Try Some Courage: Stanley Hauerwas on Death, Church, America, Suffering, and Love

The Table Audio w/ Evan Rosa

"We're a society that rarely acknowledges death before it happens. Christianity is ongoing training in dying early. That every politic, one way or the other, is a politic that deals with death." Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian, ethicist, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the 20th century, and perhaps most importantly, Texan. He began teaching at the Notre Dame in 1970 and moved to Duke Divinity School in 1983 where he's the Gilbert T. Rowe professor of divinity and law. He's the author of many books, including The Peaceable Kingdom, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness, which was written with Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche communities. His most recent book is The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, written to his real life godson, Lawrence Wells, son of Hauerwas' student and friend, Samuel Wells. For a deeply personal approach to his life and work, read "Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir." Here, "Stan the Man" was brutally honest about his take on contemporary American life, the church's political calling, vulnerable about his past pains and personal experience with disability and mental illness. He offered candid and pointed reflections on love, suffering, the practice of theology and what it means to be a Christian.

Show Notes

• 3:31—"What I try to do is to help Christians recover how odd it is that we're Christians...
  I'm in the constant business of trying to help us rediscover what an extraordinary adventure we've been put on by being full lived in God's kingdom in a way that will be very surprising to many people who think that Christianity makes them good middle class citizens of the United States of America."
• 4:33—Bricklaying, craft, and hard work that shaped his habits
• 6:35—The habits of theologians: humility and joy
• 7:20—On his marriage to Anne, mental disability, and Hannah's Child
• 8:30—"Mental illness is a black hole... you have no idea what's going on. ... What you have to remember when someone is mentally ill is they're in pain. They're perpetrating such pain on you, you have trouble remembering they're in pain. I tried to do that. To be as helpful as you can be. The more you try to make things better, things only get worse. At least that was true for me. Every person that's mentally ill is different. Her anger was volcanic. That's what finally killed me. Just absorbing the anger."
• 11:15—Suffering, lament, and grief. Naming the Silences "Silences drip off the edges of words. I think that oftentimes, we're too noisy around people who are suffering, trying to make things OK. What they absolutely need is presence. They need us to be there."
• 13:25—Wisdom for the sufferer. "It's not just the words, it's who says them. It's very important that the designated person of the community called the priest or the minister know what to say. It's very important that friends know how to be there, as well as not to say too much."
• 14:41—On our social practices of ignoring injustice, ignoring suffering for the sake of our own complacency and comfort. "I'd say, in 100 years, if Christians are people identified as those who do not kill their children or their elderly, we wouldn't have been doing something right." "I think in the name of compassion, we're living in a social order that will increasingly not know what to do with those born dying."
• 17:30—Ad Break: "Charting a Course Through Grief" A free 8-week ecourse with a variety helpful resources on grief.
• 20:22—"The idea that somehow or the other, our lives are meant to be free of suffering just doesn't make much sense."
• 22:30—The vices that stand in the way of American Christianity: lack of candid speech, and more...
• 24:09—On suffering and love.
• 26:01—Love, "apprehending the other as other," marriage. "Christians are obligated to love one another, even if they're married."
• 29:17—God is love. "God is love because what love means is that we didn't have to be... God didn't have to create, but we are as a manifestation of God's unrelenting desire to have us be His friends."
• 29:38—God is enemy. "The transformation of God from enemy to God as the one we love is part of the great challenge of living a Christian life."
• 31:24—"I prefer to cherish wrongs done to me. My sense of who I am is more determined by what I'm against rather than what I'm for. I pray that God can have my loves but not take my hates. If you take my hates, how will I know who I am?"
• 32:09—"Where would I be if I didn't have the church to criticize?"
• 32:16—Hauerwas's message to a society finding itself in hate: "Try some courage."
• 34:10—"The idea that we are Christian nation is an extraordinarily destructive one."
• 35:10—Christianity as a political religion. "Jesus is a politic and it is a politic of the formation of people who live by non resistant love across time by establishing ways of surviving in a violent world by being non violent which is a very dangerous way to be."
• 37:43—"Christianity is ongoing training in dying early. Every politic, one way or the other is a politic that deals with death."
• 38:01—Ad break: "Seeking Christian Wisdom for Life's Biggest Questions" via Biola LEARN (15% off your next course)
• 39:54—On confrontation, conflict, love, and peaceableness.
• 41:30—"Politic of the lie"
• 43:51—The experience of violence; weakness, gentleness, vulnerability, and power. "I think you don't become weak to be weak. Rather the language I refer is you discover how to be gentle. There's hardness to gentleness that makes it possible to not be overwhelmed by the violence but your refusal to let the violence defeat our ability to be friends. Gentleness, I think, is crucial for friendship."
• 47:06—The future of Christianity in America. "I believe God is making us leaner and leaner. As we continue to lose members and the church gets smaller, what I hope is we will discover unity between Christians that we haven't experienced for many centuries."
• 48:08—On writing theology. "I try to write at a very fundamental level that makes contact with what I think every Christian struggles with."

Credits

• Hosted and produced by Evan Rosa
• Resource of the Biola University Center for Christian Thought, which is sponsored by generous grants from the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion Trust, and The Blankemeyer Foundation
• Theme music by The Brilliance
• Production and Engineering by the Narrativo Group. More info at Narrativogroup.com
• Edited and mixed by TJ Hester
• Production Assistance by Laura Crane
• Follow: @EvanSubRosa / @BiolaCCT / cct.biola.edu