Tell Them You Love Me

(This constitutes a fundamental teaching in our religion.)

My aspiration is your affection.

Mysticism presumes that what really matters is beyond words. We cannot possibly transmit truth, but we can fellowship in our shared truth via human communications. That requires a certain shared contextual language and culture. Our context militates against mysticism, but we agree to use the imagery of our culture against itself. We pretend to share in the culture only so we can tear it down, at least in the sense that we agree not to take it too seriously in its claims about itself. We use it with a knowing wink.

There is a mythology in our culture that human greatness matters. The concept in itself is abused. Even if we accept for a moment the pretense of objectivity as a goal of our cultural vehicle, “greatness” is defined as holding personal significance to a substantial number of other people. It’s contextual, of course. We could say that someone is a “great man” within the context of some discussion, knowing that his greatness won’t easily translate outside that particular realm. But the whole idea is to preempt any need to examine the fellow in any detail, just presume he’s approved and start paying attention to what he says and does.

It’s a form of certification, a license to hold attention. I don’t want one of those, so don’t ever tell someone I’m a great anything. Tell people you love me — or hate me, or don’t give a damn. All that other person needs to know is wrapped up in the context of your personal affection for me. There is nothing objective about this because I can do nothing at all for anyone from the grounds of objectivity. The whole point of my sense of who I am is to combat the myth of objectivity, so a part of that is combating the myth of human greatness. If you’re going to pay attention to me, it’s because something totally subjective calls your name.

Otherwise, it can’t bless you.

The great blessings of God come with the presumption that we enjoy them in a flawed context. Further, our greatest blessing is actually the company of flawed people. There aren’t any other kind of people, so we have to build a counterculture that presumes to love anyway. Notice that this is not despite flaws, but in part because of the flaws, for it is the mixture of flaw and goodness that gives us our identity.

So we make much of transparency about those flaws.

Now, we also need to take a moment to revisit the issue of privacy versus secrecy. Generally, a secret is something kept from your awareness that has at least the potential to affect you. A private matter has no effect on you. The same detail of information can move from private to secret depending on your involvement. There is plenty you’ll probably never know about me, if only because there’s no way I can put it into words. But the closer you get to me, the more access you have to my privacy because it starts to affect you.

You really do not need the burden of knowing and processing something that won’t affect you. Thus, my sense of privacy protects both of us. There are things I really don’t want to know about you, either. Some stuff becomes clutter that hinders a proper moral focus. It’s an art to distinguish, and we justly rely on the heart for the wisdom to decide something like that.

Of particular interest in all of this is when someone feels driven or pulled into religious leadership. That presumes a certain moral probity, a certain moral authority — a certification of sorts that justifies their claim to a hearing on the matters of religion and morality.

But the defining issue is not the leader’s personal moral perfection, but their transparency. You really do need to know enough about them to place their message in context. In our culture, though, this is a lie. In fact, it’s a really big lie. It’s hard to find someone in religious leadership who is even permitted to assume that kind of transparency. Their followers are typically dragging around this baggage of “speak no evil of the leader” who is universally proclaimed “a great man”.

My personal experience hanging out with religious leaders bears this out. You would think they were eager to confess their flaws in private because they would get into trouble for a wider transparency. So once I manage to wander inside their circle of leadership, they unload all sorts of things they simply cannot say from the pulpit. And the difference between the private person and the public face is often shocking. I found it the most revolting aspect of working in church leadership.

I’m driven so hard to fight this beast that I have often said and done things that shocked the flock. In the context, it was embarrassing only in that I might feel forced to buy into the mythology, if only for the moment. Once I got away from that atmosphere, my own convictions justified my divulgence. I’m reluctant to treat anyone like a pig who can’t use any pearls.

Whatever you do, don’t call me a “great man;” just tell people you love me.