I figure if I keep this rant up on the BHT, I'm going to get kicked, so I'm going to piss and moan about it here. Anyway, if you don't follow, Frank Schaeffer wrote a book in which he breathlessly exposes (and likely exaggerates) all the scandalous, titillating details of his home life to the world. In the world according to Frank, Francis Schaeffer was apparently a big, two-faced hypocrite and his mother was nothing more than a self-righteous nut. Well, maybe they were, I don't know. But I don't think it matters. The public square is not the place to humiliate your parents.
Now some people are really applauding this book. See, Frank's being authentic here. He's sharing his true feelings. He's telling it how he really sees it, and you can't do better than authenticity. Michael Spencer sums it up this way:
Whatever the critics say, at the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself.I think this statement is completely false, and this way of thinking used by many people as an excuse for absolutely trashing people that care about them, destroying relationships, and hurting people that don't deserve to be hurt. The message here is, "It doesn't matter who you hurt or whose reputation you ruin. It doesn't matter who you humiliate or who you scandalize. Those are merely the necessary sacrifices others need to make in order for you to be authentic."
The idea that being true to yourself is the most important thing in life is also completely self-serving. You have to be true to yourself. The statement tells you to put yourself at the center of the universe and commends you for doing so by calling it "truth." What about being true to people who care about you? What about being true to the good of someone else, even if that means putting a lid on all the vitriol you feel like spewing about other people in order to keep the peace or preserve a relationship? Nope, those things are worthless. They stifle authenticity. If I hate my mom, my first and foremost need is to go out in public and tell everyone everything I hate about her and her most humiliating secrets...assuming that's what I really feel like doing. I'm being true to myself.
In a world where authenticity at all costs is the greatest good, if you hurt someone, the important thing is that you were being authentic when you did it. The corollary to this is that if people are hurt by your words or actions, the problem is with them, not with you. It's their fault for not sufficiently appreciating your authenticity. They should be happy that you are sacrificing their dignity for the sake of your self-actualization, because you are sacrificing them for the greatest good there is: Yourself. Frank Schaeffer's mother is the perfect picture of someone is patently immoral under this idea of goodness. She doesn't appreciate her son's public self-authentication by raking her over the coals and apparently just cries or something stupid like that. As Os Guinness relates,
Several times I saw her reduced to tears in private after his barbs against her. But now in her nineties, with her failing memory, she neither fully knows nor is able to respond to all he has written about her. "If I read it," she said to me about one of Frank's earlier books, "it would probably break my heart."Maybe people applauding Frank's authenticity and sternly rebuking his critics for stifling this necessary catharsis should send Edith a card. It could read something like this:
Dear Edith,Of course, no one's going to gather together and tell Edith what's wrong with her. They just view a mother's broken heart as necessary collateral damage in the quest for authenticity. No one is asking why, if he really detests so much of what his parents were and did, Frank can't just be authentic about those things with his pastor, wife, or friends (if he has any). No one asks why authenticity is sold for the neat sum of $25.99 (on sale for $17.15 at Amazon) and involves being the center of everyone's attention for a little while. Apparently, the more public, profitable, and self-serving one's authenticity is, the more real it is.
Stop your whining and crying. What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you realize that Frank is sharing his true feelings with the world? I know he's saying horrible things about you, but you need to realize those are authentic feelings and appreciate the fact that he is being true to himself, even if that means spewing bile about you. You probably deserve it, anyway.
Love,
Everyone
Now I'm not saying this just because. I'm saying it because I've seen people I love and care about nearly destroyed by this same sort of public "authenticity" while the person humiliating them was praised by others for being genuine and true. Of course, that's the most I'll tell you, because I'm not going to use this blog to expose others. That makes me inauthentic and morally inferior to someone like Frank Schaeffer. I'm used to responses to me that assume that because I don't expose myself and others via my writing, I don't have anything titillating to expose and therefore don't understand what it's like to have all these wonderful stories to tell and how much we need to tell them. The fact is, I do understand what it's like to have a family closet full of skeletons. I just don't charge admission and invite the public.
If you're still reading, this is the last thing I'm going to say. It doesn't matter if your old man really did get falling-down drunk and pass out naked in the middle of the floor. It doesn't matter if your contempt for him is genuine, if you authentically feel that his behavior has affected you, or if the guy is really important in the world and you genuinely think other people need to see him like that to know what a hypocrite he is. You don't invite everyone over to see him and expose his shame.
22 comments:
Phillip Winn's BHT post on Speaker for the Dead touches on this very same subject.
If you are not familiar, a Speaker for the Dead deliberately airs all a recently deceased's dirty laundry for the sake of having the people remaining having an authentic picture of the deceased's life. It is truly horrifying.
