Hauerwas touches here on how we are ALL drawn in by what some would dismiss as “mantras”. It seems that the assumptions under which OTHERS work are “mantra”, while one’s own deeply held beliefs are “nobody’s mantra”. Last night, one person who has previously said that “I recite nobody’s mantra” was perfectly OK with characterizing my stance as “mantra”.
That may be by so many today rely on cynicism to sustain the self. When the presuppositions necessary to uphold a society’s ethic of honor are no longer tenable, cynicism becomes morally indispensable Through our cynicism –that is, the rigorous and disciplined attempt to investigate the self-interest behind every moral claim we seek to avoid the loss of the self by denying overriding loyalty to any cause or community.
Yet in the process we lose the very soil crucial to the growth of virtue –the self esteem cultivated by the sense of sharing a worthy adventure. For a rigorous cynicism is too powerful. Even as it calls into question the moral commitments of others, we cannot save ourselves from its destructive gaze. Cynicism leaves us only with the consolation that because we recognize our own deception we are not hypocrites or fools. Of course, there is no deeper deceit than the assumption that we are among those free from deception.
Moreover, cynicism cannot sustain itself, as it is too easily captured by powers it does not have the means to name, much less avoid. As historical brings we cannot avoid living someone’s history, even if we think our cynicism has freed us from all commitments. We are not free from all narratives, nor can we choose any story. Our only escape from destructive histories consists in having the virtues trained by a truthful story, and that can come solely through participation in a society that claims our lives in a morefundamental fashion than any profession or state has the right to do.
A Community of Character, p. 127
More below , in the extended entry, from that same chapter as above.
Only through such a society do we have the possibility of acquiring those virtues capable of countering cynicism– hope and patience. For as I suggested, the virtuous life is inherently adventurous; people of virtue, claim, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that our existence is responsive to moral endeavor. We are thus sustained by hope that the adventure of living virtuously will be worth the risk. Hope thus forms every virtue, for without hope the virtuous cannot help but be ruled by despair.
But hope without patience results in the illusion of optimism or, more terrifying, the desperation of fanaticism. The hope necessary to initiate us into the adventure must be schooled by patience if the adventure is to be sustained. Through patience we learn to continue to hope even though our hope seems to offer little chance of fulfillment. Patience is training in how to wait when there seems no way to resolve our moral conflicts or even when we see no clear way to go on,” Patience is able to wait because it is fueled by the conviction that our moral projects, and to particular our central moral project we call the self, will prevail. Yet patience equally requires hope, for without hope patience too easily accepts the world and the self for what it is rather than what it can or should be.
And this is the “substance” of the definition of faith, defined in Hebrews as ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”
Not seen, but yet , seen “in spite of the evidence”.
Only by hope and patience, therefore, are we able to sustain a self capable of withstanding the disintegration that is threatened by the inescapable plurality and often unresolved nature of our moral existence. We do not live in a world that is capable of being negotiated by one virtue but neither can we live without a self formed by the hope and patience sufficient to make our life our own. Without hope we lack the resource even to have a self befitting our moral nature but without patience we lack the skills for the self to acquire a history sufficient to be a self.
The SKILLS to acquire a HISTORY. And HISTORY sufficient to be a SELF. Awesome stuff. Acquiring history that is sufficient to be a self. What DEFINES us. What MOVES us. What CONSUMES us. Absolutely.
Without denying that there may be nonreligious accounts of hope and patience, Jews and Christians have been the people that have stressed the particular importance of these virtues For tiny are the people formed by the conviction that our existence is bounded by a power that is good and faithful. Moreover they are peoples with a deep stake in history; they believe God has charged them with the task of witnessing to his providential care of our existence. They believe their history is nothing less than the story of God’s salvation of them and all people. Such a history does not promise to make the life of virtue easier or our existence safer. Rather such a story, and corresponding society, offers training in the hope and patience necessary to live amid the diversity of the world while trusting that its very plurality effects the richness of God’s creating and redeeming purposes.
Whether hope and patience can be sustained in a world, and more particularly, a society like ours that no longer thinks such trust is incurred remains to be seen. I am not suggesting that in the absence of God people have the resources to live morally. People will usually find the means to live decently. I am raising a more profound question¬ –namely,, whether in the absence of God people can find the resources, socially and personally, to form and sustain the virtues necessary for the recognition and fulfillment of our historical nature.
(emphasis in the above quotes is mine)
Indeed, this statement that we are “the people formed by the conviction that our existence is bounded by a power that is good and faithful” is a basic tenet of the story that is the history of God we seek to embody.
I long for this “corresponding society” to that story, one which devotes its life and existence to reflecting that story even as they reflect UPON that story, and continue to shape its narative such that more of the realities therein can be “inviting” to those who seek a better way.
