1Cor4v1-2 - unservile stewardship
Texting One Corinthians
“..This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful..” 1Cor4v1-2
🙇🤴 It is interesting to consider the difference of association between “servant” ὑπηρέτας hypēretas and “steward” οἰκονόμους oikonomous
🙇 Servant - conjures the obedience of a task-oriented underling ~ literally under-rowers (hupo + eretés). There is a singular prominence given to servant language in church articulations of the identity of its christians. Much is made of the virtue of being servant-hearted, which is less concerned with the service delivered than it is with the self-abnegation involved in whatever is delivered. Whatever is delivered. Grey coffee. Plastic trees. Galling worshap. Lowest common denominator everything. Frugal joyless homilies to a life consisting in a dutiful waiting to die.
🙇 Don’t hear me as opposing a right humility which an appropriate servant-heart should engender - rather, I oppose that theology which is satisfied to totalise servanting, which makes a servant-heart not only necessary, but perversely sufficient. Servility is appalling when made ultimate, it sets in motion a bottomlessly blandening force of dis-orientating, dis-ordering, vapid churching, with a complete inability to define excellence or coordinate prioritised enterprises. Totalised servanting has an allure, it promises a life without responsibility, a life unjudged for its lack of excellence, lazy escapist riskless performativity devoid of responsibility for ruling and regulating a world of consequences. Servanting-only proliferates a creed of mere obsequious genuflection, rendering an entire congregation, or even entire population as exploitably passive, religiose and will-less. This toothless and immasculete christendom is vulnerable to every wind of virtue signalling, every anxious appearance of busy-ness, every over-valuing of outputs over outcomes. The servant of Mt25v26 did no harm, but was yet wicked for being slothful, riskless, unimaginative and venture-averse. What is servanting and how is it moderated?
🤴 Steward - conjures clearly the responsibility for managing the whole in pursuit of holistic excellence ~ the house manager (oikos + nemó). Stewarding is a grave responsibility - answerable for the productive profitability of the household economy, responsible for the well-being of all within that unit, looked to for their care and right payment, tasked with the keeping of peaceful harmony within a unit of human infrastructure.. “the manager of a household; especially a steward, manager, superintendent to whom the head of the house or proprietor has entrusted the management of his affairs, the care of receipts and expenditures, and the duty of dealing out the proper portion to every servant and even to the children not yet of age” A servant does not need to interrogate the whole or to trouble themselves with secondary effects, they need only to be head-down and obedient to a given instruction. The steward must give instructions, discern futures, risk themselves and the property of others as a severe matter of conscience.
👨🏻💼 Don’t hear me as elevating stewardship as sufficient on its own either - it is very possible to over-emphasise in the other direction, fanning delusions of administrative competence, and over-structured presumptions to systematise righteousness and to render church as a foregone answer to social and economic ills. Servanting should temper, with an epistemic humility, what it is possible to know - but not to such an extent that we are relieved of the responsibility to risk to pursue excellence with what we do know.
💪 This princely role is not a Nietzschean Master ethic - precisely because a Steward is subordinate. Success is not winning, not over-againsting, not perfect, but, rather, a v2 being found faithful. And, faithful works in two senses here, I think:
💑 Faithful - as in loyal, abiding, and trustworthy, with due diligence in transparent, honest and committed business dealings
🧗♂️ Faithful - as in exercising faith, a hope in things unseen, a being spelt R.I.S.K.