Baseline Moral Seriousness
As I notice the face of a former student or two in footage of mobs threatening the lives of doctors and school board members and also see their parents who are also sometimes elected officials platforming the people who lead the mobs, the question of what I owe abusive adults with whom I am in relationship arises. As my friend, Karen Swallow Prior, recently reminded me, it’s probably better to call in than to call out, but folks are prickly sometimes. And it’s easy to mistake a calling in for a calling out. What do we owe each other in a disinformation age? Is every age a disinformation age?
Sometimes questions are put to me on Twitter. For the most part, each question proves to be a small gift that gives rise to something that wasn’t apparent to me until the question, like a teensy-weensy exorcism, shook something loose. “Deferential fear” is a name for a phenomenon I’ve come to witness a little more readily within myself and others in recent years, so I’ve started deploying the phrase repeatedly. A similar phrase with fewer syllables, “misplaced deference,” entered my bandwidth through Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez, so I’ve been using that one too. Here’s a question which speaks to both:
I have a response:
Consider the concept of insubordination. Insubordination as an error, a failure, a trespass, or a violation implies the presence of just authority. There is no insubordination apart from context. Every moment of every day is a call to recognize my own context more righteously. Art is recognition.
Everyone’s invited to art. Everyone’s invited to situational awareness. Everyone’s invited to figure out what an artful response to their own context might look like. When I publicly call upon Andy Stanley or North Point Community Church to address the fact of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bad behavior or the leadership of Christ Presbyterian Church to address Marsha Blackburn’s incitements to violence or Governor Bill Lee to fulfill his oath and his baptism or resign, am I being disloyal to someone?
I don’t think I am. I think I’m exercising baseline moral seriousness required of adults in the home of the free. Am I upsetting someone I care about? I’m afraid so, but I think I also need to overcome my proneness to misplaced deference if I’m going to be any help at all to anyone ever. I need to take responsibility for myself.
Sometimes insubordination is a form of love. And sometimes love involves risking someone accusing you of being disloyal. Demanding loyalty & punishing alleged disloyalty is a key move in the abuser’s handbook. Anybody else notice this?
If the heart is half prophet, something within us knows the score. We have the ability to sense, discern, and act upon the realization that insubordination is often deeper loyalty. We become what we defer to.
Editor’s note: The above photograph was taken by Eric England. I imagine I’ll always be grateful for it, but I’m especially grateful for it because it reminds me a little of a photograph of R.S. Thomas. I want to be like R.S. Thomas.
Stay safe, everyone.
Dissent =/= Disloyalty. Not automatically anyway.