are shaped by past experiences, culture, and even politics. We all bring the cumulative product of all that shaping to our Sunday morning expressions. There are none who are completely objective.
So, the question that has to be asked then is this: What are we doing on Sunday mornings? Think about it.
Related posts:
Euangelion
Emerging Women
The Blind Begger
Tall Skinny Kiwi
Just to clarify, when you say just “worship” most of the time in this post you are referring to worship MUSIC correct?
As you know, that distinction is pretty important to me for the sake of our own thinking about what worship really is and for those looking/reading from the outside.
Great question, Chris. Actually, your asking it sort of reinforces the bigger point I’m trying to articulate (i.e., we all bring a lot of our own experiences and definitions to the interpretive process). Some don’t consciously distinguish between the music and the event itself.
That said, I definitely hear what you are saying and understand where you are going. I’d agree with you too. However, for this post, and the big point about objectivity, I’m talking about the worship event itself, which includes music. I’m looking at it broadly because I think that is the approach most people default to when they make decisions.
Make sense? Thoughts? I’d love to hear what you think re: this issue.
Ok. I’m tracking a little better but when you say “worship event” are you referring to a church service or the event of people worshiping through any of their actions?
:)
I’m talking about a church service. The church/worship service is what is being interpreted, in this case. My point has to do with the objectivity – or lack thereof – of our interpretation of any given church service. To complicate matters even more, I’m also suggesting that church/worship services are themselves products of personal “interpretations” that have been totally formed by personal experiences, culture, and a boat load of supposition. :)
But, to stay on point, yes, I’m talking about a church service. That said, I’m not totally sure that what I’m pointing towards is far removed from “the event of people worshiping through any of their actions” because that too is not accomplished with total objectivity, IMHO. Do you think otherwise, Chris?
Hope that helps clarify! :)
Here’s a bit more to chew on Chris. Imagine, if you will, that you wrote down your thoughts about our worship and or church service. Then imagine if the couple named above wrote down their own thoughts about it all. Then imagine, if you will, that a group of people found these writings 1000 years from now and dedicated themselves to interpreting them and applying what they found in them. Don’t forget that those people 1000 years into the future would bring to the interpretive process their own cultural presuppositions, idiosyncrasies, biases, experiences, etc., etc.
What would that interpretation look like?
Again, all I am trying to say is that objectivity is a squirrelly critter that none of us can catch and domesticate. I’m trying to communicate this by breaking it down in simple terms by pointing towards the variety of interpretations a simple act like a worship service can produce, and, perhaps more importantly, where this variety comes from (personal experiences, culture, presuppositions, biases, etc.).
The biggest issue with objectivity is that it implies a standard by which to judge the topic questioned. For example, it can objectively be shown that my 91 Acura Integra is not objectively an Integra as designed by the manufacturer. It has a different exhaust, air filter, plugs, etc. This comparison is possible because there is an objective Integra that exists apart from my interpretation – there is a “thing-in-itself” Integra, the stock model that the designers mass produced and drew out in the factory.
The problem with a church service is that if a “thing-in-itself” church service exists, we don’t know what it is or how it looks. Unlike my Acura, I have no solid objective reality on which to base my vision of a church service. All we have are representations of the “thing in itself”. If such an objective reality exists, we can only approximate it and try to come close.
Personally, I doubt that a perfect Platonic or Kantian church service or worship event exists – the above is just for illustrative purposes.
That said, I think it does point to objectivity being possible in some things – even if we never get to it, the reality is still there, behind the world of observation as it where.
Dave, you wrote “The biggest issue with objectivity is that it implies a standard by which to judge the topic questioned.”
Yes. That’s exactly the problem. Where would such a standard come from? Who set it as the standard? Who said, “This is the standard?” Why did they choose it as the standard?
Furthermore, even if we somehow could fool ourselves into believing that we could trace history backwards without our own lens coloring our path towards this elusive standard, then how would we not recognize this “standard” for what it is. It is, after all, just another “form” constructed upon the same sort of presuppositions, cultural tendencies, idiosyncrasies, prejudices, politics, and power (the winners write the history we would be tracing) that have subconsciously and physically and psychologically shaped us and our consequent expressions.
That’s the problem. So, I agree with you on that much. We diverge on the so-called existence of “the objective standard” for the simple reason that it is no more than a shadow in our imaginations. Where can you find such a standard? Can we step backwards in time and history to locate it? I would say no. So, in my opinion “the objective standard” is nothing but mere imagination flimsily propped up by meaningless words.
Thoughts?
