I set a goal of publishing on this site as least once each month. But I’m not within a few hours of finishing the post I’m working on. So instead, before April winds down, here is a paper from 2019 which I wrote on indirect communication and came across today and thought was rather nice.
Indirect Communication
Indirect communication entrusts the receiver with some of the work. Soren Kierkegaard attempted to live his life, at least in some manner, to this end. Like Don Knotts as Barney Fife, he played the fool for the sake of the viewer, hoping they might get some use out of his foolishness. We do not take Barney Fife very seriously, but he is no doubt a very serious man. He is blind to his vices, and this works within the viewer the feeling of seeing beyond the veil, glimpsing something which the character cannot. Of course, that is the whole point. This is why Pat McManus, the outdoor humor writer, was so profoundly hilarious. In his wild stories, he portrays himself as the fool, leaving the reader to do the work. This indirect approach to communication leaves much of the responsibility with the receiver.
Kierkegaard speaks about the direct/indirect communication dichotomy in terms of illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. In his paper Kierkegaard and Indirect Communication, Poul Lubcke describes illocutionary acts as “giving orders, to beg and beseech, to threaten and to warn someone.” This contrasts with perlocutionary acts which he describes as “the enterprise of trying to move somebody’s heart or to persuade him” (Lubcke, 34). This latter is an attempt to “bring a listener to the point of decision [and] is in the indirect mode.” (Lubcke, 34) According to Lubcke, Kierkegaard equates perlocutionary acts with indirect communication.
At the end of his paper, Lubcke clarifies
“It is a necessary condition for all kinds of indirect language that we already have a knowledge of the possibilities about which we are going to decide . . . in my opinion many of the philosophical distinctions that Kierkegaard took for granted, e.g. the distinction between direct and indirect communication…no longer (if ever) belongs to our cultural horizon. It is, therefore…a task to reintroduce them” (Lubcke, 38).
The Gospel as Indirect Communication
We can define orthodoxy and go to great lengths and great volumes to do so. But orthodoxy is only an indication, not a description, of Christianity. The gospel is about an individual’s life, relationships, and way of being in the world. Using broad terminology, I can describe aspects of the gospel; the gospel is about liberation for captives and healing for the broken, but I cannot define what the gospel will look like in the life of another – nor should I wish to. The gospel allows space for healing, for grace to be received and given, and for personhood to develop in the process of becoming. And this gospel is at work all over the earth; it cannot be defined by words on a page. For “Christ plays in ten thousand places / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father, through the features of men’s faces” (Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire).
Kierkegaard suggests, “The most one can do is make it more difficult for someone else not to choose” (Lubke, 33). When the church frames the question as conform or be banished, there is not an authentic choice being presented. In that situation the outcome of each path is quite apparent. Kierkegaard wishes for a manner of choice in with the outcomes are not certain, where we are free to choose and faith is required. He wishes for all men to be like Abraham on the mountain, where a leap of faith is required. For Kierkegaard, it is better that we look the authentic choice in the eye and make the wrong one than to blindly do the right thing. As discussed in class, we ought to present the gospel in hope that each man might interpret his existence in light of the work of Christ.
Communicating the Gospel
Christian community ought to serve as a fortification for believers but must not negate choice. There exists within some communities a culture which compels participants to adhere to a certain mode of being: wear certain clothes, speak in a certain manner, i.e. play the game. Often, there are clear identity markers indicating who is in and who is out. In this kind of environment, the choices about someone’s life have been made long before they have arrived at them. The choices left to be made are rather small and deal only with how to live within a predetermined way of being. This is not authentic choice. Kierkegaard is adamant “one person cannot choose for another” (Lubcke, 33).
Christmas is an annual celebration of indirect communication. Christ could have come riding on the clouds and compelled every person to believe in him in an instant. Still Christ came into the world in the manner in which every person comes into the world. So it was with his life and death. He worked as a carpenter and died the death of a savage. Scripture points to instances when his glory became visible, such as raising the dead, calming a storm, or knocking men to the ground with only a spoken word. But Christ did not reveal himself to the point of negating faith. He often spoke in riddles, teaching in parables and then escaping before people could catch him. Christ performed perlocutionary acts which presented a choice to those around him.
Perhaps we must come to terms with our own faith before we are in a position to present the gospel to others via indirect communication. It takes much discipline and restraint to care for a person while allowing them to make their own choice. The easier thing is to enter into an argument, to try and outmaneuver the other. Much discernment is required as well. How can parents allow their children to develop as persons while also guarding them from encounters which will corrupt their being? How can pastors shepherd without controlling? It is a good thing, Christ said, for him to leave us so that the Spirit could come. And it is this Spirit which enables us to reckon with these looming questions, to become even as he leads us through the dark.
javen.bear. 