|
NOTE: I wrote this article at the end of 2005. It is an exercise in freethinking, and by exercise in freethinking, I mean an attempt to deal with the religious adjustment every conservative Protestant goes through after moving out of the Bible Belt and into the Tri-State area, only to find himself without a church and Christian friends, but with a library and some time to kill. Appropriately, this article captures the mental and emotional state I was in while I wrote it. In places it is smart and witty. In other places it is dry and pompous. In most places, it is antagonistic to the Evangelical tradition I left behind. Whatever. Read enough sociologists and you start to sound like one.
Let me break down the article. The Intro: this is basically me whining about how New Jersey is less "Christian" than Texas, then claiming that as an excuse for what follows. What Follows: this is my novel interpretation of the opening chapters of the Bible. I conclude: 1) that God has given us the ability to create; and 2) that we've used this ability to create religious worlds. This really means: 1) that our churches, prophets, and ethical/theological systems exist because we made them; 2) that they are true only so long as we regard them as true; and 3) that Christians are silly for ignoring the humanity of their own religious institutions.
I may or may not still believe this stuff. My position is "softer" now.
Murray James Morrison
March 2006
OF SERPENTS AND SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS
Several months ago while I was still a student in Texas, I began to wonder, as I moved from church to church, why I adopted the religious views of whichever group of Christians I happened to be worshipping with at the time. I had thought myself a rational, objective, and freethinking person, possessing the intellectual wherewithal to distance myself from my religious community and tackle religious questions in an unbiased way. Why, then, was I repeatedly convinced by the same answers to religious questions as those given by the people in my religious community? Why, in spite of any previously held reservations, was I gradually won over to the religious position of those sitting next to me in church on Sunday? I began to wonder about the degree to which my society was responsible for shaping my religious views.
Recent travels have taken me from Texas, where my Christian experience was formed and sustained in a community of religiously motivated peers, to this the Garden State, which, aside from being mostly garden-free, is a religious wasteland. Though Texas appears worldly and secular to many of the Christians living there, when compared with New Jersey, it is the Millennial Kingdom. Texans never have to listen very hard to hear the familiar strains of American Evangelicalism. But New Jerseyites must listen hard indeed, and often to no avail; amidst a chorus of pluralism and religious ineffectuality, the Christian voice is all but inaudible. It is in this latter, much cooler religious climate that I continue to ponder the influence of religious society on individual religious belief. But my recent physical and intellectual emigration from a land so saturated in Christian thought to a land so free of it has not left me unaffected (some would say unharmed).
New Jersey Christianity has brought about significant changes in my religious worldview. I think about Christianity differently these days. Whereas I was formerly to a great extent occupied with issues of doctrine (and a consistent biblical inerrantist cannot help but be), I am presently almost as interested in what Christians together have said about God as I am in what He has said to us. Of particular importance to me is the point of intersection between divine revelation and collective human projection. I have become convinced that, at least from a sociological perspective, we Christians define and realize God even as He defines and realizes us.
What am I saying? Christians, in my experience, don't talk this way. The Evangelical adds: and they shouldn't. Some of the people closest to me have in recent months been concerned for my spiritual welfare. What they perceive as an about-face in religious direction, along with some other factors, has led them to conclude I have either fallen off the map or am just one step away from doing so. And perhaps I have...
Adam and Eve in Sociological Perspective
From the opening pages of the Bible we may infer that the objective character of reality exists apart from social processes, and attribute the human appreciation of such to divine intention. In the second chapter of Genesis, after Adam has been created, appointed caretaker of the Garden of Eden, enjoined from partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and his loneliness judged as improper by God, we are told the following: "Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name" (v.19).
Adam was by himself in the Garden. Eve had not yet been made. Though Adam was in the company of other animals, he was still alone, for among the beasts no suitable helper was found (v.20). While it is true that Adam was in communication with God, and thus was not isolated completely, he was from his earthly vantage point yet in isolation, a fact God acknowledged when He said, "It is not good for man to be alone" (v.18). Eve would come later (vv.21-22), but until that time, Adam could not be a social creature. He was in a state of supra-seclusion, the quintessence of human solitude, for he was not only removed from society—he predated it!
This was the lonely man who was charged by God with naming the creatures of the earth. To Adam, and Adam alone, were the beasts and birds brought, and only Adam was responsible for their labelling. God gave Adam this work, and demonstrated His approval of his servant by accepting his efforts. That God honored Adam's labelling can be seen at the end of verse 19: "whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name."
