Orientalism—A Fourth Set of Thoughts (Othering and Bulverism)

I’ve benefited immensely from my read of Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism, and lately I’ve been blogging through a few reflections on the implications and impact of that work. Today I want to think about Othering, Bulverism, and the danger of labelling.

‘Othering’ is a formal concept where I employ an identifying metric in my encounters with an ‘other’ in such a way that I both highlight the differences and reinforce my sense of self. In the encounter between my self and an other, the other is used as a foil for my own identity, and in the process I often fail to see him or her as a real person, with real narrative, and with real information to bring to a relational engagement. Today I want to reflect on how defining a process such as ‘othering’ is both helpful and unhelpful at the same time.

First, it is helpful because it does indeed describe many of the historic, and ongoing, interactions between the West and other cultures. One doesn’t have to search far to find evidence of Western reductionism, selfishness, and fetishization of non-Western ‘others.’ Orientalism has allowed the West to compartmentalize, and then no longer see, a group—by rendering them invisible, they can be ignored, reduced in narrative, and made simple. In short, Orientalism has been a disposition that makes discrimination possible. In this, as a label it is helpful as a diagnostic tool to mark, identify, and seek to redress these abuses.

At the same time, I think it can also be unhelpful. One of the hallmarks of modern discourse is labelling—if I can effectively and evocatively label a situation, or a wrong, then I can summarily defeat it. Think of the power of big labels such as “racism,” “abuse,” and “intolerance.” Think also of the power of lesser labels, such as “Becky,” “Wypipo,” “millennial,” or “snowflake.” If I can successfully label you, then I can summarily dismiss you. Partly, this appears to be nothing more than a turning of the tables—where once, the West in power labelled and dismissed non-Western others, now non-Western others are able to label and dismiss the West.

I was reminded, here, of something C.S. Lewis wrote in God in the Dock (also published as Undeceptions), specifically about just and unjust arguments. His description is worth quoting in full:

In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it ‘Bulverism.’ Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third — ‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment,’ E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.

In other words, the application of a preconditioned label—racist, liberal, Trump-supporter, snowflake, millennial, Baby Boomer, etc.—is sufficient argument enough. No more needs to be said, and no listening needs to happen. The argument, by virtue of the label, is rendered complete.

Crucial in Said’s account of Orientalism is his appeal to a kind of listening as a tonic for the abuses of the past—toward this goal, he utilizes the label of ‘othering’ as a diagnostic tool, but he does this in order to make an appeal for better communication and understanding between the East and West. In his own words, he argues that “there is a difference between knowledge of other peoples and other times that is the result of understanding, compassion, careful study and analysis for their own sakes, and on the other hand knowledge—if that is what it is—that is part of an overall campaign of self-affirmation, belligerency and outright war.” (Orientalism, xiv, emphasis added) When labels are simply a power-play, then they can no longer facilitate this process.

In view of this, I am reminded of Jesus’s words from Matthew 5:22,

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell

Note that in this passage Jesus is giving instructions for how we are to behave when our brother has something against us (he says this explicitly in verse 23). We, in other words, are the offender in this passage. But our response is illuminating—first, we become angry with our brother for bringing a charge against us, then we call him a name (“good-for-nothing”), and finally we ascribe to him a label, “fool.” Labelling, in this passage, is the process of hardening our hearts to the claim of our brothers or sisters. It diminishes and reduces the complexity of the person. It is the antithesis of listening, and in Jesus’ instruction it is equated, in the end, to murder.

It probably didn’t look like this.

Does that mean that no one is ever a fool? Of course not. There are scads of them. Just as there are scads of genuine snowflakes and racists in the world. But when we misuse those labels in petty power plays and in a context devoid of genuine listening, we put ourselves on what, according to Jesus, is a highly dangerous trajectory.

Orientalism—Othering and the Kingdom of God

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been reading through (and benefitting from) Edward Said’s Orientalism, and I’m taking advantage of a few blog posts to think through elements of his book. Today I want to think about certain aspects of the concept of “othering.”

