This article is by Nathan Hoff:
I can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question of “what story or stories do I find myself a part of? (Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 216).
The life you live, and the community you build (or do not build) will be different if you are the protagonist in a John Wayne story or if you are Mr. Holland in Mr. Holland’s Opus. What am I to do? It depends if you are Wayne or Mr. Holland. What story do you inhabit? The utility narrative goes something like this:
Meet Nora, a 22-year-old woman who grew up in a high-performing family. Her parents were both successful in their careers. Nora and her brother were competitive in sports and school. They all worked hard and played hard. Dad was especially careful to network with others at the club, in the Rotary, and the occasional appearance at church. The kids were afforded the best coaching, tutoring, equipment, and technology to excel. Nora asked her parents if she could go on the church service trip the Summer before her Sophomore year. They agreed it would teach some good lessons, and would look good on the college essays, which were just around the corner.
Nora came alive that week. There was a night where people blessed each participant using the indicative verbs from Ephesians 1. When Nora was blessed with the words, “Nora, I chose you even before the world began. I adopted you. I have a destiny for you. You are my beloved,” she was undone. Tears, hugs, and a baptismal faith was ignited and fanned into full flame. Nora returned to her family, who shared a mutual kind of respect, even pride, in one another. Her home atmosphere was a little high strung, but usually a little night cap calmed dad down, and put mom right to sleep. Nora’s parents were proud when she was accepted, and granted a generous scholarship, to a well-respected private college, where she eventually rushed the most selective sorority. Predictably, she was issued an invitation to join. The competitive atmosphere in that community did not lag. You wanted to look your best. You wanted to be your best. After all, you were representing a storied tradition. Nora graduated with multiple majors, summa cum laude, with a few job offers in writing. Nora was also exhausted.
True to its consumer nature, the utility narrative puts a price-tag and an expiration date on everything. Is it worth it? Are they worth it? Is going worth it? Is joining worth it? What will we get out of it? Are we still getting enough bang for the buck? Are they more work than they are worth? Will this help me get ahead?
The sting of this story is felt by young and old. Line up and pick teams on the playground, and you will see the pained-look on kid’s faces who are left standing at the end of the draft. Visit an older adult, and it won’t be long before they speak the language of utility, “I just don’t want to be a burden to anyone.” Utility turns love into technique, play into performance, grace into religious transaction, vacation into a photo-op, friendships become networking, and Christmas cards become just another weird flex.
We live in the land of utility, and it lives in us. In this land, relationships are stable, as long as they are useful, productive. The marriage vow in this land is “for better, for richer, in health, as long as you are useful to me.” Utility thinking has captivated the church. Measuring giving units, courting constituencies, tolerating celebrity culture, and having the talk with singers who don’t ‘have the look’ to be up on stage. The church lives deep in this land when it offers (sells) its services as another life-enhancement, wellness option, entertainment venue, righteous club, or eternal fire insurance provider. Utility is signaled in direct and indirect ways. Pastors, parish communities and small groups make it clear that sexual identity strugglers, or Trump supporters, or citizens concerned about ecology really don’t fit in our group as they communicate, “you have a limited value here.”
“A great deal of our politics, our ecclesiastical life, often our personal life as well, is dominated by the assumption that everything would be all right if only some people would go away.” (Rowan Williams, The Way of St Benedict, p. 27). Of course economics works because of utility, and meritocracy is a well-respected philosophy in hiring and promotion, and professional sports would be boring if they operated by charity instead of utility. The problem is keenly felt when every realm, including the family, the neighborhood, and the church is motivated by graceless utility.
“Although the poverty of our language is such that in both cases it says ‘love’, yet the two ideas have nothing to do with one another.” Anders Nygren’s tome on the motifs of agape and eros has immense application to community life. Eros is, by nature, “acquisitive” and “ego-centric”(Nygren, Agape and Eros, p. 175-179). Eros is the love that is expressed in the land of utility. Eve spoke the language of this land when she considered the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was something to acquire, “so she took of its fruit.” It was ego-centric, “desired to make one wise.” It was a useful, “good for food.” Certainly, eros has sexual expression in covenant-less, narcissistic pleasure that desires to acquire the other. This can hardly be lumped in the same love-category as one spouse cares for the other who has forgotten his name because of dementia’s influence.
Eros is also expressed in community. Natural affinities and backslapping can be erotic. It is affirming to live in a community where everyone has the same bumper stickers, watches the same news station, and has the same enemies. How right we are. How wrong they are. We are better. They are worse. We are brilliant. They are idiots. We are good. They are bad. Eros is a drug. Most people, naturally, are drawn to the erotic community of utility.
If eros is acquisitive, ego-centric, and utilitarian, agape is self-giving and spontaneous. Nygren points out the main features of the agape motif:
(1) Agape is spontaneous and “unmotivated.” This is the most striking feature of God’s love as Jesus represents it … when it is said that God loves man, this is not a judgment on what man is like, but on what God is like.
(2) Agape is “indifferent to value.” It is only when all thought of the worthiness of the object is abandoned that we can understand what agape is. God’s love allows no limits to be set for it by the character or conduct of man.
(3) Agape is also creative. God does not love that which is already in itself worthy of love, but on the contrary, that which in itself has no worth acquires worth just by becoming the object of God’s love. Agape does not recognize value, but creates it. Agape loves and imparts value by loving. (Nygren, Agape and Eros, p. 75-78).
God loves because God is love. We are beloved because God loves us. “Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be.” (Samuel Crossman). The eros community measures one another’s value by their usefulness, in transactional terms. How does an eros community break through to become an agape community? How does a utility community grow to become a resilient and abiding community?
Breakthrough or becoming isn’t something we do; it is something we are. We are the beloved community because we are loved. We love because we are the beloved community. A community built on utility will not be changed by imperatives but by indicatives. “That is why we should…” gives us the destination, but no fuel to get there. We know what we are chasing, but can never catch it. utility is symptomatic of a deeper diagnosis: Identity confusion.
Consider this story as the story you inhabit. Both the younger prodigal son and the older pious son thought they were servants for a master, who happened to be their dad. The prodigal practiced his speech, “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” (Luke 15.19). In other words: Maybe I could be useful to you. And the pious son negotiated, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you.” (Lk 15:29). In other words: I have been useful to you. Both are living in the land of utility. Only the Father’s authority has the power of repatriation, when he calls out to both, “Son.”
