File this under "Things I can't identify with."

In this Toyota TV ad, a father is looking for a "safe, reliable car" for his daughter.[1]

Watch >

[2013-03-11]

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As of March 3, 2013, I have 18,387 words in my palette waiting to be edited or posted.

I've archived 146,278 words since I started archiving my own blogs (words only, no pictures)

And that doesn't include the subfolders where I work on seasonal material and stuff I simply don't want to post but want to keep a record of, or my fiction, or my journal, or my email, or what I write for a living, which probably doubles all that.

I write a lot, and still I should write more.

[2013-03-03]

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[1]
As a friend of mine used to say (quoting his father) when I was working 3rd shift at one of our retail outlets, "those are rich people's problems."

It may not be immediately obvious why this is ridiculous, so I'll spell it out: I can't afford a new car (or an old car) for a child going off to college.

My parents couldn't afford one for me, either. I spent 4 years at Calvin College and my first year after Calvin walking where I needed to go (or bumming a ride). I didn't have my own car until I bought Dad's AMC Spirit.

I'm not poor, but I can't afford a Sandals vacation, a Chuck Schwaab retirement shelter, or a  Rolex, which are routinely advertised on channels I watch. I can save and splurge like most folks (for vacations and holidays), but I suspect there is a rather large group of folks watching those ads that spend on those things without blinking an eye.

The Weight of Proximity (Part 2)

I'm beginning to lend much more credence to the beliefs of the early Church Fathers and early Christian practices when forming my opinion on doctrinal differences.

The closer someone is to something, the more we value their opinion.

For example...

• My father is a better source of information on my grandpa than I am, even though we both knew him.
• My son will be a better source of information on my grandpa than his son.
• My mom is a better source of information on Grandma's Hobo Beans than I am. I have the recipe (read it here), I've watched my mom make them plenty of times. And I ate them plenty of times. but I never watched Grandma make them and don't have the context (home and kitchen and family) that surrounded that.

Other examples abound...

• Parents are better judges of children.
• Doctors are better judges of illness.
• An eyewitness to a traffic accident is a better source of truth than someone who heard it from a block away.
• etc.

We reason this way all the time on all sorts of things, but for some reason we often treat religious matters differently[1].

What I AM NOT saying:

It doesn't mean that because a lot of folks believed something, I can immediately trust their judgment.

What I AM saying:

It does mean that I am obligated by the weight of conviction of others to seriously consider their opinion unless I can find a reason to discount it, especially if they are closer to it in some way (eg experienced it or studied it).

Real life example:

There is some (IMHO very limited) support for Purgatory in the bible. But what interests me more is that early Church Fathers believed it, and the concept is reflected in catacomb inscriptions of early Christians.

That doesn't mean Purgatory exists. It does mean that those closer to other ideas I believe, believed it did.

Learn more on this page>
Direct link to PDF with a summary of information >
Also a very good page >


Here's the point:

If you set up a metaphysical construct in which you accept divine activity (God, angels, resurrection, eternal life, etc), you cannot ignore facts that contribute to that construct because they are inconvenient.

Clarence the Baptist talking:

My brothers and sisters long dead in Christ believed in a place the dead go where they can still hear us and pray with us and for us.

I must do something with that information.

I don't believe 500 years of Reformed theology (of which I have been a part) obviates my obligation to use my noodle when faced with sound evidence, in this case textual and archaeological.

CS Lewis wrote something to the effect that he was undecided on Purgatory but wouldn't be surprised if God asked him to wipe his feet before entering heaven.

That's about where I am.

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[1]
This conversation is with myself and the world's 2.3 billion Christians (give or take). That's a big bubble, but a bubble nonetheless. If you are outside that bubble, this post (and many others I suppose) may not be too meaningful, but the principle is sound for any topic.

Started: 2013-02-26

The Weight of Proximity (Part 1)

(I've been having a discussion with an acquaintance that will make a good introduction to my next blog entry. I've edited it a bit.)

There is no such thing as objective truth. To say there is, is an ontological statement and ends any discussion pretty quickly. (To say there isn't is a non-sequitur, but if you keep reading, you can see why we must start there.)

To communicate, debate, compromise, agree, etc, we have to presume some things - that we are sentient beings, that we understand English, that we have sufficient background in the subject for the dialog to be meaningful and help each other form fuller opinions, etc.

Everything that we can possibly know, we know through discernment (inspection[1]) and/or the discernment of others (teachers).

The history of the Christian faith has these layers, which are more or less chronological:

1. Judaism, the palette upon which everything else is painted (and which itself has layers, another story)
2. The man Jesus
3. The cultural melting pot in which Jesus lived, taught and died
4. Those who learned from Jesus (Apostles)
5. Those who learned from the Apostles (Apostolic Fathers)
6. Those who learned from the Apostolic Fathers (later Church Fathers)
7. The Church and it's traditions
8. The New Testament
9. You and me

The New Testament comes nearly last, not because it's unimportant, but because it came nearly last.

Most of what we believe about Jesus and the things we do because we believe in Jesus predate the New Testament by many years.

You simply can't hold up a bible and say "if it's in here, I believe it, and if it's not, I don't." Our present Bible didn't come first and it didn't capture everything there is to know about what it means to be a Christian. It was, indeed, often a response to what the early church was already doing.