Othering is an idea that Said employs to disentangle the difficult relationship between the Orient and the Occident. As far as I understand, othering is a process of perception in which the ‘other’ is conceived as different in such a way that the difference reinforces my own sense of identity. I am not examining an ‘other’ to find out more about the other, to discover his or her history, family relationships, culture, sense of self-identity, values, teleology, and so forth. Instead, I view the other through a more rigid lens of my own perception. I identify a ‘them’ so that I can better reinforce my sense of ‘us,’ I clearly demarcate ‘outsiders’ so that I can feel more secure in my own insider status. The key, it seems to me, is that the other is viewed not for him or herself, but primarily with reference to my own knowledge, and sense of self, and the security of my own identity. History makes it clear that this kind of process has been at work in the West’s treatment of the Orient.

Within this, Said seems to be well aware that some form of othering is a necessary part of cultural engagement. Discovering a boundary between myself, and my self-perception, and another and that other’s self-perception, is always a self-reflexive activity. David Augsburger, commenting on this reality, once wrote that “He who knows one culture knows no culture.” This is true because culture only becomes visible on the boundaries, in comparison and contrast. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeing more clearly in the ‘other’ where I differ. As a personal example, I learned more about myself as an American by living in Canada, working with Vietnamese and then Chinese churches, than I would have known otherwise. My experience of the other has generated a marked and beneficial increase in my self-awareness. I would say that I’m a better person because of those experiences.

“He who knows one culture knows no culture.” ~ David Augsburger

However, the Western pattern of othering has, historically speaking, reflected a more insidious flavour. Specifically, it would appear that the power dynamic of the West—including, but not limited to, its sense of superiority, manifest destiny, and self-referentiality—has caused this otherwise natural othering relationship to generate distortions. On my read, I see this taking the form of flattening, and of fetishization. In this post I want to focus on the flattening.

The West flattens the Orient in a variety of ways, not least of which is in the absurdly broad categorization that a concept like the “Orient” requires. Orientalism, Said writes with some understatement, “is a field with considerable geographical ambition.” (50) This results in a collapse in specificity—what qualifies as Oriental is as broad as China, Vietnam, Japan, Egypt, Syria, and Afghanistan, to name a few. This begs questions—what kind of food are we eating when we eat “Oriental” food? What kind of person are we speaking to when we speak to an “Oriental” person? What kind of subject are we studying when we read an “Oriental” book? The vagueness is problematic in itself, but it extends to individual persons as well. Many are content to collapse the dizzying variety of eastern races into a single class, “Oriental” (Asians are often flattened in this way to a single category) while at the same time privileging what would be the equivalent western disambiguations (Italian, Irish, German, etc.). In continuity with this, is it not possible that the phrase, “all Asians look alike” speaks more of Western self-perception than it does of actual Asian reality?

What kind of food is actually being served here?

An important counterpoint to this is to remember that there really is no way to escape stereotyping—it’s hard-wired into how our brains take in new information. We filter new data into categories of known data. It’s how we make sense of things. Consequently, our first steps into the world of the other commonly involves our recourse to what is assumed, or known by reputation. Almost all encounters between cultures (where there is at least some knowledge of the other beforehand) involves basic stereotyping. The problem arises—and this is terribly important—when I don’t allow the new data of the real person sitting in front of me to challenge that type. The problem is when I stop listening and project what I think to be true on the person, rejecting him or her in the process. And this, of course, appears to be very often precisely what the West has done in relation to the East. It has clutched its stereotypes, then demanded that those who have been othered conform to the type. This flattens a foreign culture, reducing it so that it will fit within my perceptions.

Photo by Ridwan Adhami

As I thought about these matters, I began to wonder—is there an othering relationship at play between the Kingdom of God and human culture, whether Oriental or Occidental? There is radical, disjunctive difference between the Kingdom and the world. In that relationship the Kingdom possesses immense power to shape, define, and identify. A crucial difference, however, is that the Kingdom has no need of human culture to self-reflexively know itself. It does not depend upon outsiders to be itself, or, rather, to be more itself. All the same, in its power relationship to the world, the Kingdom defines us, orders us, reshapes us, and sets our aspirations. That is to say, despite its perfect self-knowledge the kingdom is still a genuinely imperialistic force. It approaches the world—East and West alike—with the intention of invasion, interpretation, and reformation. Like the Oriental/Occidental dynamic, it is the Kingdom that gets to tell me who and what I am. It holds all the power.

