#neighborology's critique of the instrumentalization of God & reason || John Pesebre

My goal here is to present a probable genealogy ng kaisipan ng #neighborology.

Isa sa mga pinag uugatan ng complaints ng  #neighborology is the instrumentalization of God & reason. You have to read "instrumentalization" sa context ng critique nila sa modernity kung saan ang reason ay ginagamit sa pag-mechanize at -calculate ng total reality. Ginagamit lang daw natin ang diskurso natin about God for our desired goals. In a way it indicts many with idolatry. Again ka partner nyang instrumentalization critique na yan sa idea ng #neighborology sa Modernity.

May hibla yan ng rationalization hypothesis ni Max Weber, na habang lalong nagiging modern ang societies, halos lahat daw magiging sukat na sukat na. Kumbaga everything will be mechanized and calculated; at reason ang ating instrumento. Yan ang yeast of Modernity sa Christianity. Yang instrumentality na yan ay motivated palagi papunta sa desired goals.

Yung Marxist na si Max Horkheimer may critique sa instrumentality ng reason na interesado lang daw tayo sa mga capitalist societies sa means papunta sa goals rather than prioritize na pag isipan kung ano yung end ba na yon na gusto nating puntahan. This is one of the ways para maintindihan natin ang mga nag-iisip na Kaliwa.

Si Heidegger sa kanyang mga panulat discussing metaphysics and ontotheology may suggestion na rather than mag ipon ng mga instrumentalization ng being (or Being), is dapat daw we must just let beings be -- wag daw natin laging isipin na pundasyon ng ating existence ay para sa utility natin.

Ang culprit ni Heidegger ay theology. Pumasok daw tayo diyan at hindi na tayo makalabas. Ang gusto ni Heidegger is "step back, back out of metaphysics into the active essence of metaphysics" (Identity and Difference). Kumbaga, ang theology ay nang hostage ng metaphysics at yan na ngayon ang instrumento ng Christianity sa kanyang will to power. (Oo, everything goes back to Nietzsche palagi. LOL).

Yan ang sa tingin ko ang provenance ng ideas ng #neighborology.

Kaya naman, among the many unsurprising attitudes ng mga #neighborologists dito sa Pinas ay yung disdain nila for dogma, creeds and confessions. May disdain din sila sa idea na ang mga Christians nagku consolidate ng power sa mga "beings" at instrumentalizations na yan. Example nyang disdain na yan ay etong FB post (Public) ng isang Fil-Chinese na lawyer,

"When we force people especially the poor to become orthodox, to be fully conformed to our doctrinal self-identity (Baptist, Reformed, Pentecostal, etc.), we actually end up enslaving them and promoting in them a legalistic Christianity concerned only with doing what is right instead of doing the right thing."

Heidegger's basic belief and foundation of his knowledge is secular

It seems alluring but it does not square off with epistemology and worldview of Christianity, for although Heidegger grants an agnostic view on the ground of metaphysics, Christianity asserts that God is.

Moreover, isn't yung pag "step back" nya forms a new instrumentalization din? Kaya siguro nya nasabi na "stand it" kasi tayong nag-stand it, ay nakatayo pa rin sa instrumentalization ng metaphysics ng theology.

Siguro what he wants to do is to allow for metaphysical thinking to the deist or outside of theology. In a way, the agnosticism in noumena. Metaphysics without God. Nietzsche.

Reflexivity of Creator/Creature intrumentalization

Are you in the habit of using God as an instrumentalization ng aking mga aspirations sa buhay?

I could grant #neighborology to start from this critique pero, that does not mean I can no longer present a defeater -- a more coherent knowledge.

Does that mean I am dismissing it's intellectual virtue? No. Para nga sa akin maganda na malaman ko ang place ko talaga dito sa Creator/Creature distinction na ito. Na kapag ako'y gagawa ng sermon, o panulat, o makiki-engage ako sa apologetics, I do not use God as an instrument lang to prove my point. Instead God is using me as an instrument to prove His point.

In a way reflexive ang instrumentalization.

God uses me as an instrument to achieve His desired ends.
I am using God as my instrument to give meaning sa aking mga existential questions, kasi kung wala yon.

Appendix:

Raineer Chu's FB post dated 11.27.2016

What is wrong with evangelical theology today?

Theology is always time bound but the desire for orthodoxy often leads it towards the other direction, to make it timeless.
Theology is never absolute in the sense that it answers only to a specific crisis or contemporary issue. It is not absolute because it is not the entire word of God for all times for all situations. It is just one specific response of the church addressing a time bound problem.

