As a practical theologian, and teaching at an institution that values the practical actualization of the kingdom of God in feeding the hungry, tending to the sick and advocating for the widows and orphans, I have always eschewed ivory tower academia and pulpit sermonizing.
However, I am becoming more and more aware of the danger of passionate calls to social action when they go something like, “don’t just talk about the problems, do something,” or, “don’t make the issue more complex than it has to be by over-analyzing it, just act!” Even more so when calls to action play on people’s guilt (especially middle-class guilt: “think of the starving children in Ethopia”) or are supported by insufficient or spurious facts and figures (lies, damned lies and statistics).
This kind of thing happens on both the right and left of the religious and political spectrum. Calls to action from the right tend to be against personal sin (abortion, homosexuality, pornography; usually somehow related to sex) and from the left they tend to be against social sin (racism, sexism, economic injustice; usually somehow related to power and money).
In both cases they concern important issues (even if one may disagree with positions taken), but my discomfort is firstly, that exhortations are to act against particular people or institutions (whoever is to blame: the government, the corporation, the media) instead of empowering people to self-criticism and personal change, and secondly, that simplistic solutions are offered that one should act on now.
Too often the call to action falls into the trap described so insightfully by Jacques Ellul in his book What I Believe:
…action serves as a substitute for truth. It is the great intoxicant of society and individuals. We ask for no reason; we plunge into action as into a party. Since action validates itself, we do not ask about its why or wherefore. What we have here is the frenzy of movement. We must not shut ourselves up in ourselves or in our rooms; we must be on the move to something new in an illusion of renewal. We must get out of ourselves in order to live only for entertainment, or we must forget ourselves in highly qualitative actions, for example, in our work or in deeds of charity, in the service of a cause or our country, in the distraction of a hundred possible actions that are always open to us and that are constantly renewed by an inventive technology that offers support for all actions and that authorizes the greatest possible dispersion of our being in its enterprises and fascinations. My acts allow me to escape the haunting question: Who am I? Action suffices. Above all, when I have gone to the edge of the world, when I have explored the most paradisal of islands, I must not come back to myself and make the ridiculous discovery that I am the same person as I was when I set out. Action evades the word; indeed, that is one of its main functions.
By “the word” Ellul means both the spoken and written word by which we signify and symbolize reality, but also the true meaning and truth of a thing (the logos). Thus action avoids reflecting on the true meaning of what it achieves and sees the fact of action as the value itself (it is self-validating). Very often what it is masking is that the one motivating the action is involved in power play: to motivate others to action is to extend one’s sphere of influence and therefore one’s power (and often money). And for the one preoccupied by doing, the difficult questions of “who am I” and “why am I doing this” are successfully avoided.
Let me give a very practical example (entirely fictional but quite plausible): a North American faith-based organization that emphasizes family values supports an orphanage in, let’s say, Columbia, run by a sincere and ambitious young Christian leader. Both benefit from the relationship in that their sphere of influence and fundraising capacity are increased (the organization has a large staff managing their international projects, with regular trips to check up on the local recipients of their funding and the young Columbian is the only one in his village who owns a Toyota 4×4).
The middle-class donors that give a monthly debit order to support the orphans (and regular photo’s and thank-you letters) benefit by soothing the guilt of their consumerist lifestyles but without any personal inconvenience or challenge (or physical contact with the recipient of their largesse). In fact this global system of charity and the international aid and development industry it supports may (perhaps uncharitably) be named the indulgences of the globalized church community. In other words, the ‘haves’ assuage their guilt and complicity in an unequal and unjust global economic system (okay – I know I am sounding like the lefties I was criticizing earlier but I’m not urging you to action of any kind, just reflection!) and ‘buy’ their salvation.
The ‘have-nots’ benefit by relief from their immediate need (but with little impact on what has caused them to be have-nots), and of course the social entrepreneur who runs the orphanage becomes one of the haves (in his context) as well as the recognition and status of being a community builder.
You may say at this point, who cares what the motives are, the orphans are looked after. Yes, from a functional perspective, their basic survival needs may be met (some food, a roof and a bed) but none of the fundamental questions (the word) have been addressed: why are there orphans in a communitarian society, why the massive inequality between North and South, why the fixed roles of giver and receiver, why the impersonal nature of the transaction, why the perpetuation of a system that does not in fact change anything or anyone? These systemic (and complex!) questions of identity, meaning and transformation are all successfully avoided because “at least we are doing something.”
So what is the alternative? Let’s leave that for another post, but at the very least, let’s stop calling people to action as if it is the preferable option to contemplation. Let’s not “just do something” (or make folks feel guilty if they’re not) and avoid the harder work of asking why we are doing it and whether it is, in fact, addressing the true causes of the problem.
Being precedes doing, and if not, very often doing unthinkingly avoids being.