There are further differences, however. The Kingdom holds this power by right—it deserves it. The West utilizes this power by accident of history. Where the Kingdom by right redefines the world, East and West alike, the West does not possess the authority to redefine the other according to its pleasure. In fact, what may make the particular cultural sins of the West more grim is the appropriation of Kingdom power for its own purposes. The West has done things to the world in the name of the Kingdom, and that corrupted, self-referential use of Godly power has not only done damage to the East, it has poisoned the power of the message the West was privileged to inherit. In presuming to speak with the authority of the Kingdom of God toward the rest of the world, the West has ascribed to itself an undue holiness, an improper destiny. Rather than bringing the Kingdom to the East as a subject of it, the West has often enough presumed itself to be the Kingdom. This has created situations where the West falsely legitimizes its oppression by appeal to the Kingdom.

This is the flag of the Dutch East India Company, which famously (or infamously) married its acceptance of Christian missions to its profit margins. Missionaries, often enough, were reduced to advance agents for empire.

Additionally, where in the hands of the West this othering power has flattened other cultures, the Kingdom of God does not flatten. Yes, it is imperialistic. Yes, it redefines and shapes according to its dictates, but fundamentally the Kingdom is about bringing life to the world in all its variety. Under the effects of the othering of the Kingdom of God, we are not less ourselves, but more ourselves than ever we were before. This is a great mystery.

Rowan Williams, writing about St John of the Cross, said the following: “To be absorbed in the sheer otherness of any created order or beauty is to open the door to God, because it involves that basic displacement of the dominating ego without which there can be no spiritual growth.” (The Wound of Knowledge, 176) To step from this language into our discussion suggests—I think rightly—that in the context of all true othering, we lose ego and gain self, while false, distorted othering causes us to clutch ego and lose our selves.

Orientalism–Some First Thoughts

As a side-track to my main research (on collective identity) I’ve found myself reading, and enjoying, Edward Said’s Orientalism. The book is both challenging and illuminating, and I thought that I might take advantage of a few blog posts to highlight things I am being driven to think about. Today I want to reflect on the power that questions have to shape a discourse.

One of Said’s central claims in Orientalism is that the concept of the “Oriental” is created by the West, then deployed in discourse with the Orient as a means, often enough, of political, moral, social, and economic change. To put this differently, in the historic dialogue between “east” and “west,” the west has traditionally held the power (for example, European domination), defined all the terms (for example, “oriental”), policed the discussion (e.g., by means of language and dialectic control), and even granted the right to speak—or proscribed it, as the case may be. In short, there has been an unequal relationship between East and West, and this inequality has been woven warp and weft into the Western conceptualization of what it means to be “oriental.” Untangling this weave is Said’s intended goal.

The very nature of discourse between Orient and Occident is, fundamentally, shaped by Occidental conceptions of discourse, and these forces are in turn shaped significantly by the West’s exposure to the Enlightenment with all the attendant clarities and ambiguities freighted by that watershed. Concepts like ‘rationality,’ the self, what constitutes a good, and the human relationship to the natural world, are not neutral givens in such a discourse. All the same, they are deeply held convictions which stand tacitly behind the Western identity—they don’t merely shape questions, they shape the shaping of our questions. Western identity not only generates a certain set of questions which it brings to something ‘outside’ the west, it shapes the how by which such questions are formed in the first place. A key difference between the west and the non-west is in this how by which questions themselves are formed.

What I am getting at is that these features in the western mind that shape the very shaping of questions in turn shape the shaping of answers. When the west, rich in power and self-possessed of its privileged position, queries an outsider culture, the query itself becomes a shaping power in that culture. First, because of the imbalance of power, the weaker culture is forced to provide an answer—and it must be an answer that satisfies the west’s terms. Second, if the weaker culture is incapable of providing such an answer, then the west (traditionally) provides its own answer. Either way, the answer is then retroactively projected on the weaker culture. Together, the answers given—or provided—come to shape the weaker culture’s sense of itself. This, broadly, is what has happened with the concept of “Orientalism”—it is a construct of the West, by the West, and for the West, which has in turn come to shape the self-perception of the East, often with unjust, flattening, distorting, and even violent effects.

