You are not your own (part 2)

Book Review (O. Alan Noble)

A Christian Anthropology

Part 2 of our review of Alan Noble’s, You are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World. (Read Part 1 here)

Chapter 5

This chapter is the pivot. When we turn from problem to 'solution', except that Noble is wise enough to temper 'solution' very much. And it's no surprise that the solution here is that we belong to someone else. That is the set-up from the start, the answer of the Heidelberg catechism. The work then, is to show how belonging to God alters our framework of existence. And the first implication is that we are not radically free, we do not live a life with limitless possibilities.

A useful caution

Christians must be particularly careful here. Accepting limits is not the same thing as accepting that you belong to God. It’s possible to obey many of God’s limits and still deny that you belong to Him. (p118)

Embracing a form of Christianity, christian ethics or christian identity, but still functioning under the belief that you are your own, so that 'Christianity' is your choice of how to fulfil your identity and self-expression, is always going to end up either in breaking that form (at the point that it places limits upon you) or an empty chasing of meaning (because your choice of Christianity as a form is no more meaningful than the other choices).

Noble does indeed take us back to the catechism, and hones in on the framing of the question, "What is your only comfort in life and death?" - our belonging to Christ is a comfort, which assumes that comfort is necessary.

the need for comfort in the face of life is not restricted to a particular moment in human history. It is a part of the human experience. But it is the case that the need for comfort manifests differently at different periods. (p121)

Noble explores an important way in which not belonging to ourself seems not to be a comfort. Firstly, of course, we treat authority as hostile, autonomy as sacred. But why? Why does (western, Anglophone, American) thought treat the rebel as sacred and liberty as absolute? Especially in these days, we are disillusioned - all the traditional authorities of government, religion, etc., have shown themselves culpable. To accept authority is to open oneself up to abuse, because authorities have always and continue to abuse.

The danger of rejecting individual sovereignty is that if we belong to anyone who does not actively and truly desire our good, we will be abused. (p125)

We need two antidotes to this:

Contemporary abuses of authority may be less overtly coercive, but they remain coercive. In other words, autonomy does not get rid of abuses of authority, it just changes their appearance. (p124)

and secondly:

We need to belong to someone who is perfectly able to desire our own good while desiring their own good, someone for whom there cannot be a conflict between our good and their good (John 3:16; Romans 8:28; 2 Peter 3:9). We need to belong to Christ. (p126)

This resolves a tension in my self. I grew up very, very much skeptical towards all authorities. I embraced political left-wing anarchism. I find traditional power structures inherently untrustworthy. How then can I be a Christian, and embrace a King? To put it another way, all authority enables abuse of authority, and all people are affected by a fallen nature, so that to a greater or less extent, abuse of authority is inevitable. We need authority, though, because absolute autonomy is a delusion. We need an authority who is perfectly good. And that is Christ.

Noble takes and extends the catechism's belonging to Christ to the dimensions of Scripture that speak of us as redeemed, as bought by Christ, as even slaves of Christ. I have likewise wrestled with the Scriptural language of slavery. I think Noble does a good job in showing how human slavery (which always requires the dehumanisation of the enslaved person by the act of ownership) contrasts with belonging to God - because he is categorically a different Being to us, our Creator and Saviour, we can't help but be 'owned' by him (even more so as believers redeemed by Christ), but "unlike any other belonging imaginable, when we belong to Christ, we belong without effacement." (p128)

We then move to implications, and all the implications sound the same, a fact Noble owns and admits ("Acknowledging a Christian anthropology has basically the same implication for each sphere of life: grace alone sustains us." p159) . He begins with justification - if we "belong to Christ, then there is nothing you can or must do to justify your life." (p129) And yet, and yet - one of the good things in Noble's book is that he regularly and emphatically asserts that simply knowing all these things is not a cure. You will still feel, regularly and often, that you need to justify your existence. Because you live in a world where everyone else, and the systems and structures around you, are dehumanising and encourage you to act like you are your own. Belonging to Christ is a comfort, it's not a miracle cure to self-medicate with.

He carries on exploring the nature of how belonging to Christ transforms, or can transform, our approach to living ethically, our sense of justification there, the twin elements of existential and theological justification, before moving on to identity. Again, our identity is a given thing, not a self-made thing. Here, again particularly valuable, is the warning that one can take on an "identity in Christ" as just another option of expressive individualism, which is really the manufacture of an idol of Christian identity as marketable and consumable.

In the section that follows, on 'meaning', I found another provocative thought. The disjunct between being meaningful, and feeling meaningful, and how these are not the same. If the problem is not 'feeling' meaningful, then we ask

What methods (techniques) can we use to feel meaningful? And the answers are almost always the same: find community, be vulnerable, connect with nature, find a job that gives you agency, take care of your health, and so on. (p143)

The solution is not a solution to meaning, but to feeling meaningful. Which means a placebo is as good as the real thing. It might be psychologically comforting to feel that one is meaningful, but not be; it is philosophically more valuable to be meaningful, objectively, even if one does not feel meaningful. There's the rub.