If God honored Adam's choice, it is not surprising that the generations of humans that followed did too. In the very next chapter, Eve—who, incidentally, was also brought before Adam for labelling (Gen. 2:22-23, 3:20)—was deceived by the serpent, a creature her husband had just named. She ate of the forbidden tree, shared some fruit with her husband, sewed fig leaf clothing for newly-discovered nakedness, hid in trees from the God she disobeyed, and listened to her man deflect the blame her way (back onto his "suitable helper"). Then, finally confronted by God, Eve looked at her Maker, and using vocabulary made possible in the Genesis text only paragraphs earlier, admitted candidly, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate" (Gen. 3:1-13, emphasis mine).
It would not do to reply, "The ox deceived me." Adam had, upon the prompting of Almighty God, determined the name of the beast, and it was up for debate no longer. Serpents had been around as serpents longer than any human save Adam had been alive. Unless she was deranged, dishonest, or plain dumb, Eve had no reason to question the appellation God had in His wisdom directed her husband to create. A serpent is a serpent because Adam, with God's blessing, said so.
So says the Evangelical, although almost certainly not in those words, and almost as certainly not with the same passages for scriptural support. Said in a friendlier way, reality has an objective character that exists independent of social experience, the foundation for which is the God of the Scriptures, and the human perception of which is by His design. In the context of this discussion, religious truth originates not with the religious community, but with God. And religious conversion—the dissemination of religious truth—is best explained in spiritual, not sociological, terms.
These last two statements must to some degree be challenged. Religious truth, as it is known in religious society, is not nearly as heaven-sent as is commonly believed; nor is the spreading of it properly understood as a "work of the Spirit" to the exclusion of social factors. The religious truths that are to the believer inseparable from legitimate religious experience are in an important sense born from, nurtured in, and preserved through religious society.
In religious society, Christians are a part of something outside themselves, yet greater than themselves. The Christian who shares his religious experience with the group finds that the group is sharing its religious experience with him. In the course of this sharing, individual religious projection takes on collective potency: it feeds back on itself, and returns to the Christian more powerful than it was when it left him. It may be altered in the process, but this is not a problem so long as the power of the social forces at play is appreciated. The Christian is involved in something beyond and bigger than himself and cannot help but be impressed.
To the extent that this impression is felt by the religious society as a whole, the religious experience and religious truths inseparable from it assume the quality of reality. The members of the group, collectively impressed by the awesomeness and externality of shared religious experience, become aware that they are part of something profoundly real. They are participants in religious reality. This awareness confirms their individual religious projections: they were right to share their religious experience with the group. So assured, members embrace that which was shared in the experience, and uphold the religious truths of the group as their own. Religious truths become real to Christians because they are essential to the social spirituality that confirms their personal one. With respect to the religious societies that hold them, religious truths are inseparable from legitimate religious experience—they are real. In adopting the religious truths of their religious society, Christians further confirm their individual religious projections, and become participants in the making of their own religious reality.
What, then, shall we say of the serpent? Did not its label exist independent of social experience? And was not its existence a result of divine consequence? These two latter questions may be answered two ways.
First, the label came to exist in the manner suggested by the first of the latter two questions, for Adam's initial experience was by no means a social one. Adam was, after all, alone in the Garden of Eden. But second, the label continued to exist by way of social forces, for starting with Eve and onward, it was apprehended and maintained in a social world. This response is explained in greater detail below.
As for the last of the two questions: First, the labelling of the serpent was no autonomous work of man. It was God who formed the beast. It was God who brought it before Adam. And it was God who charged him with naming it (Gen. 2:19). God later cursed the serpent, relegating it to a life of eating dust and a death of equal misfortune (Gen. 3:14-15). These divine fingerprints must be seen and acknowledged. But second, the labelling of the serpent cannot be understood apart from the work of man. It was Adam who chose the name of the beast. And it was Adam who applied it (Gen. 2:19b-20). While God formed the physical entity |serpent|, Adam fixed its identity. Adam, like his Lord, was a creator. He had an ongoing relationship with his creation. Adam called his serpent "serpent", and future generations, following Adam, did the same. Seen this way, the conclusion that a serpent is a serpent because Adam said so is unavoidable. And because his relationship with the serpent—his creation—was ongoing, an addition point follows: Adam was a participant in the making of his own reality.
