Sources of Identity, Meaning, Relationship to the Moral Good
The Examined, Reflective, Whole, Deeper, Purposeful Life is Well Worth Living
Garibaldi Lake
my culture, country and family of origin, the history of my people, my mother tongue and color–where I was born, my early years, my roots
my personal passion, or more deeply, my sense of calling–what and where I want to contribute, my life trajectory, my life’s work
my educational and job experience/training–my leadership skill set derived from my many mentors, colleagues and friends
my priceless personal mentors, coaches, partners and life journey guides, people who have stretched my vision
my ongoing reading and lifelong learning–my quest to expand my horizons
my sexual orientation, the biology of my body, my gender socialization and choices about self-expression, wise management of sexual desires: My understanding of, respect for, and appreciation of, the opposite sex. What is sexual health and wholeness?
my religion, philosophy of life, worldview or ideological orientation, sources of inspiration and spirituality, my ideals, higher values, standards and principles–those meta-biological drivers
my experience of trauma, tragedy, abuse and suffering, failures, handicaps, plus how I cope with suffering and hard circumstances or personal loss
the friends I hang with–my social life and romantic life–network for personal sanity, meaning, and joy
my creative engagement with people who differ from me, either in background or convictions, my listening skills and ability to learn from others that I may disagree with, or who make me feel uncomfortable with my own assumptions–my teachability and openness to growth through dialogue
the community or charity projects where I volunteer and attempt to make a better, more equal playing field in the game of life
the larger story or narrative that makes sense of my life–clarifying what really matters, what constitutes being human at a higher level, what gives solidity, weight and substance to my biography
my children, their lives, their needs and aspirations–the creative sacrifice of giving them life, nurture, guidance and purpose, believing in them and their potential, championing them and their accomplishments
See My New Book: Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Cultureby Gordon E. Carkner, Wipf & Stock: available for order on February 24, 2024. For the latest update, see: https://ubcgcu/coming-soon/
Email: orders@wipfandstock.com
my commitment to the poor, the homeless, the marginalized–community service, social compassion, positive social change
my political affiliations, causes, debates and engagements–my sense of justice, human rights, concern for democracy, peace-making, the common good
my moral commitments to certain virtues and values (strong evaluations)–the good, the admirable and noble–leading to my growth in character and civility, my consistent relationship to my highest good, things that empower my moral agency and set me free to be more responsible. This is how I “become better through seeing better” (Charles Taylor).
my self-concept as a global citizen, commitments to the wellbeing of other people groups and nations–my ambassadorial role
my sense of calling on my life
my relationship to creation, to the land, air, and oceans, to the wellbeing of the planet for the long term–creation care and community justice regarding resources and food
my local social roots–my deeper experience of neighbourhood, church and community–positive agency and communion
my economic, career track potential and capacity–traction in applying my knowledge, being innovative, taking leadership, shaping culture, making art, leaving a positive legacy (Andy Crouch, Culture Making)
my prayer, worship and spiritual life practices, relationship with the divine–experience of the transcendent, my quest for wisdom towards a life worth living–my engagement with the Bible as a source of friendship with God
my music and aesthetic interests, loves, participation–seeking the good of my mental and emotional health, my creative artistic expression, the nurture of my aesthetic self, continually expanding my tastes seriously and not just for entertainment
how I deal with my personal addictions and obsessions–darker motives and habits–my inner chaos, my deceptiveness, dishonesty with self and others, my manipulative refusal to take responsibility, to admit where I have been wrong, to ask for forgiveness, to admit where I am not speaking the truth–confronting the charlatan and coward within who exploits others for personal gain
my means of recreation, relaxation, creative outlets, entertainment, fun and adventure–my quest for good health, reducing anxiety, for the long journey of contributing
my self-articulation or profile on social media, video, audio or print media, public speaking, book and article writing–Do I build others up, share vision, respond thoughtfully, help people make good connections, take the posture of a seeker after truth, harmony and goodness?
my relationship to the very transcendent, powerful and life-changing agape love, which helps heuristically to shape and interpret both my stance towards myself and my stance towards the larger world. Is love my first priority or power?
my relationship to the Incarnation of Jesus who they call the Christ: the transcendent & immanent God we celebrate at Christmas.
In SummationBe Real; Be Attentive; Be a Whole Person; Be Innovative; Be Resilient Amidst Your Suffering; Go For Depth; Live with Integrity; Take Care of Yourself; Work Towards Harmony Between Various Sectors of Your Life; Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Identity Basket; Operate in Good Faith; Prioritize The Goods in Your Moral Life; Examine Your Motives and Conscience; Practice the Virtues; Tell the Truth; Invest in Community; Write Your Authentic Story; Appreciate the Many Gifts Given to You & Build Out Your Narrative From There; Practice Gratitude; Keep Poetry in Your Life; Take Robust Responsibility for Yourself and Your World; Marry the Quest for Freedom with Good Faith Responsibility; Love the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; Seek Friendship Wherever You Travel and Work; Help Out Those Less Fortunate and Be Generous to a Fault.
