The Second Person
In Theology is for Proclamation, Dr. Forde wrote
The preacher must claim the audacious and unheard-of authority to say who is intended to actually speak for God. The answer to anticipate, is always you: ‘You, now that you are in earshot.’
Supposedly this answers the ‘problem of God.’
Well, I suppose. If you search a bit on “problem of God” you get some interesting results. My favorites are links to Richard Dawkins and a link to a student paper on The Brothers K. In this they quote Ivan: “It’s not God I don’t accept, understand this, I do not accept the world, that He created, this world of God’s, and cannot agree with it.” The problem of God in a world like Dawkins’ or in the world of people who think the way the Brothers K do, is that God doesn’t seem to be around to defend God’s self in the matter of these problems. It’s a heck of a deal.
What Forde suggests we do is a little bit crazy, a shift of the ground everyone is standing on. Addressing our discourse in the second person is a calculated risk that upsets things. It certainly turns the table on a would be interlocutor. The questions are about God; what kind of world God has created or for what purpose it’s madeor permitted to persist so.
The Forde answer is this big non sequiter, in the form of direct address of the questioner: you! You’re the purpose! Doing this recalls the scene in Mark 2 of course, with Jesus perceiving what is in the hearts of the scribes. Are we expected to do the same thing? Perceive the interior of hearts? And then make statements like Jesus did? Indeed. I think Gerhard would say yes! There’s a real sense of seizing the moment in this, of daring to hear the questioner out and then giving an answer which leaps directly to the bottommost, most vital concerns: That’s right, you don’t agree with this world of God’s, you can’t see right now what the point of it is, but I have been instructed to tell you that it’s for you. Quite a turnaround we’re expected to make. Best get crackin.