A Practical Theologian's Response to Esther Meek's "Other"
Nestled solidly within Esther Meek’s essay “The Other” is a profound dare to followers of the Jesus Way to relocate, maybe even rediscover, faith beyond reason.[1] Meek invites us to open to the real, to receive in the smile of the other an invitation to pivot from ideologies, anonymity, and abstractions and, in a loving gesture, toward the real—toward symbiotic relationship and whole-personed presence. Hers is an invitation to welcome the limitations of our articulations of truth and our pragmatic notions of what works, wooing us to desire a loving posture toward the other.
Beginning with the End
Before getting to Meek’s big idea, join me in her conclusion. While wrapping up her salient essay, Meek draws on Wendell Berry’s 1988 novel Remembering, set in the fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. So far, Berry has situated nine novels and several short story collections in Port William, including Jayber Crow, which has a backstory that resonates with my reading of Meek. The story follows the life of Jayber, an orphaned loner-turned-barber who finds home and belonging in Port William. But more particularly, I want to draw our attention to the book’s narrative setting, where readers are offered a glimpse into three generations of farmers.
The oldest farmer knew his land deeply and personally. He communed with the land in a profoundly relational way, in a longing-to-know way, in the loving-to-know way that Meek so consistently woos her readers to (re)discover. He reminds me of my paternal Mennonite grandfather from the prairies of Manitoba, who was known to place a pinch of soil on his tongue, and by tasting that pinch, he knew what he should plant or if the field needed to lay fallow. In Jayber Crow, this older man’s more modern son was formed by a social imaginary fixed on maximizing yield. This son fertilized and planted crops on every inch of the family’s property. And he succeeded! He increased yield. But in the process, this modern son scorched the earth.
Then, along came the son’s son, the grandson of the older farmer. Having witnessed the ecological suffering in the wake of his dad’s obsession with yield, he longed for a healthier, more human-scaled way of being. The grandson longed to relate to the land not as a natural resource to exploit, as his father had, but as a partner in a mutual, faithful relationship—similar to how his grandfather once did. Yet in Berry’s novel, it appears to be too late to live in this way. The grandfather’s tacit knowledge of his relationship with the real was lost. It couldn’t be passed down. Even if that knowledge could be retained, the land is scorched and is now dependent on fertilizers and pesticides. And as if that wasn’t enough, the broader economics of farming had evolved away from living in harmony with the earth—so what is a grandson to do?
The grandson’s predicament appears to align with ours. Many of us long for something real. We find ourselves living in the turbulent wake of abstracted modernity. While the echoes of premodern enchantment call to us, it sometimes feel as if our imaginations have been scorched. Meaning was traded for power to control. Many of us desire a more harmonious way of living with, yet the political, economic, and environmental systems of modernity seem to control the day. So, what might it mean to invite the real here and now? How can we hope to commune with the real when the earth has been scorched, and we were discipled into abstracted truth claims?
This is Meek’s quest. This is my quest. Maybe you feel it too?
The Limitations of Truth Claims
Early in her essay, Meek walks her readers through the emergence of the modern philosophical project. She demonstrates that by objectifying one’s relationship with reality, the modern thinker sacrificed subject-to-subject relations with the real on the altar of possessing knowledge. One might even say that a truth claim became modernity’s abstracted mechanism for trying to describe and colonize the real. Reduced to a truth claim, the real was traded for a thought. Once abstracted into a truth claim, modern people were emboldened to live above the real, in a world of abstraction. Once abstracted, conquering, mastery, and ownership displaced faithful relationship—and it is there we find our modern farmer, obsessed with yield.