To have meaning is to stand for something other than oneself, to establish a link with a value, an idea, an ideal beyond oneself [a referent]. Life has meaning, for example, for those who spend their lives in search of a cure for a disease., or in the struggle against injustice, or just to show every day that society can be more than a jungle. The link one establishes with this value or idea confers a higher value on life…. A life that has meaning recognizes certain references…. In other words, it is paradoxically worth something only to the extent that it admits itself not to be of supreme value, by recognizing what is worth more than itself, by its ability to organize itself around something else. Everyone will admit that existence is at once both finite and deficient. We consider society to be mediocre, love insufficient, a lifespan too narrow. The person whose life has meaning is the one who, instead of remaining complacently in the midst of his regrets, decides to strive for perfection, however imperfectly, to express the absolute, even through his own deficiencies, to seek eternity, even if only temporarily. If he spends his life making peace in society or rendering justice to victims, he is effectively pointing, even if it is with a trembling finger, to the existence of peace and justice as such…. By pursuing referents, he points to them. He awkwardly expresses these impalpable, immaterial figures of hope or expectancy…. Individual existence, when it means something, points to its referent through its day-to-day actions and behaviours, the sacrifices it accepts and the risks it dares to take…. The seeker moves forward, all the while wondering, “What is worth serving?” Individual existence structures itself through the call for meaning. Existence is shaped by questions and expectations.
~Chantal Delsol, Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in an Uncertain World (4-5)
Roger Scrutin on Virtue, Freedom & Accountability
Virtue consists in the ability take full responsibility for one’s acts, intentions, and avowals, in the face of all the motives for renouncing or denouncing them. It is the ability to retain and sustain the first-personal centre of one’s life and emotions, in the face of decentering temptations with which we are surrounded and which reflect the fact that we are human beings, with animal fears and appetites, and not transcendental subjects, motivated by reason alone….. Virtues are dispositions that we praise, and their absence is the object of shame…. It is through virtue that our actions and emotions remain centred in the self, and vice means the decentering of action and emotion…. Vice is literally a loss of self-control, and the vicious person is the one on whom we cannot rely in matters of obligation and commitment…. Freedom and accountability are co-extensive in the human agent…. Freedom and community are linked by their very nature, and the truly free being is always taking account of others in order to coordinate his or her presence with theirs…. We need the virtues that transfer our motives from the animal to the personal centre of our being–the virtues that put us in charge of our passions [because] we exist within a tightly woven social context. Human beings find their fulfilment in mutual love and self-giving, but they get to this point via a long path of self-development, in which imitation, obedience and self-control are necessary moments….. Let’s put virtue and good habits back at the centre of personal life.” (R. Scrutin, On Human Nature, 100, 103, 104, 111, 112)
The question of the relationship between Christianity and culture increasingly takes centre stage in debates both within and outside the church today. This talk reflects on how a constructive, nuanced and—to many modern ears—fresh vision for contemporary society can be drawn from a rich engagement with the Bible’s storyline, guided by Augustine’s magisterial work City of God. What might it look like to reimagine Augustine’s mode of engagement with late Roman society in our own cultural moment of late modernity?
Biography
Christopher Watkin (PhD, University of Cambridge) is senior lecturer in French studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is a scholar with an international reputation in the area of modern and contemporary European thought, atheism, and the relationship between the Bible and philosophy. His published work runs the spectrum from academic monographs on contemporary philosophy to books written for general readers, both Christian and secular, and include Difficult Atheism, From Plato to Postmodernism; Great Thinkers: Jacques Derrida. His recent impressive 2022 tome with Zondervan Academic is Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.
Winner of Christian Book of the Year Award in Australia
Two Ways of Seeing/Reading/Understanding the World
a. The Epistemological Way of Seeing:
The set of priority relations within this picture often tends towards a closed world position (CWS) within the immanent frame (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 2007, chapter 15). Its assumptions include proponents like Descartes, Locke, and Hume. Taylor calls this the modern buffered self. We find this approach rooted in Anglo-American philosophy. The connection between self and world is an I-It relationship.
Knowledge of self and its status comes before knowledge of the world (things) and others (cogito ergo sum).
Knowledge of reality is a neutral fact before the individual self attributes value to it.
