(Thimble Sermon:)
Recentering in the Heart’s Virtue:
A Call for De-gendering Careerism in the Spiritual Vocation of Listening, Intentionality, and Love
Rev. Douglas Olds
27 October 2024
“Women are naturally more empathetic than men. They identify
and feel the particular hardships of others in a way that men don't.” So by all means, the capitalist theories consider this commonplace to suggest: to improve the world (expand the relative supply of labor chasing a
fixed political economic structure), let’s shape girls into male character by
training them how to sharp elbow their climb on corporate ladders. Such shaping of girls is
illustrated by the lists of personal characteristics and adjectives to avoid
vs. to advertise (via professional recommendation letters) for career
advancement purposes proposed by the Commission on the Status on Women of the
University of Arizona (https://rb.gy/5pyfgd):
Characteristics of women to “Avoid: caring, compassionate,
hard-working, conscientious, dependable, diligent, dedicated, tactful,
interpersonal, warm, helpful.”
Ego characteristics to “Include: successful, excellent,
accomplished, outstanding, skilled, knowledgeable, insightful, resourceful,
confident, ambitious, independent, intellectual.”
The first list of adjectives (labeled “avoid”) ironically
demonstrates relational focus which initiates eternal centering (the listening initiated, heart-centeredness of the Deuteronomic Shema [Deut. 6:4-9])—while the second list ironically
demonstrates centrifugality, the seeking of hierarchy and the monuments of ego,
and the tether to the cash nexus as opposed to householding-scale commerce and provisioning.
These lists reflect a traditional gender dichotomy, where females are urged
take on the egotistic autonomy of traditional males in order to advance in
their careers. Such “industry identified objectives” stifle the soul and
commodify citizens as purposive agents of mammon, the insatiable demon of wealth-seeking (Matt. 6 :24).
Instead, to address
escalating social dysfunction, it is the male who should avoid the
latter list and develop the former list of character. Jesus adds the purposive
intellect (dianoia: Matt. 22:37) to the Shema only after the soul of a person has been
reordered, directed from noetic primacy and set right (been rebirthed) in the Shema’s
sequence of human essence: by ear to attended Torah, then heart to love, nephesh
(the expressive and kinesthetic soul sited in the throat--to express words of goodness mixed with and conveyed by spirit), then effective action
(exemplified by Proverb’s virtues), again rerouted in the Shema's sequence by the heart.
It is worth quoting the Shema here to note its sequential metaphysics:
4 Hear [HEED], O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
The New Testament adds dianoia to this sequence to carry through the experiential insights
of metanoia (the effects of repentance) to actuate Jeremiah’s new covenant of
the heart of flesh—the heart devoted to liberating and enlivening flesh. See https://douglasolds.blogspot.com/2024/06/
Again, this suggests that the task for men requires the greater emphasis and address: to displace the mind’s arrogating primacy regarding social purpose and talent, subordinating it to charitable and
Golden Rule functioning where gift and the other--like of God's providence--is more valorized than talent and accumulation. Churches and pastors
fail this “born again” redemption of human nature becoming human essence when they model and call
for machismo, alpha dog energy as dominance, and contempt of non-hegemonic
human expressions of craft, instead to exemplify bitterness, sneering, an identity of derision, and nostalgiac regret looking for God in denial of the telic present, instead in a fierce past’s ancestry to "come again."
By calling males to give up their comfortably limned roles for a better, more creative and creational calling, and dissuading females from making the traditional male’s same mistakes, Jesus as ever redefines common, cultural ideas of human merit. It is not to climb mountains from a bootstrapped condition to reseed and restaff hierarchies with self and friends, but to ever pursue the virtues of the Golden Imperative that soothe every moment as God-given, a ceaseless and suasive alignment with grace that is without fail becoming all in all, even if every generation needs to be recalled—by the ear of the Torah and prophets (Matt 22: 40)—to the metaphysics of intentionality that enflourishes, sustains, liberates, and repairs estrangements of intent that have fallen from the good creation’s intent.
It may be argued there exists an optimal balance between ambition and relational virtue that aligns with the human metaphysical essence in the Shema. That virtues of a middle course are instrumental and not deontological. But take close note of the the Book of Proverbs which is thematically centered on the dangers of seeking a middle way for egological instrumentalities. For example, Proverbs 13:11a (NRSV) coheres with the semantic range of hăbēl: unworthy, selfish means and vain, vacuous ends that evaporate like mist: “Wealth fraudulently [NIV: hastily] acquired dissolves.”
But the middle path may only be relational and not egotistical. Its optimum prioritizes the other, the neighbor, the one who images God but is owed the consideration of the Golden Rule, the foundation of deontological ethics.
Shalom (peaceable wholeness that reaches out to include) and agon (strife and exclusionary striving) are the two dichotomous paths that admit no syncretism.[1] We are never to waver (John 6:66) from the one true path—never “to the right or to left” (Deut 5:32; 17:11; 28:14; Josh 1:7; 23:6; Prov 4:27; 2 Kgs 22:2; Cf. Prov 4:25; 10:9, 17; 12:28). No third way exists between life and death.
[1] Syncretism is the [attempted] “amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought . . . [in order, per its etymology, agonistically] to unite against a third party.”
—Soanes and Stevenson, Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
To be born again in and by the heart of Jesus is to listen for the intent behind words in every communal space--listening for the ethics of Golden Rule repair focused first on the other, or for strategic speech proposing to sickle the future of opportunity. Being born again in the Shema as the path to Jesus Christ includes a vocation of ear, heart, and repairing insight replacing discontenting cogitations and egological careerism--for man and woman alike!
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