On Inarticulate Critique

I encountered a problematic gesture today. It was on a FB group that I frequent and, most of the days, enjoy. The post was a typical kind of communication within a certain conservative Christian demographic – that is, the “disdain and disbelief” sort of post. I could probably write a large amount regarding the nature of the Christian “disdain and disbelief” post, since it appears to be the majority of the sort of communications that social-media-engaged-self-identifying-as-Christian people do. You know this sort of post, if you do any social media at all: “Can you believe this?” or “How long until that?”

The question at the heart of this particular “disdain and disbelief” post was:

So, how long do you think it'll be before you can choose more than two genders in a create-a-character mode?

The implied feeling of this post is meant to confer a particular "doom-and-gloom" response to the “rampant liberalism” and the “siege against Christian morality standards.” (Or insert your own fun phrases inside of those quotation marks.) The question isn’t actually a question; it’s a statement that says, instead, “The culture is increasingly becoming secularized; I bet we’re going to encounter this secularization in the multiplicity of genders in our character-creation screens. How annoying and bothersome that they are imposing their beliefs on us.” This is a perfect example of a "disdain and disbelief" post.

There is a deep problem with this “disdain and disbelief” post. Rather than seeking to understand the claims of the LGBTQ community regarding gender, this Christian person has thought that he already understands their claims. But gender theorists would claim that gender is “performative,” meaning that it is something that a person acts in accordance with. This is like when Jean-Paul Sartre says in Being and Nothingness that the waiter is just “performing” at “being-a-waiter,” when, in reality, he would not have to “be a waiter” if he were already – in essence – a waiter. (This is part of a description of what Sartre calls “bad faith.”) In gender theory, particularly that of Judith Butler, the case is made that there is no “essential” feminine or masculine and that a person is a “male” or a “female” or "other," with respect to gender, based on how they disclose themselves to the world around. The claim is that gender is a performance, whilst biological sex is a physical trait.

Yet, is not a video game avatar already a performance act? If someone were to play, say, Skyrim, they could play as a male or a female, and they can pursue romantic relationships with male or female partners (within the confines that have been programmed into the game). Skyrim does not need a “third gender” or “intersex” parts in the character creator – a player can make their character look like they want them to look like. In short: no gender theory academic would suggest that video games need the very thing that this Christian disdained.

Now, let me be clear: I do not buy the popular claims that the queer academic world and gender theorists makes regarding gender. It seems to me, often, that they are simply replacing one set of performative modes of life with another set of performative modes of life, without giving a case for why those performative modes or the experienced ‘freedom’ that accompanies those modes are “better.” While I understand their reticence against Platonic "femininity" and "masculinity," it seems to me that they do not call their existential gender claims to any suitable universal authority, something which is problematic. I also find there to be an implicit benefit to capitalism tied up within the modern queer discussions on gender, something that, if I were to make a case following the notion of ‘intersectionality,’ would be deeply problematic to the LGBTQ community itself. These critiques would be another essay if I were to delve into them.

The problem is not that Christians should not critique gender theories – we ought to, since we have resources to describe sexuality in a more thorough and complex manner than secular gender theories have – but that when we critique we should critique in a manner consistent with the claims that are being made. It is useless to moan about gender theory by wondering aloud if Elder Scrolls VI or the next Mass Effect game might have multi-gender character creation options; no one in gender studies would even think about requesting that because they view gender as performative in the first place.

A Christian critique of gender would need to begin with our admission of unbiblical gender standards that we have set upon men and women ourselves first, and then an honest discussion, treating the Scriptures consistently, of what human sexuality and human sexual difference implies for our day-to-day existences. This doesn’t mean that we need to arrive at the Platonic conclusion of “feminine essences” or “masculine essences,” nor do we need to arrive at the conclusions of John Piper, questioning whether women should be policemen or not; but we will likely conclude something different than the anti-essentialist claims made by, say, Judith Butler. (And, again, there is another line of critique one could follow that involves the problem of radical individuality under a democratic-capitalist state.)

My point here is not actually about gender theories at all. The bigger point is that Christians – and Christian theologians and Christian apologists – often do not understand those who they critique in the first place. It is easier to say, for instance, that Friedrich Nietzsche is just wrong when he says “God is dead” than to admit that his claim is right, given its political-social context, and not actually reflective of a theological assertion in the first place (re: he's talking about modernity). The more atheistic claim that ought to be refuted is the one by Ludwig Feuerbach regarding man projecting himself onto God. (By the by, I just heard a great argument the other day against Feuerbach’s claim from the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.)

Inarticulate critique – critique that is ignorant of the argument’s claims and grounds as well as critique that is poorly communicated – does not advance the Christian Gospel. If anything it makes the caricatures against the Christian Gospel true; it makes it easier to describe your given Christian Church as just another gathering-place for not-quite-the-Westboro-Baptist-Church types of folks.

Another example could be the way that modern Christian apologists use the terms “subjective” and “objective” to mean “opinion” and “fact” respectively, when the terms refer more accurately to modes of discourse, the discourse of language and the discourse of science, to put it really briefly. No wonder the atheist philosophers cannot take the Christians seriously – all-too-often, our Christian thinkers speak words they do not actually understand. It should be of no surprise that the words of our apologists are incommunicable with the liberal academia.

The Christian scholars who understand this problem – folks like Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Miroslav Volf, Charles Taylor, and I’ll include Tim Keller, even though he’s not an academic – are well-received when they debate and discuss their ideas in the public square. I saw a great discussion between Tim Keller and several liberal thinkers who thought of him as particularly wise, even though they disagreed, something that we cannot say regarding that debacle between Ken Ham and Bill Nye.

Inarticulate critique damages our witness because it shows that we are not willing to listen to those with whom we disagree in order to understand them before we challenge their ideas. It is not that we ought not challenge. The Christian faith makes specific claims about very contentious topics. But it is necessary that we understand the claims that are being made so that when we challenge them we can challenge in an articulate manner. Articulate critique, engaged critique, understands the stakes of a claim and challenges it from within its own system. This is part of what makes Jesus so incredible. Holding up a denarius He says: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s.” To the Sadducees, He says “I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God is the God of the living not of the dead.” To the man trying to justify himself, Jesus points to a good Samaritan. Jesus understands the stakes of the claims He’s being asked to make; and, instead of dismissing those arguments forthright, He jumps into the midst of the theology and philosophy underneath the argument and makes a radical claim.

That is the sort of apologetic work that we ought to do as God’s people, rather than making inarticulate claims and remarks that aren’t even representative of the claims of our opponents.