Circumstance Seven
Circumstance One:
An American student studying in France reads an English translation of Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame de Paris (known in English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame). The villain of this story is Claude Frollo, a Faustian archdeacon who has dedicated his life to “hoarding up knowledge,” in Hugo’s words, having finished theology, medicine, science, and law, and started in on sorcery. But one day, while he huddles in his hidden chamber, the gypsy La Esmeralda comes to dance in the square before the church. Frollo sees her out the window and burns his books in the fires of lust.
From this point on, Frollo considers himself torn between intellect (studies) and passion (Esmeralda). But in reality there is one single lust that dominates him: the desire for control. His search for knowledge is simply a desire to be master of the intellect — how else can he say that he has *finished* with science? With theology? How can anyone say that he has exhaustively studied God’s creation, let alone God himself? Only if he cares more about himself and his intellect than about the thing he studies — if he places himself above, able to decide when and how he has conquered, in all senses of the word, the subject.
This is Frollo’s attitude. And when his long-suppressed sexuality bursts forth, it takes the same form: a desire to dominate the “beloved.” He vows to have Esmeralda, even if it means killing the one she loves; he vows that if he cannot have her, no one else will. He cares not about Esmeralda (although he claims to love her, to love her passionately); he cares entirely about himself.
The student has not yet finished the book, but he suspects that this attitude is about to lead to all sorts of malodorous shenanigans.
Circumstance Two:
The same American student studying in France thinks about the difficulties of learning a new language. It’s easy to learn about other cultures in America, when all the information is in English. But things are suddenly a lot more complicated when you live in another culture and realize that people actually talk and think differently than you do: that other languages aren’t simply English in code and that a foreign culture isn’t simply America in a beret. There’s a sort of unpleasant humility that comes with the realization that you, with all your sophistication and training and education, have suddenly come face to face with a language barrier as transparent as a wall of Jell-O — and that right now you are mentally unable to see the other side.
This humility may be unpleasant, but it’s also (the student thinks) beneficial. Yet when we do all our reading and talking and thinking in our own language, we don’t see the the need for this sort of humility. We assume that the world, on its most basic linguistic level, presents itself to us waiting to be understood. We risk inculcating an invisible intellectual arrogance, one that thinks itself more than capable of understanding and solving all the problems and quirks of the world (because all the important problems and quirks are in English, of course. Not to mention that all the people worth speaking to happen to speak English as well). We pack the world into Tupperware, close the refrigerator door, and move on with our lives. But the world is much bigger than our kitchens.
The student starts to realize that there’s truth behind the postcolonial literary theory he studied in Lit Crit.
Circumstance Three:
The same American student studying in France is browsing through a French grocery store when he notices a journal with an English cover:
Perhaps what the journal cover is saying, the student thinks, is that girls don’t want to be indexed and cataloged. They don’t want to become a field of knowledge to be mastered. They don’t want to become the Esmerelda to a Frollo — they want a Quasimodo, someone who loves them as a person.
The student thinks about this for a while and eventually wonders if the girls he knows think the same way. So he takes a picture and posts it to Facebook, prompting one of the most constructive Facebook discussions he’s ever seen. Somewhat surprisingly, not a single person agrees with the journal. Everyone wants both understanding and love; they even argue that they’re inseparable. This startles the student, since this was not how he had been thinking at all. Then he remembers a paraphrase of Augustine’s Confessions: “I love in order to understand.” It’s right, he thinks: you can’t deeply understand someone without loving her, or at least acting like you do.
But the student also remembers his childhood sailing lessons, when the slightest touch on the rudder would swing the boom clear round to the other side of the ship, taking unfortunately tall people with it. With the most imperceptible of adjustments, he suddenly realizes, our pursuit of understanding too can change directions, becoming more about the understander than about the understood. This is when the journal speaks truth and “understanding” becomes Frollo’s quest for domination. And this is what love prevents.