What I am wrestling with, then, is the concept that the type and manner of a given question can come to form and even alter the subject with which it is engaged. This, to me, raises a question about the etiquette of questions. And yet, perhaps such shaping is inevitable. At the quantum level, we are told, the fact that you have looked at and isolated a quantum element itself changes the quantum element. This means that at the most rudimentary level of relationships, our attention always has changing, shaping power over a given subject. If this is the case, and if I can justifiably extend this to bigger discourses, then there are no situations where I might ask a question which will not in some sense shape the answer. In the interplay between knowledge and power, the quest for knowledge will always, in some form, shape and be shaped by the dynamic of power—whether I am a scientist observing butterflies, a policeman querying a prisoner, or a social scientist examining a cultural phenomenon.

If no question can avoid shaping, then the only shaping that remains is the shaping of our etiquette when it comes to questions. How do we query in such a way that invites, opens, expands our mutual understanding, but doesn’t do violence, flatten, distort, or dehumanize? I’ve not reflected on this much, but I have a few intuitions. First among them is one that says listening will be a key component. Am I attending to the cues offered me by the subject I am questioning? Am I striving to really hear the answer offered—or not offered? Am I attentive to text and subtext alike? And am I shaping my own questions relative to the subject?

Another intuition says that I’ll have to think about the kinds of answers I will accept. Have I considered what qualities will constitute a satisfactory answer? Do I hold all the power in terms of granting whether or not an answer qualifies for a satisfactory rating? Am I in possession of sufficient wisdom to know the difference? Thinking about questions and answers in this way makes me think further about situations of public calamity and cries for ‘answers.’ Those who demand answers hold the power of satisfaction for a given answer, and the one who gives an answer, aware of this, is often afraid lest blame be assigned to them in the process. The questioner is not asking for information, but to assign your answer to a category. In such an ethics there are, without doubt, many more categories to examine and nuances to explicate.

Fascinatingly, the first recorded questions in the Bible exhibit this shaping power of questions. Following the narrative of creation Eve converses with the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The serpent asks a question: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” The question shapes Eve’s perception—in this case, diabolically—from benevolence to distrust, from contentment to discontentment, from understanding to confusion. The data of Eve’s life to that point is now muddled by a foreign and dangerously imperious invasion, and in her newfound doubt she is susceptible to its argument.

Now note, especially, that when God appears on the scene He also asks a question. The Lord calls to Adam and says, “Where are you?” I like to remind people that God does not ask because He needs the information. He most certainly knows where Adam is, and yet in asking such a question is it possible that God is presenting a different kind of opportunity? That God does not ask for information, but asks so that Adam can reframe himself? Does God’s question shape the situation as well, offering Adam the opportunity to resituate himself relative to this new situation of disobedience? If so, then the right answer might have been, “I am standing outside of Your commandment.” We’ll never know, but the situation certainly bears thinking about.

The Problem with (Some) Christian Books: Gibbons’s The Monkey and the Fish

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.” ~ Søren Kierkegaard, quoted in The Monkey and the Fish.

It is always the mark of a dispiriting reading experience when the quotes that open a chapter are the best part of the book, and such, unfortunately, is the case with Dave Gibbons’s The Monkey and the Fish: Liquid Leadership for a Third-Culture Church (Zondervan, 2009), a thoroughly forgettable, overly optimistic, disorganized, and altogether vague foray into the subject of Church leadership today.

I stumbled upon Gibbons’s book while browsing a $2 book bin while on a family vacation (for the record, I typically have great success with the $2 bin). Since I am undoubtedly not only in church leadership but indeed cross-cultural church leadership, this seemed like a potentially rewarding read. The back cover offers the promise of a “third-culture way of being the church” and “creative applications that can help any church of any kind anywhere make a difference in the world.” Hey, I’m an American of Puerto Rican heritage working with Vietnamese people in Canada—I’ll take all the help I can get! In other words, I paid my $2 and read the book.