Yet there remained more for him to do. Adam's creative work was unfinished. This is because of the nature of the creation itself. That which was made could not continue to be without additional effort from its maker. It depended upon him for its very existence. A creator creates, but that is not enough. Adam, like his Lord, was required to sustain his creation.
In this way Adam, who was himself created, took on the properties of his Creator. Only Christ can claim that "all things were created by Him and for Him" (Colossians 1:16b). But Adam can claim that the serpent was in a limited but significant sense his creation, and therefore created for him. And as it is true that in Christ "all things hold together" (v.17b), so it also true in a qualified sense that in Adam the serpent holds together. A serpent is a "serpent" in Adam. It maintains its identity only so long as its maker maintains its identity: the serpent continues to be a serpent because it is by Adam regarded as such. If it were called something else, or nothing at all, the physical entity |serpent| would remain, but it would cease to be a "serpent".
This scenario must now be expanded. For though Adam was not at or immediately following the time of his naming of the beasts a social creature, this did not remain the case for long. He was soon joined by Eve, and later (via human creative processes of a different sort) many others.
It was seen above that Eve honored her husband's work by adopting his labels as her own. This is a fact of no small importance. By referring to the serpent as a serpent Eve did far more than honor her husband's labels: she lifted them up, regarded them as helpful and true, and secured their continued place in reality as she knew it. But she did still more: she secured the continued place of those labels in reality as it was socially known. A serpent was a serpent because Adam said so. This situation changed with the introduction of a second party. Now, a serpent is a serpent because Adam and Eve both say so. And it is more than just Adam's or Eve's serpent—it is theirs.
In embracing the labels that were handed down to her Eve joined her husband in the creative process. Significantly, she and Adam became co-creators of the "serpent" he had originally made. And because she had cause in Eden, and no doubt elsewhere, to refer to the beast, she took part with Adam in the Creator/creature relationship. Like Adam, who was like God in the aforementioned special sense, Eve became a participant in the making of her own reality—or, more precisely, their own social reality. And what is true for Adam and Eve is true of the legions of humans that came after them. Eve handed her inherited labels down to her children and children's children, who, for their part, sustained the identity of the beasts just as their progenitors had. The ensuing society that formed was united in its affirmation of the serpent as serpent. Through collective creative activity, its members upheld the truths handed down to them and furthered the existence of the social reality of which they were a part.
But now a question arises. If a |serpent| is a "serpent" only because it is commonly regarded as such, what prevents men from calling it something else, like, say, "ox"? Before I offer an answer, I would do well to admit as a possibility that which the question assumes. In a social world, identities can change over time. The identity of the serpent must be sustained by the identity-givers if it is to survive. But sustenance is not guaranteed. A society may for one reason or another begin to regard the serpent as something other than a serpent. In this situation the serpent may suffer an "identity crisis" of sorts, and perhaps so severely that it ceases to be a serpent. An alternate identity may be suggested and rise to social prominence over time. It is, therefore, entirely possible for a serpent to become an ox in a social world. But—and here is the answer to the question—a well-adjusted society will resist such a change. If a society is functioning properly (i.e. according to the social processes outlined above) its members will be confronted by social truths in the form of compelling reality. Collective reality-sustaining activity is persuasive in its effects: it establishes as real the very thing it preserves. This means the individual who sustains his socially-created reality is collectively and thus compellingly confronted by the same reality, which is presented to him not as one reality amidst a sea of plausible alternate realities, but as actuality—the state of things as things really are. The presentation of an alternate reality or a challenge to the established social reality will be met with collective resistance. In well-adjusted society, "serpent" is not an arbitrary appellation: a serpent really is a serpent. To suggest that a serpent is an ox is to suggest something less than real, and to present as real something that cannot be socially regarded as such, at least not without considerable opposition from the members of the society accustomed to labelling the beast as the former.
The importance of Eve's use of the Adamic serpentine label in Genesis 3 may now be appreciated. By calling God's |serpent| Adam's "serpent", Eve founded the social establishment of identity and initiated the collective reality-creating process. Through this process, reality is sustained even as it is made. Every individual affirmation of a given social truth contributes to the social potency and durability of that truth by integrating it with social reality. And Eve's work outlived her—this process continues. Subsequent human generations even up to the present age upheld the labels inherited from their societies as their own. Following Eve, they participated in the social construction of their own reality.