Also, I’d say that your automobile illustration focuses more upon form and a recognition of forms than objectivity. We rearrange material resources and make a car. We give the cars different names and shapes. We then recognize the differences between our rearranged material resources. How does this relate to objectivity? I am missing something here in your illustration, for sure. Help me understand it. I think the illustration breaks down when, let’s say, people who have never seen an auto before are introduced to the story. They have no objectivity in this regard and may think the machine to be a monster of some sort. I think it’s the same with the worship service illustration I provided. In fact, I think it actually strengthens my suggestion that total objectivity doesn’t exist and our expressions to countless situations and events are born from our presuppositions and cultural tendencies.
Great conversation, Dave. I really appreciate your thoughts. I appreciate being able to converse with people who appreciate the conversation.
“That’s the problem. So, I agree with you on that much. We diverge on the so-called existence of “the objective standard” for the simple reason that it is no more than a shadow in our imaginations. Where can you find such a standard? Can we step backwards in time and history to locate it? I would say no. So, in my opinion “the objective standard” is nothing but mere imagination flimsily propped up by meaningless words.” – Shawn
Cool, common ground is a good place to start. Onto the divergence, then. I would suggest that that which God creates is objectively whatever He says it is. I am making the point that such an objective could exist while we were unable to perceive it clearly. Such is God – I think it is clear that God exists independently of human thought and experience. Since God predates humanity, he cannot simply be defined by humanity. He must be a thing-in-itself, and by definition exist objectively.
So, now that one objective must exist, we cannot say that everything is subjective based on experience. We can say that our interpretation is subjective, but there is a huge qualitative difference between saying that we experience things differently but there exists a baseline, and that their is no objective Truth with a capital T. Because that is where this line of logic goes, I’m sure you have read where this leads – it’s the foundation of postmodernism. It’s also why postmodernism is a failure of a philosophy and self-contradictory, but that is another topic.
As for the car example, the Integra is an Integra because its creator called it so. The person who thought it was a monster may experience it as a monster, and that may be useful to us and to this person in many situations, but it does not make the thing a monster – it is still a car, because it’s maker said it is. The Creator has the right of definition. In a textual situation, it is often impossible to know the creator’s intent, hence Barthes and the “Death of the Author-God” article. But we must remember that God is not a human author. Sin is what it is because God defines it that way. Love is what it is because God defines it as he defines it. You get my drift, I trust. It is a form, which is what defines it.
“Where would such a standard come from? Who set it as the standard? Who said, “This is the standard?” Why did they choose it as the standard?” – Shawn
I think I already answered this, but God makes standards of reality, behavior, truth, etc. We may not know them all, but my inability to see it or know what it is precisely has no bearing on its reality.
Dave, you wrote “Onto the divergence, then. I would suggest that that which God creates is objectively whatever He says it is.”
… and therein lies the problem. Did God speak to you? Did he use language? Did he send you a book? If so, we will be forced to interpret it. Our interpretations are smothered in our cultural and ethnic and a million other presuppositions. Historical and cultural relativity is all through our texts about what God says to us. To suggest otherwise would be ridiculous. Do you really think that when God speaks he sounds like a nomadic shepherd? When Paul says that “every knee above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth will bow in the name of Jesus,” do you really revert back to a three-tiered view of the world/universe? I would say probably not. Does that mean there is not revelatory material in there? No! It means we have to do the difficult work of differentiating the historical/cultural relativity of the text from the revelatory aspects while simultaneously realizing that we occupy the same tenuous position as they (the writers telling us what God says) once did.
I digress. The bigger point has to do with how we know what God says. So, I ask you again, did he tell you personally, or did you read in papyrus, or did you turn to the bible and discover it? I also ask you if you really believe that you can hear what God says with total objectivity or does the way that you have been shaped by culture and experience color your interpretations of what you hear?
God may make the standard, as you say, but the standard makes little difference in human reality until it is engaged by humanity. When we do engage it, interpretation is born.
Incidentally, and a bit of point (your point regarding God being the standard of reality, behavior, truth, etc., made me think of this), have you ever thought about the Euthyphro Dilemma?
In reference to the Euthyphro Dilemma: Yea, I have grappled with it, and found it to be no dilemma at all. It makes more sense for Plato’s cosmology, with a polytheistic world-view, but for Christianity, it becomes a perfect example of the logical fallacy that is classified as a false dilemma, or a false dichotomy. Allow me to explain for a moment, especially for those who might not have read Plato so thoroughly.
Euthyphro’s Dilemma is predicated on the idea that morality is either arbitrary (whatever the gods say it is) or that is exists independent of the gods and is binding on them as well (making it superior to the gods themselves).