Embrasing sinful authenticity is the exact opposite advice given by Paul.
19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Romans 7
St. Paul isn't being very authentic. "It is no longer I who do it."
Indeed.
This is basic stuff. How is Josh's point controversial? As I learned in catechism class:
===
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
What does this mean?
We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
===
If that doesn't float your boat, the example of Ham ought to be enough for a believer to reject Schaeffer's antics in/with this book. Being true to yourself means nothing (if it means anything at all in the first place) if you treat your neighbor like garbage, even if his/her actions are garbage.
It's controversial because Michael Spencer is a literature guy, and the more authentic writing is, the better it is. Notice his barb against me was basically, "Well, I guess we don't need to worry about Lutherans ever writing some decent literature." See, if you're not exposing all the dirty details and unveiling the depths of your contempt, you're not being fully real. Your writing isn't as good as it could be. You're not producing great literature.
Also Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."
What does that say about authenticidy?
It's too bad the relatives of Sts. Peter and Paul weren't being "true to themselves," because I'm sure from what little we know of their lives from the biblical accounts, there had to be many titillating moments for us to read. Just think of all the times Peter was rebuked by Jesus and John didn't record it. And wouldn't you love to know exactly what was happening in Paul's life when he wrote Romans 7?
Sadly, these people chose to let the biblical record stand, and worse -- they weren't true to themselves.
Normally I'd agree with you, and I tend to mostly agree with you anyway. Here are the two things that I think should be considered, though.
1. The lesser point is only tangentially implied by your statements, so I include it primarily for others: Hinted at by many of Frank Schaeffer's critics is the idea that Frank is lying. That in his anger, he is exaggerating, prevaricating, or just making crap up. I've written about this already on the BHT, but I think it is key to note that while Frank's version of events doesn't line up with, say, Os', that doesn't mean Frank is lying. My kids sometimes see things differently than I do, and I see them differently than my parents. Frank and Os could both be telling the absolute factual truth, but putting a different spin on things.
2. More to your point, which primarily seems to be that private lives should be kept private, not aired for the sake of... whatever. Therapy, book sales, attention; doesn't matter. Here I'm in close to complete agreement, though I think I understand why others feel differently.
Francis and Edith Schaeffer lived *very* public lives, far more public than most. I can understand why someone might feel compelled to *publicly* counter *public* stories about someone under those conditions.
If *my* dad was a falling-down drunk, it would stay within my family. If my dad was a falling-down drunk and pastor of a megachurch and best-selling author of books on how to live a morally upright life as a Christian, well, at some point I think I'd have a bit more justification to be a bit more open about how maybe, just maybe, those books aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Put another way, the difference between Frank's criticism of Francis and your criticism of Frank is that you're criticizing Frank's public efforts (his book, or at least articles about it) while he was criticizing private events (his family life while growing up). I suggest that inasmuch as his family life while growing up was *public* rather than *private*, it's legitimate fodder for a book. Inasmuch as it wasn't, it isn't.
While I haven't read Frank's book, I do think he probably could have made his point without quite so much of the personal stuff. I suspect -- but don't know for sure -- that he is enjoying the deconstruction of hero-worship that some have for Francis Schaeffer. Not much given to hero-worship myself, I'm sympathetic, but I do think it says as much about Frank as it does about Francis; maybe more.
But I still haven't read the book, so it's all somewhat theoretical for me.
Voelker stole my thunder. Ham came to mind for me too.
How unfair of God for punishing Ham for being authentic.
Sub-point under the 4th commandment: Thou shalt not make thy mother cry.
There seems to be a bit of second- and third-hand criticism going on here.
I haven't read Frank Schaeffer's book, and I suspect that nobody else in this discussion has done so either. What I have read is Os Guinness's scathing article about Frank Schaeffer's book. And apparently (though I haven't read it) Michael Spencer has defended Schaeffer from Guinness's attacks on the grounds that Schaeffer's "authenticity" should insulate him from criticism.
I don't think we can condemn Frank Schaeffer on the basis of what Os Guinness wrote, without actually reading Schaeffer's book. Nor should we condemn Schaeffer for using the "authenticity" excuse, because (as far as I know) it's not Schaeffer who has offered this excuse, but Spencer who has offered it for him.
I used to get Frank Schaeffer's newsletter back in my Orthodox days. The newsletter was a weird amalgam of extreme social conservatism and Orthodox triumphalism. So I have never been one of Schaeffer's fans. Because of that I probably won't read the book (and because the sort of Reformed Christianity represented by Schaeffer's parents holds very little interest for me). But until and unless I do read the book, I think I'll refrain from teeing off on Schaeffer for what he wrote.
