Metaphorical Prosopagnosia and Christian Life
Bear with me. This is going to be really nerdy. Prosopagnosia is a cognitive disorder in which one’s ability to recognize faces is impaired. This may include one’s own face. A properly functioning fusiform gyrus (I know—I’m sorry) allows people to recall faces with more detail than similarly complex objects. However, prosopagnosic brains have to process faces the same way they process any other object. Imagine looking at yourself in the mirror and forgetting what your own face looks like when you walk away.
While some people certainly suffer from this disorder literally, this also acts as a good metaphor for a society of people unsuccessfully chasing after an identity they can hold on to. Everyone is really a lot of things: a child, a parent, a worker, a mentor, a citizen with certain political beliefs, a human with unique religious and spiritual perspectives, and so on. And we behave differently in each of these different roles. When I’m working, my political leanings are hidden. I can’t be preaching politics or religion to the kids at the after school program. That would be inappropriate. People like to complain about work, but they don’t often do that as a worker. They go home to complain about work. They put on a different face on the job. Parents have to act confident in front of their young children, even if they still see themselves as children looking to their own parents for guidance. How can we possibly recognize our own face when we wear so many masks? When we strip away the personas, who is the person underneath? We may never know. Metaphorical prosopagnosia. We are blind to our own faces.
Now, if you see this as an eye opening metaphor, I must admit, I didn’t invent this one. This has been thrown around for a while, perhaps most importantly by James. In James 1:23-24, he compares people who are hearers of the Word and not doers to those who see themselves in the mirror and then forget what they look like. To listen to the Gospel message of Christ and then not doing anything about it is metaphorical prosopagnosia. For those who only hear, the Word is not who they really are. It doesn’t define them as humans. It doesn’t impact every facet of their life. It is simply one of the masks they wear. Among other things—parent, child, worker—they are hearers of the Word. A doer of the Word treats it differently. They may be many things, but all of those things are affected by discipleship. They are a Christian parent, a Christian child, and a Christian worker. Their identity as a redeemed sinner is so foundational to their life that they can’t remove it from any persona.
Of course, this makes me wonder, am I a doer or a hearer? Is this a fundamental part of my identity or simply a hat I put on when I need to or when it is convenient? Is the Word something I encounter on Sunday mornings, or does the Word dwell within me affecting my actions, desires, hopes, and dreams? As much as I’d like to claim that I am a doer of the word, I think these things are always more complicated than a simple binary. I’m not absolutely good or bad at anything. It’s mixed for every attribute. Sometimes I am perfectly organized. Sometimes I am a total mess. Sometimes these two things happen simultaneously for different facets of my life. I am too many things with too many successes and failures to claim to be only a hearer or only a doer. Naturally, we are all both.
When we go to church on Sunday morning and then forget everything about it by that afternoon, we are being hearers. When we leave church on Sunday morning and talk to other people about what we experienced there, we are being doers carrying the Gospel forth from that sacred space into the world. When we resist sin within the walls of the church as a way to perform piety, we are being hearers. When the Word affects our morality in every aspect of our life, from church to home to secular public spaces, then we are being doers of the Word. Most of us have done all of these things, and at any given moment we may feel more like a hearer or more like a doer.
Being a doer affects our face underneath all the masks. As we move toward more fully being doers of the Word, active participants in God’s story, our faces change to more closely resemble the Word that dwells within us. We appear more like Jesus. Now, obviously I don’t mean that we grow a beard and become an ancient Galilean itinerant preacher. But our spiritual face, which is perhaps more true than our physical one, more closely resembles Christ: benevolent, merciful, loving. As Christ’s influence grows within us through our receiving the Word and Sacraments in community, we learn to share Christ’s love for the world. We may see Christ in ourselves and others, and then how can we be willing to hurt each other? How can we leave another poor and needy if we see the same God dwelling in both them and ourselves? How can we turn our back on Christ who has given us a face, an identity, worth remembering?
For James, faith is an active thing. One cannot really be a Christian without also engaging in Christian life. We cannot be a Christian and remain only a hearer of the Word. Of course, this doesn’t mean that this is something we accomplish ourselves. Christ will give us a face to remember, if we stop hindering God’s work in our lives. So often we chase after masks that we think we will feel most comfortable in and never take time to quietly listen for God’s voice. Sometimes we seek to cover the face that God has given us with other masks. Like Jonah fleeing his prophetic calling, we hide the vocation God has given us behind characters the world demands we play. Perhaps it is time to take a step back, take off the masks, look in the mirror, and see who God is making us.
