Listening to the Word of God makes us aware that we cannot simply adapt and adjust to the realities of a divided society. But especially in a society that is divided in the way ours is, the church’s work of formation is about listening to the Word of God in a way that makes it possible for us to listen to one another. Along with the Word we hear in the words spoken on Sunday morning, we need to hear more from the people who are part of our lives beyond the church. Listening means listening to the others with whom we create and maintain the things that make ordinary life possible, even in a divided society. Listening to the Word leads to a different way of listening to the world and to a renewed understanding of the things we do together with others in our everyday lives. Listening to the world involves shifting attention from the questions that pretend to be big to smaller problems that are closer to our own experience. It means paying attention to what we and those around us know about how to accomplish something together.
A Circle of Responsibility
Asking how all things are related to God as the source of their being, order, and meaning thus requires us also to pay attention to how things as we experience them are related to each other. It takes little effort to repeat the words of the Nicene Creed that affirm that God is “maker of all things, visible and invisible,” but more is involved in trying to see these distinct and sometimes conflicting realities as part of one created order that includes human dreams and stubborn realities, the world we build and the forces of nature, ourselves and our enemies. We may be inspired by a starry sky on a clear night, or by a photo from space that allows us to see the whole earth set against the vast emptiness that surrounds it, but it is often more difficult to see created order on a human scale that includes distances to be covered, tasks to be completed, and, of course, other people.
Nevertheless, that is the scale on which faith must be lived. Bonhoeffer’s insight into the task of Christian formation was to see that it has to be undertaken in relation to the penultimate goods of ordinary life, rather than in rare moments of spiritual insight or in big ideas put forward by political leaders. In ordinary life, we relate to other people. We take on roles and duties toward them. Together, we form organizations and institutions, and we are related through corporations, cities, and societies to people we do not know and will never meet. As we saw in the previous chapter, these relationships quickly take us outside our community of formation and beyond intimate connections to family and friends into what I will call a circle of responsibility, where we engage in common tasks and create possibilities that could not exist without this web of connections. This sphere tends to grow over the course of a lifetime, as we master new tasks and enter into new relationships, and we can expand it deliberately by reaching out to new people and making voluntary commitments to shared efforts. Sometimes this is done for reasons we would call altruistic or disinterested, simply because we care about the people who cross our paths and the ventures that matter to them. But just as important, and probably more familiar, are the occasions when we deliberately extend our circle of responsibility because we need new relationships, colleagues, and resources to deal with the responsibilities we have already undertaken.
Often, though not always, what is at the center of these responsibilities is a job. In theological terms, we might better name it a vocation or calling, to cover those whose circle of responsibility is tied to caring for a family, building up their neighborhoods and communities, or providing comfort and companionship in hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities. For Christians, vocation is important because it is the place where we actively build those connections between God and the world by which we come to a personal understanding of our faith. We are called to our tasks because it is in these concrete details that we can begin to see all things in relation to God. Without this circle of responsibility, a theocentric view of reality would remain an abstraction, a phrase vaguely remembered from a Tuesday Bible study group or a passing reference in a Sunday sermon. Indeed, most of the opportunities to make these connections come while we are not immediately thinking about the theological implications. We have deadlines, budgets, and pro- duction quotas to meet. We have a doctor’s appointment for the baby and a parents’ group that is meeting with the elementary school principal. We have promises to keep, choices to make, and a departmental “mission statement” tacked to the bulletin board to consider. These are the things that will occupy most of our attention.
Still, it makes sense to understand the results of these efforts in moral and theological terms. They are “goods.” By that we mean not just material goods, such as furniture or face masks, nor even economic “goods and services” offered on the market, but “penultimate goods” in Bonhoeffer’s sense, goals sought because they make human use of the good given in God’s creation (Genesis 1:26–31).* Penultimate goods are what connect things within our circle of responsibility to the meaning they have in relation to God. Most of us are happy to take home a paycheck, but if we think about it in terms of our life of faith, much of the satisfaction we gain from work derives from a conviction that what we do meets real human needs. Pharmaceuticals and bed linens go to a hospital that provides a setting for the work of doctors and nurses, and that particular organization functions as part of a larger social structure of insurance, incentives, and regulation that makes health care affordable and widely available. Or at least it is supposed to. That is what we think we are doing when we work at a calling. One aspect of our circle of responsibility, then, is that it is where we develop a detailed knowledge of how penultimate goods are created and an understanding of the institutions and social structures by which they are maintained.
Bonhoeffer’s ethics alerts us to the theological significance of these penultimate goods, but ethical reflection on the ways they are created and maintained is ancient. Aristotle, who gave us the first systematic text on ethics in Western philosophy, begins, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good.”* Taking time for such reflection on the goal of our activity can, of course, be seen as a kind of luxury, a leisure activity that those who grow the grain and bake the bread cannot afford. Aristotle may have been supported in his philosophical pursuits by good farm management on the part of those who cared for an estate in Macedonia that he had inherited from his father.** As a result, he was able to organize his thinking about human goods and virtues without paying much attention to the work of ordinary artisans or the virtues that might be found among farmers, slaves, and housekeepers. He seems to have thought that most people would do well enough by sticking to their craft and doing as they were told.
This attitude is still present in the modern world, where, only partly in jest, we warn people against taking on questions that are “above their pay grade.” Indeed, we often impose a sort of servitude on ourselves by concentrating on the specialized knowledge necessary to our tasks. This enables us to produce complex goods, for which we may be highly compensated, while avoiding questions about any larger good of which they are a part.
For people of faith, however, a circle of responsibility is more than a way to earn a living. It is a place to listen to the world in ways that both learn from and contribute to the ways we listen to the Word. The complex structures in which human goods are related to one another mirror the complex ways that faith understands them related to God.* Taking these goods seriously also relates us in important ways to other people, even when they do not share our faith. Precisely because all are part of this world of God’s creation, no one is excluded from living the moral life that Aristotle described, no matter what Aristotle thought about the philosophical capabilities of ordinary human beings. When people recognize in each other real concerns for penultimate things, it builds mutual respect and increases cooperation among them. As they begin to understand how other people live and the complex questions that are part of their daily lives, they recognize that everyone has something to contribute to shared questions that we face together. They do not view anyone who is different as being self-interested or simply evil, and so they are less likely to turn to false ultimates and polarized identities to explain their problems.