In monotheism, this is asked in terms (usually) of “Is morality ‘good’ because God says it is, or is it ‘good’ no matter what God would have said.” The proposal is that if it is arbitrary, then God would have just as easily made something that we abhor, like rape or hatred, moral. If it is not arbitrary, it must exist apart from God and thus constrain him, making him not the Ultimate.
Yet this simple statement is something akin to “If you aren’t supporting the President, you are against the President.” There is another option here, namely neutrality or undecidedness, or a host of other shades of meaning. This is a false dichotomy or false dilemma. In much the same way, there is a third option for Euthyphro. Allow me to structure this out in narrative, since I haven’t done a formal logical proof or syllogism in a while. For the record, St. Thomas Aquinas was the first (that I have read) who dealt with this, though C. S. Lewis is perhaps a more readable alternative, in “The Poison of Subjectivism”, a copied excerpt from a text that I have from an old class in philosophy. So I am not sure where it actually comes from.
Between the prongs of the dilemma is the possibility that God is goodness personified. If God = Goodness, then He could in no way command other than the way He does – it would not be in the Divine Nature to do so. In this way, morality is neither created by God nor is it obeyed by God… it is a part of God. Call this Divine Command Theory Jr. if you will, but it escapes the dilemma and makes a heck of a lot sense. It also goes back to God as standard, which I happen to like… though that hardly makes it so.
I think the issue is that we are committing a category mistake when we separate God and morality. It’s like Gilbert Ryle said (though I don’t agree with where he took it, to a totally materialistic, anti-Cartesian conceptualization of the mind/body problem) in “The Concept of Mind”. We are walking around the Millersville Campus, we see the Ganser Library, the Admin and Admissions buildings, the Lyte Auditorium… and then we ask the tour guide, “But where is the University?”
The questions re: Euthyphro was an aside. That said, I appreciate your response to it. I agree, it makes sense. Still, the translation part is a serious issue that requires more work than we are typically comfortable with, IMO.
Yea, sorry about the digression… I like Plato too much for my own good sometimes.
I think that we view the Bible a little differently, and this is the likely crux of our disagreements. You have made reference to “Bible idolatry”… an idea that I don’t see being possible. I see the Bible as the Word of God, something which you cannot make an idol of.
You asked me if God spoke to me. Well, yes – though I can’t claim to have ever had a nifty burning bush experience. I think that God speaks to us all if we listen. But usually I think He speaks thru the Bible, His Word. And yes we have to interpret it… but we interpret Scripture with Scripture – sola scriptura. If we reject this, I think we stand in a precarious place – the Bible is our standard, and how we gauge our own rightness or wrongness.
For example, I really wish that all religions led to eternal life and salvation; it would be a really neat thing, right? But I look at the Bible, and it clearly states that they don’t – Jesus is the only Way. So I can try to interpret the offending verses away as cultural/historical/ethnic anachronisms, or I can change my own mind, and say “Thy will be done.” Let all men be liars, and God’s Word remain True.
I believe, and the Scripture seems to indicate, that the Bible is more than just a text. I am cool with lit crit when we are talking about Hamlet or Gatsby… but not the Word. It was penned by human hands through divine inspiration. “God-breathed” if I remember the Greek aright. It was written in the same way that the prophets of old “spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
So no – cultural bias is not found in the words of God. The language may be difficult to understand at times since 2000 years have passed since it was written down… but the postmodern thing is simply wrong. It is a self-negating philosophy at the best of times, but when applied to the Divine it becomes nearly nonsensical.
Sorry, I worded that so strongly, no offense is meant, but I can’t seem to come up with a way to say what I mean without framing it as an absolute like this.
No offense taken at all, Dave. But, yes, we approach the Bible differently. And we disagree on specifics within the approaches, for sure.
That said, I do think that revelation is contained within our many biblical narratives. I simply think it takes much work to differentiate between it and culture.
Happy to disagree with you on this issue and still call you brother! :)
Likewise, Shawn. I have enjoyed getting a fresh perspective on these things. If nothing else, it makes me articulate my reasons for believing as I believe. And in reality, it helps to see issues within my own theology and some areas that I may not have addressed without something to challenge me.
I look forward to seeing more detail on your interpretive method, perhaps with some examples, in the future (or if you could point me to them in past writing that would be great too).
My posts for some time to come are going to be all about interpretation and hermeneutics. I look forward to your thoughts concerning them.
‘Till then, you may find something of interest in these earlier thoughts:
http://www.lofitribe.com/the-literal-tenor-of-the-metaphorical-hell/
http://www.lofitribe.com/lukes-pragmatic-attribution-of-the-term-savior/
http://www.lofitribe.com/roaming-immediate-and-future-soteriology-in-luke/
http://www.lofitribe.com/house-church-lectio-divina-and-markan-sandwiches/