All that makes a good preface to tomorrow's blog post.

[2013-03-05]

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[1]
To discern "by inspection" means to observe (sometimes without much preparation) and describe; this was a favorite phrase of one of my linguistic profs, Prof Lockwood, then at Michigan State University and a prominent figure in Cognitive Stratificational Linguistics. I'm afraid I was not a good linguist and left the MA program near the end before completing my dissertation. I am still a fan of Cognitive Stratificational Linguistics and believe it offers more insight than Transformational Generative, ie, the Chomskyan variety, which puts me if a very small minority. (Funny how much that happens.)

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A surfeit of lamprey.

I am currently listening to a history of the Middle Ages and heard this delightful phrase: "A surfeit of lamprey."

It was a apparently the cause of death of King Henry I. Lampreys were enjoyed by the European upper classes during the Middle Ages >.

To paraphrase Truman Capote, the rich sure are different from you and me.[1]

[2013-03-03]

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Who am i writing for?

When I write I these posts I usually have specific people I picture reading them...

Friends
Family
Folks at extremes of the Christian spectrum (Baptists and Catholics, mostly, two denominations divided by a common savior)
Folks outside both extremes (atheists, agnostics)

I try to anticipate disagreement and I think my posts (sometimes awkwardly) reflect that.

[2013-03-08]

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[1]
I'm listening to Prof Dorsey Armstrong on "The Medieval World." The Middle Ages is one topic in which it would be easy to criticize religious elements for their role in human cruelty, but Prof Armstrong frequently gives insight into ancient peoples and motivations that humanize them in a way that makes them more accessible. It's not a matter of dismissing the wars and crusades and machinations, but allowing for some sincerity of many who found themselves caught up in them.

A personal insight: I am sad to say I was filled with just as much vengeful thinking after 9-11 as many Americans. I was aware of my anger, but it didn't go away because of my awareness. Something inside me wanted people to die, as much as I wish I could say otherwise. I've railed against feelings like that here many times; no doubt evidence of discomfort with my own aggression.

I don't think I could pull the trigger or drop a bomb, but I sure had no problem silently cheering on those who did, which made me equally culpable.

How different am I today from someone who sent off a son to fight in the Crusades?

Not at all.

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Diverted despite association.

If you come to a good thing through a benign thing, is the final result any less good?[1]

• Adults used to add sugar to medicine for children (before pharmaceutical companies began making it taste like bubble gum).
• Lo-cal, lo-salt, and lo-fat foods are made to look and taste like their unhealthy cousins.
• Teachers reward students for doing their homework and getting good grades.
• Bosses give flex time, vacations, bonuses, etc to improve performance.

If I enjoy selling widgets because someone offered me a good paycheck and lots of vacation time, do I sell any fewer widgets?

If I got an A in calculus because the teacher promised the class a pizza party, do I understand calculus any less?

If I eat only lo-salt pretzels and am equally satisfied, is there any qualitative difference when I reach the bottom of the bag?

If I love Jesus because I was first attracted to statues or steeples or beads or bells or hymns or fonts or baptisteries, am I any less saved?

The point: Does something "not Jesus" obviate "Jesus"?

No, I don't think so.

They can instead be enriching complements.

Sure, any incentive can interfere with a goal, but that's true of everything.

[2013-02-26]

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I have a question....

Why did Jesus say "pick up your cross and follow me" before he was crucified?[2]

Was the cross an Aramaic metaphor? Or is it an anachronism? (and so probably added after the crucifixion).

If it wasn't a phrase familiar to his listeners, it makes no sense.

I understand the Romans often forced condemned criminals to carry the cross-beam to the place of execution, so this would have been a familiar scene and it's entirely possible Jesus' words were a metaphor meaning something like "the burden is unpleasant and lonely and may not end well in this life."

There are thousands upon thousands of colloquial expressions common today that 2,000 years from now will mean nothing. Indeed, even hundred or a dozen years from now.

(IMHO the fact that it was included indicates the original writers and editors - who certainly were aware of the anachronism - held accuracy to be more important than the immediate sense, which is not a trivial observation. Any change made - even for gender or racial or theological sensitivity - can remove a detail that might later add insight. If the text can't survive scrutiny or we don't have the courage and perspicacity to account for changing sensibilities, maybe we ought to forget about it altogether.

That is a very real challenge, and it applies to any creative work. If you're not willing to approach it in its own context and on its own merits, don't bother.

I'm most definitely not saying there's no place for modernized translations, adaptations, etc, only that those ought to be steps back toward the source, not the end of the discovery.)

[2013-03-04]

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[1]
Even tougher: If you come to a good thing through a bad thing, is the final result any less good?

No, I don't think so, though the likelihood of that happening IMHO is much less.

[2]
The full context is:

Luke 14:25-33
25 Now large crowds were accompanying Jesus, and turning to them he said, 26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn't sit down first and compute the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish the tower, all who see it will begin to make fun of him. 30 They will say, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish!' 31 Or what king, going out to confront another king in battle, will not sit down first and determine whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot succeed, he will send a representative while the other is still a long way off and ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way therefore not one of you can be my disciple if he does not renounce all his own possessions. (NETFree)

 

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