The Case for Christian Anarchism - part V

5. Neither speaking as a Christian nor speaking from a position which is not Christian has any effect on the absolute relation (or lack thereof) that undergirds the central message of the gospel.

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And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.

And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. (John 17:11-14)

I. How does the Christian speak when they speak Christianly? To speak Christianly is to speak as if “faith is a fact”. The Christian speaks from a position of “completeness”, a recalibration of body and mind to be as they are, as opposed to merely active in body and dead in spirit. Speaking from this position of unity, reliant upon the ground that brought it forth from outside of itself, the individual speaks with a tongue to speak what the eyes to see and the ears to hear have received.

II. How does the world hear when they encounter the Christian speak? Often, the world takes the Christian speaking as any other speech: a moral opinion amongst opinions, gratefully noted for quick dismissal; an outrage amongst outrages, gratefully shuffled into the discourse. When the world hears Christianity spoken as if “faith is a fact”, it encounters it as a mystery.

III. How does the Christian speak to the world? The Christian, misunderstood out loud, does not speak at all—he speaks in silence.

In Philosophical Fragments and its ironically titled Postscript, the curious investigator of Christianity, Johannes Climacus, notes a strange position that these strange creatures called Christians identify in their very being—by way of some strange, highly-subjective experience referred to as being “born again”, they seem to recognise that there is something fundamentally different about themselves that arose during this fantastical event that ...