Individual Action is Relational Action

Graham Ward in an essay entitled "A Christian Act: Politics and Liturgical Practice" sets out a model for describing human action. His terms are similar to Kenneth Burke's dramaturigal model. Ward suggests that Christians begin with the principle "Your life is hid with Christ in God" (Col 3:3). He then asks, "What kind of act is a Christian act?" He examines this question from six perspectives, all of which overlap to a large extent:

1. Agent: The actions of the Christian are not those of an autonomous individual who claims self-sufficiency but of an individual who is wrapped in a vinculum caritatis, a bond of love. The Christian act is one that abides in Christ, that imitates Christ. The Christian agent is one who sojourns in this world, even while claiming it for Christ. This journey is traveled within the koinonia fellowship of the Church and experienced in the unity of the Lord's supper. As such, each Christian is called to resist individual privitization of his or her life and recognize the "interrelationality" of being a being on his or her way to a "final recognition of who she is in Christ."
2. Nature of the Action: Our actions, then, are Christological in orientation; they are discovered to be such at the level of our practices. We reach an understanding of them by participating in the Christian practice, which God names us through. We cannot name the nature of the action ourselves, for it is God who decides this as we participate in his will.
3. Evaluation of the Action: We are limited in our ability to judge our actions, though we must attempt to do so even as we are aware of our limitations. "We name and judge far better the more we are subject to God," and this happens as we enter into his eschatological expectations. We orient ourselves to his end purposes.
4. Object: We truly discover the object of our actions as we submit all things to Christ. The object of our actions is to be situated within the economy of redemption; thus, we learn to pursue the good , true, and beautiful as God intends. When we do so, our objects become worship. "In such a labouring, the agent is priestly, the act liturgical, and the object sacramental."
5. Effect of the Act: The effect of the act upon object and agent is transfiguration: to be obedient and desire what God desires. We learn that we are not truly transparent to ourselves even as we obey and grow in obedience.
6. Dispositions and Affections: These operate within a Christ-centered form of reasoning; we become more and more inclined to a direction of discipline, that inclined to the way of Jesus.

All of this suggests that our motives and intentions are mixed and failable and only become less so through the actions of grace upon us even as we enter in and seek to obey. We cannot truly act in a free manner as God intends without the relationships of Church and Triune God.