Paul Tillich’s wonderful book The Courage to Be, which has been one of the guiding lights of my entire adult life, sets out the basic idea of the courage or faith necessary to engage with the ambiguities and anxieties of life. It’s a phenomenological study, drawing deeply upon both existentialist philosophy and a theological vision of what Tillich called ‘the God beyond the God of theism’. His faith and mine are grounded in the God who appears when the traditional God of theism and religion is (as he put it) swallowed up in the despair, doubt and meaninglessness of so much contemporary experience. A God beyond the God of religion.
Within this profoundly evangelical affirmation—evangelical in the sense that it offers some good news, life-affirming and hopeful—Tillich sets out two forms of courage. One is the courage to be apart and the other the courage to be a part. It’s a lovely and very insightful distinction.
The courage to be apart was perhaps the issue for so much of the twentieth century: the challenge to break with conformity, mob thinking and such things as the manipulation of our thinking by the media, political controls and economic pressures. Tillich had endured and eventually been expelled from his academic position by Hitler’s regime and then went to the USA for what he thought would be one year, only to spend the rest of his life there as an émigré. He knew personally how difficult it is to stand apart from the dominant powers of this world, in politics, in academia and in the church. The courage to be apart is the challenge of personal integrity. Tillich wrote also of the difference between solitude and loneliness. The courage to be apart affirms itself in solitude and within the busyness and engagements of everyday life. To quote a great song of that era, ‘I am, I cried’, or another ‘I am a rock’.
The courage to be a part is something else again: this involves the responsible decision to belong to, work with and be part of something—something inherently bigger than oneself, perhaps something more than one can manage, control or even envisage. I think this kind of commitment is much harder today than in the past. There is a strong affirmation of individuality and even resistance to ‘the dominant paradigm’, social forces etc. A ll that I agree with. But there is also an inherent suspicion of things we cannot manage, control or comprehend, which is both a good thing and a limiting thing. It is this challenge I would like to reflect upon here.
The courage to be a part of something I cannot envisage fully: is that simply fool-hardy, a bit of nonsense, the worst of the systems of control in mediaeval religion, society, politics? Have we not at last freed ourselves from all that—at least in most of the world? That is indeed the danger here. But does this form of courage or commitment to be a part necessarily mean that kind of control, capitulation even dominance and exploitation? I think not, though it is always necessary to guard against those elements.
I was thinking along these lines when reflecting with a colleague the other day. Many of us work in situations where we are part of something, whether it is an institution, a department, a system which is bigger than ourselves and more than we can comprehend even. We are part of something, but not something we can control, fully manage or maybe even see.
This led me to think of something I have observed in regard to many of the truly great building of the world. The people who built the great cathedrals of Europe or temples in Asia worked for their entire lives on a project that took longer than their lifetime. No one who started it saw it finished and no one at the end was part of the beginning. Yet all were committed to this grand vision.
So it is with many things, I think. We are part of this life, with its possibilities and pitfalls.We don’t know or choose our beginning and broadly we don’t control where or how it finally ends. (Even if we think we decide to end it all, that is almost always because of things we did not choose.) Our life is in the middle of something much bigger than ourselves.
Our work, our society, and if we engage with something like a church or faith community are all within something greater than ourselves. This is in fact the most helpful and meaningful idea of ‘tradition’. The word has a very negative connotation for many of us, but its best sense is about handing on. It would be good to think of it as an activity, the handing on of meanings, which in fact we can shape and change. We need the verb, traditioning. This would be the meaning-making, chosen handing on of things we have received into the world that is yet to unfold, the future which will also receive and change and hand on some such meanings. We are just a part of this stream of meaning-making. It is never complete, never finished, never fully grasped.
To be part of something more than ourselves is in fact our only choice in many aspects of life and we are best off if we accept this, grasp it with both hands and make the most we can of the opportunities, limitations and challenges before us. Make the most, with all our talent, inventiveness and also openness to what others have to contribute, different from and apart from what we have, what we know or can do. We are a part of all this and can celebrate it and learn to rest in that.
Trees are a wonderful object-lesson for us here. Some live but a short time, but many trees live for centuries. They are part of the world and depend on other elements and contribute to the whole. They are a superb illustration of how the universe cares for us humans too: they give off the oxygen we need, and they absorb the carbon dioxide we exhale and turn it into living form. Planting trees is one thing we all can do to help save the planet!
We are parts of a whole much greater than ourselves, in human life and society, in the earth and the universe, beyond our comprehension. Only the most foolish amongst us, beginning with some in elected office, imagine that they can control the world.
The courage to be a part is a positive and life-affirming stance. It takes responsibility for what we can do, as a part of the whole. But it also requires accepting our limitations, our finitude, and positively affirming as well the contributions of others different from ourselves, including all those we do not know, who have gone before or will come after. We are at most a part, perhaps a very small part, of something, many things, much greater than ourselves.
The courage to be a part requires a commitment to participate beyond outcomes. We do not know all that we are doing. Many of us make a contribution we cannot measure. The ‘results’ may not be known until long after we did that project or job—or may never be known. But to be part of the whole, with vision and hope, can be the deepest and most meaningful dimension of our lives and a source of joy.
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be,first published by Nisbet and Company, 1952; later by Collins Fontana, 1962.
An(other) en-courage-ing post, Frank. Thank you.
I appreciate your thoughtful and insightful writing Frank, you always stir the questions within.