This is a follow-up to my entry on the Atlantic pieced: https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/01/benjamin-herold-disillusioned-suburbs/677229/ with the title: THE SUBURBS HAVE BECOME A PONZI SCHEME. That encouraged me to read the book “Disillusioned-Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs.”
There is a systematic key that I found reveling in this book. Particularly towards the end, the author is reflecting on how to unravel the appearance of gloom and doom emanating from the stories told in the book. He makes this critical point about Timothy Morton’s notion of humanity dealing with hyperobjects, characterized by the incomprehensible vastness of the mess humanity has created. Some of these tangles that we created that touch our community directly are:
- The political and economic forces that foment and lead to our problems with immigration.
- The complete unaffordability of childcare education.
- The neglect and indifference given by the church to low-income and black and brown communities.
This same process of neglect, indifference, and lack of investment permeates our ministries. We can open this systematic lock by reflecting on how hyperobjects need theological and hermeneutical reflection; the liberation of our communities, as a philosophical and theological endeavor, beckons our sincere and systematic approach. How do we interpret the reality of our problems in the church, find spaces to liberate our people from their feelings of impotence and chaos, and transform their Christian life into one full of hope, resurrection, and divination? Answering this enormous “how-to question” needs to become the centerpiece for ministers today; the vastness of the problems should prove that it is a God-given task. Ignoring such a call will ensure Christianity’s demise and ongoing social and cultural irrelevance.
Timothy Morton introduces the concept of “hyperobjects” in his book “Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World.” Hyperobjects are entities of immense scale in time and space, so vast that they transcend traditional understanding of what objects are. Global warming is a prime example of such a hyperobject. Morton’s work challenges conventional thinking, urging a radical shift in our perception and interaction with these overwhelming phenomena. His approach blends philosophy, science, literature, and art, suggesting that the end of the world, in a sense, has already occurred. This is evident in how traditional concepts like world, nature, and environment no longer provide a meaningful backdrop for human events. Instead, we find ourselves enveloped by hyperobjects like climate change, nuclear weapons, and evolutionary theory, which impose immense strains on our conventional ways of reasoning.
Applying Morton’s concept to theology and church ministry, particularly in addressing issues such as immigration, the unaffordability of childcare education, and the neglect of low-income and black and brown communities, provides a thought-provoking framework. These challenges, and my additions, are well presented in the book “Disillusioned” with its enormity and clear examples of how we are highly connected with the life cycle of suburbs and the American dream. The systematic key to unlocking these challenges lies in theological and hermeneutical reflection on hyperobjects. These issues’ complex and overwhelming nature, much like hyperobjects, defies easy understanding or straightforward solutions. They are vast, interconnected problems that have grown beyond the scale of traditional church ministries and social action. There lies the key: traditional church approaches are then in need of deconstruction; here is my hunch for another reflection: we could find that if we deconstruct traditional ministerial approaches, we could see that the pieces could as well be reused, just like when your kids destroy a beautiful lego creation to create something new and exciting with each piece.
In this light, the church’s role is to interpret these problems and actively engage in their complexities through a philosophical and theological lens. Looking away, pretending it is not our problem, or ignoring it altogether due to the breathtaking scope of each of them is not an option. This engagement calls for a deep, sincere, and systematic approach, recognizing that the liberation of communities is not only a social or political endeavor but also a profound theological one. The church is challenged to move beyond traditional frameworks of understanding and action, embracing more comprehensive, interconnected, and innovative approaches that reflect the vastness and complexity of the issues at hand.
Morton’s concept of hyperobjects offers a valuable perspective for the church to reassess its approach to the immense and interconnected challenges facing our communities. It suggests moving from a narrow, localized focus on specific issues to a broader, more holistic understanding encompassing these challenges’ large-scale, interconnected nature. This approach calls for theological reflection and action as expansive and interconnected as the issues themselves.