Fall 2024 · Vol. 53 No. 2 · pp. 168–178
Disclosing God’s World: Calling, Discipleship, and Curation
Have you ever tried to tell a friend about something very important to you, and then you picked up signals that the other person was merely feigning interest, or perhaps was even trying to change the subject? If so, in addition to being disappointed, you might have decided that the person did not “see” what you “saw” in that important matter. The phrase “see what I see” is a helpful way of representing such a situation. Our human experience of coming to care about what we “see” involves recognizing beauty. This recognition turns a set of bare facts about something into an intertwined network of meanings that solicits or calls for our involvement in a particular way. Inviting someone to care about something, therefore, does not so much center upon passing along lots of data about that interest (even though this could be part of the process), but comes about as a person p. 169 is afforded the sorts of perceptions that disclose to them the same beauty that we have come to see in our matter of concern.
The discipleship task in the mode of the curator involves seeing the Scriptures, the world, God’s actions, and associations between these in a coherent enough way that these associations can be conveyed to others.
Such a posture is not only helpful when soliciting others into our pet hobbies but is also an important piece of the logic of Christian discipleship. People tend not to come to care about Jesus and Christian living through receiving facts alone; they rather find themselves caring about Jesus and Christian living through seeing something beautiful in Jesus, in God’s world, in the Scriptures, and in the way the Christian life unfolds.
The type of beauty that is of central interest to this paper is the beauty that is perceived through the presentation of the character of God within the created order. This general beauty, argues Jonathan Edwards, is “consent, agreement, or union” with God’s being. 1 For example, holiness is beautiful (Ps 29:2), a clear night sky is beautiful (Ps 19:1), and God’s people living together in unity is beautiful (Ps 133:1-3). These are beautiful not because of their independent internal properties, but because God himself wills to forgive sins, God creates the majesty of the night sky, and God calls us to live together harmoniously, just as he exists in a Trinity of mutually supportive relationships. Conceived in this way, general beauty is a reflection of the invisible qualities of God’s divine nature or character, repeated within the created order (Rom 1:20).
Even though we can see something of God’s purposes in the beauty of Scripture’s witness and God’s created order, these meanings can be potentially obscured. They require interpretation and are only fully revealed as Scripture is interpreted well. If we are to see and respond to God’s character and action in a life of discipleship, it can be helpful to have someone interpret the beauty of God’s character and action for us. For example, the hope and promise of Scripture’s witness can be degraded into information alone if an interpreter doesn’t take care to show what it is about the Scripture’s witness that calls to us.
In this essay I suggest that we misunderstand discipleship if we view it as primarily a process of acquiring more and more understanding, even though acquiring understanding is an important part of discipleship. Instead, the disciple is someone who has come to see something of God’s person and God’s world in God’s intended way, and has come to feel solicited or called by these events in a Christian way. The work of disclosing God’s person and God’s world in God’s intended way involves more than logical analyses; in addition to being received or reasoned, the truth that we come to care about is also truth that is felt. 2 Such a truth speaks to us, asks for a response, and solicits a deepening commitment.
A way of conceiving the discipling task, in this regard, is through the metaphor of the curator. The curator is one who aims to disclose the world, not just in a way that conveys information, but also in a way p. 170 that solicits a viewer to care about or become invested in the world in a particular way. The role of the curator, as it relates to discipleship, is the task of disclosing the world in such a way that persons feel a call to live in the world as disciples of Jesus. To appreciate the work of curation, we must first understand two other concepts: “seeing” and “being called.”
LIFT UP YOUR EYES
In both the Old and New Testament Scriptures, characters are recorded with some frequency to have “lifted their eyes,” “raised” their eyes, or otherwise come to see what was not formerly available to their perception. This act of lifting one’s eyes tends to occupy a turning moment in biblical narrative, for as Scripture’s characters “lift” their eyes, they begin to see, or are permitted to understand, what was not formerly perceptible.