Knowledge of things of the natural order comes before any theoretical invocations or any transcendence. Transcendence is often problematized, doubted or repressed—for example, in reductive materialism. This approach tends to write dimensions of transcendence out of the equation as a danger to wellbeing (superstition). Science morphs into scientism.
Human meaning is much harder to capture in this frame of reference—leading to disenchantment. It can cause alienation and lead to skepticism, or promote disengagment from a cold, mechanistic, materialistic cosmos.
Language is the Designative type (Hobbes, Locke, Condillac)—instrumental, pointing at an object, manipulating objects, and often in turn manipulating people as objects. It is a flattened form of language, which does not allow us to Name things in their depth of context, their embeddedness. Poetry, symbol, myth are missing. Scientific rationalism is dominant: evidence and justified belief.
Power and violence hides under the cloak of knowledge and techne: colonization, imperialism, war, environmental exploitation, Global North versus Global South. Hubris is an endemic problem.
Ethics is left to the private sphere of individual values, because of the fact-value split or dualism—moral subjectivism results. This often leads to loss of moral agency and nihilism, partly due to the loss of narrative and the communal dimension of ethics.
Human flourishing is a central concern within this immanent frame: reduction of suffering and increase of happiness/wellbeing. Health, lifespan, safety, entertainment, economic opportunity, consumer choice are key cultural drivers. This results in a thin self, focused on rights, entitlements, opportunities to advance one’s own personal interests.
b. The Hermeneutical Way of Seeing:
The working assumptions of this approach includes proponents like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, the later Wittgenstein, Charles Taylor and Jens Zimmermann. We find this approach rooted more in Continental philosophy. The connection between the self and the world is an I-Thou relationship.
Self is not the first priority: the world, society and the game/drama of life come first. We only have knowledge as agents coping with the world, and it makes no sense to doubt that world in its fullness. Taken at face value, this world is shot through with meaning and discovery.
There is no priority of a neutral grasp of things over and above their value. It comes to us as a whole experience of facts and valuations all at once, interwoven with each other.
Our primordial identity is as a new player inducted into an old game. We learn the game and begin to interpret experience for ourselves within a larger communal context. Identity, morality and spirituality are interwoven within us. We sort through our conversations, dialogue with interlocutors, looking for a robust and practical picture of reality.
Transcendence or the divine horizon is a possible larger context of this game. Radical skepticism is not as strong here as in the epistemological approach. There is a smaller likelihood of a closed world system (CWS—closed to transcendence as a spin on reality) view in the hermeneutical approach. In a sense, it is more humble, nuanced, embodied and socially situated.
Language use is the Expressive-Constitutive type (Herder, Hamann, Humboldt, Gadamer) The mythic, poetic, aesthetic, and liturgical returns. Language is rich and expressive, open, creative, appealing to the depths of the human soul. Language is a sign. See Charles Taylor, The Language Animal.
Moral agency is revived within a community (oneself as another) with a strong narrative identity, in a relationship to the good, within a hierarchy of moral goods and practical virtuous habits that are mutually enriching and nurturing. One is more patient with the Other, the stranger: hospitality dominates over hostility.
The focus of human flourishing is on how we can live well, within our social location—a whole geography of relationships that shape our identity, and which we in turn shape as well. This is a thick version of the self, open to strong transcendence, within a meaningful whole.
The Logic of Incarnation—Why God Took on Human Flesh Incarnation concerns both the Person and the Work of Christ…. Incarnation impacts salvation, theological anthropology, and the doctrine of God. It is about much more than mere remedy or repair. Christ is complete and characteristically distinct in his humanity. The divine Word does not change or evolve, but takes humanity up into divinity. Incarnation is grounded in the nature of God, even as it creates a whole new and profound relationship with humanity, and offers a gift to raise the dignity of human beings. The Word is eternally part of Jesus the man—who is both human and divine. But the Incarnation does not exhaust God of his plenitude. Like creation, it does not change or restrict the Creator. It rather shows the love and artfulness of God in a human mode, divine holiness in the course of a human biography, revealing the infinite God in finite ways. Jesus most fully bears the Image of God, restoring it from its corruption—an act of solidarity and redemption intended to restore key human capacities to know and to love (relationally, reflectively, with receptivity and agency), to do justice and love mercy. There is a deep coherence and beauty to all the dynamics of Incarnation. All that prepares for it and follows from it, is a drama into which human life, history, and culture is gradually drawn. Above all, Christian theologians would want to say that the Incarnation, even more than the presence of human life, crowns the extraordinary dignity of life on Earth, or the dignity of the entire cosmos.
Andrew P. Davison, Professor of Theology and Natural Science @ Cambridge University.
Annunciation by Cambridge Poet-Chaplain Malcolm Guise
ubcgcu 
Leave a comment