In my last post, I proposed that vanity constituted the last intentional position or posture human being can take in seeking the divine. From the perspective of vanity, humanity moves from its easy habitation of the possible and into the difficulty of dwelling in openness to “something else,” i.e. that which is impossible, divine advent. I offered a preliminary definition of vanity drawing from Ecclesiastes: a disappointment of the autarkic self that results in separation from and indifference to the world. From this distance emerges the potential to readdress the identity of the human self. I would like to explore vanity further in this regard in the context of Jesus’ teachings in Matthew 6.
In
Matthew 6:25-36, Jesus challenges the definition of life as we know it. “That
is why I am telling you not to worry about your life and what you are to eat,
nor about your body and what you are to wear. Surely life is more than food,
and the body more than clothing!”[1]
In this passage, Jesus is rejecting a definition of human life that is
coextensive with the procurement of necessities and he is suggesting that life
may be “more than” this kind of appropriation. Immediately, the question of
limitation arises: What is restricting my access to “more”? The answer is
worry. Jesus is rejecting a life in which the self is entangled in worldly
anxiety. Jesus indicates that human life is potentially more than securing existence
through the appropriation of objects.
In
this passage, worry should not be confused with a mere pessimistic feeling.
Rather, worry is the occupation of anxious provision. Humanity is held hostage
by the seeming need to get ahead, make good, be productive. In a way that
recalls Ecclesiastes, Jesus remarks that the life of worry is essentially
futile, not able “to add a single cubit.” Additionally, he directly opposes
anxious provision to the “kingdom of God and his justice.” When we read this
selection with the verse directly before it, the dichotomy between the kingdom
of God and the life of worry becomes more pronounced; it is impossible to serve
both God and mammon. While some
translations and traditions prefer a limited definition of mammon (money, riches, excessive wealth), the grammatical
connections between the passages suggest a meaning for mammon that includes food, drink, and clothes. In this way,
we discover that Jesus is calling into question the life of appropriation, not
just of amenities, but of necessities as well.
By
criticizing worry in connection to the acquisition of necessities, Jesus seems
to be in danger of dispensing with all possibility of providing for life.
However, Jesus indicates in verse 6:33, “Set your hearts on [God’s] kingdom
first, and on God’s saving justice, and all these other things will be given to
you as well.” The necessities are not the essential problem, but the worried
manner in which they are acquired. We can further clarify his meaning by
appealing to another “life” passage in the Gospel of Matthew. In Chapter 16,
the apostle Peter has just admitted that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.
Jesus recognizes this title and begins to reinterpret its signification. He
describes a messiah that will be handed over to be killed. Anyone who would
follow him as a disciple must also take up his or her cross. Jesus says,
“Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life
for my sake will find it. What, then, will anyone gain by winning the whole
world and forfeiting his life? Or
what can anyone offer in exchange for his life?” The criticism in Matthew 16:25-26 is against the impulse to “save life.” By
“saving life” Jesus is not describing a rescue from illness or accident; he is
not admonishing the lifeguard or the doctor. Rather, Jesus’ condemnation falls
again on worried appropriation, specifically the impulse to snatch up life as a
possession. In other words, he is criticizing the human identity which secures
certainty in worried appropriation, i.e. the autarkic self. The autarkic self
is an identity that is based on self-sufficiency, in this case, the ability to
possess and manipulate objects in the world. The worried or autarkic self
mistakes adequate provision for life itself and the security of provision for a
“world” without worry. In this way, Jesus equates “winning the whole world”
with “forfeiting life.”
Just
as Jesus is not advocating the full scale forfeiture of human life, neither is
he counseling that the world as such be repudiated. With vivid pictures of
birds and flowers, Jesus carefully appeals in Matthew 6 to nature’s beauty and
its value as cared for by God. Jesus makes another distinction along the fault
line of worry; he juxtaposes the world viewed as a series of appropriations
with the world as creation. To that point, the beauty of the flowers is held against their transience. In
“the wild flowers growing in the field which are there today and thrown into
the furnace tomorrow,” Jesus employs the standard, scriptural image of vanity.
Acquisition cannot form the basis of security, because in the end it cannot
correct mortality. However, the ephemerally of the world is held against God’s
vigil over it. The world derives its value from its being the subject of God’s
care. The anxious self opposes this very quality, preferring the illusory
certainty of appropriation to the recognition of God as caregiver over
creation.
However,
Jesus holds out the possibility of “finding” life. Jesus’ message in this
passage includes the possibility of a life apart from the domination of anxiety
in openness to the impossibility of God. If the impossibility of advent is in
opposition to the bid for a “world,” then it must be predicated by a relief
from worry. Worry is countered, not by repudiation of the world as such, but by
an understanding of the world’s essential transience and especially a
realization of the futility of pursuing certainty through acquisition, e.g.,
vanity. When the world is colored by vanity, appropriation looses its ability
to guarantee certainty. In turn, the perspective of vanity grants a distance
from and indifference to the world that potentially allows humanity to gain a
new perspective on life itself and opens the impossibility of divine advent.
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