'Focal concerns’ are those important aspects which give our lives
meaning and purpose and toward which we direct our attention. The root here is
‘focus’ meaning hearth. A useful metaphor for us. In terms of Christianity the
focal concerns are love of God and love of neighbour. So she asks do we live by
such focal concerns?
The device paradigm Dawn outlines (after Borgmann) teaches us that the notion of a device removes from us the burdens we experience with a thing. Eg a hearth,(thing meaning something which cannot be separate from its context, tasks and skills and experiences related to it, and how we engage it, learn and relate to it and one another. (Borgmann instances the machinery of a fireplace and what it is as a hearth thing.) Further, the device paradigm is concerned more with commodities(ends) rather than machinery (means). She notes the following -
Death of culture; LOSS: Truth, authority, community; Quick-fix,
breakdown in disciplines/practices; Pluralism; Rejection of actuality of ‘sin’.
I have been struck by the device paradigm because, I think that Dawn rightly highlights something of the power of this not only in society, but the church. And here it engages me to think more deeply about how we treat ‘church’ as device in so far as the debilitating effects – the fetters and shackles – make church and our experience(s) of faith less than real, more virtual. It concerns us in how we worship, how we relate to others (or not), and more…it all becomes a commodity and it has shaped our identity.
the commodities of our society are so attractively packaged and soI am especially struck by the virtual. Baudrillard speaks of simulacra where something virtual, simulated in the end becomes the real. I wonder in what ways beyond what Dawn mentions church has become a simulacra, when in fact we are missing so much more. If church is a thing and a part f the machinery then it involves us very differently. Reflecting through Lamentations, it might mean then that we become ‘communities of honest sadness’ (Brueggemann) who wrestle with issues and faith, but who know what it is to worship the living God, to live a daily faith, to be friends, to love and serve one another. In other words to organize our lives in ways that love God, love neighbour and begin to make a difference from the margins where we refuse to be DRIVEN any longer in ways that make the church a device/commodity a mere simulation of the God-reality it is called to be.
alluringly
advertised that churches sometimes don’t trust their own identity
and think that
they have to be similarly glamorous, even seductive, to
appeal to the seekers in
their communities, to announce their relevance, to
provide all that their
members need, to make a difference in the world. In
the process the churches are
adopting the culture’s device paradigm… and
thereby enter into a spiral of
weakening – becoming less and less what the
Church really is and then having
less to offer. My particular concern in
this book is that adopting these
misplaced priorities means that
congregations have no ability to equip their
members to question the
paradigm by which the church itself is functioning.(89)