While sitting at the door of his tent, Abraham “lifted up his eyes and looked” and saw three men approaching him with a divine message (Gen 18:2 NASB, passim). After Abraham’s hand is stayed by God during the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham “raised his eyes and looked” to behold a ram caught in a nearby thicket (Gen 22:13). Though prohibited from entering the Promised Land, Moses is commanded by God to “lift up your eyes to the west and north and south and east,” and see the Promised Land for himself before passing away (Deut 3:27). As Joshua was preparing for battle with Jericho, he “lifted up his eyes and looked” to see the angel of the Lord opposite him with a message of God’s holiness and purposes (Josh 5:13). As David awaited news of battle, a watchman on the fortress wall “raised his eyes and looked” to see a lone man running with both good news of victory and crushing news of Absalom’s death (2 Sam 18:24). In Psalm 121:1, the words “I will lift up my eyes” refer to a posture of prayer, of focusing one’s attention on God. Lifted by God’s Spirit in a vision, Ezekiel is commanded to “raise your eyes now toward the north” where he sees the abominations Israel is committing against the Lord God (Ezek 8:5). Explaining the mission of God to his otherwise imperceptive disciples, Jesus instructs his followers to “lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest” (John 4:35).
To lift one’s eyes in Scripture is not simply a description of eye movement; rather it indicates a new awareness and focus. The phrase signals when a character sees differently by seeing what was not known or recognized previously. The biblical character who lifts their eyes becomes attuned to the world in a new way, making possible a new kind of participation in and response to the world. 3 Such a person may come to see the world as it is, and thereby is afforded the ability to act in alignment with these new understandings. p. 171
As characters in Scripture come to lift their eyes, the sight that is beheld may have the quality of beauty noted in the introduction above. For example, God speaks to his people through Isaiah, instructing them to “lift up your eyes on high” and “see who has created these stars” (Isa 40:26). In his speech God links the beauty of the stars to his own character and action. As characters in Scripture lift their eyes, they also experience a form of being called to by the beauty they perceive, becoming attuned to the world in a particular way.
Seeing the beauty of God portrayed has at least two layers of meaning. Hans Urs von Balthasar has said that “in the case of revelation . . . form cannot be separated from content.” 4 It is not only that beautiful things, in some way, point to God’s purposes, but it is also beautiful that revelation is addressed to us in the first place. Isaiah 40:26 is not only about God’s beauty and the creation of the night sky, but it is at the same time the case that this God, who created the night sky, is seeing us, talking to us, and anticipating a response from us. Being addressed by God has meaning both in the content of the address and because God feels we are worth being addressed and is waiting for a response.
BEING CALLED
When engaging in the discipling task, the mentor, preacher, teacher, pastor, or Bible study leader not only conveys biblical content but critically invites persons to be invested in the world as Christians. To care about the world, or to be invested in the world in biblical and Christian ways, involves not only a comprehension of biblical claims but also feeling called by these claims in the sort of way that Christian living emerges.
A short thought experiment will demonstrate that information alone is insufficient for coming to care about the world in a particular way. Suppose, for example, we discover a simple system of moral deductions whereby any person, in any situation, who answers our system’s five straightforward questions will come to see the moral thing to do. Let’s imagine we print our five-step moral system onto business cards and distribute these to everyone in the world. In undertaking this feat we have created a reality in which anyone, in any situation, can know how to act in moral ways. Yet before we celebrate these new measures of moral goodness arriving in the world, we should pause to appreciate the difference between knowing the right thing to do and caring to do it. 5 This is to say that information affords some measure of clarity, but information by itself does not lead us to care about the world in any particular way. Something more is required.
In the New Testament, James argues this same position in his own words, saying that knowledge about Jesus is by itself insufficient for p. 172 being invested in the world as a disciple of Jesus. He remarks that demons “believe” (pisteuō) that there is one God but do not care to be committed in Christian ways on account of this belief (James 2:19). The language of “believe” is employed here to suggest that the demons are committed to an active, factual acknowledgment of God’s absolute reality, but not that they wish to exist in loving obedient charity toward him. 6 James suggests that knowing Christian things, or even acting in Christian ways, are not by themselves expressions of Christian discipleship. Even as James is concerned with practical action, the actions he is interested in flow from an undivided heart, and he is critical of action motivated by double-minded concerns (James 4:8). To have this undivided heart is to be called by a singular defining commitment, which tells a person how to care about the world, which gives a person roles and responsibilities within a hierarchy of meanings and actions, and which leads to a way of skillfully coping with the world in an everyday manner. 7 Such a defining commitment is necessarily expressed in practice, for otherwise it remains only theoretical. To be a Christian, then, is not simply to know about the world in Christian ways, or even to perform actions that are in keeping with the Christian tradition, for either can be done with a range of motivations, or cares, that may or may not be Christian in character.