The examples to show these are the problems regarding the role of women, the humanity and divinity of Christ, slavery, speaking in tongues, the inerrancy of Scripture, salvation by grace, tribulation and pre-tribulation, etc. In the matter of the reliability of Scripture, the response of the church was a narrow but precise voice into the chaos brought about by the cynicism of two world wars. But it is too narrow to become our comprehensive orthodoxy on the matter. The doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture must be held together with the other tenets of Scripture, to give it a holistic form, to make it an honest attempt at representing who God is.

But even orthodoxy that wants to become comprehensive ends up becoming a tool for mastery and control instead of a tool for freedom and illumination. People who want to be baptized or become ordained have to jump through many hoops in order to be certified. This becomes glaringly painful when we live among the poor. Ninety percent of the church belongs to the poor and an emphasis on mastery and control creates a default in favor of the rich and educated. The spirituality of the poor immediately become second-class or inferior despite that God said the poor are rich in faith.

Orthodoxy in general is conformity to stated standards and tenets of a particular denomination. If you want to be a truly Reformed Christian, you need to be able to not just publicly adhere to Reformed doctrines but also name all the important ones (even explain them since often they are quite complex).

In the long debate against liberation theology, the evangelicals were able to debunk liberation theology and showed it to be completely NOT Biblical. But though we won the debate, we actually lost the war. Liberation theology is really Marxism (violent revolution) in the garb of Christianity. It was the anguished heave of a Greek God long imprisoned in Hades (Kronos). Liberation theology became popular because the church was no longer taking care of the poor, the ninety percent of the church. Yes, we debunked liberation theology but the question remains. What is our response to the fact that 10% of the people of the world own 90% of the wealth of the world? Any theology that is not concerned with that will expect another anguish heave from Hades.

Even systematic theology is ideological. No one is neutral when it comes to ideology. Either one is promoting capitalism with all is appurtenant virtues or a form of socialism. Even our silence is already a vote for the dominant or default ideology. When we trash liberation theology, the default favored capitalism.

It’s like a lawsuit between brothers over a family ancestral home. One brother occupies the house and the other does not. For so long as the lawsuit persists, the brother occupying the house gets to use the house and enjoy it. This is what is going on in the default. The 10% pro capitalist is using and enjoying the house, the status quo. The status quo is comprised of the laws, structures, policies, values that promote and protect the wealth and power of the dominant class.

Theology that does not know how to exegete the world (also the self and the Word) is prone to being blind to its own ideological biases. When we exegete the world we quickly realize that the world has indeed molded the Word and the church despite the injunction not to be conformed to the world. Christianity is mainly a white American capitalist religion aggressively promoted by Hollywood and Wall Street.

Capitalism promotes individualism, which discourages community (the biggest social capital of the poor). The way we disciple is also individualistic including the way we read the Bible. Capitalism today is also dualistic and secular, dividing the spirit and the body. At no time in history has the world been more dehumanized, creating not just a huge disconnect between body, soul, heart and mind but also its social disconnect, an isolation from one another. And ironically this isolation grows despite globalization, which has succeeded to shrink the world to a tiny village through the Internet. Virtual intimacy has fully replaced true intimacy and in the midst of prosperity suicide, addiction and divorce increase.

Our gospel has become reductionist, “just believe in Jesus.” We think we are evangelizing people but we are really making them more American than Christian (more individualistic, more materialistic, more isolated, more secular). Our Christianity is officially and legally divorced from public life (the separation of church and state). America is the most persecuted nation in the world but it does not know it. Because of lawsuits, the church has been tamed or co-opted. It no longer speaks into the crisis of the times for fear of becoming bankrupt and then the need to close shop.

The role of the 10% is not to say to the 90% that the latter are wrong but to arm the latter with tools to analyze current theology, to be able to critique the status quo, and give the latter language and arguments and abilities to be able to overcome this oppressive default in order to promote a theology that is more biblical than what it is today. The 10% in the upper class needs to lose the war because they rest on top of an indecent structure of wealth distribution. Their work is to constantly make explicit their ideological biases, explain them and make them plain when they teach.

When we force people especially the poor to become orthodox, to be fully conformed to our doctrinal self-identity (Baptist, Reformed, Pentecostal, etc.), we actually end up enslaving them and promoting in them a legalistic Christianity concerned only with doing what is right instead of doing the right thing. Doing what is right is prescribed by tradition while doing the right thing responds to the call of God to us a the time, at the moment, in the kairos moment. We are then more concerned with conformity rather than making a prophetic voice into the world (Thus Says The Lord). We are then more pressed with the desire to preserve our identities and traditions than to make the church a living witness responding to current crises in the world outside.