The Emerging Informality: An Epilogue (At Last)

[Finally, at last, an epilogue (puns intended) to my series on informed formality, parts I, II, III, and IV. I hope you have enjoyed the series; I petition you to express your thoughts. My thanks to Milton Stanley at Transforming Sermons and Jason Coriell of Sunshine Church for sharing this series with others. And I want to thank everyone who commented here and elsewhere for their provocative thoughts, all of which helped me shape my arguments. I am nothing on my own.]

Did you ever learn in writing class that you should never begin an essay with a question? Well, if not, let me commit such a sin here today; let me model bad form. But if you do remember learning such a rhetorical detail, why would it have been taught? Why all the rest of the laborious emphasis on form, on syntax and grammar, on precision in spelling and diction, associated with learning to write? In short, why is there any form to writing at all?

Perhaps there is formalism in writing solely to avoid such things as visCos lemen vas7so for four non8¶. In other words, to avoid confusion and chaos. Formalism in writing not only protects clarity and meaning, it helps create clarity and meaning when both are threatened or lost. Similarly, formalism in diction, in the choice and meaning of words, protects against amphibolous distortions, as each writer commits to using language with formal accuracy. Of course, this is not to insist that language remain forever static or free of dynamism. For language is indeed a moving and growing thing; new words emerge all the time. But often new words emerge not because someone is reaching for new concepts; new words emerge because of the neglect, misunderstanding and misuse of the language already in use. "Irregardless" is a good example of a new, highfalutin-sounding word used as a synonym for "regardless" or "irrespective," but it is the consequence of linguistic abuse. It is not a new concept generated by a creative mind.

My aim in this series has been to sound something of an alarm. I have challenged the opinion that the Christian Church needs to be more casual and informal in order to be more culturally and socially relevant. I've insisted that a casual approach to Christian worship is antithetical to Christian relevance: the Church, I believe, is its most "relevant" when it is in a very real sense irrelevant. When an idolatrous world finds the Church irrelevant to its consumption of worldly gods, chiding it as out of touch, the Church should receive this as flattery. For the Church should perceive itself firmly fixed on a frozen lake's stable shoreline, standing like a rescue worker who is being chided and mocked as "out of touch" by those who have fallen through idolatry's thin ice; the Church is flattered to know that it is itself not trapped in death's icy grip. Of course, like a rescue worker the Church might need to plunge into the frigid depths to help others, but it need not stay there long to prove its relevance, to prove that it identifies with the world's plight. The Church's struggles with its own sins are well known, but its strength is that it knows its own sins.  

Spend two minutes in nearly any mall, or on any public bus; spend two minutes watching television, particularly the shows popular with the MTV generation; spend two minutes nearly anywhere in America, and you will see informality as commonplace as asphalt. Casual attire is reaching new lows, even when it has reached new heights as major designers continue creating lines of clothes that are pre-worn, pre-torn. Modesty, that great virtue protected by formality, is anathema to America's immodest boast that immodesty proves authenticity of self-expression and personality. Bearing one's underwear, or one's darkest sexual moments, is now a sign of validation and individuation, of being genuine and real. Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson, Chloe Sevigny, Madonna, Tommy Lee, Bill Clinton, Rob Lowe -- each of these have only benefitted from their indiscretions, turning modesty on its head.

You have heard such adages as "You are what you eat," or, "You are what you read." The point of these adages is utterly simple: whatever you do you will be. Last night I read a Rolling Stone interview with the already mentioned actress Chloe Sevigny, who admitted that if she portrays a "bitch" in a movie, she actually becomes an unpleasant person during production: She is what she acts. This little fact is powerfully true. Treat yourself like a bum, and you will be very much bumming. Talk show figure Bo Dietl, the self-made security guru who uses his wealth to clothe himself richly, told Don Imus yesterday that if a person dresses with self-respect then others will treat that person with respect. Dress nice -- be nice, and get nice in return. It is almost a law of nature. Most of us avoid the mangy dog.

Moreover, psychology has recommended that if you feel "out of love" with your spouse, pretend to be in love, romancing your way as if you were in the earliest stages of courtship, and your "out of love" feeling will disappear. Others have advised that smiling, even when forced, will make a sour person feel better; and that frowning will indeed make even the soul frown. Laughter is indeed the best medicine, perhaps most immediately needed by the cheerless. You are what you laugh about.

The Church is ostensibly the presence of Christ on the earth, His body; even His Bride. But if the Church sees itself as little more than Christ's brother, it is far more likely to become not a prince, but the Billy to Christ's Jimmy Carter. No doubt Our Savior was casual, but not necessarily in all things. No doubt He was informal. But was He informal about worshipping God? And was His very real body ever informal or casual in its functions? If we are that body, should we not function with that body's rich formality, with its wondrous sequences and protocols?

***

Where is the Kingdom of God? What does it look, sound or feel like? Is the Kingdom like an Abercrombie & Fitch; is the Bride of Christ like Victoria's immodest Secret? Can you show me where I might find that Kingdom? And if I find it, will there be any expectations of loftiness there, any great heights I must scale to raise myself above the casual life that is so easy to lead?

What were the warnings by the Catholic Church regarding birth control? They were sure and accurate: if you do this, if you "control birth", sex will be cheapened, treated casually as a recreational pasttime. It will remove responsibility; it will remove commitment and even romance. Make sex about orgasm, and pleasure and fulfillment will be sought in a complex of deadends.

Laugh if you will, it matters little, but the Pope was right: Contraception has only enslaved humanity to empty idols. And the rather protestant dissolution of sacraments and sacramentalism, of formality of symbol and act, has led to the demise of the sacrament of marriage, encouraging everyone, straight or gay, to define marriage in existential, non-transcendent terms: marriage is about whatever you want it to be about. Gay marriage proponents have not embraced the Church's idea of sacrament, knowing as they do that gay marriage cannot be sacramental. So they jettison sacramentalism, a rejection-slip many of us heterosexuals handed to marriage long ago through pre- and extra-marital promiscuity and divorce. (It is no accident that the Church that is the most sacramental is the Church that stands the firmest against gay marriage, divorce, abortion, war, and the death penalty.) But the message is clear and no joke: remove formality and even more informalities will follow.

I shall stop now, drawing this rather formal series to a close. There is life in taking life seriously: there is wonder in formality, in symbol and sacrament. Let us not lose our ability to speak with eloquence solely so that we may speak in the common parlance. Each has its place, but only one sets a standard that elevates. It is easy to be casual, as easy as saying "ain't." Let us with grace choose the harder way.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.