Caring about the world, or being invested in the world in any sort of way—including in a Christian way—involves an experience of being solicited or called by something. In describing the experience of being called, Maurice Merleau-Ponty talks about what it is like to visit an art gallery. He notices that some paintings are large and some are small, and some sculptures are viewed at better angles than others. The works of art, in their beauty and creative expression, call to be seen, and the viewer, in relationship with the art, moves their body and posture toward an ideal distance, at which a “maximum of visibility” is afforded the viewer. 8 In this exchange the art is, in a sense, directing the viewer toward an optimal stance, and the viewer, who could have spent time looking at anything else or not even visiting the gallery at all, has found themselves in committed responsive relationship to these works of art. The viewer moves their body around in order to get a maximum grip on the objects holding the viewer’s attention. In the relationship between viewer and the art, the viewer finds themselves invested in this exchange. Given that the art holds the viewer’s attention, is directing them to stand in the right sort of way, and appears to “speak” to the viewer about something meaningful in the world, we would say that the art is calling to the viewer.
The way art (or another solicitation) directs us differs from the way that human beings employ rational processes to construct personal or social meaning. In the event of calling, it is not we who are constructing p. 173 meaning but we who are receiving and responding to meaning. In the present example, the best way to get a maximal grip on the art that calls to us is to position the body in relation to the art such that the experience of the art as intended is most fully perceived.
Other objects, gestures, symbols, and understandings may also speak to us. Things like our childhood photo albums, or someone with a patient character, or perhaps even mathematical formulas have the capacity to call us. The experience of being called, says Hartmut Rosa, involves noticing “something is there and present,” whereby this something calls for our attention, asks for a response, and invites us into a “moving interaction” wherein the self is persistently “negotiated” in conversation with the object that calls. 9 This feeling of being addressed or called is not an emotional state but a resonant relationship wherein both sides of the relationship mutually “speak with their own voice.” 10 For example, our childhood photo album speaks to us of a simpler time, a friend’s patient character calls to be emulated, or mathematical formulas may afford us a sense of wonder at the created order.
Rosa points out that Christian practices also speak to us or call to us. Christian practices, specifically, speak to us from the reality that they point to. This is not an act of magic or superstition but occurs in the same way that we experience a painting speaking to us. Christian practices, such as the Lord’s Supper, offering a benediction, or the gathering of Christian believers in Jesus’ name (Matt 18:20), are not simply gestures that human beings have created and given meaning to but are avenues through which God’s call solicits us. 11 The Sunday morning church gathering, for example, is not just a pragmatic way of disseminating a Christian sermon to a community of people, but it is also something of a weekly unfolding miracle wherein God’s people feel called to gather in Jesus’ name. Amid the secularization of North American society, wherein people’s sense of possibility on a Sunday morning can be quite varied, it remains the case that some people persistently feel and respond to the impulse to gather in a church community for Christian worship. The practice of gathering to worship, then, in addition to its pragmatic means of disseminating Christian teaching to a church community is also a signal, sign, or vector of calling to those who are able to hear that God is in the active process of forgiving sins and reconciling the world to himself (Matt 11:15; 2 Cor 5:19).
Having attended to the matters of seeing and of being called, let us now consider how the discipling task helps persons to hear and respond to this call through curation. p. 174
CURATION AND DISCLOSING OF CALL
Human beings have a way of assuming the world around us. To assume the world is to be comfortable with the settled meanings that we have created for ourselves and that we project into the world as if they were true. Such created meanings tend to lean toward self-interest because it is we who have created them, and we are interested in ourselves. Stanley Hauerwas argues that “we do not see reality by just opening our eyes” and therefore “to know the real rather than being in a state of illusion and fantasy is a difficult task.” 12 But the person who lifts up their eyes is confronted with a reality asking for a response. The experience of being called, of lifting up one’s eyes, is an experience of moving from illusion and fantasy into relation to God’s reality.
The way our assumptions shift, argues Hubert Dreyfus, is not so much through logical analysis as it is through feeling compelled, called, or attracted to something in the world that discloses a different way of being in the world. 13 When something shows up for us as significant, there is a quality of beauty present that grasps us and asks for a response. The discipling task will include articulating Christian facts and logics, but more fundamentally, the discipling task is a task of soliciting someone to care about the world in Christian ways through seeing the beauty of Christian witness and Christian living. There is not, that we are aware of, a straightforward and step-by-step process by which we disclose beauty to one another. A helpful metaphor that is suited to guide this type of action is the metaphor of the curator.
