Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Bad Catholic

Home
Catholic
Against Suspicion

Against Suspicion

Last updated on: April 20, 2016 at 1:14 am by Marc

Against Suspicion 2016-04-20T01:14:16-04:00 Marc

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

You may be wondering why I am writing this from the floor, softly sobbing insane melodies and applying Icy Hot to my tendons. I just wrote and directed a children’s musical.

It wasn’t my fault. The script spilled out in an afternoon already flooded with caffeine, enthusiasm, and the hope of impressing a beautiful English major. Her niece and nephew egged me on (“it would be way better if the aliens had a third eyeball”). I held auditions with the same tentative curiosity with which one sticks a fork into a socket. It was joke right up until it was deathly serious, until suddenly, without concern for my spiritual well-being, The Incredible and Death-defying Expedition to Planet X was a thing.

A thing with alien politics…

space travel…

soviets…

and death.

So there I stood, caught in the bright, expectant glare of 35 children — their hopes, their dreams, their ADHD. They asked horrible questions like “can I wear a tentacle on my foot” and “would it be funny if I got shot.” I felt Immense Doubts. They (my doubts) sang (because this is musical theater, dammit) something like this:

“You’re a faker, a liar, a con-man, a joke / You’ve directed jack-squat and everyone knows.”

“That doesn’t rhyme,” I rejoined, but my doubts, like my plays, are hardly concerned with consistency. (Besides, no one notices a slant rhyme if you sing it, a fact which, given the right intonation, could pass for wisdom.)

motivatord3abc3b9ed6d0a1fcd306b060925b079c79d5781

The children ignored my existential crisis. It’s their particular vocation in life to make adults feel stupid for shivering over vague “issues of identity” when there are planets to be explored. Now tugging at my sweater, now punching my kneecaps, they called me Mr. Director. At which point, something marvelous happened: As light becomes the color of the glass it passes through, I became — not in pose, but in truth — the director they saw. I passed through their lens and found myself transformed.

America is an individualistic country, prone to the idiotic opinion that identity exists as some secret psychological nugget that we express to the world. Who-I-am relies on no one but me. Pope Francis called this “an extreme individualism which weakens family bonds and ends up considering each member of the family as an isolated unit, leading in some cases to the idea that one’s personality is shaped by his or her desires, which are considered absolute.” Contra the baloney, Aristotle calls man a “political animal.” I’m with him: Identity is always formed in dialogue with a community. I am not a lonely individual who may or may not become social. I am a creature who only exists insofar as he is held in the eyes of other people, saturated in a common language — always-already part of a family. Being “Mr. Director” proved this. No amount of self-assertion or Disney-style empowerment would have been sufficient to claim the identity of “director.” The identity of director is a co-creation, constituted in the magical space between my self-presentation and the creative, constitutive gaze of 35 little kids. They assumed my authenticity and made me “the very man.”

In this, the munchkins proved good Thomists. St. Thomas Aquinas says we should assume the best in people. He does not call this a work of charity, as if it were a gift to our neighbor to assume the truth and integrity of their actions. He calls this a work of justice — a work due to every human being. (II-II, Q. 60, A. 4)

When we doubt the goodness and authenticity of our neighbor’s actions, we abdicate our role as co-creators of their identity. We leave our brothers and sisters in the lurch, unable to really be who they are — for who they are is social, in need of our creative contribution. This is suspicion, the vicious opposite of a childlike faith in the authenticity of our neighbors, and it’s a tricky demon. It worms its way into everything. It whispers: “He didn’t really understand that book the way you did,” and “she isn’t really so committed to helping the poor — she just needs to feel accepted.”

The suspicious man is always triumphantly validated in his suspicions, for he plants in his neighbors the very failures of authenticity that he suspects. Anyone who, perfectly innocent, has nevertheless felt guilty as the police roll by knows this fact. Anyone who has suffered a suspicious lover knows the same. One is only a “faithful spouse” in, through and with the eyes of the other. Take away the trusting gaze and voila, the identity crumbles, and the temptation to be otherwise than faithful asserts itself, as when a suspected spouse says, in despair, “if this is how he sees me, I may as well give him reasons for it.”

If the children had looked on me with suspicion, they would have indulged a self-fulfilling prophecy. By refusing to believe in me as their director, I would have been unable to be constituted as a director. Suspicion sows the inadequacy it reaps. Sure, I could have forcibly expressed this identity over and against their doubts, but I never could have been the director as a real, felt identity — only as an artificial function.

A community formed in justice assumes the best of each of its members and thereby provides the ground for each of its members to rise to this high estimation, to “become who they are,” to be fully constituted in their identity which is only ever a co-creation of the self and the neighbor. From the dizzying heights of children’s theater I glimpsed a lesson for our country, who squints with such fervent suspicion that her eyes are almost shut: Our warring classes, races and political factions will continue to find each other inadequate, vicious, and dishonest if, delighting in national prejudices, we refuse to assume the best of our neighbors, destroying the very ground of community by which every man stands up in the full depth of his own identity.

Virtue Ethics That Don't Suck

Previous Post

April 11, 2016

The Radical Reverse Engineering of Pope Francis

Next Post

June 20, 2016 On Good Guilt and Bad Guilt

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Another Look Atheism Bad Catholics Beauty Communio Crookedhart Destupidification Exiting the Culture Wars Gender Theory That Doesn't Suck How To Language Liturgy! Love One Another Marriage Equality Modesty Music Objectification pop culture Poverty Sacraments Sex Technology The Best Religion in the World The Erotic Phenomenon Time Uncategorized Virtue Ethics That Don't Suck Winning the Culture Wars

Select a Month January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 July 2016 June 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A fence A wall A stone A door