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BREAKING NEWS and the roots of modern anxiety

10/28/2018

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​I recently led a discussion on 
“How to Worry Well” at my church weekend away. In preparing for our discussions I came across this wonderfully insightful comment from Oliver O’Donovan, who includes some in-depth reflection on the nature of modern anxiety in his book “Finding and Seeking.” He notes that much modern anxiety is conceived in the passionate throws of anticipation: an elicit union of “breaking-news” and consequentialism (the practice of justifying our present actions on the basis of their anticipated consequences).  
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Why are our first impressions of events so important to us...? It is because we feel our identities are at stake... Every culture concerns itself with news-bringing in one form or another; most other cultures have been more relaxed about it. Perhaps simply because we have the power to communicate news quickly and widely, we are on edge about it, afraid that the world will change behind our backs if we are not [up-to-date] with a thousand dissociated facts that do not concern us directly. It is a measure of our metaphysical insecurity, which is the constant driver in the modern urge for mastery...”

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“...bureaucracy is an apparatus set up to entitle us to make confident predictions in every field of social policy, because confident predictions are what we have decided we need in order to justify our actions.”
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We often mine the latest “tweets” from our preferred news outlet for the most up-to-date vindication of our actions and opinions.  But because we mistake current opinion as virtual "hard data" on where the future is heading, our moral judgements are up for review every time we click the "refresh" button. 

Our anticipations and predictions are made obsolete with each frenzied turn of the news cycle, and so we are never entirely sure our actions are sufficiently justified: the resulting anxiety typically bears the marks of moral paralysis,  or alternatively, impatience with the very exercise of moral discourse itself
. ​ Our harried anticipation of where public opinion is headed next leaves us far too anxious to commit to any one clear course of moral action. 

​In contrast, FAITH in God's past action gives us firm ground from which to launch our moral  decision making, and HOPE gives us the confidence to stay the course, despite the disorienting fog of the immediate future lying before us.

Faith and Hope free us from the relentless need to anticipate the where the "times" are heading next, and instead focus our attention upon the next step of love that lies immediately at our feet.

For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this  Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page.
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On Plastic Bags (and gingerbread men) - work & permanence

6/8/2017

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Today I had Oliver O'Donovan's latest book, Entering Into Rest, turn up on my doorstep.
Eagerly flicking through the index I discovered he'd given extended consideration to the significance of human work.

O'Donovan gives particular attention to challenging the view that only "enduring work" can be considered good.  The select quotes below are from  p112-114.

O'Donovan sets the scene for the discussion by recounting the way in which both Teilhard and Volf have  framed their theology of human work:

"  'With each one of our works we labour,' Teilhard wrote, 'to build the pleroma; that is to say, we bring to Christ a little fulfilment.' (1)....​   Miroslav Volf, in what was perhaps the last echo of the mid-century tradition, put the same challenge more bluntly. Only 'cumulative work,' he insisted, could 'have intrinsic value and gain ultimate significance.' (2) "


O'Donovan evocatively draws out the implications of this perspective on human work:

​​ ...we might be tempted to conclude that our work would be effective in proportion to the durability of its products. Making the terracotta army would be better than making gingerbread men for the children's party, planting a tree better than cleaning a room, manufacturing the plastic bags that hang around forever caught in the branches of trees better than making biodegradable ones.

However O'Donovan warns that.....

"...we should hesitate before reaching such a conclusion, not only from a scruple about ephemeral work, but because we know the deeds valued most have often been those whose future effects the actor could know nothing about - such as the hours spent wrestling with a piece of writing no publisher may ever touch."
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O'Donovan goes on to conclude....

"So we must not allow ourselves to be forked on the suppositious alternative of a work that is precious because permanent, and a work that is worthless because its effects are impermanent. Work is made precious as impermanent, since God has taken time and its works to himself, restoring them through and from their passing away, not "cumulatively" as a process, but by an act that bears testimony to himself as creator and redeemer, which is resurrection."

1. Teilhard, Le Milieu Divin, pp. 54, 56.
2. Miroslav Volf, Work in the Spirit (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2ooi pp. 9o-91.

​Buy Entering Into Rest - it looks fascinating!  In the section following that outlined above, O'Donovan goes on to address the difference between work and leisure, and work and self-realisation.

For more about Oliver O'Donovan, check out this  Oliver O'Donovan Facebook Page.
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Does having "a sense of duty" imprison us?

5/28/2016

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"A sense of duty imprisons you" says NY artist Jenny Holzer.
That is certainly what many of us most fear.

............

However, the role of DUTY is not to restrict or limit our relationships as Nietzsche supposed.
Nor is a sense of DUTY doomed to suffocate the authenticity of our feelings, as many of us instinctively fear.

Rather DUTY acts as a "shorthand" description of what kind of GOOD we are trying to achieve for others, within each specific kind of RELATIONSHIP  (Romans 15:1-2).

Still, for all the help that Duty can give us in directing our relationships for the good of others,  DUTY by itself is never enough to guarantee the health of our relationships, nor their full flourishing.

We can just as easily use the idea of Duty as a justification to AVOID seeking the good of others (Luke 10:29). Love alone can free Duty to exceed the limits of demand (Romans 13:8).
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An Evangelical Theology of Work

5/27/2014

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Work.
It forms such a big part of our lives.
We desperately long for it to have meaning.
But what meaning?

In the paper linked below, I compare/contrast how O’Donovan and Volf explain the relationship between our creational and evangelical work. The introductory section briefly reviews reformed thinking on vocation, before moving on to Moltmann’s,  Volf’s and then  O’Donovan’s proposals.

Evangelical Theology of Work
File Size: 361 kb
File Type: pdf
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This paper was originally posted at:
https://graceinvader.wordpress.com/2014/05/27/volf-odonovan-an-evangelical-theology-of-work/
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    I'm Steve. Anglican Presbyter, Practical Theology Enthusiast, and Graphic Design Hobbyist in Sydney, Australia

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