Aware, Away, Awry in Action

The story arc of "Aware, Away, Awry" in its particular applications has to do with the occasions in our lives in which any of the constituents of ourselves are shocked into awareness--with the absolute requirement in our analysis (which the theologians would like to forget) of considering that we lag in our apprehensions behind such initial shocks.  Things impact themselves upon us, and we react--but we must remember that "reaction" is a cumulative process, a process of the various parts of our experiential selves being shoved against each other.  If there is anything logical or expected (that is to say, linear) about our thought-progressions, this takes place in reality not as a type of contiguous process, but rather as a process analogous to a collision transferred thorough a line of coupled rail-cars.

The analogies are difficult, but so is the process that one might like to describe.  It is no wonder that Jesus presents the continual tasks of believers--who, in their daily lives, will be relegated disproportionately to low-end and menial tasks under supervision--to be the continual tasks of believers represented as stewards of households.  All of us are the stewards of our households both without and within ourselves.  As we attempt to process our inchoate experiences up to the most explicit of our understandings and potential verbalizations, we are deluged with chances for error.  This is the type of responsibility that bears upon us, even including the most intimate of private experiences, in such manner as responsibility is ostensibly borne by managers "in the real world."

In the real world, much of management is done poorly.  There are many reasons for this, but among the most prevalent is the perpetual managers' insistence that underlings "ought" to respond reflexively to duties, and--as virtually every employee has witnessed on some occasions--there is the reflexive managers' perennial complaint that "you just can't get good people anymore."  While of course it is often a cheap maneuver to attempt to define words by their derivations, it is entirely true that a wholesome approach to management involves the root of "hand," understood as to "handle."  A manager is responsible for anything and everything, regardless of whether it is to be handled directly or indirectly.  The good manager that Jesus describes does not merely budget for the servants' meals, but rises from his or her table of accounts to ensure that the servants are truly fed.  The bad manager that Jesus describes, who eats and drinks and beats the servants, is not overseeing a household in which nothing happens, but rather a household in which the things that happen have been placed by the manager out of his or her hand, as though they would happen properly by themselves.

These bad things are also the type of bad things that happen when we ignore the process behind "Aware, Away, Awry."  We want to have simple solutions to the things that vex us in our lives (think of the theologians' endlessly-touted "simple" salvation economies), but in a nearly-invariable pattern we actualize that "want" by pretending--against all evidence throbbing away in our momentary lives--that we are the single and dispassionate observers of ourselves.  Even when we have undergone great trauma, our chief tendency on this score (toward which we are pressed greatly by society) is to try to engineer in reverse a storyline along which our singular selves have passed.  We compile a story of our individual soul's journey, and then we must flog our memories and our lingering, multifarious impressions into acceding to that story.

We have many and varied and conflicting moments of awareness.  We move away from them in the innate remoteness among parts of ourselves; in the distance to which parts of ourselves recoil; in the passage of time and of circumstances from the original moments; and in our predisposition to view ourselves as singular, experienceable wholes.  We go awry in the process.

An fitting example of this in the theological pursuit is the standard sort of analysis of the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  The theologians want the parable to be simply about the joy in heaven when the lost are found.  The parable in Luke is preceded by the short and happy parables about the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, and it is unsurprising that the standard notion of the Parable of the Prodigal Son is that it is merely the concluding of that comfortable threesome.  However, the Prodigal Son is followed directly by the Parable of the Unjust Steward and (soon thereafter) the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus--two parables that deal with a person's responsibility to a household (whether defined as material or familial), and in length and complexity (not to mention perplexity) they would be more fitting partners in a tri-fold sequence with the Prodigal Son.

What cannot be forgotten about the Parable of the Prodigal Son is the fact that this--the younger--son does not really change.  The younger son endures great trauma and feels great emotion--but he leaves the household to obtain what he feels is a more favorable lot, and he returns to his father's household as a second choice.  He goes after much food, he ends up with little food, and he resolves to content himself with the (apparently quite ample) rations of his father's servants.  He goes after drink and (apparently) female companionship, and he has every prospect of such things in at least moderation if he returns (after a calculated rehearsal) to become one of those servants.

