The Buffered Self

Following last week’s blog, Augustine suggests the essence of your life is found in what you love the most. Satan invites us to idolise self, the world and its pleasures – whereas the antidote and the only true path to joy is to love God.

This insight has consequences as to what it means to do church. The role of the pastor, and the preaching of God’s word, is about speaking against idols, and challenging people to love God and trust that being captivated by him is the only path to peace and joy. To submit yourself to your pastor and their preaching is to open up your soul to challenge and genuine encounter.

This is how pastoring and preaching would have been viewed by congregants up until the 1800s. One came to church open to hear what God was saying. In conversation with the pastor, one’s posture was porous.    

Sociologist Charles Taylor suggests this has all changed, and we now engage with church and the pastor not as a porous self, but as a buffered self. He uses the analogy of a house. In the past, we lived in close quarters, with open doors and windows. There was no private cubicle at confession. People could see and come into our private spaces, and this transparency made us receptive to people speaking into our lives.

But now we live in big houses, set back from the street, with private yards and fences. We have buffered ourselves from the view and voice of others. We become the curators of our own souls, and we can dismiss and disengage from the insights of others. We listen and lean in when we perceive it to be helpful for us, and we retreat to our private mansions when we disagree.

Furthermore, we imagine we are safe in fortresses, and our houses are impenetrable. Somehow the clunky pastor, or church politics can’t touch us.

This is flawed on at least three fronts. First, Satan is not bound by such fences, and evil crashes into our feeble fortresses. Second, we are not the best curators of our own soul. We need to be challenged about our love of money, reputation, and possessions. Third, we are made for community, not isolated shelters.

The buffered self may sound appealing, but perhaps it becomes a lonely prison of our own making.