Stanley Hauerwas

The ministry seems captured in our time by people who are desperately afraid they might actually be caught with a conviction at some point in their ministry that might curtail future ambition.

The high humanism of contemporary theology and preaching has reinforced the presumption that Christians can be Christians without enemies. We go to church to be assured we have no enemies.

One hopes that God is using this time to remind the Church that Christianity is unintelligible without enemies. Indeed, the whole point of Christianity is to produce the right kind of enemies.

If postmodernism means anything, it means that the comforting illusion of modernity, that conflict, is, can be, and should be avoided, is over. No unbiased viewpoint exists that can in principle insure agreements.

Our difficulty is not that we have conflicts, but that as modern people we have not had the courage to force the conflicts we ought to have had. Instead, we have comforted ourselves with the ideology of pluralism, forgetting that pluralism is the peace treaty left over from past wars that now benefits the victors of those wars.

We need to have a sense of where the battle is, what the stakes are, and what the long-term strategy might be. But that is exactly what most preaching does not do. It does not help us locate our enemy, because it does not believe that Christians should have enemies.

The project of modernity was to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they choose when they have no story. The truth is that since we are God’s good creation we are not free to choose our own stories. Freedom lies not in creating our lives, but in learning to recognize our lives as a gift.

The great magic of the Gospel is providing us with the skills to acknowledge our life, as created, without resentment and regret. The recognition of our created status produces not tolerance, but humility. Humility derives not from the presumption that no one knows the truth, but rather is a virtue dependent on our confidence that God’s word is truthful and good.

Ironically, in the world in which we live if you preach with such humility you will more than likely be accused of being arrogant and authoritarian. To be so accused is a sign that the enemy has been engaged.

Moreover, you had better be ready for a fierce counteroffensive as well as be prepared to take some casualties. God has not promised us safety, but participation in an adventure called the Kingdom. That seems to me to be great good news in a world that is literally dying of boredom.

— Stanley Hauerwas is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University.