As odd as it may sound, over the years in the modern era, some of Western Christianity has grown to settle for its articulations of its claim to truth over a loving relationship with the real that its truth claim was meant to illuminate. Trying to figure-it-out prioritized getting it right, rather than lovingly opening to relate with reality on reality’s terms. When people substitute their claims about god[2] for the God who is, then god becomes an abstract idea. That god is no longer engaged in a subject-to-subject way, and well-meaning people of faith can end up worshipping their idea of god and missing the God who is.[3]
From Ideas to Relationship
Early in my transition from leading a local faith community to teaching at The Seattle School, back when the school was in an office park in Bothell, I had a profound encounter with a student named Lisa. We shared a brief conversation in the parking lot after class, and although I can’t recall what was said, the impact was transformative. It wasn’t the words that touched me but the authenticity of our connection. Lisa and I connected as two humans. I vividly remember feeling seen and loved, while seeing and loving her. Our parking lot encounter hastened and enhanced a shift in me and my teaching. These days, I often say that the classroom is an excuse for us to come together to discover a way of love together. As an educator, I am learning to imagine content as a platform for encounter.
In Meek’s essay, she suggests a path to encountering and knowing the Divine rather than merely believing ideas about God. Her proposed path is messy, as it challenges the neatness of modern truth claims. Embracing a real relationship with the Divine requires humility and continual letting go of preconceived notions and prior experience. Her proposal invites opening ourselves to the unfathomable reality of the Divine, who transcends our words and imaginations.
This may already be abundantly clear, but I’m responding to Meek’s essay not as an epistemologist, nor a philosopher; not as a psychologist, nor a sociologist; not as a biblical scholar, nor a systematic theologian. Rather I’ve been formed as a practical theologian. I am a pastor, a broken and often lonely person living and hoping for a more real way of being in this life. I guide local communities of faith and practice while training missional leaders to guide communities of faith and practice within Jesus traditions. I am a doctor of the church, paying particular attention to the church emerging after Western whiteness Christianity.[4]
Sometimes it feels like every time I turn around I hear more about the decline of the church, the rise of the Nones, Dones, Ums, Spiritual But Not Religious, and people walking away from franchised Christianity as they’ve known it. Meek’s essay helps me reimagine the decline of modern Christianity, at least in part, as a rejection of the reductionistic, abstracted, dualistic, fragmenting, and partisan practice of church that has marked the modern age. This mass exodus may even expose a grandson-like desire to (re)discover a real spirituality. And Meek, takes us even further. She wisely steers us toward the real, offering handholds for recognizing the new wine of Divine presence in these unsettling and tumultuous times.
So how? How might we escape the cave of our abstracted shadow puppets and be freed from the cynicism of postmodern angst and from our nihilistic despair? How might we practice our way to a more humble and authentic theological method? How might we begin to move beyond our thinking about god and to actually encounter the God who is? Or to encounter the real on the real’s terms, rather than dissecting it and forcing it into our preferred categories? What is this key that Meek so gently lifts up and respectfully learns from before generously placing back in our hands?
Opening to the Other
For Meek, the key to opening reality is “the other.” The key is the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the unclean, the wrong, the outsider, and the person or community least like oneself.
Consider the Western context in which Meek dares to propose such a thing. Thoughtful, reasoned civil discourse may be approaching an all-time low. Seemingly firm lines separate right from left and left from right in nearly every sector of life, thought, and practice. Images of divisions, fragmentations, adversaries, and wars are easily conjured. Celebrating the other as vital to genuine encounter, the alien as core to encountering the real, or the person or group I most disagree with as necessary to encounter the Divine—this is bold.
Sometimes, I feel like the grandson in Berry’s Jayber Crow, having come of age during peak evangelicalism, a time when modern Protestantism zealously pursued maximum yield. I was trained in the art of maximizing yield, ordained in a missionary sending denomination, certified as an Evangelism Explosion Trainer, mentored by the author of The Master’s Plan of Evangelism, and coached into “targeting” seekers at Willow Creek Community Church. I was on my way to becoming the modern son, armed with fertilizer and pesticides. But amid all this preparation to maximize yield, I experienced a profound mystical encounter with God.[5]
There aren’t enough words in all the languages throughout human history to capture the depth, beauty, and grace of that transformative encounter, an encounter that still resonates for me over three decades later. Suffice to say, through that unitive experience I came to a transformative knowing that I am God’s beloved child, part of God’s family, and entrusted with particular responsibilities within God’s family business. I was communing with the real. This experience began shifting my pastoral imagination so that I no longer sought to maximize yield at any cost. Ever since then, I’ve been on a quest for more authentic expressions of convening in the Way of Jesus (ecclesia), walking alongside leaders in diverse Jesus traditions, learning from varied cultural contexts and faith expressions, in neighborhoods all over the world. I’m learning to orient around love—love of God, love of neighbor and neighborhood, love of self, love of creation, even love of enemies. I am learning to join with all, especially those on the margins. I am learning to subvert empire. In short, that unitive encounter began shifting my focus toward less abstracted and more authentic, present, faithful living in the Jesus way, prioritizing God’s Shalom for all and everything and opening me to the real. This encounter initiated a transformational pivot toward the other reframing fidelity to Christ more as “right relating” than “right belief.”
