Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

I'm suddenly out of time, once more, so just a quick note about something I feel the need to discuss at much greater length, sometime.

Having followed a Mutant Allies link to bimo's post on the character of Book on Firefly, Deconstructing a Shepherd, I was struck by her argument that Book was not on Serenity to serve as the moral conscience for the crew. As I wrote my own comment in response to that post and those replying to it, I realized that once again I was being brought back to issues I've been wrestling with ever since I became a minister (19 years ago in practice, though I've only been ordained for 16 and a half years).

Here's some of what I wrote, with revisions:

Given Whedon's theology, it's not surprising that Book is portrayed as less the stereotypical 'ideal clergyperson' (a fount of moral certitude and faith when all around him are getting bogged down in doubt and temptation) and more of a mirror or foil for highlighting Mal's faith and role as moral exemplar for his crew -- even though Mal's faith is based on the loss of faith and learning to live with doubt and meaninglessness, while still keeping faith with himself and those under his protection.

One of the reasons I've often been uncomfortable being called 'Pastor' ('shepherd') myself is because the very word seemed to me to imply a deep gulf between the 'shepherd' and the 'sheep', suggesting that they are forever members of different species, with impermeable boundaries between their abilities and callings. I'd rather see myself as more of a 'wounded healer' (a la Henri Nouwen), or someone who simply has specialized training and a specialized vocabulary for reflecting on our shared experience as human beings trying to find the courage to go on 'being' in the face of certain and overwhelming 'non-being.'

Buffy, Angel, and Mal -- they all try to provide refuge for those who need it, even though they themselves feel acutely their inadequacy in the face of so much danger and evil, and they lead both in spite of and because of their doubts and the courage with which they face them, rather than out of any moral or spiritual certainties that set them above the other people in their communities.

Of course, I may be stretching that metaphor too far: a ship's captain, a Chosen One/Slayer, and a vampire with a soul can't exactly be just 'one of the gang,' just another face in the crowd. They are set apart by their abilities and the responsibilities that they've accepted or have had thrust upon them. And Angel is NOT, technically, human, even. But they all live and work as members of communities -- communities in which everybody is 'different' in some way from each other -- and they all self-identify as people who aspire to be decent human beings and to help others be decent.

I think my discomfort with the role or title of "Pastor" comes down to the suggestion that my ordination or calling makes me so different from everybody else that I can always be depended on to be perfect and to get it all right and to never struggle with doubts or discouragement or despair or emptiness. Some years ago, when I was writing my qualifying examination on pastoral theology, I remember working out a definition I could live with, pointing out that Christ is the one whom the Gospel writers describe as the "Good Shepherd" with humanity as his sheep, so in a sense Christ is the only real 'pastor' in Christian theology, but that Paul's teaching that we are all members of the body of Christ and that Christ lives in all of us, or the Reformation emphasis on the 'priesthood of all believers', suggests that every 'sheep' is also in a real sense called to be a 'shepherd' or 'pastor.' After all, there's increasing evidence that the best pastoral care and pastoral counseling in a church occurs within the small groups, within the congregation, as members minister to and listen to and care for one another. Thus, the role of the ordained pastor could be defined as simply helping everyone else to realize and live up to their own 'potential' as fellow-pastors in this world.

So, in a way, what Buffy does in "Chosen" is my ideal of pastoral ministry -- she enables everyone else to live up to their potential, to realize that they share her power, and that she is now just one among many.