asap
When you hear or see this phrase what do you think? Culturally is means, “I need it now, right now”. Yet a closer look reveals that the acronym is made up of four distinct words, “as soon as possible”. What does this phrase really mean then? Does it mean as most assume, “immediately” or does it mean the “soonest you can possibly get it accomplished”? In my professional world these 4 letters mean immediately and there is no doubt about that meaning or is there?
We use phrases, words, acronyms like asap each day with little thought to what they mean. Little thought to how they express our intent, our desire, our expectations. We are becoming a people who are thought-less about what we say, what we do, what we are. We just assume whatever we say, do, and are has to be accepted by others. We live out our days with insensitivity and callousness not stopping to think what we really mean with our words. For me words are important and what they mean is essential to how we use them. The trouble is we lack an understanding or knowledge of what the words we use daily mean.
The postmodern philosopher and writer Jacques Derrida said this, “I speak only one language, and it is not my own”. The words we use are not our own. They have a collectively held source of meaning. For Derrida this was the crux of the issue and he espoused a deconstruction of our language(s), our worlds, and our understandings. Being taught to be an architect in the in the last century there was a time of postmodern deconstructive angst in that world. We spent hours, days, weeks tearing apart the basic ideas, styles, doctrines of Architecture. My undergraduate thesis was a study in deconstructing classical models of form in hopes to understand why they existed at all. As I explored the ideas, the thought, the language that formed these classical models I reached a point where I got lost. I had journeyed beyond the boundaries of precedence, boundaries of norms, boundaries of understanding. There was a certain freedom being in this place devoid of rules, norms, morays. It was freeing to create forms, ideas and concepts that seemed unique. Then something become clear, all I had really done was to re-imagine, re-align, re-work ideas that had come before. I reached a point where I was required to explain my findings, my learning from this exploration and I could not. I could not on one level because I lacked the ability to do so, and on another because there were no others there to assist.
Two decades later as I sat in a class entitled, “Cultural Captivity of the Church” I realized I was in the same wilderness I was twenty years earlier. Yet, again I jumped in head first, I read, I listened, I explored the “emergent” deconstruction of Christianity and its place in the culture. I read books that espoused a total anarchy, others a softer gentler dismantling and yet others were just repainting old models. In the end this deconstruction of Christianity was just as empty and listless as I had experienced in architecture.
Today as I think back on these two different, but similar journeys I am struck with how our world today has suffered from it all. In the world of architecture style is ambiguous, individual, chaotic and it is the same in Christianity. I would argue that it is the same in all aspects of our lives. We are suffering from the empty promises of post modern deconstruction that was intended to re-discover, re-order, re-create our world, our lives, our words. We have allowed a world to be created where we must dismantle everything, everyday, everywhere, the deconstructing, the re-visioning, never stops. We find it harder to accept those different from us. We find it harder to look into our past without revising it to fit our current views. We think if we we remove all the pain, all the hate, all the hardship, all the injustice, all the violence we will not repeat it. In a way we are losing our connection with what came before. Our histories are filled with stories of those who ignored the past and how they made the same or similar mistakes again. Our histories are filled with misguided, misdirected, misinformed movements, ideas, cultures and people who thought they could do better. If we deconstruct our worlds and our histories to an irrelevance, an irreverence, an unrecognizable shadow we are doomed to be who we already were. Yes, there is injustice and oppression and hate and manipulation that needs to confronted but if we dismantle our world to a point where there is nothing behind us, or around us, or under us where do we go. Our past, our present, our future is and will be filled with failure, pain, hardship and hate. But that past, that present that we desire to deconstruct is also a place of hope, of love, of joy, of promise. Let us stop dismantling for the sake of dismantling, let us re-imagine our world, let us use our past to inform our future, let us, together be the people we are created to be. If we deconstruct our world so it is unrecognizable and devoid of failure it will be impossible not to become what we just erased. I for one am going to do all I can to learn from my past, our past so I can become something better than I was, better than I am and I am going to do it asap.