From a paper I wrote in seminary, during the waning days of my identifying as a Christian. I’m reminded that I posted this on a now defunct website I called “the center for spiritual procrastination.”

Our larger question concerns how God operates in this borderless city. Georges Bataille has suggested that life is so fecund that it generates much more than it needs. In fact, life generates so much extra that the disposal of this extra portion, or the “accursed share,” becomes a problem. Throughout history humanity has disposed of this accursed share through different means: slavery, warfare, eroticism, art, religion, etc. For Bataille, what defines a society is how it disposes of the accursed share.

We do not have to wholly swallow Bataille’s “general economics” to make use of it. I propose that grace is at least as fecund as Bataille imagines life to be. Grace is total, all-encompassing. There is nothing that escapes grace, nothing that is beyond it. All things and all actors are influenced by grace. The world is upheld, moved, and grown through grace. Because grace is total, it is inadequate to speak of “responding” to grace, as though grace were an email that we can choose to reply to at leisure. We are constantly “responding” to grace, through a multitude of actions, gestures, emotions, thoughts, and speech-acts. Everything we do, for good or ill, is a response to grace.

To follow Bataille further, if grace is total, then there is more than enough grace. There is enough grace for us to create flourishing cities that affirm the full humanity of their citizens, but there is also enough grace for us to create cities that dehumanize, that rely on the exploitation of many for the benefit of a few. The theodical implications should be clear. Evil is not the result of God’s granting us free will, the result of the inscrutable weighing of God’s desire for justice and mercy both, or due to a lack of God’s power or desire to stop evil. Evil is a direct consequence of God’s goodness, of God being too good. Frankly, there is too much grace to go around. Put differently, God is too much to handle. We are awash in the abundance of God. Like the blue collar family who fights while cleaning out a lifetime of accumulated junk from a packrat grandparent’s messy home, we are the inheritors of our forbears’ “indisposal” of grace, and we are continually finding new ways to “indispose” what God has given us. And so we fight over the house, the tools, and the photo albums, manipulating each other to do more or less work, using our gains to assert status over one another, and in more pressing moments even talking about lighting the whole thing up in flames–all the while adding to our own cluttered homes the accumulated junk of another. We are bad inheritors of a bad legacy.

Our larger question concerns how God operates in this borderless city. Georges Bataille has suggested that life is so fecund that it generates much more than it needs. In fact, life generates so much extra that the disposal of this extra portion, or the “accursed share,” becomes a problem. Throughout history humanity has disposed of this accursed share through different means: slavery, warfare, eroticism, art, religion, etc. For Bataille, what defines a society is how it disposes of the accursed share.

We do not have to wholly swallow Bataille’s “general economics” to make use of it. I propose that grace is at least as fecund as Bataille imagines life to be. Grace is total, all-encompassing. There is nothing that escapes grace, nothing that is beyond it. All things and all actors are influenced by grace. The world is upheld, moved, and grown through grace. Because grace is total, it is inadequate to speak of “responding” to grace, as though grace were an email that we can choose to reply to at leisure. We are constantly “responding” to grace, through a multitude of actions, gestures, emotions, thoughts, and speech-acts. Everything we do, for good or ill, is a response to grace.

To follow Bataille further, if grace is total, then there is more than enough grace. There is enough grace for us to create flourishing cities that affirm the full humanity of their citizens, but there is also enough grace for us to create cities that dehumanize, that rely on the exploitation of many for the benefit of a few. The theodical implications should be clear. Evil is not the result of God’s granting us free will, the result of the inscrutable weighing of God’s desire for justice and mercy both, or due to a lack of God’s power or desire to stop evil. Evil is a direct consequence of God’s goodness, of God being too good. Frankly, there is too much grace to go around. Put differently, God is too much to handle. We are awash in the abundance of God. Like the blue collar family who fights while cleaning out a lifetime of accumulated junk from a packrat grandparent’s messy home, we are the inheritors of our forbears’ “indisposal” of grace, and we are continually finding new ways to “indispose” what God has given us. And so we fight over the house, the tools, and the photo albums, manipulating each other to do more or less work, using our gains to assert status over one another, and in more pressing moments even talking about lighting the whole thing up in flames-all the while adding to our own cluttered homes the accumulated junk of another. We are bad inheritors of a bad legacy.