Circumstance Four:
The same American student studying in France continues to work his way through Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine Saint-Exupéry. He finds one of the most beautiful and profound passages about meaning, relationship, love and understanding that he’s ever read in the conversation between the Prince and the fox. Unfortunately, since his only copy of the book is in French, he has difficulty sharing this discovery with anyone who doesn’t read the language. But he can share one of the most poignant quotations: “You only know the things you tame.” (Taming, in the conversation, means establishing a relationship.) Out of context this sentence sounds like a quest for domination, but in context it reminds the student very much of Augustine.
Also, in English it sounds a bit less meaningful. Everything sounds more profound in French:
On ne connait que les choses que l’on apprivoise, dit le renard.
Circumstance Five:
The same American student studying in France is also working in France, at a language school with a bunch of international students: German, Syrian, South Korean, Russian, Brazilian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Belgian, and more. He has had several conversations about spiritual things with these students and also with professors, including one exciting class period where he was called upon to explain and defend his views on gay marriage. In French.
The student has been somewhat stretched by all of this, but has, in fact, encountered almost no hostility whatsoever to his religious beliefs. By the same token, no one has converted to his religion, either. And in fact, the more the student (who is a Christian) thinks about it, the more he wonders how he can justify his ideas about evangelism. He believes very strongly that he has a responsibility to tell people about Jesus, to urge them toward conversion. But who is he to take it upon himself to change another person’s most fundamental beliefs? Who is he to reach into another’s soul and tell them their life is built all crooked? The student would much rather get to know other people, enjoy being with them, and enjoy who they are — because even without Christ, the students and professors are remarkably fantastic people. Trying to be always gospel-minded around these people and making his default interaction mode SPEAK (the gospel) rather than LISTEN (of course you have to listen in order to speak, but that’s different from listening in order to appreciate) seems to him like a form of ignoring the other person in favor of his own message.
Circumstance Six:
The same American student studying and working in France reads the preface to Augustine’s City of God, a massive tome about the relationship between the kingdom (City) of God and the kingdoms of this world (the City of Man). A certain sentence arrests him: “Therefore I cannot refrain from speaking about the city of this world, a city which aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust of domination.” The phrase “lust of domination” is the perfect encapsulation of everything that’s been buzzing around in his mind for the past few weeks. This is the problem with Frollo. This is the (real) problem that motivates the (mindless) journal-cover slogan. This is the problem the student perceives with evangelism. So what is the answer? What is the opposite? What is the antidote?
The student rewinds a few paragraphs. The City of God, the opposite of the domineering City of Man, is marked by faith, patience, waiting, and humility — all qualities more or less opposed to pride and control-lust. Yet Augustine, strangely, still speaks of the *domination* of the City of God. The city possesses “an excellence which makes it soar above all the summits of this world”; soon the city will win “ascendancy over its enemies, when the final victory is won.” This doesn’t sound an awful lot like humility.
But there is a crucial difference between the two cities. Both cities await dominion and expect victory. But the one seeks an eminence “arrogated by human pride.” The other waits for an eminence “granted by divine grace.” Not arrogated, but granted. Not from us, but from our master. This is a radical shifting of focus, an unprecedented displacement of responsibility. Who are we to call people to repentance, to tell them their lives need changing? No one. We, in fact, have no right to do so. But God does, and he has called us to call with him. We didn’t plan the event; we’re just putting up the posters. Sorry, but we didn’t write the policy — look, the boss signed the memo right here.
We’re not drag people into a religious club or conform them to our opinions: we’re to speak the truth God has told us to speak. Perhaps it’s only when we think this way that we can see unbelievers not as “projects” or “challenges” but as people, fantastic and intriguing; lost, but God-stamped. For if our goodness is a divine gift, perhaps the goodnesses of non-believers are also instances of God’s grace — not salvation, but grace nonetheless. And we can rejoice in the beauties of a fallen world without forgetting to proclaim that a better comes.
Yet we must not only rejoice in beauty, but also flee from evil. For without the grace of God, our evangelism is pride at best and terrorism at worst — our best love is selfishness and our worst, rape — our pursuit of knowledge is little more than masturbation. The City of Man is the City of Self. Only with Christ can we escape, and even with Christ we must remember our littleness, for our goodness and the goodness of others are not arrogated but granted.