The Triune God as Key to Encountering the Other
The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Corinth saying that God chooses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the strong (see 1 Cor. 1:27). At the conclusion of Jesus’s parable about the sheep and the goats, the Gospel writer records Jesus saying this: “The king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matt. 25:35 NRSV). Christ is other.
Theologically speaking, a Christian imagination of God simultaneously acknowledges three persons and one essence, multiplicity and oneness. This holy mystery encourages us to anticipate love and unity amid profound differences. As the late Richard Twiss loved to say, “You can’t have unity without diversity.” Stanley J. Grenz argues that having Christlike, loving relationships with diverse others is how human beings reveal the imago Dei.[6] The other is a gift of grace. Throughout both Hebrew and Greek testaments we see God revealing God’s mission of shalom for all and everything through the wrong people—through the enemy, the stranger, the weak, the young, the foolish, and yes, the other. So often God reveals themself exactly where the so-called faithful least expect God to be found.
I see in Meek’s other a profound invitation to move beyond the modern idea of religion and its possessive claims to truth, claims that so often places one’s possessed truth claims in opposition to another’s truth claims. Many of our modern religious systems and institutions are fragmenting under this kind of myopic us-over-them social imaginary. This modern binary tends to make the other a threat while making difference or disagreement intolerable. With every split over beliefs, practices, or personality a gospel of opposition and fragmentation spreads like a cancer under the guise of rightness, holiness, or truth. The Western whiteness church is a failed experiment in getting it right.[7]
Jesus emphasizes over and over that a flourishing life is about healthy and thriving relationships with reality not propositional assimilation or acquiescence. Looking at the life, teachings, and practices of Jesus as revealed through the Gospels, it is impossible to conclude that the goal of Jesus of Nazareth was to get everyone to share the same set of ideological concepts or beliefs. Rather Jesus came to give full life which Jesus orients around love—love of God, love of neighbor and neighborhood, love of self, love of creation, even love of enemies. Jesus refers to this as the “new commandment,” and it is a commandment that fulfills all commandments (John 13:34-35).
One can’t be forced to love. Thus, Jesus’s “greatest commandment” is a kind of anti-commandment (Matt. 22:34-40). Commandments by definition control and restrain. Commandments draw the line over which one must not step. Yet Jesus’s “new” command to love is liberative, free, and knows no bounds. Love is the fulfillment of all the teachings of the law and prophets.
Many have come to equate their own thinking about God with the Divine. Yet Meek challenges the dominant social imaginary’s desire for abstraction, daring us, instead, to welcome a more robust epistemological humility, no longer living in fear of paradox or mystery. The kind of epistemological humility Meek fans “loving to know”[8] into flame. Loving to know is, at its core, an opening to the possibility of relationship with the real that is marked by faithful presence. Right versus wrong, in versus out, white versus Black, conservative versus liberal—these are all malicious attempts at control. Loving to know is different. Loving to know seeks mutuality, curiosity, and reciprocity over dominance; it seeks relationship instead of rightness, love not ideology. Loving to know is shalom fulfilling orthodoxy.[9]
Ending with the Beginning
I began with Meek’s conclusion, and so now I’ll end with her introduction.
Meek opens by painting a picture of a young mother who, having recently given birth, gazes lovingly into the eyes of her baby. Then Meek contrasts this picture with the image of a second new mom who rejects her newborn and refuses to see her child.
A palpable ambivalence grew within me as I attended to this two-mothered intro.
