I've been slowly working through an essay by Zizek in a book, The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (University of Chicago, 2006). It seems to me for Zizek, we must take this title with irony, yet it shows the opening for theological thought that now exists in the general academic culture.

What caught my eye is a general diagnosis from Zizek on the state of culture in the West (anchored in the nature of the state, it seems to me). Zizek writes, "Today, we seem effectively to be at the opposite point from the ideology of the 1960s: the mottos of spontaneity, creative self-expression, and so on, are taken over by the System; in other words, the old logic of the system reproducing itself through repressing and rigidly channeling the subject's spontaneous impetuses is left behind. Nonalienated spontaneity, self-expression, self-realization, they all directly serve the system, which is why pitiless self-censorship is a sine qua non of emancipatory politics" (p. 135). The right to express oneself, the right of validation of one's one experience, the reduction of all stories to equally relative interpretations do nothing but serve "the System" of the endless repetition of the new and improved, of self-affirmation of all perceptions and desires, by which the "progress" of the world runs forward. Truth evaporates, a mere expression, so its said, of power; of course, the irony is that it is the power of "the System" that established the "truth" that "truth" comes in the validated experiential interpretation of each person or interest group.

In an absolutely brilliant move, Zizek moves to show the identical underlying oppressive ethical logic between an interview of Oprah Winfrey with John Gray, the author of the "Venus and Mars" series on gender difference, and the post-structuralist ethical work of Judith Butler. Gray on Oprah taught the audience to "'re-write' this scene, this ultimate fantasmatic framework of his subjectivity, in a more 'positive,' benign and productive narrative' (p. 137). Life becomes a means of re-writing: "yes, if it is sincere and serves the goal of your profound self-realization -- What disappears in this total availability of the past to its subseqent retroactive rewriting are not primarily the 'hard fact,' but the Real of a traumatic encounter whose structuring role in teh subjects psychic economy forever resists its symbolic meaning" (p. 137). For Butler, we are all "thrown into a pregiven complex situation which remains impenetrale to him and for which he is not fully accountable" (p. 137). Yet this is precisely "the condition of possibility of moral activity . . . since we can be responsible for others only insofar as they (and we) are constrained and thrown into an impenetrable situation" (p. 137). Thus "what makes an individual human and thus somthing for which we are responsible, toward whom we have a duty fo help, is his/her very infinitude and vulnerability . . . this primordial exposure/dependency opens up the properly ethical relation of individuals who accept and respect each others vulnerability and limitations" (p. 138). We are all only responsible, not for our own desires, perceptions, and behaviors per so because of our own trauma and vulnerability; yet we are responsible for the Other in accepting our own limitation, that we are caught in our own finitude and subjectivity and limitations. "This awareness of limitation implies a stance of fundamental forgiveness and a tolerant 'live and let live" attitude: I will never be able to account for myself in front of the Other, because I am already nontransparent to myself, and I will never get from the Other a full answer to 'who are you?' because the Other is a mystery also for him/herself . . . . This mutual recognition of limitation thus opens up a space of sociality that is the solidarity of the vulnerable" (pp. 138-9).

It is this way that "This 'tolerant' attitude fails to perceive how contemporary power no longer primarily relies on censorship, but on unconstrained permissiveness" (p. 134). To not participate in proper understanding and validation of the "Other" in their vulnerability and limitations, is fundamentally to fail morally to recognize your own limitations and thus become "unloving" and "judgmental". All we can do is encourage each other with a permissiveness that allows the unchecked continuation of our unexamined desires that provides the very grist of the mill that keeps "the System" running. There is no greater intolerance expressed than that by the tolerant who encounter the intolerant within the logic of the contemporary culture.

Of course, Zizek merely names an antidote that Christians have long recognized -- the "pitiless self-censureship" necessary to withstand the moral malformation of the culture is another name for Christian asceticism, the disciplines of the Christian life, particularly being engaged in the spiritual and corporeal works of mercy. Traditionally these have been ensured by living faithfully to the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Yet, it seems to me, that what instances like Wesley's "Rules for the Methodist Societies" was trying to do was to take the Christian asceticism out of the celibate life within monastaries to shape all Christian lives through engaging these works of mercy. In a culture of permissiveness and "understanding," it seems to me that holiness, the sanctifying work of the Spirit, lies on the other side of the "pitiless self-censureship' that engaging in the works of mercy require, down out of faith in Jesus Christ, hope in the power of the Spirit, and love of God the Father -- love of the Triune God that is then manifested in a proper love, not tolerance, of the neighbor.