Thoughts on Adiaphora

Adiaphora: a religious term that probably doesn’t get enough use. Like all good religious words, it comes from ancient Greek [Greek is the coolest origin for Christian theology; Latin runs a close second]. Adiaphora means indifference. For Christians, it means indifference to things that are not essentials of the faith.

There’s an old religious dictum: “In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” Sounds groovy, until you ask what the essentials ought to be.

Determining essentials is nearly impossible, despite centuries of effort and the assertions of various communities that they, in fact, hold the essentials and all you heathens [no offense to my heathen sisters and brothers and others] need to get on board with us.

From inside the Christian tradition, I can assure you there is little agreement.

We cannot agree on what writings should be scripture, nor what scripture means or is or does. We do not agree on Jesus: who was he, what is his specific relationship to the divine? Most of us are Trinitarian, but some of us cannot reconcile God-in-three-persons, and have some other constructions.

For that matter, we’re not really sure [though some of us are certain] what we mean when we say, “God”.

Since my adolescence, I’ve been a Jesus person. What that means and how it gets expressed has looked radically different over the decades, and plenty of Christians and non-Christians have told me I’m not, but I can’t help it. I just love that guy. I’m a huge fan. When someone asked Jesus what the essentials were, he had one answer: love God; love your neighbor. Later, the apostle Paul, in two of his letters, says that the essential is this: love your neighbor. Those dudes weren’t alone. First century Jewish thinkers and philosophers said the same thing: our entire religious tradition is three words: love your neighbor.

Those words seem simple and even trite sometimes. Last spring I interviewed a bible scholar named Dan McClellan for the Mountain Words Festival. The day before we lamented those in our tradition who leverage the bible to construct ladders of power. Toward the end of the conversation, Dan affected a stoner voice and said, almost sheepishly, “It’s all about love, man.” I get it, both the sentiment and the embarrassment. Love feels naive in the face of the challenges we see in the world.

Love God; love your neighbor. The Book of James, which some people think was written by Jesus’ brother, says, “How can you say you love God, whom you cannot see [and don’t even know exists] if you don’t love your sister and brother and other, who’s right in from of you?” I think James gets the priorities straight.

There’s only one essential, and it isn’t found in creeds. It isn’t in what you believe. Whatever you believe or reject about God or scripture or anything else is adiaphora. Looking to the material needs of your neighbor is the essence of living a full human life.

A person need not be a “Christian” [whatever that means] in order to follow Jesus’, Paul’s, James’, the rabbis’, or even Dan McClellan’s reminders that love is where it’s at. As Peter Rollins, a philosopher, says, “God is not … an object that we must love, but … a mystery present in the very act of love itself.” Do with that what you will.

Recently, someone asked me how we can find common ground with our political enemies. Despite my sometimes abrasive demeanor, that seems like a really important goal. If we can agree on the essential, we can talk.

Now, if you say, Black lives matter, and a person responds, “Not as much as mine,” we can’t find common ground.If you say, Stop bombing Gaza, and the response is, “They’re all terrorists,” we can’t find common ground.If you say, Protect trans kids, and a person says, “Mutilation,” we can’t find common ground.And on and on.

But if, centering our neighbors, we can sit down and explore historic, systemic, and ongoing racism, we might find common ground. If we can talk about the horrors of propaganda and the deaths of innocent people and European antisemitism, if we can confess our own ignorance of biology, social identity, the complexities of gender, and are open to learning, then we can find common ground.

A while ago, our vice president thought it would be a good idea to weigh in on that invitation to love our neighbors by mangling “ordo amoris” [Latin, the second coolest theological language, for “order of love”]. For him, love is a limited resource, like a pitcher of water, carefully spooned out, rather than a mystery that grows “in the very act of love itself”. Vance posited that ordo amoris means loving my family first, then people who look like me, and then, in diminishing amounts, maybe others. The Pope himself had to weigh in, and Vance doubled down, the quintessence of a man bringing a knife to a gun fight. The Pope said we ought to meditate on the story of the Samaritan [Luke 10], where enemies become neighbors, where material needs are tended to, not out of largesse, but from limited resources. He said, “love … builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

Love seeks the material good of others. And it is lower-archical. It seeks the good of the marginalized first, assuming that if one person has more than what they need while others go without, the ordo amoris is disjointed. It always takes the side of the powerless, the disenfranchised, those considered last.