REVELATION AND INDECENCY

Public domain.

Karl Barth did something that is often regarded as a theologian’s most profound “NO” possible: he denied the possibility of knowing God through anything but the person of Jesus Christ. Barth rejected what is often called natural theology. Aquinas famously wrote that he knew God through two sources of authority: divine revelation (e.g., Scripture) and nature. Knowledge derived from this second source is called “natural theology.” He believed that, given our sense of reason, natural theology allows us to deduce qualities about God by studying Creation itself. I have long suspected natural theology can carry into “experiential theology.” Experiential theology is a term I like to use; and for the sake of this essay ought to be understood as “the belief that we can know who God is by means of the created world as well as our own lived experiences as human beings uniquely made in God’s image.”

Marcella Althaus-Reid in her seminal work Indecent Theology offers what I think to be a revolutionary approach to knowing God. Althaus-Reid tells us that the God of Christianity is known to us perhaps best through the “indecent” things of life: kink, gay leather culture, cruising, clubbing, dancing, sex work, etc. Her work takes experiential theology to the next level and claims we know God primarily through our bodily experience. And how can we as good practical theologians hold Barth and Althaus-Reid together? It starts with understanding how these two ideas about how we know God relate to one another. What I want to do is offer my own testimony, especially as a gay man, on why Barth’s revelation-only view, and the experiential/natural theology only view both leave out something essential.

Barth’s view is rooted in the desire to not let anything take the place of God in our lives as ultimate authority and therefore turn us into idol worshipers. This is an understandable desire, since, as Calvin said, our hearts are often “idol factories” turning us to objects of worship that we can never satisfy. Barth was living in a time when the German church was starting to blatantly accept Nazi propaganda as “equal to Scripture”' in its ability to reveal truth. The danger then consists not only of the desire to let things like material goods replace God but the real and demonic evil that idolatry can have on the world.

However this rejection of all natural theology comes with disadvantages, primarily a suspicion of our own experiences. If we hold that we can only know God through revelation then we might shut off our ears to the voice of the Spirit at work in our own lives and therefore make the mistake of thinking that God is no longer speaking to us in our time. This view also tempts us to forget that we are made in God’s image and, as Christians, are given the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. This suspicion of our own experiences can be harmful for marginalized people and especially to LGBTQ folks. I know this all but too well from my own life. Growing up I was taught that the heart and emotions were seen as deceitful and the Bible alone was authoritative and worthy of our attention. While this is quite different from the Barthian view that Jesus is the ultimate authority, it is still a rejection of experiential theology. By shutting off these moments we risk silencing the voice of the living God in the lives of the faithful. And if I may be so bold, push them out of the Church and (God forgive us) into the hands of the accuser of the faithful that love to see us in closets and chains.

Now the opposite side of the spectrum presents its own set of theological traps. When we are so dependent on our experiences to tell us about God, we quickly lose sense of a coherent narrative of faith. We can fall into the all too common thought process that says that “all I need to know God is my own life experiences.” Yet we are members of a communal faith: WE have received the Holy Ghost as the Church. Our Lord in John 14:16 promised to give the Spirit to the Church, not to a group of individuals. When we lose sight of this, our natural theology can quickly become naturalist theology. That is to say, instead of our experiences being read in light of who God is, we read our experiences or observations as divine in and of themselves. The Creator and creature can become all but too blurry and then we are, like Barth reasonably feared, moving into the realm of idol worship. We might even fall prey to what happens to so many Christians and view our experience of comfort with the status quo as divine. This will inevitably end in a cycle of seeking respectability and assimilation at the expense of others. Or perhaps even the most tragic outcome: we see our experiences as purposeless and the end unto themselves, rather than viewing them as the means by which the holy and living God wants to know us.

So here is my personal view, rooted in testimony, on how we can balance these two views for a fuller Christian life. As I became aware of my own identity as a gay man and understood the biblical text more and more I started to resent the theology I was raised in. My response to this was to run the opposite direction, I started to feel my body as sacred and my experiences as a holy encounter with the living God. None of this was untrue but I began to neglect the authority of Scripture and tradition. Viewing the texts themselves as unnecessary to the spiritual life of the contemporary Christian and even viewing them with disdain.

After a while I craved integration into a body of believers but ran up against the fact that I didn't seem to fit into the life of the church. The thing that I held as my gift from God (i.e., my queerness) seemed to be only acceptable if it was packaged a certain way. Assimilation provided comfort for me since I didn't feel like the “ wrong sort of gay”. As long as I didnt talk about my anti-capitalist theology and gay-liberation theology, I was ok and allowed the consolation of silence. However, it wasn’t long until it felt like another sort of closet. These conflicting emotional responses to faith resulted in a very disorganized spiritual praxis and, ultimately, a burn out that led me to believe faith was impossible for me.

I fell away from the body of Christ and tried to find other religious communities because I thought that I couldn't be my unapologetically queer self and be a “serious Christian”. Since for me this theology of revelation and experience were at war and “serious Christian” seemed to look like a vision of assimilation. However, like the hound of heaven, God chased me to the places I thought I could hide. I found God in the faces of men clad in all leather handing me a beer and telling me I looked handsome when I had never ever believed that about myself. I saw Jesus in the very nice gogo boy who always helped me get into the right uber when I had had just a few sips too many. Christ met me on the dance floor of a circuit party wearing a crop top and asked me to dance with him when I was new to the scene and no one else would. And yes — in all of the Scruff and Grindr dates that ended in just cuddling together and watching a horror movie. And in all of these men God was chasing me down and speaking to me, “come and follow”.

This was my story until a dear Lutheran pastor friend asked me the question which would start to define how I viewed theology ever since. What if I approached this “incarnationally” ? Taking my lived flesh and blood experience as a person and the spiritual revelation given to us through the Scripture and tradition. A theology that ,like our Lord, is fully human and fully divine. In practice this is simply living out the promises of baptism. We are never “not-Christian” as we walk around in our lives. It is for me as tactile as carrying my rosary in my pocket to leather bars, having my pocket Gospel book in my shorts at a circuit party, praying over my vodka redbulls at a house party, and blessing the food I share with my chosen family after a night out.

And it is in living this out and being just as authentically Christian as I am authentically myself that I have seen the fruits of the Good News flourish. I have been able to love more like Jesus loves. I have been on the very same dance floors and shared the love of Jesus with the same people who danced with me. I have taught the beatitudes to leathermen and seen tears well up as they realize God loves them. I have become more concerned with the welfare of the poor because I'm not obsessed with my own supposed brokenness, which was really “blessedness” all along. And I have learned most of all that my love is not a finite resource. I have become kinder and more patient than I have ever been. These are all signs of the fruits of the spirit and so I must be faithful in answering the still small voice. God is in all of these places bidding me to not only go and enjoy the life he has given me, but also to serve him in the people that surround me.

Jesus went to the temple and holy places but he also went to wedding parties and knew how to make a drink! If God incarnate can serve the people around him and tell us to serve the strongest drinks first, then I have a Lord who understands me. I firmly believe this radically incarnational approach to the Christian life will not only change your life but the life of others. We have been set free by the grace of God in Jesus to live a life more abundant and free. Jesus Christ did not come only for the acceptable or respectable, so why are we, his Church, so obsessed with being so? The Church needs you to live authentically. It is the only way we can hope to share our Good News with those around us that doesn't sound like a sales pitch. And so I encourage you to pray and ponder what a radically incarnational life looks like for you. How can you bring all of your God-glorifying self to the throne of Christ and offer it to him as a gift?