Why care to write a review of a book I found so unmemorable and vague? Because it exhibits a number of what I perceive to be common, unfortunate habits of popular Christian literature. Therefore talking about the book gives me the opportunity to vent my frustrations. And, of course, much like the owner of a roadside diner giving advice on road conditions ahead, a book reviewer should alert a potential reader to the book conditions ahead. Of course you can read it if you like, and maybe you’ll enjoy it. But you can’t say I didn’t warn you if you don’t.

So then, what are these distasteful habits of popular Christian literature that Gibbons’s book exhibits? I’ve picked four to talk about here: Undefined Terms (which I’ll discuss at length), Incomplete Thoughts, Formatting, and what I’ll call “Mystic Appeal.”

Undefined Terms

When I graded papers for professors in seminary, it was a continually astonishing fact that few masters-level students possessed any concept of the thesis. Sure, they could write word counts—words flowed from their computers like water from burst pipes—but the process of stating a claim, then working through an argument, was woefully lacking in the vast majority of essays that I assessed. The simple lesson, so often missed, so easily overlooked, is that when you are writing a work to make sure, at the outset, that you state what you are talking about clearly. This is more essential, perhaps, even than the thesis, because it gets you and your reader both on the same page. It is a matter of defining the terms of your argument. Now Gibbons’s book is based on the invention, or at least unique application, of the term “third-culture.” It is identifying and applying this idea that drives the whole engine of his theory. But the crippling problem is that the very idea of “third-culture” is never adequately defined.

Let’s consider how this plays out. Early in the book (page 21), Gibbons offers his first definition of what it means to be third-culture. He draws first from third culture children, whose parents are one culture (say, American), but have grown up in a different cultural environment (say, in Japan). He writes,

When third-culture kids become adults, they possess a heightened sensibility and intelligence about embracing and bridging cultural differences wherever they go. They’re accomplished ‘culture-nauts,’ so to speak. Throughout their lives, they are able to relate to people of vastly different cultures far more easily than most people can. And because of their deeply ingrained convictions about the inherent richness and value of different cultures, worldviews and perspectives, they seek to expose their own children to the diversity of the world’s people and cultures. They celebrate culture. They treasure it. They respect it.

Now this is all well and good. We are getting the idea that “third-culture” seems to mean a kind of cultural conversance. But the very next sentence throws this off a little:

As we unpack the third-culture way, I think you’ll see how it is at the core of the gospel and who we are called to become.

Now, this is an obvious overstatement: how can any single thing other than the gospel can be at the core of the gospel? We have shifted from one definition of Gibbons’s special term to another within the space of about two heartbeats. But before we have a chance to consider this more carefully, Gibbons is going to illustrate his point with a story about a man named Julio who was mugged but shared the gospel in the process. He asserts, at the end, “that Julio’s response was third culture. It was an embrace of pain and an extension of generosity—learning, loving, and serving all wrapped in one amazing young man.”

Clear definitions mark the life or death of an argument!

From this short example you get the sense—one that increases as the book continues—that the definition of “third-culture” shifts and bends depending on the chapter. Furthermore, what Gibbons means by it in any given situation is apparently equal to what Gibbons likes. And this is one of the tangential byproducts of Christian literature today, because it seems rather common for authors who don’t identify clear terminology to label everything one agrees with as symbolic of your thesis, and everything one disagrees with as opposed to your thesis. The result is books that lack argument, but catalogue the likes and dislikes of the author. What it appears, then, that Gibbons is doing is merely exchanging the word “gospel” for his term “third-culture.” If that is the case, then the story about Julio’s mugging/evangelism is a nice example of the gospel. But as it stands, loose definitions run the dangerous risk of rendering all terminology meaningless. Why invent new words if their invention only obscures the use of our already preexistent and perfectly good ones?

Writing that operates with badly or undefined is frequently an unwieldy mess. Consider this alternate explanation of the meaning of third culture from page 37 (for the record, Gibbons presents a variety of definitions, but with each one I found myself increasingly confused):

When I use the term third-culture church, I’m referring to a beautiful yet sobering reality: whether we’re in Manhattan or Beijing or Sao Paolo, our credibility and the veracity of our initiatives will be measured by our third-culture lifestyles—hence the need to understand the third-culture mandate in light of the purposes of the church prioritized by Jesus himself when he was queried about the greatest commandment.

