Happily Deconstructing

In What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, author John D. Caputo discusses a theme from Derrida’s The Post Card:

Even when it is not lost and even when it is understood, a text remains structurally and in principle capable of being understood differently–by different communities of readers at different times, in other times and other places—so that it is always happening but never arrives decisively at just one final destination that would be authorized to pronounce its meaning once and for all.

Caputo goes on to stress that the first Christians approached the Hebrew Scriptures with a "creative misreading" and that the Christian tradition is a history of "taking the story of Jesus differently, again and again, in the course of the ages, in changing times and circumstances." Many will buckle under this suggestion, and buckle to their pet Truth-claims, fortified against the dreaded Relativism or against a history of ecclesiastical misappropriations used to justify violence. These are fearful responses.

Caputo, as a deconstructionist, advises us to let the New Testament happen to us, as opposed to deriving instruction from the text. You might recall various ministers advising you to read under "the guidance of the Spirit."

And if the Spirit, having blessed you with a critical mind and a modern education asks you to demythologize, lifting the eternal truth from the temporal constructs that house it, what will you do? If this reading denies the historical claims of the Gospel story, and finds a different sort of meaning, will you accept it?

You might recall Origen’s belief that the letter of the text, the surface meaning, is not to be adopted when it would "entail anything impossible, absurd or unworthy of God." With an extra 2000 years of discovery, our ideas of what is and what is not absurd will inevitably differ from those of the writers of the New Testament, and those of Origen himself.

Armed with this knowledge, should we re-interpret the text, as Jesus re-interpreted the Hebrew Scriptures (Mark 2:22-28)? What authority do we have to do such a thing?

Maybe we have no authority, but to faithfully and continually reevaluate the text and read it in a new light, (that is, to make the text a meaningful part of our lives,) we must refrain from pronouncing any one reading as final and absolute. We must deny that we have any authority at all, and also question the authority of previous readers and commentators, while remaining open to their ideas and experiences. We must continually wrestle and fight with the text.

Peter Rollins, in The Fidelity of Betrayal, writes:

It is all too common for Christians to attempt to do justice to the scriptural narrative by listening to it, learning from it and attempting to extract a way of viewing the world from it. But the narrative itself is asking us to apprach it in a much more radical way. It is inviting us to wrestle with it, disagree with it, contend with it, and contest it--not as an end, but as a means of approching its life-transforming truth, a truth that dwells within our limits and yet beyond the words.

The conflicts that will arise from our divergent readings will frequently be tense and uncomfortable, but this will augment the tension and discomfort already within the text(s), an edifying characteristic of the multi-faceted New Testament. I am not suggesting we stretch the text to suit our agenda, I am suggesting we explore it free from our preconceived notions and assumptions about what we are supposed to find there, and I am suggesting that this act be an act of community.
 
It is important that we conduct our dialogue with a sincere love for each other. This will not be easy. We feel we have so much invested in the text that differences in understanding are threatening to us.

In a chapter called "Sentences" from New Seeds of Contemplation, Thomas Merton talks about "the men who run about the countryside painting signs that say 'Jesus saves' and 'Prepare to meet God'":

Strangely, their signs do not make me think of Jesus, but of them. Or perhaps it is "their Jesus" who gets in the way and makes all thought of Jesus impossible… In any case, their Jesus is quite different from mine. But because their concept is different, should I reject it in horror, with distaste? If I do, perhaps I reject something in my own self that I no longer recognize to be there… Let not their Jesus be a barrier between us, or they will be a barrier between us and Jesus.