“…his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man — not a part of man’s duty, but the whole.”
– Charles Dickens from Hard Times
My last post and this one were inspired by the powerful words of Dickens above. Just a lonely portion of a paragraph in a book that no one thinks is his best. And it is a sledgehammer of a thought. Pure death. And death is exactly what I want to talk about in light of this Christmas season.
We left off discussing our uncontrollable need to present ourselves as valuable. When our output is either deemed as worthless or trumped by another’s output, so goes our identity. The very definition of who we are dies. It is the inner drive of “justification by works” that most theologians tend to gloss over as they pant after ethics.
Death, it must be said, is quite the liberator. “What would you do if you were to die tomorrow?”, is the common question. The implication is that the doer would be free of all constraints. All of a sudden, things get complex. After being condemned for murder and coming to terms with it, the protagonist of The Stranger thinks:
“With death so near, Mother must have felt like someone on the brink of freedom, ready to start life all over again. No one, no one in the world had any right to weep for her. And I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.”
– Albert Camus from The Stranger
Tragic words. Death (either the physical, final sense or society’s pronouncement of obsolescence) can liberate in many ways. It can be anywhere from going to see Mother for the last time to entering into the narrative of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. It’s the great void or the “vanity of vanities”. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose,” says Kris Kristofferson.
And this brings us to Christmas. Despite what you see outside and on the television, this holiday brings a profoundly grown-up message. But, since I don’t want to short-circuit the insight of Dickens and Camus, it will have to wait for another post.
For part three, the final part, go here.
[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEQCJtfENAc&w=600]
COMMENTS
9 responses to “Hard Times, Recession Depression, and The Whole Duty of Man, Pt II”
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Luther defines outward righteousness as death to self in favor of ones neighbor. He says that no faith at all is required here and further that God promises earthly rewards such as a longer life for those who are outwardly righteous.
How would you see Luthers views connecting to what you wrote.
which is all awesome by the way. I will be thinking about that dickens quote for a while. It sounds right but at the same time it really bothers me.
Just as an aside, in his quote about "the whole duty of man" Dickens is making a reference to a devotional/theological work of the same name, written in the mid-1600s, that most of his readers would have recognized.
It represented a sharp turn away from the Gospel as understood by the first Anglicans (Cranmer, Hooker, Donne, etc.) — i.e. forgiveness freely extended to broken sinners — toward a severe cruel semiPelagian moralism.
Fitz Allison talks about "The Whole Duty of Man" at length in his book THE RISE OF MORALISM. I can't wait to finally meet Fitz at the April MB conference!
Browder, brilliant Browder,
you have included "Obsolete", a high point for TZ.
For this alone, you are being knighted.
This very night.
In time for Christmas.
Sir David Browder,
Knight of Mockingbird and M.M.E.
Frank: I'm not really going for the outward righteousness angle. More justification. Maybe i'll do outward righteousness in another post.
Stamp: I had no idea. That's a great bit of info. I love how Dickens works it in.
PZ: Thanks. We did a whole Sunday School class on "Obsolete". I love you, my friend.
Thanks Browder, your post reminds me of the discussion of physical death in Phil 1:20-24 and Rom 8:21-f, where Paul describes it in terms of liberation. (Camus and Phil 1 seem to be on the same page when it comes to the emotional ambiguity surrounding physical death–joy and sorrow).
What you speak of here, though, seems to be a mix between the death of one's identity (at the point of failure) and the awareness of one's own mortality (The Stranger) rather than the actual experience of death itself. My guess is that it is easier to disassociate with the idea of our physical death than it is the death of our value/identity. However, it seems that the Incarnation has obvious pastoral implications for both 'deaths'.
Amazing clip, Browder.
Dylan,
I was trying (and maybe failing) to tie all of this back to the article about suicides during the recession. While, obviously, failure doesn't necessarily bring about physical death, the perceived loss of value can be as close to a physical death as one might experience.
Especially since we live in a place where we are defined by the about of value we contribute to the system.