Josh, are you by chance familiar with "The Ethics of Authenticity" by Charles Taylor?
'Notice his barb against me was basically, "Well, I guess we don't need to worry about Lutherans ever writing some decent literature."'
As a writer of some kind - whether I'm producing great literature is another question best left to others - I find Spencer's argument here especially daft. Even when I am at my most 'personal,' there is always the artifice of the poem or whatever that creates a distance and allows the *form* and *style* an importance lost on those who simply desire confessional 'authenticity'.
Consider - Shakespeare's sonnets aren't great because we get some kind of immediate access to his feelings and so can bask in his Authentic Depth - we don't get that at all. Whatever real, profound experience motivates the various sonnets and their arrangement, for us, as for Shakespeare the artist, what matters most is his pattern of language, his breaking and reforming the argumentative structure of the sonnet, and so on. Their real emotional power, that sense of the revelation of something hidden, ambiguous, yet powerfully real in human experience, all of that derives precisely from the artifice of the sonnet and what Shakespeare does with it.
That's an extreme example, of course, because guys like me can't, in any given moment and with any given poem, claim to be as good as Shakespeare. Still, I try to be, and that has more to do with finding out what the poem wants to be, how to bring the formal intuitions I'm given to fruition through art and craft, and then, only then, looking back and finding the emotional, relational, confessional, or whatever experiences that probably motivated the piece at some level I can't possibly grasp.
In short, I like the guy, and he's quite smart and often has interesting things to say, but Spencer doesn't really seem to know much about making poems, plays, novels, and the like. Sounds like an English major to me...
Peace out.
Thomas of Endlessly Rocking
I know you don't want to hear it, but a lot of great art is based on the writer's depiction of pain, personally felt. If that pain came from his dad, why should he pretend it came from his ____? Or should he just swallow it and write a cookbook?
One of the functions of art is to console the audience in its perceived, individual sufferings. Roger Waters (you brought him up) is a great artist because his story is true, and his art makes the listener less lonely.
Twylah
Twylah, Roger Waters is a grown man crying about kids and teachers being mean to him in 5th grade. That's just lame. Also, one can depict pain without exposing all the gory details of other people's lives.
(MSPencer writing)
Josh:
Really, you have surpassed yourself.
1) You haven't read the book.
2) Your commenters admit they haven't read what I said about the book. Only what you've said abut me.
3) You've gone to the most hyperbolic, worst case scenario interpretation possible of what I said- a specialty of yours for this kind of rant- and made it seem I am advocating a whole raft of thinjgs you damn well know I am not advocating.
4) Your commenters are now saying "Spencer's argument against Lutheran writers is daft," when again, you know that was sarcasm, a specialty of yours that we all toss back your way.
This is as pathetic an example of the use of your ability to think and write as I've ever read. You have no idea of any specific in the book because you haven't read any more of it than I have of Chemnitz or you have of Dave Armstrong, but yet you are over here sponsoring a thread of one error, lie and distortion after another.
The "new Josh" indeed.
Are my opinions on authenticity not authentic enough to pass the "At the end of the day, you've got to be true to yourself" test?
1) No, I haven't read the book, but I know a good deal of what the book's about, largely from people who praise it...just like you don't have to read Two Natures in Christ to know what the substance of the work is about. Most reviews of the book do not lie about its substance, and if you thought reviewing patristic christology was a waste of time, you'd be justified in thinking Chemnitz was wasting his time without reading the book.
2) I haven't said anything about you in particular. I talked at great length about the idea that "being true to yourself" is pretty much more important than anything else and is the ultimate judge of what you should and shouldn't say. Your line there started me off, but you are hardly the first person I have ever heard say it to justify things I find abhorrent.
3) My writing is neither hyperbolic nor worst-case scenario. It is based on actual reality and real scenarios that I am not publishing on the Internet, because unlike Frank Schaeffer and other heroically authentic people, I do not delight in publicly revealing the scandalous behavior of people close to me. Perhaps if you had read the entire post, you would have noticed that.
4) There is always an underlying sentiment underneath sarcasm in order for the sarcasm to be meaningful. That sarcasm was the medium does not mean the sentiment gets a free pass from critique.
What are the lies I've told? Give me the specific. If I'm here lying about stuff, call me out of it.
Also, what "new Josh?" I'm the same asshole I've always been.
I said you were sponsoring a thread that contained lies, meaning the commenters.
"Spencer wants to insulate Schaefer from criticism." Of course. You are very aware that I've defended his right to tell his story and that's all. God, his audience, his family and those who knew his parents can judge him, but they (other than God) can't negate his right to tell his unique story.
