Living Wittily and serving God in the tangle of our minds

To serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds....

This post was written three years ago when I started blogging as Living Wittily. It's based on the motto at the head of the blog page, words of Sir Thomas More, from Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons.

I read it every now and then to check it is still mostly what I am about - and it is. I've posted it again as a blogging reiteration, a restatement of why the time and energy to do this blog seems worthwhile. This is now the 1001st post - a lot of words. I hope some of them have mattered and made a difference.

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Almost every word of this phrase has significance for an obedient following after Christ. At least for me. Unpacking this I use the inclusive 'we' - others may not think or feel this way, which is fine. I would be interested though to hear from you what you think it might mean "to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds".

To serve implies obedience, but as willing grateful surrender, an inner attitude of consistent readiness, from which each action and activity derives its value as an act of devotion following after Christ.

To serve wittily means an end to naivete, a call to attentiveness and alert observation of the world in which we live and move, and within which we are called to serve. So having  our wits about us will mean, (and this only for starters - feel free to add to this unpacking process)

1. Not being rendered myopic by cultural assumptions, but rather see the world through the lens of the Gospel - not war but peacemaking; not greed but generosity; not lies but truthfulness; not power over others but power serving others.
2. Not being pushed around by consumer pressures but rather being intentionally shaped and transformed by Jesus. And what are the economics of the Kingdom; what is it that profits a human being?
3. Not being morally domesticated by ethical and cultural accommodations, but rather seeking to live in the radical freedom of the Kingdom of God where the only rule is God’s rule. The culture of hard realism challenged by visionary compassion; the idolatry of the bottom line questioned by gestures of sacrificial extravagance; the semantic cosmetics of political correctness superceded by communities of Jesus embodying radically inclusive love.
4. Not being embarrassed by the evidence of Christendom in decline, but rather seeking and embodying a lifestyle more faithfully rooted in the teaching of Jesus.

The tangle of our minds – tidiness and system, an imposed order on life, what P T Forsyth called the lust for lucidity – none of these answer to the sheer messiness and inconvenience of the world, our culture and our times. There is that in the Gospel which resists being combed into shape, style and fashion. ( I use the metaphor as one who no longer has much use for a comb!) My own experience has been that Christian theology, ethics and practice have to relate to a world constitutionally ambiguous, unpredictable, inconsistent – and each human life is entangled in the consequent joy and suffering that is a human life together.

And it is the tangle of our minds; speaking here only for myself, my deepest theological convictions, and even my most passionate spiritual experiences, are often rooted in the life of the mind. Thought, reflection, consideration, contemplation, reason, understanding, prayer – however deeply I feel the truth of things, they become most real and I own them as life convictions mostly as they are received and welcomed as ideas rooted in experience and expressed in the life God gives me to lead. Loving God with my mind is an essential not an optional devotional attitude and aptitude in my own spirituality – and for better or worse.

  So as a motto, ‘to serve God wittily in the tangle of our minds’, provides a number of perspectives on my personal discipleship. However, in case I get too serious about this, serving God wittily could also mean humorously, good humouredly, and with hilarity. Fun and laughter being an essential presupposition of healthily, gladly, en-joy-ably, serving God. That sets me thinking about the spiritual discipline of fun - is there a discipline of fun, an obligation under God to be a gladness maker?!

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

The whole thing fits well with Proverbs 8 which we read from my rapidly produced translation last week - wisdom at play. I wrote up my blogs this past weekend and I have included your phrase with the brief on your blog. Thanks for all the input.

[Hermina Janz]

I would like to encourage you to continue your blog, mostly for selfish reasons. I can't remember the google search topic I typed in some time last year, which originally led me to your blog, but I have greatly benefited from checking your site daily. Last week I forwarded your "Though I may stumble..." entry to several friends, for just one example. So much appreciated.
You have mentioned many authors I enjoy reading, and have led me to many new ones (new for me).
In the tangle of my mind, your blog has helped to shine clarity and encouragement, to work at developing this "life of the mind". I also do need to work harder at rooting this in lived out service, I admit.
I like your expression "economics of the Kingdom". A good way to re-focus daily.
I'll be back tomorrow!
Hermina, aka poetreehugger

[Jim Gordon]

Thanks for the encouragement Hermina and Bob. Blogging started as an experiment for me, and has become an important way of thinking in a shared conversation with people like yourselves. Grace and peace to both of you.

[T. Imhoof]

What is Bolt's source for this quote, or did Bolt construct it from several sources?

[Jim Gordon]

Please see the latest post where I mention Robert Bolt and his play A Man for All Seasons - which is where the epigraph comes from. So far as I know this is a fictional construction of the kind of thing MOre might have said!