The curator of a gallery, museum, or other exhibit is, first, a type of researcher. In order to care for the collection under their responsibility, the curator knows their field, knows where to find what is needed, and knows how individual elements of a collection fit together. 14 The curator knows what to include in a collection or exhibition, or what to exclude from such an assembly, because the inclusion or exclusion of elements serves to define a given collection and its meanings in contrast to others and their meanings. 15
The curator is, in the second place, a type of educator. The curator not only understands their field, but the curator’s role is to make their understanding available to patrons and visitors. This involves more than just passing on knowledge but includes arranging and displaying content in such a way that it shows up as significant to viewers and patrons. Hans Ulrich Obrist argues that the way a collection is organized or presented expresses some set of “possibilities and associations” that translate into “a way of thinking about the world.” 16 Adrian George regards the curator as a public “arbiter of taste who . . . is able to say what is ‘good’ art and p. 175 why.” 17 In their exhibition display, the curator says something about the world we live in and how it is to be understood.
In the third place, the curator aims at soliciting a response from viewers and patrons. The logic of curation, critically, involves aesthetic sense. In addition to conveying knowledge, a good exhibit asks patrons to feel a certain way about this knowledge. Jenny Davis argues that the curator’s art is “carving out” space for what is “most provocative, beautiful, relevant,” and truthful. 18 An exhibit’s elements should ideally give viewers a sense of feeling “directly addressed” by its content. 19 A good exhibition is shaped around the visitor’s experience as opposed to the museum’s or sponsors’ interests, or those of other groups. 20 The curator brings themselves to the exhibit, trusting that the things that have shaped the way the curator cares about the content may also solicit a patron in the same way. In making the exhibit, the curator feels a measure of vulnerability, for the good exhibit must be personal, existing as a type of testimony to how the curator has felt moved by the content.
JESUS AS CURATOR
In chapter 24 of the gospel of Luke, we see Jesus acting in the mode of a curator. He is teaching in a manner that attunes his two listeners to the beauty and calling of the gospel. Cleopas and another disciple are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus after the crucifixion events. They have heard reports suggesting the resurrection of Jesus has taken place, and Jesus joins them in their walking. Jesus holds the disciples in conversation, and the disciples find themselves intensely focused on Jesus as he explains the Scriptures to them. More than just receiving information, the disciples report feeling like their “hearts” were “burning within” as Jesus invites them to see the world as he sees the world (Luke 24:32). The disciples experience their “eyes” being “opened,” and return at once to Jerusalem to witness to this series of events (Luke 24:31, 33). It is not that these disciples were unaware of the Scriptures. But it is the case that Jesus helped them to see the witness of the Scriptures in a way that called to them, in a way that pointed to God’s action, and in a way that invited these disciples to care about, or be invested in, the world in a particular way.
In this exchange Jesus inhabits the three basic curatorial functions. He has understood what the Scriptures say about himself through Moses and the prophets. He has arranged these understandings in a way that discloses a truthful and new way of thinking about the world and living within the world. And in the way he offers himself and his teaching to the disciples, the disciples feel directly addressed by what is provocative, beautiful, relevant, and truthful within the Scriptures. Jesus exhibits a type p. 176 of vulnerability in testimony, for the teaching he gives speaks to how he was personally involved in this unfolding story.
It is a high bar to mirror the ministry posture Jesus adopts with the disciples in Luke 24. Yet these are also given as standards to frame the discipleship task around. The curatorial role requires more than passionate appeals to listeners or efficient content delivery. The discipleship task in the mode of the curator involves seeing the Scriptures, the world, God’s actions, and associations between these in a coherent enough way that these associations can be conveyed to others, and in such a way that others will feel addressed by what they see and solicited toward deepening commitment to Christian living. The discipleship task is an act of vulnerability in testimony—in making visible how Jesus speaks to us (Rev 12:11). Even though there isn’t a sure-fire method of making people care about the world in the same way the curator does, there are basic cues, central to which is calling attention to the beauty of God’s character and action presented within Scriptures, the world, and the life of the curator.