If the overarching theology of the analysis of this is pure Calvinism, then in terms of salvation it is mere shadow-play, or at most it is a directive on how the elect might obtain more favor from God in this lifetime.  Of course, Christianity does not really function on such terms, and so we are left with standard analyses to the effect that it is a salvation-drama, one that describes the process of salvation writ large.  Unfortunately, the apparently pivotal declaration that the young man in the pig-pen "came to his senses" or "came to himself" (or however it is translated) does not equate to actual moral sorrow.  The inheritance was his to squander, and he is apparently entirely qualified to be one of his father's hired men once the squandering is over.  The unwarranted idea that the young man's singularly-described "self" has changed must be squeezed out of the narrative.

But that the young man is hit with something in himself that he did not expect, or at least calculate upon?  Now that would fit with something recognizable in human experience, and something that might lead to salvation.  A part of the young man rises up and confronts him.  If this is the story (or the beginning of the story) of his salvation, then it presents in enigmatic narrative form a picture of the unresolvable debate about faith versus works.  Did the young man correct himself, or was correction bestowed upon him?  If we reckon that human beings are bundles of jostling components (or, as in our metaphor, multitudinous internal cohorts requiring diligent management) then the distinction between "correct himself" and "correction bestowed" becomes immaterial--as does the ridiculous notion of faith versus works.

Of course, the theologians cannot countenance such interpretation, and so we are left with the (empty-husked) story that the young man came to repentance and salvation--though if he ever expresses an internalized sorrow (rather than social or familial shame) it is hidden from us.  For all we know, he woke up with a hangover the next day and "came to his senses" and realized he had better start wheedling what he could from his father while the old man yet lived--after all, it's not as though the young man went to the far country, contrived to embezzle an additional fortune from the pig farmer, and then--struck with guilt--donated both fortunes to feed the nameless starving pagan multitudes of that nameless land.  That story--especially when we got to see what his awaiting father thought of it--would be one of salvation.

As it is, we have not cause--in any roughly discernable notion of Christianity--to know that the Prodigal Son was saved, but that does not stop the theologians from assuming that it is a simple tale of how individuals must act eventually before God.  The theologians will, however, entertain the notion that we do not know how the angry older brother responded at the end.  The story, as Christianity relates it, is open-ended at that point--though that just goes to show that Christianity has not been listening.  The older brother claims that he has never failed his in duties to his father, and his father ratifies that contention by saying that the older son will ever be with him and will inherit all.  If the father--taken as a figure of God--says that the older son (so often called "Pharisaical" by the theologians) has never failed in his duties, then the theologians have some explaining to do--though, in light of the fact that the father is definite that his elder son will rightly claim all, we cannot by any reasoned analysis conclude other than that the most likely candidate for the older of the two sons is Jesus.

The Jesus-figure, apparently, is angry.  Jesus was often angry.  That Jesus would feel anger in some part of his human self would be no more than a logical expectation of the out-workings of his human nature.  To have a part of oneself respond reflexively to some stimulus is only human--and yet Christianity would have us be un-human constructions of our own conceit.  By that conceit, we are singular, integrated beings--as though we might have a God's-eye view of ourselves.  By that conceit, we can look at such things as a very humanized parable told by the God-man Jesus and twist it freakishly to suit our arrogant theological leanings.  Everything human about the Parable of the Prodigal Son would warn us that the younger son might be full of as-yet-unconfronted tendencies, and everything human about the Parable of the Prodigal Son would console us that the merciful father figure has rightly entrusted his elder son to do the right thing.

The younger son is responsible for the household of himself, and in that household will arise many and varied tendencies.  The father is responsible for the household of himself and his family and his servants, with all the complexity that will entail. And the elder son is responsible for himself and all the household has--his being entrusted with the care of all, including his challenging younger brother, being the greatest responsibility and the greatest affirmation one might imagine.