Everything a Christian does is “praxis.” It ought not be a useful word, but it is. That may be in part the influence of the adjective form, practical. In the two related essays, I have indicated my continuing interest in biblical studies and in Christian theology. It would be silly to say those are not “matters of practice.” Of course they are.
The real difference between the things I am going to be calling praxis and those other interests is that those are more formal. There is a science of biblical hermeneutics, though it is not all science. There is a logic to Christian theology—following out the metaphor that it is like geometry—although it is not all logic. If there is a “science" or a "logic" of Christian praxis,” I have never heard it argued.
The practice of being a Christian, of being a follower of Jesus Christ, has more to do with the traits of the particular person and the needs of the particular setting. It resists being systematized, certainly, and what remains are the “good practices” that people follow because they have found them helpful.
The implications of the praxis, the practice-oriented, model are too diverse even to catalogue. Besides, the function of this Page is to serve as an introduction to the kinds of Posts that will be appearing above the label, “Christian Praxis.” For instance, one such post will be appearing fairly soon with some such title as “What Does God Want from Shy Christians?” That being the case, I’d like to concentrate here on just four emphases. The images you will need are: team, diversity, water cooler, and journey
TEAM The first is that Christianity is a team sport. Solitary Christians labor under extraordinary burdens. We need to be part of a team or an ensemble or a group in order to ask the right questions of ourselves. There are two such. The first is “are we winning;” the second is “am I playing my position the way it ought to be played?” I probably should confess that I like team sports and “team” is my own first language, but I intend these questions to be available to people who have other first languages, as well, so I will meddle in other metaphors as a gesture of good faith.
It might just as well be an acting ensemble, in which case, you should be able to ask, “Am I playing the villain in a strong enough way to allow the hero to keep the narrative thread alive?” If I am doing what I should be doing—and everyone else is too—the play ought to have a powerful effect on the audience. My goal, our goal. By “group,” I had in mind both task forces, where the goal is clear and time is short, and groups like book groups, where there is plenty of time and the goals have more to do with belonging together and with the quality of the discussion. My goal, our goal.
And that’s why the notion of a solitary, that is, a “considering only himself,” Christian, is so puzzling. It would allow an offensive tackle to ask whether he is doing a good job entirely apart from whether the quarterback has enough time to find a downfield target and entirely apart from whether his team is beating anybody.
DIVERSITY The second emphasis is that any collective of functioning Christians is going to have to have different skills and if they don’t really value different skills, they won’t have them for long. There is a nice, but not exhaustive survey in 1 Corinthians 12, with which everyone is familiar. I want to use three others. I am going to call a “collective of functioning Christians” a “church,” (not meaning by that, a “congregation”) partly so I won’t have to call them CFCs. Every such church needs people who take the current situation for granted and work to improve it. And, people who do not take the current situation for granted, but who seek a fundamentally new approach. I call those “priests” and “prophets” respectively and I do that so I can say that the priests need to really “get” the prophets; need to appreciate them and enable them. They don’t need to understand them because they probably could not and their role does not require that they be understood. Ditto for the prophet’s appreciation of the priest. And if they don’t, they won’t have these skills available for long.
For the same reason, a church needs people who will drive a group; who will move them outside their comfort zone in order to get their work done. And it needs people who will nurture and buffer the members of that group so that even in hard times, they can withstand the demands being placed on them and, in good times, flourish under the challenges. Again, you don’t have to call them “leaders” and “healers,” respectively, as I do to say that the each kind of leader needs to understand that without the other, nothing is going to work the way it should. And if they don’t, they won’t have these skills for long.
And for the same reason, a church needs people who will confidently assert a goal and freely adapt to its achievement any tactics that are at hand and it needs people who are meticulous about the means, people who think that “the means” is what Christians are all about. You don’t need to call them “stewards” and “servants,” as I do, to see that the first group left to its own inclinations would become an army of steamrollers and the second group left to its own inclinations would produce an impenetrable jungle of worries and inhibitions. The servants need to value the bold goal-setting of the stewards; the stewards need to appreciate the gentle process orientation of the servants. And if they don’t, they won’t have these skills for long.
I have argued to this point that the focus on the collective goal and on the personal goal should be complementary. Neither is dispensable. That is why I said there were two questions. And I have argued that churches come with sets of talents such that the holders of one will be inclined to depreciate the value of others. It’s a shame, but that’s the way it is. My proposal is that a robust appreciation of the skills you don’t have, even a costly appreciation of those skills, if it comes to that, is necessary.
Two questions remain: how can I get the information I need and what should I do with the information I get? These important questions will require a new set of images. If you must have teams or ensembles, these questions will deal with things like looking at the game films or learning to play arpeggios more smoothly.
WATER COOLER Gathering the information your praxis will require will be more informal. It’s like the information that is exchanged in a really good water cooler discussion. It is like the personal experiences relayed by the patients who get their chemotherapy at the same time every week and become a very special group, since most are dying. It is like skateboarders teaching each other how to do a 360 without landing on your face. There is nothing formal about any of these. In these settings, one learns a kind of knowledge the Greeks called metis, which might be translated as “craftiness” or “savvy” or “street smarts.” It isn’t geometry. If you hang out with these people and you keep hanging out with them and learn what they have to teach you, you are going to wind up knowing most of what you will need to know. And you will be teaching what you know, although it may be only fragments and it may be more about your failures than your successes. Say it the way you need to say it; they will hear it the way they need to hear it.
JOURNEY The final emphasis takes seriously the notion, very very old in Christian thought, of a journey. I’m thinking more of the kind of journey a pilgrim would make than the kind a tourist would make. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t a destination; the journey really is taking you somewhere. But it also takes seriously the idea that on a journey, it is what helps you make the next step in the right direction that is most useful. One step. You outrun your supply line and you’ll just have to come back. One step.
Reconciling with an enemy would be wonderful and if you can do it all in one step, you should. But it is a task that cannot be refused by a Christian on the grounds that it requires more than one step. Taking one step is good. Helping a friend take one step is good. Helping the enemy notice that a step has been taken is good. I can be one notch more willing to believe that a criticism was well-intended and I can do that on days when two notches would be an unreasonable demand. I can be one notch less wary of taking emotional risks if that is the direction my journey takes me. Or one notch more wary, if that is “the right way” for me.
But always there is the destination. Always I have the obligation to move toward it as I am able. Always it is wise to reject what I can not do in order to affirm what I can do. Always it is good to take one more step when you have recovered from the last one.
