There is this thing called the messianic future.
This isn't a Christian dialogue, and not necessarily even a religious one. This is Derrida's idea; he was a Jew who argued for faith without religion. This is not to say that individuals shouldn't pursue their individual religions, if desired, and adhere to, love, and be obedient to them; rather, he saw that if a unifying idea doesn't become common among all people everywhere, and if people don't look outside the fellow members of their own religions, we will only continue in the destruction the recent generations have seen. The idea he proposed to unify us is the messianic future.
Derrida points not to The Christian Messiah, but the messianic principle and idea. There are messianic figures in many religions, and even in secular ideas, and their purposes are the same: to come and bring justice in the future. A messianic future is an absolute future: justice will come. If you believe that justice will come, you act in faith in it. This faith, Derrida says, is "lying at the root of our most everyday practices," or, as Joseph Smith taught in Lectures on Faith, the most basic force in life--we get out of bed, eat, study, speak, all because we have faith that a specific result will happen. Even when we sit down in a chair we have never sat in, we sit in faith that it will hold us up. The key to a messianic future, however, is that is never actually come, it has never actually "arrived," in totality. This is confusing; don't we want justice to come? Don't we hope for it? If justice is the object of a messianic future, isn't that the goal?
Derrida is emphatic that having an idea of what the messiah will look like, or when "he" will arrive, is not the point. If anyone asks, "will there ever be total, unconditional justice in the world?", the answer is invariably no. The point is not the telos, or the end "goal" or purpose. The point is that a messianic future places the responsibility in the individual. As long as that messianic arrival hasn't happened yet, every believer can ask, "are you coming?", and continue his preparation for it (what the LDS community calls a "probationary state.") And any person who truly hopes for and is preparing for a just future will act according, in faith: he will seek out his "other", will care for him, will right the wrongs of the world on an individual basis, face to face, one a time. That individual relationship and care is what he calls "the gift": the gift is giving another the future, it is hospitality, it is spreading goodness.
I think the end of this article says it best:
"Come, Come" is not said with your lips alone; what is required is "the efforts of men, virtue, their repentance." The messianic is a call that is whispered in my ear to begin now, today, working for justice, without delay, even though justice is always to come. The Messiah may, if he chooses, answer this impertinent question by saying, "Today." The messianic commands us not to wait--to bring about justice today, to change our lives today....
"When will you come?"
"Today."
"Today" because we can change our lives, change the way we treat others, today. If we do this, the messianic justice, whichever one we believe in, and the greatest one--a person caring for another person--is here today.
This is an important, even most important, idea to me. It's nonexclusive, immediate, it's powerful. For me, it makes the most daunting tasks seem doable.
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