In my listening to her essay’s telos, I heard we are all the new (m)other rejecting the other of our womb and our world, often justifying our refusal to see and receive in the name of right belief.
I also heard, that the lovely gaze of the smiling mother inevitably leads to a kind of unintended idolatry unless the new mom finds a way to let go of her controlling dream for the child, the very child for whom she longed, labored, and loved. Meek’s invitation seems to go beyond welcoming our idea of the real; instead, it opens us to the real of the other. And we often find that the real of the other seems to pull the rug out from under our expectations and even our hopes.
Increasingly it feels as though Western epistemologies and faith communities have been scorched by the modern quest for certainty in an evangelical fervor to maximize yield. As scary as it may sound, at least part of the invitation to engage the other involves acknowledging we cannot possess the real, one can only open to a mutual relationship with the real. Thus, according to Meek, real knowing is a gift, a gift that can only be received as one lovingly welcomes it as other, on its own terms.
Like the old farmer, many of the wise guides of Western Christianity who had deep local knowledge have disappeared, yet we are not lost. The Spirit of God is always wooing us to discover and practice the way of love seen in Jesus Christ. We can learn again how to subvert the social imaginary of spectacle, simulacrum, and abstraction. Our hope in this (re)learning is the other, especially those who have been most maligned and marginalized by Western Christianity’s insatiable hunger for more. Meek invites us to find our (m)other, (br)other, and (an)other in the face and smile of the other.[10] We might say the very idea, group, or person we most want to reject may in fact be the gift we’ve been searching for. God’s gift to us is the other, the one or ones we least expect.
It seems to me, that like the grandson in Jayber Crow, increasing numbers of followers in the Jesus Way seek a relationship with the real. Meek’s dare to us is not to try to return to some idyllic premodern way of relating to the real but to begin right where we are—here and now!—with the other in our life.
[1] See Meek, “The Other: Returning to Our Natal Philosophy in the Mother’s Smile,” The Other Journal 38.5 (2024): 1.
[2] Throughout this essay, when you see god with a lower case g, I am referring to a person’s or a tradition’s cataphatic idea, theology, or agreed upon articulation of God. When you encounter God, I am apophatically pointing toward the Divine who is, the I am, the indescribable transcendent who became knowable in Jesus Christ, the One worthy of worship.
[3] See the following useful texts for exploring the idea of relating with the God who is and not settling for one’s abstract idea of god: Meek, Contact with Reality: Michael Polanyi’s Realism and Why It Matters (Cascade Books, 2017); John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (P and R, 1987); Crystal L. Downing, Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semiotics of Communication (InterVarsity Academic, 2012); and Chris Boesel and Catherine Keller, eds., Apophatic Bodies: Negative Theology, Incarnation, and Relationality (Fordham University Press, 2009).
[4] Willie James Jennings, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Eerdmans, 2020).
[5] Toward the conclusion of Ron Ruthruff and Joel Kiekintveld’s response to Meek’s essay in this series, they refer back to Leslie Newbigin’s “acid test of evangelism.” Newbigin’s acid test comes in the form of a great question: “Is the evangelist ready to be changed by the encounter, or does he or she look for change only in the other party?” (Mission in Christ’s Way: A Gift, a Command, an Assurance [Friendship, 1987], #). Encountering the other is an invitation to mutual transformation. It’s the way of love.
[6] Twiss, Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expresison of the Jesus Way (IVP Books, 2015), 128. Also see Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self: Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei (Westminster John Knox, 2001).
[7] See Paul Hoard’s treatment of eucontamination in his response to Meek’s essay for a deeper dive into this realm.
[8] Meek, Loving to Know: Covenant Epistemology (Eugene. OR: Cascade Books, 2011).
[9] Meek’s proposal resonates with the final clause of The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology’s mission statement: “The mission of The Seattle School is to train people to be competent in the study of text, soul, and culture in order to serve God and neighbor through transforming relationships” (https://theseattleschool.edu/about/theological-statements/).
[10] In Meek’s essay, her stated focus is on the “other,” and she directly brings in (m)other, as the title of her essay clearly communicates; I am simply extending Meek’s methodology to include brother and another.