Now, first off, this is a monstrous sentence: it is terminological, vague, and drifting. Second, it exhibits the unfortunate tendency to make an argument by repetition rather than definition: the words “third-culture” occur three times within it, but I still have no idea what he means, only that Gibbons thinks it’s important. Third, this sentence has all the appurtenances of importance, but I can’t seem to determine if it actually says anything of substance. What is it that I’m supposed to do? What’s beautiful about it and what’s sobering? How am I being judged by my third-cultured-ness? What is this mandate and how, if it is at the core of the gospel, is it to be understood “in light of the purposes of the church”? If it is at the core of the gospel then isn’t it already the purpose of the church?

But perhaps Gibbons has an answer for me already, because a few pages later he says (page 40), that,

Third culture is about adaptation, the both/and, not the either/or, mindset. It doesn’t eradicate color or lines but embraces and affirms who we are, regardless of differences in ethnicity, culture, or mindset. Third culture is the gift of being more cognizant of and more comfortable with the painful fusion and friction inherent in cultural intersections.

Well now, here we have yet another definition of third-culture, one that, in its affirmation of both/and and rejection of either/or, seems to imply that my desire for clarity is itself a defect. After all, I’d understand if I were more third culture! Perhaps the problem is that I merely lack the cultural cognizance to appreciate Gibbons’s argument.

For the record, I want to state that I don’t think Gibbons is necessarily wrong about what he intends to write (and he does say a few memorable things in the book). The problem is that how he has written it has gotten horribly in the way of whatever it was he was hoping to say, and to observe that a lack of definitions make for crippling reading. In the end, if you are going to write a book about a new idea for church leadership, you had better make sure you’ve adequately and clearly defined your term by the end of the first chapter.

Incomplete Thoughts

A second issue common to Christian literature is Incomplete Thoughts. Authors regularly make side points that require development, hint at stories left unfinished, and on the whole leave the reader hanging in anticipation of resolutions that never arrive. The author thus creates gaps in the reader’s mind, but rather than filling them (as good prose does), chooses instead (in my estimation out of neglect) to either go off in a different direction or end the chapter entirely. It is a profoundly dissatisfying experience.

In one place (page 102) Gibbons describes the life changing experience of meeting and ministering to a homeless woman, and how it changed his perception on the role of teaching versus action. A statement like this sprouts questions like crocus in the spring: What happened? How were you changed? But while he talks about meeting the homeless woman in abstraction, we never actually hear about the meeting, what happened, or what, particularly, Gibbons learned in the process. The omission is startling. (It is worth observing, actually, that in this episode Gibbons makes the point of praising action over teaching. This attitude is symptomatic of a further problem: if you neglect the ministry of teaching you become incoherent as a teacher. Hence, Gibbons succeeds here in naming a situation without explaining its lesson at all. It’s a kind of un-teaching—words without content.)

In another place (page 43) Gibbons asks, rhetorically, how one of his leaders, a man named Cue, whose background is unlike that of Newsong Church, ended up in such a radically different atmosphere,

The answer to all these questions finds it home in Cue’s pain. Cue epitomizes a new breed of leader, a leader who leads from what I call the pain principle. This is one of several attributes that mark a third-culture leader and a third-culture church. The pain principle grows out of two axioms: (1) For leaders, pain in life has a way of deconstructing us to our most genuine, humble, authentic selves. It’s part of the leader’s job description. (2) For most people, regardless of culture, it’s easier to connect with a leader’s pain and shortcomings and mistakes than her successes and triumphs.

The first question that popped into my mind when I read this was, “Wait a minute, there’s a pain principle?!” Do you mean to say that in the middle of (inadequately) describing what it means to be “third-culture” Gibbons just introduced a new term—one that he will equally fail to explain in full? Indeed yes, and this is the kind of rabbit-trail prose that frustrates me in Christian literature: terms without definition, ideas without flesh.

