Intervarsity Press is publishing a new series of books called “Resources for Reconciliation” that pair leading theologians with on-the-ground practitioners. For example, put a missiologist and a missionary together and let them write a book. Or an academic expert on world hunger together with a person leading a hunger-fighting organization. It’s a terrific concept.
Living Gently in a Violent World: The Prophetic Witness of Weakness is one of the first books in this series. It is written by Stanley Hauerwas and Jean Vanier. Hauerwas is a well-known theologian, and Jean Vanier is the founder of L’Arche, a community that emphasizes the importance of the disabled.
L’Arche differs from other organizations by placing emphasis on communal life with the disabled, not merely work for them. Vanier’s organization is founded upon the belief that the weakest among us have something of spiritual and eternal value to offer us.
Living Gently in a Violent World intends to challenge our presuppositions. In the introduction, John Swinton writes:
“It is not the world of disability that is strange, but the world ‘outside,’ which we dare to call normal. It turns out that the world of disability is the place God chooses to inhabit.” (15)
I had hoped that this book would be a fresh look at how weakness challenges our world’s preoccupation with strength. After all, Christianity is the only religion that embraces the paradox of seeing strength in weakness, power in submission, gain in giving, etc.
Unfortunately, many of the distinctive Christian beliefs that undergird the pro-life witness of this book are swept to the side. Vanier embraces a bland ecumenism that sees everyone as “children of God.” His beliefs stem from a view of Jesus that does not always correspond to the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels:
“Jesus spent time creating relationships. That’s what Jesus did. His vision was to bring together all the children of God dispersed throughout the world. God cannot stand walls of fear and division. The vision of Jesus shows us that division is healed by dialogue and meeting together.”
Division is healed by dialogue and meeting together? Then why did Jesus die? Or take this:
“Jesus entered into this world to love people as they are. The heart of the vision of Jesus is to bring people together, to meet, to engage in dialogue, to love each other. Jesus wants to break down the walls that separate people and groups. How will he do this? He will do it by saying to each one, ‘You are important. You are precious.'” 63)
No… Jesus brought people together by dying on the cross and rising again to new life. This type of cross-less reductionism is what makes Living Gently in a Violent World ultimately unsatisfying. Instead of grounding the work of L’Arche in the gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection, L’Arche put down roots in the sands of contemporary psychology:
“The vision of Jesus is that we meet people at the bottom and help bring them up to trust themselves.” (71)
Ironically, much of the vision of Vanier and Hauerwas is distinctly Christian, even if the authors do not recognize its distinctiveness! Can you see Hindus embracing the untouchables in the way that Vanier lives with and serves the disabled? Can you imagine the secularist devoting his life to people without “meaningful life” according to our contemporary, merciless terminology? Not at all.
This book makes a powerfully pro-life statement: every life is valuable. Vanier peppers his book with good stories: a man staying by the side of his wife who is suffering with Alzheimer’s, people being transformed by the slow pace of the L’Arche community, volunteers discovering the value of every human life.
Living Gently in a Violent World communicates a distinctively pro-life point of view that shines the light of life in a dark culture of death. But the book’s Christian witness is muted by its theology. Living Gently ultimately negates the very distinctiveness that could have given its pro-life message the foundation necessary for true and lasting transformation.