And so we know that God is always at work in the world, even if we do not properly manage the superabundance that God has given us. God will work for our good through any means possible and is, in fact, doing just that already. Therefore, all means that are available to us are potentially the works of God: God works through expedient means. In any given case, three general possibilities exist: (1) God could be at work, (2) we could be “indisposing” God’s superabundant grace, and (3) we could be cooperating with God’s gracious work in the world. The first general possibility is always the case. The second general possibility, which we have already discussed, is too often the case. The third general possibility deserves further discussion. It remains possible that we can actually cooperate with the workings of God’s grace. In Platonic terms, cooperating would be a matter of “participating” in God’s grace, that is, sharing in the qualities of something else. In biblical terms, we would be “co-workers with God” and “joint heirs.” In Bataillian terms, we would dispose of the “accursed share” in ways that lead to health and wholeness instead of violence and disease.

The possibility that any of our “works” could be participating in the work of God is both relieving and disturbing. We are relieved that God works through us and even that God works in spite of us when we are uncooperative with grace. We have experienced the works of God even-and perhaps usually-when we are not willing, when we would rather “indispose” God’s grace. God works in our world whether we want her to or not. And so we are also disturbed that such a God would be at work not only within our capacities for understanding but also in infinite ways beyond our understanding, giving birth to the world in her constant overabundant self-giving. We are disturbed that we cannot contain God within ourselves but are relieved that God’s working in the world does not depend on our being able to do so.

And so we are relieved and disturbed that we can participate in God’s work in the city. We are relieved that our own failings will not mean the destruction of the city–the city is already fallen, and God is already at work to redeem it. We are disturbed that our own efforts will not mean the city’s salvation-it is beyond our understanding to know if our well-intended actions are, finally, participating in God’s grace or further wasting it. We are relieved to know our efforts can participate in the works of God in the city, even if we “see through a mirror dimly.” We are disturbed that our methods–however well devised and executed-cannot insure the presence of God in our work. The ambiguity of God’s work in the city is halting. It would seem, then, that our participating in God’s work in the city is a matter left to chance, inscrutable guesswork that leaves us with no satisfaction. It would seem that we are left only with our own methods–for good and for ill–and perhaps an “interim ethic” that we must apply haphazardly within a history without end.

Yet have we not experienced God’s work in the city ourselves? If God’s grace is total and abundant, then surely we have memories of God’s presence in the midst of our urban work. Surely we can recall times when we have felt assurance that our work was indeed participating in God’s urban grace, whether that assurance was experienced then or later. The task of articulating an urban theology is the task of articulating these stories in ways that will assist us to return to the work of God in the city in our current contexts. Our question as urban theologians is “How can we return to rejoin the work of God in our city?”

We are reminded of the ambiguity of God’s urban work. God could be at work anywhere and in fact already is. The task of rejoining God’s work is potentially overwhelming if we consider the infinite possibilities at hand. Our experiences and memories provide us with an indispensable limiting tool, bonding us to the graces we have already known. We may at some time be faced with questions such as, “Perhaps God is at work in this domestic violence?” or “Perhaps God is at work in this economic exploitation?” or “Perhaps God is at work in this xenophobia and hate?” To this we must reply from our experience, asking if we have ever experienced the grace of God in violence, manipulation, or hate. Our answer will be an unequivocal No.

A doctrine of expedient means? In certain strains of Mahayana Buddhist thought, the concept of upaya (commonly translated “expedient means”) teaches that if the goal of enlightenment is like crossing a stream of water, then any water-worthy boat will do. Thus, the Buddhist doctrine of expedient means teaches that any route to enlightenment that works is a means that is expedient and should therefore be used. In the discussion here, I have sought to import that term into a decidedly different context, God’s work in the city. In the Christian doctrine of expedient means that I am proposing, all means are potentially the works of God. I have sought to limit our use of such a wide potentiality of expedient means with the rubric of experience, calling our attention to the tendencies of God’s work already among us.

This doctrine of expedient means allows us to do several things that I have alluded to already. First, it allows us to affirm the work of God outside Christianity and the Church because of its emphasis on the superabundance of grace in all times and places. Second, for similar reasons, it allows us to affirm a strong Wesleyan take on grace, particularly prevenient grace. Third, it calls us to be attentive to our bodied, located, contextualized experiences as primary loci of revelation within history–a feminist point. Fourth, experience is further underscored through its use as a limiting factor, that is, if we limit ourselves to the works of God that we and our communities have experienced, we will be less likely to find ourselves going off the deep end in our zeal to participate in God’s urban work. Fifth, dependence on the works of God already among us open our communities up to critique as works of God surface that had not previously been articulated, or had been articulated to some and not to others. Sixth, dependence on our experience enables us to continue to be “people of memory” and “people of the Book” as we look back over our lifetimes, our histories, and our traditions for glimmers of God’s saving work in the past. Finally, characterizing the divine works we have experienced as expedient means underscores that we are not dependent upon particular methods, which could lead to idolatry, but upon God.