The Discomforting Gift of Newness (Evil Geniuses Series)
Photo by Tangerine Newt on Unsplash
This is the second in a series of posts where Dr. Brueggemann reflects on the book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History by Kurt Andersen. Read the first post here.
In his remarkable, important book, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History (2020), Kurt Andersen has traced the planning of a political party to take over the government. Near the end of his book, Andersen lists eight claims in the playbook that he believes generate their action. It is my intention in this and following weekly blogs to take up each of these eight claims and to consider how we may in good faith respond to them. I have no doubt that such a careful pointed response to each of these distortions is an effort worth making. I will take up each claim in turn.
The second claim is belief in our perfect mythical yesteryear. This claim is the wish or hope to escape a present social reality into an imagined past that was found to be more congenial and less demanding. Such an exercise in nostalgia is highly selective about the past, with a capacity to forget or deny the many liabilities of that past for the sake of a pretend world.
In the world of ancient Israel, the act of escapist nostalgia is on exhibit in Psalm 137. While we tend to focus on the hoped-for vengeance voice in the Psalm, we may notice that there is a longing for a remembered Jerusalem that is precious and treasured:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy (Psalm 137:5-6).
That remembered Jerusalem, however, is very different from the city characterized in prophetic poetry or, for that matter, in the narrative account of the kings. The prophetic lines castigate those who are “at ease in Zion” who engage in self-indulgence (6:1):
Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,
and eat lambs from the flock,
and calves from the stall;
who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp,
and like David improvise on instruments of music;
who drink wine from bowls,
and anoint themselves with the finest oils (Amos 6:4-6).
Those who engage in such luxury, however, failed to notice the profound crisis into which the city had entered; so narcoticized, they were “not grieved over the ruin of Joseph” (Amos 6:6)! They simply did not notice the signs of failure and destructiveness that were all around. In like manner, Isaiah can describe the “daughters of Zion” in terms of impervious self-indulgence:
Because the daughters of Zion are haughty
and walk with outstretched necks,
glancing wantonly with their eyes,
mincing along as they go,
tinkling with their feet;
the Lord will afflict with scabs the heads of the daughters of Zion,
and the Lord will lay bare their secret parts (Isaiah 3:16-17).
And then, the prophet, in mocking understatement, provides an inventory of the tools of self-indulgence that will be forfeited:
In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils (vv. 18-23).
All the totems of privilege will be taken away! The city is not a safe, happy, or beautiful venue for life or for faith!
Jeremiah, in his turn, can characterize the predatory economy of the city wherein the poor are like birds caught in a cage, where orphans and the needy are disregarded:
For scoundrels are found among my people;
they take over the goods of others.
Like fowlers they set a trap;
they catch human beings.
Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of treachery;
therefore they have become great and rich,
they have grown fat and sleek.
They know no limits in deeds of wickedness;
they do not judge with justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper,
and they do not defend the rights of the needy (Jeremiah 5:26-28).
All of this is voiced concerning old Jerusalem. None of this, however, is noticed in the nostalgia of Psalm 137. The capacity for disregard of social reality suggests that the backward looking of the Psalm is on the lips of the elite who never experienced or noticed the socioeconomic realities of the city that were carefully kept from view. They had no notion of the underside of exploitation and oppression.
It is, at long last, II Isaiah who addresses such elite exilic nostalgia. He utilizes an imperative that the privileged exiles should turn their attention away from their backward-tilted nostalgia to face forward into the new history that is now emerging:
Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:18-19)
It is time to relinquish that imagined past. It is time to notice that YHWH is making a new world before their eyes; and they are bid by God to accept and live into that future, even if it requires that they will not have such preeminence and influence in the newly emerging social scene. The exiles are urged to face up to the new reality.
As the tradition of Isaiah unfolds in its anticipated scenario, the poetry culminates in Isaiah 65:17-25 with a vision of a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. This new Jerusalem is not some heavenly escape. It is, rather, a viable city where society is marked in healthy ways:
by an absence of infant mortality:
No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed (Isaiah 65:20);
by a viable peaceable economy absent of predatory threat:
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my people shall long enjoy the work of their hands (vv. 21-22);
by healthy child bearing, in which both mother and child are kept safe:
They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity;
for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—
and their descendants as well (v. 23);
by the acute attentiveness of God to their prayers:
Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear (v. 24); and
by a full reconciliation of all parts of the environment:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent—its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord (v. 25).
The prophetic point in 43:18-19 is a call away from escapist nostalgia to a new community, to be given in God’s good governance that is marked by human life made possible, peaceable, and prosperous. We may conclude that covenantal-prophetic faith is exactly a refutation and rejection of the option of a “perfect mythical yesteryear.”
It is obvious that this same sequence of nostalgia, summons to newness, and characterization of newness readily pertains to our own sociopolitical crisis. The nostalgia for some is to seek a return to the “good old days” of white male domination when everyone had their assigned roles to play, women were “in their place,” Black people were subordinated, and gender identities were rigidly prescribed. One can hear in such backward yearning for white male domination an echo of the Psalm:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy (Psalm 137:5-6).
One need only substitute “white male domination” for “Jerusalem” and the point is clear enough. Such an arrangement of social power was indeed a “highest joy” for some. But for many, many others, the good old days were bad indeed. They were bad for women with such a low ceiling; they were bad for Black people who were denied most opportunities; and they were bad for LGBTQ people who lived closeted and afraid. Thus imagining a “perfect mythical yesteryear” of white male domination is an exact counterpoint to an imagined joyous Jerusalem that conveniently skips over the truth-telling anguish of prophetic articulation.
The prophetic work, now as then, is to summon our body politic away from nostalgia for a world that never existed to engage social reality, and to receive the newness that God promises us. That emerging newness that we may take as a gift from God is indeed a multi-ethnic, multi-racial society in which no one is granted special advantage and in which no one is assigned to a subordinate role. That new future entrusted to us is a version of the old baptismal declaration:
Neither Jew nor Greek,
Neither slave nor free,
Neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28).
That baptismal triad touches the continuing sore points among us concerning insider-outsider (that is, “clean and unclean”) and economic equity between genders, races, and social classes. It is only those who live in a make-believe past that fear “replacement” from a world that never was. The new social arrangements coming upon us seek to exclude no one, but invite everyone to participate as a neighbor in a common enterprise of viable community.
The church, given its rootage in the memory of Jesus and its hope in the coming reign of God, is peculiarly situated to reiterate the summons of Isaiah 43:18-19. It is a call
to stop the illusionary nostalgia;
to notice the emerging newness to be received as a gift from God, albeit an inconvenient gift, and
to accept the work and responsibility that goes with receiving life on new terms.
Those who are displaced from positions of power, privilege, and influence do not easily receive such news. So it is in the church as well. That is what sometimes causes the church to be resistant to change. But the God of the gospel is always making new. And we are always on the receiving end of God’s newness. Our nostalgia will not stop the newness from God. It will only make the newness more painful for us. God’s truth is indeed marching on. And we are at the work of catching up with that newness— receiving, embracing, and taking responsibility for that newness. God’s truth is marching on, and all of our illusionary nostalgia will not stop that march toward justice, peace, and freedom by way of mercy and compassion.
Walter Brueggemann
August 2, 2022
