Getting free of the hermeneutic of suspicion...

[Michie]

I apologize for using one of those rather haughty theological words: Hermeneutic! I also know that many DO in fact know what the word means. But just in case you don’t let’s define it. Fundamentally a “hermeneutic” is an interpretive key, a way of seeing and understanding the world.

So what do I mean when I speak of a “hermeneutic of suspicion?” Well, consider the times in which we live. Most people are suspicious of just about everything and everyone! It is a common and usual worldview that politicians lie, the Government is lying, big business is lying, advertisers are lying, the Church is lying.

It is presumed, even if there is not outright lying most people and organizations are just acting out of selfish motives and self-serving agendas. Everyone is simply dismissed because they have an ”agenda” and this agenda is somehow less than pure, fair or neutral.

In pondering this all-pervasive “hermeneutic of suspicion” I wonder if there do not have to be some limits to its application and conclusions:

1. Is “everyone” really lying or just acting out of a less than pure agenda?
2. Is it always wrong to have an agenda?
3. Is self interest always a bad thing?
4. Is it always wrong for groups to seek to influence the national discussion even if that influence serves their interest and worldview?
5. Clearly lying is wrong and there is such a thing as lying but is everything I call lying really lying?

I do not ask these questions as a moral relativist who is simply asking for everything to be murky and gray. But I do suspect that our culture is really overheated at the moment with suspicion.

Continued- Getting free of the hermeneutic of suspicion...