Philosophy is a really annoying friend
Writing this paper and thinking of how difficult it sometimes is to study theology and philosophy. It’s like having a friend who only ever asks you the most challenging questions and then pesters you until you give the most honest answer you can. Sometimes she lets you hide from the truth, but more often she puts it right in your face and demands a response. Nothing is strictly academic. It’s all deeply personal.
It sent me spinning from the very beginning, but everything that drives me crazy about it is also what makes it impossible for me to walk away.
Six years in, there are very few theological claims that send me reeling. Many of the same questions persist, but I have grown comfortable with them. So I have found other things to unsettle me. Right now it’s Judith Butler. It’s impossible to read about melancholy and loss as anything but a person. This isn’t self help. It’s about the construction of identity. But, it’s revealing things in me that I’ve never addressed and pushing at vulnerabilities I didn’t know were there.
Liberal theology is very good at asking the right questions and not so good at providing satisfying answers. Mostly because they don’t exist. But, what’s personal is what’s fascinating and I think we’ve already established that I can’t walk away. Sometimes there’s healing in better understanding. It was actually that thought that made me write this. More often it’s just frustrating, and there is no conclusion I want to add to that, except to say that I’ve been happier since I started asking the difficult questions than I ever was before.