Nice change of name to the post. Let me suggest you get in something about paranoid and over-reaction as well.
Your own crap is what you're talking about in all these posts. My defense of Schaefer's right to tell his story just gave you a convenient target. Let your readers go and read where this all started at the BHT with your post "I Censored This Myself." No attention seeking authenticity there. Nosirreebob.
You can't just make a point Josh. You have to nuke an enemy. You can't just make a reasonable counterpoint in a reasonable discussion. We've been talking about this for weeks on and off and you have to made a post with three straight lines of edited profanity to let us all know how right you are.
You are the most "true to yourself" person on the net, and of course you will argue the rest of us into the dirt that such a thing is "whining."
I read Speaker for the Dead, which "Frank Schaeffer would probably love." I do not think it is a Christian practice.
Michael, I would liken my original BHT post not to self-searching cathartic public soul-baring that is the hallmark of true literary genius, but rather to losing my cool and screaming "SHUT THE **** UP" to some annoying jackass whose constant clamoring for attention has gotten on my nerves one too many times. Your attempt to accuse me of doing exactly what ol' Frank has done in my rant is completely off the mark.
What do you mean by a "right," anyway? The only "rights" I know of are our constitutionally guaranteed rights. Frank Schaeffer has the right to publish whatever the heck he wants, including his self-righteous, belligerent books about Orthodoxy. I have the right to get sick of it. I'm not lobbying for a change to the 1st Amendment or anything, so all this blustering about what Frank has the "right" to do is pretty meaningless to me. I mean, in the final analysis, you have the right to call your mother a whore.
The fact is, I find public soul-baring pretty annoying. I don't actually think it's all that authentic and generally is a mask of some deeper agenda. In Frank Schaeffer's case, unless he has completely changed since I was reading him a few years ago, he has a deep need to feel extremely important and very much gets off on scandalizing evangelicals and basically telling them what a bunch of losers they are. Interpolating from what's out there, it doesn't sound like Frank's fundamentally changed all that much. He's just less of a Republican now and has now decided that the Christian Right also needs to be dumped on. He's been crapping on his parents for a while now, so that's not exactly huge news. But I guess this is that final loaf he's needed to pinch off.
In the bigger picture, my loathing of Frank Schaeffer is the same sort of loathing I have for emo bloggers, those weepy kids on Livejournal who imagine that the whole universe hinges on this girl they like going out with another guy and the gratification they get from having total strangers gush with sympathy in the comments. It's perverse. By the way, if you want "true to yourself," go read those crying emo kids telling everyone everything they've ever thought or felt. My blog isn't the place for it. I post very, very little personal material here...far less than you do on IM.
If you really want to accuse me of being like Frank, you're going to have to go back a little ways into my writing. "Takes one to know one" isn't an unfair thing to say at all. Frank's public exhibitionism, gleeful painting of respected people close to him as big fat hypocrites, and exaggerated sense of importance in the world isn't all that far off the darker parts of my own nature. But those are indeed the darker parts. The other books he's written that I've read people call brash and belligerent, but I call them vile. It goes deeper than his need to crush or his exhibitionist streak. It's hard to explain. Do I see something of myself in them? Of course; that's why I can loathe his books more deeply than most people do. You can beat me over the head with that stick all you like. But the blackness of the pot does not somehow turn the kettle white.
I don't "sponsor" a whole heck of a lot. I'm just pretty light-handed with my censoring of comments here.
Reading the words "exhibitionist streak" on either your blog or mine needs a laugh track.
If anything, this book is Frank's repentance for his past egomania. So he should have gone to a Chinese orphanage. Fine. He's been writing books about military families for the last 5 years and this was one book to make peace with what he did to his dad.
Thanks for the admonition to visit emo blogs. When I get a few minutes between talking to the students whose lives I described at the IM post discussing this, I'll get right on it.
I'm done with this. Neither of is learning anything except how to excuse contempt, and I don't need that.
He called his mother a "nut." Come on.
The reference to "gleeful painting of respected people close to him as big fat hypocrites" is just what I'd expect from someone who's not actually read the book, but has relied on a bunch of one-sided reviews to form an opinion.
Sure, there are things I dislike about Schaeffer's book (his sarcasm is not an endearing trait), but it's a much more nuanced book than you portray. He paints his parents as flawed human beings, and that is a long way from "big fat hypocrites". That description doesn't even begin to do it justice.
In fact, the picture he paints of Francis Sr is of a person I'd have liked to know. He is as affectionate towards them as he is brutally honest about their failures. He is as open in praising their goodness as he is in exposing their badness.
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