Before offering some concluding remarks, I must briefly mention two issues that may appear obvious but should for the sake of clarity be addressed. First, social truths are socially learned. No human since Adam has come into a world devoid of other humans. Instead, humans are born into an immediate social world comprised of others willing to share their knowledge of reality with them. That Abel called a serpent a serpent is no testament to his great intuition and deductive prowess. Abel knew a serpent was a serpent, but this was because his society told him so. Second, the members of a society need not be aware of the mechanisms underlying the creation of their social reality. In fact, a society functions smoother when its members are ignorant of such things. He who accepts without objection the truths handed him is less apt to challenge the system through which those truths were obtained. Naivety promotes compliance. It was thus good for post-Edenic society that Abel unquestioningly adopted the serpentine label of his parents, although he could have, if he wanted to, renamed the beast at his leisure (regrettably, this is a less than perfect example. Abel was later killed by his brother [Gen. 4:8], and murder is hardly conducive to a smooth functioning society). Here's the point: for the individual who accepts social reality as actuality, it will never matter that the very existence of the serpent is contingent upon repeated affirmations of serpenthood from his society. Nor will it matter that the serpent exists in its socially accepted form because of his creative efforts, and those of others like him. A serpent really is a serpent to the members of a society that so regard it, the arbitrariness of the appellation notwithstanding. Members like these do not pose a significant threat to the maintenance of social reality.
Some Concluding Remarks
But so what? Who gets upset about serpents, anyway? We 21st Century Americans can use the label "serpent", "snake", or even "ox" in our daily lives. Few would care. Why should they? There's no way to know what Adam actually said in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 11:6-7), and besides, his original word probably sounded nothing like our English "serpent". If people addressed serpents as oxen today, public outcry would be minimal. And realistically, the issue is just not important. Serpentine "mispronunciations" might be cute to some, and annoying to others; they hardly constitute a threat to the established order of the cosmos.
"Mispronunciations" carried over into the religious world are a different matter. In the world of religion, it is said, God has spoken. Man must here be silent and heed the divine speech of his maker. Mispronouncing Adam's word may be excusable, but no justification may be given for mispronouncing the Word of God. Put crudely, man can do what he wants with Adam's snakes, but had best leave God's bibles and churches alone.
It should be obvious by now that I intend to do no such thing. American Evangelicals have overestimated the degree to which God has spoken by underestimating their own penchant for speech. In their religious world, the church is mute and God's words are everywhere. God won't stop talking. Believers, apparently, are just along for the ride. This is most manifest in an Evangelical doctrine of scripture (e.g. Amos was a communicative vessel of the Lord and did not—in terms of theological speculation, anyway—express himself through his writing), and in an Evangelical application of the doctrines in scripture ("We only believe what the Bible teaches"). But despite all attempts at defining their religion in terms of divine causes, Evangelicals remain in a world of their own making. This world exists as the world they created irrespective of their acknowledgment of its humanity. The Evangelical "serpent" is yet their serpent—whether they realize it or not.
I have for some time suspected that the church played a much larger role than is commonly acknowledged in the construction of her religious reality. Even as an Evangelical living in Texas, I wondered how religious community impacted religious thinking, although I dismissed the question as lack of submission to biblical authority, human fancy, or whatever. An appreciation of the serpent as a type of social reality has since brought me insight into the religious world. The collective reality-creating process explained above is particularly relevant to religious society as discussed in this article because it is a lasting process not confined to secular realms. Adam and Eve created a serpent. We created a spiritual institution.
It is fitting to end this piece by highlighting the payoff for participation in religious society, which has already been discussed, but bears repeating. Members in religious society are part of something outside themselves, yet greater than themselves. As they participate in religious society, they are confronted and impressed by collective experience, and moved by the power of this experience to identify themselves with the group. They adopt group truths as personal truths, and in so doing—and at least through the medium of their minds and to the comfort of their souls—validate their participation in religious society. Whenever Abel spoke of serpents, he was not merely parroting what he had heard. He was verifying the reality of his communion with Adam, Eve, Cain, and whoever else he shared the earth with at the time. Through affirming reality as defined and created by his society, he confirmed his individual social experience, and assured himself of his membership in that same society.
|
|
|
|
|