CONCLUSION
Human beings are not, fundamentally, a collection of ideas in an abstract brain. This would perhaps be rather convenient if it were the case, for we could then input the right ideas, delete the wrong ideas, and efficiently create Christians. Yet our being is more complex than that, for we are beings who have bodies, who are invested in the world, who care in particular ways about the world, and are solicited by the world. We have a set of background assumptions that condition our being-in-the-world whereby some things show up for us as significant, some things show up as banal, other things as threats, surprises, opportunities, novelties, and so on.
It is in this complex way of being human that Jesus asks us to become disciples and to make disciples of others (Matt 28:16-20). In this essay I have argued that discipleship involves an experience of being called, and being called specifically by Jesus. Disclosing Jesus’ call does not lend itself to a step-by-step systematic process, and I have set forward the metaphor of the curator as a means of guiding the task. The curator pays attention to the world and calls attention to what is most significant, beautiful, truthful, and compelling, such that others might also come to care about the world and Jesus in Christian ways.
NOTES
- Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960), 27. Edwards describes beauty as consent, agreement, and union to “Being in General.” The term “Being in General,” refers to God as an acting agent, moral foundation, and sustainer of all being. See Thomas A. Shafer, “Editor’s Introduction” in The “Miscellanies”: entry nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, by Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 55. Edwards also conceives of a second order of beauty, of proportion and symmetry of objects, such as triangles and the human body. This second order of beauty points to its Creator but does not explicitly consent, agree, or unite with God’s character (see Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 27).
- Richard R. Osmer, The Teaching Ministry of Congregations (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 286–87. Osmer argues that in addition to truth that we reason together, truth we imagine, and truth we receive, there is truth that we feel. Even though the truth we feel can be difficult to articulate, it nevertheless critically motivates how we exist within the world. In his account of human being and knowing, James K. A. Smith argues that we understand the world by acting in it more readily than we understand the world by theorizing about it. See James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2016), 3–6.
- Mark J. Boda, “Writing the Vision: Zechariah within the Visionary Traditions of the Hebrew Bible,” in “I Lifted My Eyes and Saw”: Reading Dream and Vision Reports in the Hebrew Bible, eds. Elizabeth R. Hayes and Lena-Sofia Tiemeyer (London: T. & T. Clark, 2014), 114.
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume I: Seeing the Form, eds. Joseph Fessio and John Riches, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982), 54.
- Simon Blackburn, Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 91.
- Peter H. Davids, “James,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, eds. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner (Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity, 2000), 346. Davids argues that the epistle of James develops the language of faith in a way that Paul’s writings do not. For James, faith is expressed in loving obedience and is not only a matter of right confession. Davids argues “demons believe the truth; the true Christian obeys the truth” (346).
- Hubert L. Dreyfus, “ ‘What a Monster then Is Man’: Pascal and Kierkegaard on Being a Contradictory Self and What to Do about It,” in The Cambridge Companion to Existentialism, ed. Steven Crowell (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 104, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521513340.006. Dreyfus’s idea of the “defining commitment” is developed across his work. This citation articulates some essential characteristics of the “defining commitment,” namely that such a commitment tells a person what is “relevant,” “important,” gives an “identity,” and leads into a “vocation.” p. 178
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London, U.K.: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 302.
- Hartmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James C. Wagner (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity, 2019), 127.
- Rosa, 174.
- Rosa, 263.
- Stanley Hauerwas, Vision and Virtue: Essays in Christian Ethical Reflection (Notre Dame: Fides, 1974), 36.
- Hubert L. Dreyfus, “The Primacy of Phenomenology over Logical Analysis,” Philosophical Topics 27, no. 2 (1999): 10, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43154313.
- Emily O’Reilly, et al., “Curation, Conservation, and the Artist, in Silent Explosion: Ivor Davies and Destruction in Art,” Studies in Conservation 61, sup 2 (2016): 167, https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2016.1188250.
- Mary Jane Jacob, “Making Space for Art,” in What Makes a Great Exhibition? ed. Paula Marincola (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, 2006), 134.
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ways of Curating (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 39.
- Adrian George, The Curator’s Handbook (London, UK: Thames and Hudson, 2015), 12.
- Jenny L. Davis, “Curation: A Theoretical Treatment,” Information, Communication and Society 20, no. 5 (2017): 771.
- Franz Meyer, “Franz Meyer,” in A Brief History of Curating, ed. Hans Ulrich Obrist (Zurich: JRP Ringier, 2008), 104.
- Jacob, 137.
