Tony Judt was what some call a "public intellectual." That is, of course, a funny thing to call somebody. Public intellectuals, as I understand them, are smart people who apply their analytical gifts on public issues and in a popular manner. Judt started his life in a Jewish home, and as a young man he absorbed writings of Karl Marx and argued for the re-establishment of the nation of Israel. He went on to teach European studies at New York University.
Judt died in August of last year. A few weeks before he died, he wrote a short essay entitled, "Words." He lamented the modern decline in the quality of writing and speaking. He suggested it is a sign of poor thinking: "Shoddy prose today bespeaks intellectual insecurity: we speak and write badly because we don't feel confident in what we think and are reluctant to assert it unambiguously."
In the heart of his essay, Judt wrote about how people use words today to make people think they are close when, in reality, they are miles away. Read the following paragraph carefully:
Articulacy is typically regarded as an aggressive talent. But for me its functions were substantively defensive: rhetorical flexibility allows for a certain feigned closeness--conveying proximity while maintaining distance. That is what actors do--but the world is not really a stage and there is something artificial in the exercise: one sees it in the current US president. I too have marshaled langauge to fend off intimacy--which perhaps explains a romantic penchant for Protestants and Native Americans, reticent cultures both.
Judt argued that we can speak (notice he used the fancier word, "articulate") defensively--to feign or fake closeness while "maintaining distance," like an actor. He even explained that he was tempted to use words this way. Aren't we all? But here is what I find fascinating. He says one reason he has a "romantic penchant" for Protestants (that's us!) is because they, too, use words to keep people away. (By the way, I have no idea why he lumps Protestants and Native Americans together in this regard!)
Is this true? Is Protestant Christianity unusually marked by the use of words to keep people away? Are we part of an especially "reticent" culture. If so, this should not be. Those who have experienced the Gospel, whose lives have been radically transformed, who know that their heart is an open book before the Creator of the Universe, have nothing to hide.
As you go about your day, today, consider how Paul described his speech in 1 Thessalonians 2:8:
So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our selves, because you had become very dear to us.
Paul shared more than the gospel, he shared his life. This is every Christian's calling--to share not just our words, but to share our hearts with others, too. This takes great wisdom. It will not do to sit down with someone you barely know and unleash the flood of your inner thoughts. But most of us don't struggle with being too open. I think Judt is right. Most Protestants, most of us, marshal our language to "fend off intimacy."
Comments