Counterweight

Michael Metzger

As clocks are wound back and we watch days grow darker, my wife Kathy says my mood also seems darker these days. I think I’m in good company. Critics often asked Flannery O’Connor why her writings were so dark. She said it was the only way to be a “counterweight to the prevailing heresy” in the contemporary church.

Flannery O’Connor was a writer whose career was cut short after being diagnosed with lupus at age 25. Given five years to live, she retired to her ancestral farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, living 13 years before passing away in 1964. During that time, O’Connor wrote two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960), as well as two books of short stories: A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965).

In correspondence with friends, O’Connor described her writing as “the accurate naming of the things of God.”1 Biographer Brad Gooch said she was in “pursuit of reality.”2 O’Connor pursued reality by playing the part of Old Testament prophet, unearthing heresies that are often hidden. “According to St. Thomas,” she wrote, “prophetic vision is not a matter of seeing clearly but seeing what is distant, hidden.”3

She explained this vision in the fall of 1963, in her final public lecture, “The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South.” The occasion was the 175th anniversary celebration of Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. Leaning on crutches, O’Connor read prepared remarks through her prominent eyeglasses. “Prophets,” she noted, “carry an invisible burden to remind us” of aspects of human nature “we have forgotten.” She was referring to the modern reader’s “sense of evil” being “deluded or lacking altogether.” Readers wanted sweet stories with happy endings. O’Connor wrote about freaks.

“Whenever I am asked why Southern writers particularly have this penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man.” For O’Connor, this idea of the whole man “is what we conspicuously lack in this age.” It was lacking in the church as well. “The reader wants his grace warm and binding, not dark and disruptive.” O’Connor told dark and disruptive tales. She was a keen observer of human nature. Contemporary Christians weren’t. Their faith was “a purely private matter” so they wanted purely positive stories.

O’Connor believed insularity bred artificiality—ra-ra replacing reality. In an address given a year earlier at East Lansing High School, O’Connor said modern writers must often tell “perverse” stories to “shock” a morally blind world.4 The novelist has to act as “a counterweight to the prevailing heresy” of a privatized and cheery faith. Her dark stories included unsavory characters, even Christians, doing some pretty despicable things. Thomas Merton saw O’Connor as “someone like Sophocles… with all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor.”5

The fall is why the prophetic voice is critical. It keeps the faith community tethered to what Jim Collins calls “brutal reality.” Great organizations “exhibit the ability to confront brutal reality without losing hope,” he writes. That’s why depressing reports are not necessarily detrimental. The prophetic voice can shed light on hidden heresies. I can think of at least two that the contemporary church prefers to ignore.

The first is the Christian publishing industry and its penchant for keeping things positive. Over 20 years ago, Dennis Bakke, a Christian and founder of AES (Applied Energy Systems) called a friend in the Christian publishing industry. He was inquiring if his friend knew of companies successfully stitching together faith and work but not doing very well economically. The friend thought for a moment and said, “Yes.” Bakke replied, “Why don’t you write about them?” “It won’t sell,” was the answer. When Bakke wrote his warts-and-all story of AES, Joy at Work, only a small Seattle-based publisher would sell it. It wasn’t cheery enough for the Christian publishing industry.

The second heresy is how sermon plagiarism has become passé. In 2006, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page, above-the-fold story: “That Sermon You Heard on Sunday May Be From the Web.” Suzanne Sataline described sermon plagiarism as rampant—not just practiced but defended by pastors because of perceived pressure to surpass the previous week’s sermon. Sataline reports that churches excuse plagiarism as simply “borrowing” ideas. Any credible academic institution would see it as grounds for dismissal. Ray Van Neste, an associate professor at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee says that any time a minister passes off material as his own, he’s plagiarizing. Period.

The problem in both cases is that an incessantly positive message yields an artificiality excusing bad behavior by believers. O’Connor believed artificiality causes us to forget that we are spiritual kin to sinners, in need of counterweights. In his book, Flannery O’Conner’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find: The Moment of Grace,’ Michael Clark writes, “When the Grandmother of the story touches The Misfit, she replicates Paul’s laying on of the hands at the very moment she loses her artificiality and realizes that she and The Misfit are spiritual kin.” Unfortunately, the Grandmother’s epiphany came too late.

It’s not too late for the contemporary church. At this time it operates mostly as a not-for-prophet institution. That’s not healthy, but the church can change. The first step might be a few good men and women reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The story will likely darken their mood, but if they prove to be counterweights, they’ll shed light on many of hidden heresies plaguing today’s church.

_____________________
1 Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1988), p. 128.
2 Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2009), p. 260.
3 O’Connor, The Habit of Being, p. 365.
4 Gooch, Flannery, pp. 274-5.
5 Thomas Merton & Patrick Hart, The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton (New York, NY: New Directions Publishing, 1985), p. 161.

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7 Comments

  1. Mike,

    I appreciate your writing. It is provocative. That keeps us thinking which hopefully leads us to better actions , more in keeping to good works. Thanks!

  2. Chris,

    I understand your question but suggest you read O’Connor before jumping to conclusions. Rieff’s “deathworks” include those books and writings that erase any reference to the sacred. They turn the theological into the therapeutic. Flannery O’Connor doesn’t erase the sacred order but rather reminds us of our fallen nature. My hunch is that she would rail against the therapeutic take on faith that’s become so popular.

  3. Mike,

    Thanks again for writing. I wonder if this “insulation” that causes Pleasantville syndrome in churches might also be an underlying cause of the society’s obsession with horror flicks. I refuse to call them films because most of them have no decent story, and don’t particularly stand as works of art. And it goes beyond horror flicks to dramas called “Ghost Whisperer,” reality shows based on ghost hunting, etc. It would seem that most men know deep down that O’Connor is right… that we are kin to evil, and this insulated life is not all there is, so they go searching for the spiritual somewhere other than the church, because the church is just as insulated. Fair read on the culture?

  4. Flannery O’Connor study group open to the public, men and woman, at St. John’s College:

    Wish you had more time to discuss Flannery O’Connor?

    Come Join the Woman’s Literature Study Group as we discuss “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

    Mr. Michael Comenetz will be leading the discussion in the Hodson Room on Tuesday, November 8, 2011 from 6:30-8:00 pm.

    Copies are available in the library and the bookstore.

    Hope to see you there!

  5. Mike,

    Your writings are appreciated!

    Many other people could benefit from your insights by creating a broader Clapham Institution – making more connections, bringing in more supporters and more writers – so that this ancient wisdom you write about may be recognized by a broader audience. Can you imagine if Jim Collins, David Brooks and Seth Godin became regular commentators on what the Clapham Institute puts out?

    While building a broader institution is complex for one person to do by himself, and perhaps evokes feelings of hope and fear, you better than anyone know how to build a team to do this.

    You can be successful if continue the same thing, but how far could this really go? How much influence do you want to have? Will it continue on for generations?

    Warmly

    Jeff

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