And yet more, even, than the sudden arrival of new principles, a paragraph like this begs questions: How does Cue use his pain? How has Cue been “deconstructed to his most genuine”? And how does he then take this pain and apply it to Newsong Church? But there’s nothing about this, and I am left turning pages looking for answers. Here the omission is especially startling because points (1) and (2) are interesting and worth thinking about—how Cue does these things seems extraordinarily relevant! But as it stands, without explanation they’re just nice words; an example that is named, but void of content. As if I were writing a book about the right way to eat pizza and cited as evidence my friend Peter (an expert in eating pizza!), but never described Peter’s method at all. It is wholly dissatisfying.

Formatting

The formatting of Christian books is one of the criminal travesties of our time. And one of the prime examples of this criminal activity, exhibited by Gibbons’s book, is the use of lists. Now, a good list is a great thing, powerful, rewarding, and pungent in its effect. But it is profoundly dispiriting to discover that an author has formatted sections of text that are pure lists, characterized by things that are,

– Banal

– Insubstantive

– Containing one entry that doesn’t quite fit with the rest

– Repetitive

– Short

Nevertheless, the list gives off the appearance of significance because, of course, it’s in a list. It is a way of disguising the lack of argument through formatting, as if re-clothing a book could change its substance.

O Authors, lists do not an argument make! For the most part, they merely show us that you have copied your notes into your book without taking the time and effort to turn it into prose. It is lazy writing. Stop it!

Mystic Appeal

My last complaint about Gibbons’s book (and Christian literature in general) is what I’ve called “Mystic Appeal.” It is the allure of the different, usually the ‘eastern,’ as a challenge to the way we’ve done things in the west. Gibbons’s book opens with (and its title is drawn from) an “Eastern Parable” about a Monkey and a Fish. There is obvious appeal here. We’re getting an ‘eastern’ viewpoint (Gibbons, incidentally, is half Korean) which carries with it the allure of alternate ideas.

Definitely a sage man.

From within this framework, the chapter titles sound even more significant—titles like “Liquid,” “Wardrobe,” “Liquid Bruce Lee,” “Three Questions that Become the Answers.” (Is it too much to suggest that we should imagine Mr. Miyagi reading these titles to us? They certainly sound significant in his voice…) ‘Western’ people (that is, North Americans) seem to have a mystic (and often uncritical) appreciation for eastern ideas, and this is rooted both in the inherent challenge that different ideas bring to our way of doing things, and a good dose of WASP guilt over how the church has been run for the past, oh, 20 centuries.

For example, a chart (indeed, one of those rhetorically formatted ‘lists’) on page 105 contrasts bad and crusty ‘western’ ways of doing things with fluid and adaptive ‘eastern’ ways. It is worth stating, to set the record straight, that this contrast is optimistic at best. I, a westerner, work for an eastern (that is, Asian) church. I want you to know that the cultural practices are equally crusty and firm in the east as they are in the west, and change is equally hard because of it. It is a lie to believe that people of an eastern disposition are more malleable. While they often have a different way of doing things, they are just as committed to their traditions as so-called ‘western’ people are, if not more so.

Therefore, Christian author and Christian reader, be not deceived by the allure of the east—take what is good, of course, but do not consider what is different to be necessarily what is best. It might in the end be merely different.

Final Thoughts

Undefined terms, incomplete thoughts, formatting, and mystic appeal, Gibbons’s book was replete with these issues. By the end, despite my hopes, I was reading to finish the book more than I was to enjoy it. I had gotten all I was going to get out of it (slightly less, perhaps, than the $2 I paid for it), and had found myself, at the end, as irritated with this type of book as I was with its content. That content was not really a new philosophy of ministry, just Dave Gibbons’s hodgepodge opinion on what he likes to do with ministry; not a thesis, just a collection of disorganized thoughts, gathered under the ubiquitous heading, “third-culture.”

So, if you have read this to the end, and if you are ever hoping to write a Christian book of your own, please remember, not only for my sake but for the sake of all those readers you hope to reach, to please, please, define your terms, finish your thoughts, make arguments without relying on shenanigans in formatting, and remember that God’s truth is God’s truth, whether you are in the East, the West, the North or the South, and that no cultural information, however interesting or alluring, is a substitute for the Word of God.