Bill Clinton Was Right About the Nature of Being

Twenty years ago, in the midst of an impeachment, the sitting president made perhaps the most weasely defense ever. He infamously tried to parse the word ‘is’.

In his questioning about an ongoing relationship with an intern, Former President Clinton said:

“It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

We know what he was trying to say and not say.

We are more aware of the difference between history and lived experience. Share on X

As only the passing of time and the defusing of present context can help us better understand what we have heard, maybe we can now recognize that he wasn’t wrong. Not from the perspective of the unrootedness of the postmodern condition. Not from the separation we have from tradition and common language. Not from the uncertainties of our beliefs and our conditions. Or our struggles to make certain what is fundamentally uncertain.

What ‘is’ is is not what we think it is.

Tell It Like It Is.

Today we like when people

“Tell it like it is”

Which is another way of saying “speak one’s mind.”

But we all know they aren’t telling it like it ‘is’. Not really. They are telling it like they know it.

And there is a huge difference.

Between what is and what is known? It is all the difference.

The ‘is’ spoken isn’t reality. It is only their perception of reality.

Is Isn’t.

In the postmodern world, we are more aware of the act of knowing and not knowing. We are more aware of the difference between history and lived experience. And we know that we aren’t living the same experience.

And yet we long for those once-trusted touchstones. We want common understanding from a world now aware that we can’t have an objective common history: we can’t know what truly is.

We can know what one perceives. But more than that?

We long for that common is. And we remember when it existed. Or better, when we believed it existed.

When we perceived there was an is.

Is isn’t. Is wasn’t. Is never was.

Is Is Made.

And yet. Is can be. Not because we can know the true ‘is’–that actual of historical fact–but we can make a true ‘is’. We can build an ‘is’ because the root of ‘is’ is not the history, but our agreement upon a shared view of a moment.

Is is made wherever people get together and agree about a shared experience and then put it all into words.

A small government board in Texas is making an ‘is’ when they determine what goes into a textbook.

A teacher or a newscaster makes an ‘is’ with groups of people when they share what they value about a given moment in our world and clarify what it means to our history.

Christians make an ‘is’ every time we share with one another in the love of Christ.

There is no way of knowing what ‘is’ is. But there is a way of making an ‘is’ from our shared moments.

Like It Is.

Of course, this is what we’re doing when we endorse someone’s version of the world, saying they’re “telling it like it is.” We are building consensus. We are making an ‘is’ together.

Our present political campaign season is full of our making ises.

The debate around guns is even more full of ises. What the Second Amendment is; what gun control is; what safety is; what freedom is; what science is.

We are all telling it like it is — because we are all trying to persuade one another to make an ‘is’ with us.

It all does depend on what your definition of ‘is’ is.

Like It Could Be.

I don’t think we need someone to tell it like it ‘is’.

We also don’t need someone to tell it like it ‘was’ or like it ‘will be’.

We are inundated with all these perceptions of the world: past, present, and future.

We need more dreams. We need more hopes. We need more ‘could bes’.

We need aspirational to go with our actual. We need our pursuit of big things to go with our pragmatism. We need more changing course to go with our expectations of the future.

As Christians, we call this Christian Hope. We also call it “preparing the way of the Lord.”

Out With the Old.

What many are longing for in the past is that sense of common wisdom and certainty. We long for Walter Cronkite when we get together with our friends, then watch Fox News when we get home.

We want those touchstones. We want that certainty.

Postmodernity destroyed that certainty and left those touchstones without power.

We have exposed naked our ambitions and our politics. We have exposed the nakedness of our aggression and our desire to be in the right, with the side of power. We have exposed the fragility of human nature.

We have also opened ourselves to a more honest place. Our desire for “telling it like it is” isn’t about honesty, it’s about power. We want to be right and have our way. And yet we have more opportunities for honesty in our media and in our relationships. We have more transparency and more opportunities to get the official record more right to the world we want to live in.

We can’t rely on Walter Cronkite to tell us. But more importantly, we have to recognize there is more than one right.

In With the New.

In a world in which we struggle to understand what ‘is’ is, we flounder because it all feels broken, destroyed.

That’s because it has. Well, more like deconstructed.

Deconstruction, as a discipline is actually the fundamental currency of the postmodern world. We see it in every Facebook fight as we parse each other’s words or in every celebrity scandal.

We all deconstruct our world today. Not because we want to break it. But so we can understand it. So we can ultimately make it better.

What is going on in our church and in our world looks really frightening. It looks like chaos. It isn’t. Not yet, anyway. We’ll know chaos when it comes.

What we have is a deconstructed world. And the ones with the tools to build a new society are the ones who will rise.

Right now, white nationalism is ascending in Europe and the U.S. as a response to decades of stagnation and rising inequality. As those who fear the impending chaos have found their lives more and more adrift.

We can reconstruct our world without racism, fear, authoritarianism, or border obsession. Whether that is the border to our country or the border to our bathrooms.

To do so, we have to realize that White Nationalism has created a narrative for us. They are making an ‘is’ and are pitching that ‘is’ to the rest of us. And without another ‘is,’ an ‘is’ which speaks to what could be, an unwelcome ‘is’ will dominate.

To Make A New Is.

For many of us, we simply aren’t used to the idea that ‘is’ is up for debate. We’ve been sold an absolute truth mindset, even as we’ve all been part of a postmodern world for over half a century.

We aren’t used to having to debate and clarify our is. To negotiate and build an is together. We want our is to just be. Self-evident. Natural. Obvious.

It isn’t.

We need to make a new is. Not a recreation of the past or one resigned to a future we are far too certain will come.

A new is which allows all to thrive. One which feels a lot more like the kindom.

Postmodernism has destroyed the illusion of absolute truth as an attainable goal and the maintenance of one as a false idol. But it hasn’t destroyed our need or ability to build functional solutions for our world or embody the kindom GOD dreams for us.

In fact, it has made them more likely.

We just have to get through this age as the comfortable are being afflicted and we center our hearts around bringing comfort to the afflicted.

Eventually, we will then see what is. And what isn’t.