The alternative to technique in the Ellul sense, Noble suggests, is prodigality. If we set aside 'efficiency' as a meta-value, then we can "act according to love or goodness or beauty rather than primarily efficiency." (p151)

We also are not free to belong to wherever and whoever we want. Our place and people are (somewhat) predefined, and we negotiate our place in the world by attending to these. We don't choose our families, but Noble radically suggests neither do we choose our places, or our churches. The emphasis here on the fact that churches are places where we will hurt because people suck, and we don't get to cut and run, resonates deeply for me. Churches are places I have been hurt, and every church I've ever been in is full of people I didn't choose and pick to be there. They are messy, contingent places, and yet we belong in them.

Photo by Ruvim Kerimov on Unsplash

Chapter 6 - What can we do?

I mentioned previously how much I appreciate that Noble doesn't pivot to a solution. And chapter 6 explicitly opens with that - this book has no solution, it doesn't have a program, a key concept, a bunch of steps, or anything that will either "solve" society or "fix" oneself. And I appreciate that honesty. I appreciate that this book just sits in the sorrow and says, "Life sucks, here is the shape of existential suffering in contemporary life, and here is one piece of counter-thought that comforts us while life sucks". This isn't a counsel of despair, it's a counsel of modesty - how might we in the here and now live out little resistances to the Burden of Self-Belonging, motivated and undergirded by bigger truths that do in fact have the power to utterly transform our lives.

Believing that you are not your own but belong to God truly is a comfort in life and death. It is our only real comfort—all others are derivative. But comfort is not peace. And so long as our society is premised on a false anthropology, we will live in deep tension. (p162)

So, what does Noble counsel us to? Firstly, grace, for ourselves and our neighbours. We live in a disordered, dehumanising society, and we shouldn't expect that to go away, so life will continue to suck, for us and those around us. And part of our response is disavowing false hopes for change. Here, and later, Noble draws heavily upon T.S. Eliot, putting us into conversation with the phrase, "wait without hope". When we place our hopes in programs or revolution or whatever, we deny grace to anyone who won't get on board. And those hopes - political, social, psychological, are always in vain. This world won't be fixed in that way.

There's an intriguing turn here. Noble tells us basically that it's okay to cope, and okay to use methods to cope. It's okay to turn on the tv. There are better and worse ways to cope, and yes we should use better ways. More importantly, when we understand the good things of life as God given comforts, we can use them in right relationship to their ends. Here he draws upon Ecclesiastes 9. Good gifts of God are a comfort in life. And don't go around despising your neighbour because they chose Netflix to get through the day instead of Poetry.

Secondly, he counsels us that if we are setting aside efficiency as a value and virtue, we are free to embrace fidelity instead of productivity. Not that we should embrace inefficiency as a value instead, but we can act with faithfulness to our values and vision, belonging to Christ, in a way that isn't relentlessly driven by the project to improve ourselves or save our world. We can both act, and rest, in dependence upon God.

Thirdly, he returns us to Ellul, who likewise offers no overarching solution. The problem of the 'city' is solved neither by redemption of the city nor by retreat from it, but it is a tension that is lived with through the practice of daily faithfulness in the midst of the city, as long as possible. Every proposed redemptive/revolutionary solution is going to a finite human solution that fails. Nor can we flee (generally), because we are not our own and we are obliged to our neighbours.

We must find ways of living in the contemporary world that insist that we are not our own but belong to God—ways of living that testify to our radical dependence on God for our existence and preservation. (p179)

Not as a strategy for change, but as an expression of our belonging to God. And the shape of that is desiring and acting for the genuine good of others. Noble maps this through various parts of life - what does an outward-looking marriage look like, that involves sacrifice of individual desires, not only for the good of one's spouse, but also for one's children, and one's neighbours? What similar questions can be asked for single people and childless couples? What might it look like to answer career and employment questions with, "What does my community need?"

Whatever job pays your bills and is honorable and serves your neighbors is a good job. It doesn’t define your identity or justify your existence or even determine your purpose in life. It’s merely a good thing to do today. (p186)

There follows a section in which Noble offers a vision of political involvement framed around seeking to use whatever influence we have, for the common good, of people as people. Neither abandonment, nor retreat, nor putting our hope in political change, nor ever embracing unjust means for just ends.

Chapter 7 - Our only comfort

This chapter is a conclusion, of sorts. It focuses in and narrows us down on the question of comfort, and recapitulates all that Noble has said so far in relation to life. We then turn to our comfort in death.

I find death fascinating. Not in a morbid or macabre sense, but in an existential one. It is the one facet of our existence that defines and limits us, which equalises and terrorises us, which puts the lie to every attempt of finite and fallen creatures to assert, exert, our importance and immortality in the universe. It is our great enemy and implacable foe. From whom we run and hide, lie and deny, until it comes for each one of us. Truly, we need comfort in the face of death.

The book closes with Noble's letter to a dying friend. It is touching, personal, and powerful. The comfort of belonging to Christ is brought home, a "hard comfort", but a true one.

A reading post-script

Some books I struggle to pick up, some books I am indifferent to, and some books I can’t put down. This was definitely one of the latter. The analysis of contemporary anthropology was compelling, and the antidote, administered not as a miracle cure but a complicated and difficult comfort in a world of sorrow, was sophisticated in its simplicity. The thought that we are not our own, but belong to Christ, can, does, should, and will transform every aspect of what it means and looks like for us to be humans, in this life and in our deaths. Noble holds us back from false hopes and false cures, instead giving us what we need – the hard comfort of the gospel of grace rightly applied, to enable faithful, often painful, presence in our world.