Christian wisdom and research

Complexity theory and action research

This brief paper seeks to make connections between action research and complexity theory and between action research and Christianity. Complexity theory is attracting interest in many places.  The two streams of thought do seem to emerge from an underlying paradigm shift.  I understand the difference being that action research is particularly concerned with epistemology whilst complexity theory mainly addresses ontology i.e. action research is interested in how we come to know what we know whereas complexity theory is interested in the nature of reality.  Action research therefore appears more relative, more engaged with human limitations as it struggles with the process of learning and finding out about our world.  Complexity theory is sensitive to these issues but has a more confident bearing because it focuses on the complex reality of the world rather than our faltering attempts to understand it.  By bringing these two approaches together we can move beyond nihilistic scepticism which confuses ontology with epistemology - just because we find reality difficult to understand it doesn't mean it isn't real.  Everything doesn't go because there is an underlying reality that we are foolish to ignore.  This is a perspective which Christians don't find difficult because we believe in a God who gives us a guarantee of the reality of things beyond our perception of them.  Action research has tended to be sceptical of Christianity because Christians and most Christian institutions have gone beyond this basic confidence in reality into rigid prescriptions for how people should act - confusing, perhaps, epistemology with ontology[1].  What then is the relationship between Christianity and action research?

Christianity and action research

Peter Reason one of the leading proponents of action research is certainly interested in spirituality. One of his books refers to Buddha, Gurdjief, Tai Chi and the ex Dominican Matthew Fox but the spirituality at Bath tends towards the New Age with understanding of Christianity limited.  Christians are, however, involved in action research - Dave Erlandson, an educational researcher, for instance, influenced by Guba and Lincoln is an evangelical Texan.  The interesting Churches Commission on Mission programme Building Bridges of Hope also claims to use an action research process, although what theory informs this is unclear.  I, for one, believe there are deep truths in the action research paradigm which Christians would be foolish to ignore.  Where then might be some connection points between the Christian tradition and this new emerging world view?

Perhaps the obvious place to start is with the wisdom tradition within the Bible.

Wisdom is intensely practical, not theoretical.  Basically, wisdom is the art of being successful, of forming the correct plan to gain the desired results ... those who possess technical skill are called wise: Bezalel, chief artisan of the tabernacle (Exodus 31:3); artificers of idols (Isaiah 40:20, Jeremiah 10:9); professional mourners (Jeremiah 9:17) and navigators or shipwrights (Ezekiel 27:8-9) ...

Kings and leaders were in special need of wisdom.  On them hung the responsibility for correct decisions in political and social affairs.  Joshua (Deuteronomy 34:9), David (2 Samuel 14:20), Solomon (1 Kings 3:9-12; 4:29 -) were granted wisdom to enable them to deal with their official duties.

The wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job etc.) is the record of this search for practical wisdom in Ancient Israel,

I turned my mind to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the sum of things, and to know that wickedness is folly and that foolishness is madness.

Ecclesiastes 7:25

Significantly there are many parallels with the wisdom literature of neighbouring nations.  Nonetheless, the God of Israel is seen as being the source of wisdom - wisdom must be deeply spiritual rather than just an exercise in human rationality.  Wisdom is personified in Proverbs 8:22ff and this is developed by Christianity into an understanding of Jesus.  Certainly there is much of the wise counsellor in Jesus - the practical orientation of his teaching (Matthew 5:23-4), the engaging in dialogue (Matthew 16:13-16) and the wider concern for renewal and transformation (Luke 4:18-21). In another paper I have detailed the connections between Jesus and the idea of Learning Organisations - which is an expression of Reason's paradigm shift in the area of management.

This wisdom tradition has perhaps not often been the dominant voice within Christianity but it has always been present as groups of Christians have sought to discern a practical theology for their particular context.  In recent years it has seen something of a resurgence, well expressed in the description of an ongoing research project, explicitly drawing on the resources already mentioned, by Waikato Anglican Social Services:

The director and some of the other participants in WASS are also engaged in their work because of their explicit commitment to Christianity.  Given the frequent critique of the church as colonising and indelibly sexist and racist, and knowing that others in the Agency share this critique, we wonder if and how a different theology can be enacted in the work of social service, when it is so closely aligned with the church institution.  We expect to draw on liberation, narrative and feminist theology (for McFague Models of God: theology for an ecological nuclear age.  Fortress Press 1988)

This initiative in New Zealand is a good example of how creative interactions between action research and theology are emerging throughout the globe.  Robert Schreiter's Constructing Local Theologies is a helpful overview of the issues involved in this process.

Research as touching and caring can encourage us to develop a fruitful dialogue between Christianity and action research, but it is perhaps when we use the metaphor of taste that we really start to reach the core of a radical Christian understanding of research.

Taste and risky commitment

The metaphor of taste speaks to us not merely of looking at or touching something but of actually taking it into ourselves. This is a risky thing to do, it is a radical bringing together of subjective and objective and should not be taken on likely.

One of the best examples is Edwina Gateley's story as told in I Hear a Seed Growing.  It traces the story of her retreat in a forest cabin and her subsequent mission amongst the street people of Chicago.  It is told through her journal entries which gives it a strong sense of immediacy and raw reality.  She drinks deeply of the chaos of the streets and makes a series of mistakes with one particular woman, Delores, and yet it has led to an important project - Genesis House which has so far housed over four thousand prostitutes seeking an alternative life and new developments in seminary training (Leech 2001 p180).  This is an almost universal experience - tasting what we should have left well alone, regretting it but knowing that it has made us who we are.  It is a shame that few of these illicit stories are told - they remain, in the language of action research, personal first person research projects and never become third person projects open to the wider community.

I would suggest that this hazardous research by taste - a research which risks letting things get inside us is endemic in Christianity because it is the very example we have in Jesus, the inspiration behind the cult of martyrdom.  What action research project was more risky than the incarnation? Lacking in controls and safeguards, no one would recommend it.  But it happened, and that is the point.  We all live in the shadow of the incarnation and learn from the four accounts that we have - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  This kind of research cannot be programmed, it becomes very distasteful when we encourage people into a Gateley-like foolishness but it will happen and then we must learn from it.  In fact we do well to dissuade people from it - and when they do engage in it encourage them to have safeguards (Gateley was able to retreat, at times to her forest cabin) and to focus on the practical details and let God deal with the spiritual inspiration.  Neither should we treat these escapades as heroic, much better to learn from the mistakes and the hurts.  Yet as we look at the example of Jesus we know we need to make room for research and action of all kinds - following in the shadow of the incarnation (to speak of following the example seems to me inappropriate)

His love for me brought low his greatness

He made himself like me so that I might receive him

He made himself like the so that I might be clothed in in

I had no fear when I saw him

for he is mercy for me.

He took my nature so that I might understand him,

my face so that I should not turn away from him.

Odes of Solomon 7 (Clement p37)