I've been trying to gear up for my certification tests lately, taking many practice tests and trying to fill in the cracks in my academic knowledge which have developed (primarily in MATH) since I graduated.
In an attempt to create as realistic a testing scenario as possible, I wrote this essay for the practice test today.
PROMPT:
“Because the traditional grading scale of A through F fosters needless competition and pressure, colleges and universities should use a simple pass/fail system.”
ESSAY:
As the American school system struggles to regain a foothold as a top-rated educational system among the developed nations, it can be tempting to try brash tactics that attempt to wipe out the status quo rather than repair it and improve its productivity. Removing the traditional A through F grading scale would in the long run be detrimental to American students, and fails to address the larger issues which cause needless competition and pressure: lack of individual attention, compounded by an obsession with knowledge assessment over learning skills.
Removing the grading system will not increase the number of teachers per student, a ratio which other countries have raised each year and which the United States continues to drop each year as state education departments treat local school districts as an easy source of funding, pinching teacher pay and instituting hiring freezes to allow administrators at the district and state level to continue to receive raises and/or hire new administrators for positions which seem conjured out of thin air as teachers on the ground are forced to seek employment elsewhere. In this rigged system, students aren’t so much competing with each other for higher grades as they are competing for attention by their instructors, and our educational system favors those whose natural learning styles are reading, writing, and verbal, to the exclusion of all other learning styles, especially kinetic. And their teachers have zero freedom to attempt to reach out with other styles of instruction because they are so hampered by standardized assessments.
Which leads to the other cause of needless student pressure: our system’s obsession with standardized testing. A written test only allows those students who naturally learn best through reading and writing to excel, though in our current system of too-much-too-early, even those rare individuals struggle to vomit the massive load of information that has been crammed into their skulls. Standardized testing paralyzes our underpaid, overworked educators from being able to experiment with teaching or content, or to creatively engage their students. If they want their students to pass, they and their students must conform to the standardized system, and far too many cannot. By basing our entire educational system around standardized testing, we are stifling the best resources an education should provide: critical thinking and creativity. Both in our teachers and our students.
Thus, the A through F grading system is not the problem, nor has it led to our current set of problems. Not enough teachers and too many tests has led us here, and we cannot move on as a nation and join the rest of the developed world until we do so.
Friday, January 8, 2016
Sunday, December 20, 2015
My Sunday School Class
I'm starting to think I would enjoy leading a Sunday School class, provided anyone else showed up.
Especially after having many good and many terrible experiences with different styles of leadership and facilitation over the years.
Here are a few classroom rules I would put into effect from day 1.
1) No pressure to pray aloud.
Starting with this one because my wife and many of my more spiritually sensitive friends are introverts and or/suffer from social anxiety. Christian churches are notorious for applauding long, eloquent prayers as if prayer is an oration before a crowd instead of an intimate moment with God. Part of my goal in forming a class is to attempt to undo some of the long-term effects of this policy upon the community and upon its perception of Christianity by, insofar as I am able, removing the peer-pressure to pray loud and long and loquaciously. I will not take the go-around-the-circle approach to taking prayer requests, taking the responsibility of praying aloud upon myself and letting those who wish me to address their anxieties or concerns specifically mention them of their own volition.
2) No lectures.
As anyone who has read my blog in the past can attest, I have sufficient struggle dealing with the typical church service's sing-then-lecture format, and thus have no reason to extend that struggle to Sunday School. A Sunday School class is a small, more intimate setting, designed not for a single speaker to stand above everyone else and assume they all agree with him/her, but for everyone present to be able to voice concerns and make contributions to the discussion. Having only one person speak and everyone else just nod or stare at the wall is counterintuitive to the small-group setting, and counterproductive overall.
3) No rhetorical questions.
As an extension of #2, I will take special care to never ask a question without expecting an answer from the class. Rhetorical questions in a small-group setting just fill up the time with unnecessary and awkward silence that could have been filled with discussion and opportunities for growth.
4) No one-word answers.
A step up from #3, I will also take special care to either design my lesson plans to ask deeper questions than can't be answered with "God" or "Jesus" or "faith" or "sin," or push anyone who answers thusly to further elaborate, in order to challenge the class to think more profoundly and delve more deeply into the concepts we discuss.
5) Controversial topics welcome.
I fully expect to have disagreements among and with members of my class. How we handle disagreement among ourselves as Christians demonstrates our Christianity so much more deeply than how we behave sitting in church. Especially since many of the topics which would arise in class discussion are those which directly affect our perception of the world and/or our daily lives. I hope to ask the kind of armor-piercing questions that lead to major, long-term shifts in thought and spiritual perspective.
6) No platitudes. Ever.
This one gets a little gray for the locked-down church-kids in the class, but anyone who has left the church and/or left Christianity can see platitudes coming a mile away. This rule will likely step on more than a few hidebound toes because it will require a change in word choice, in an environment (the church building) which encourages using the same words over and over again until we're saying them in our sleep and are totally numb to them.
7) Cliches will be avoided whenever possible.
I differentiate semantically between platitudes and cliches because platitudes are used in place of genuine sentiments, while cliches can be genuine sentiments expressed in a repetitive manner. As the class leader, I would also differentiate in my approach to pointing out cliches vs. platitudes. Cliches can be addressed without confrontation, because in many cases the person is using an overused phrase or term without realizing that it is overused. Platitudes need to be shot on sight whenever they rear their ugly heads because their use only drives people away from the church and away from Christianity, and reinforces the negative stereotypes associated with American Christianity.
8) All Bible study will involve a holistic approach.
Too often, church Bible studies involve one person spoon-feeding a preselected set of dogma and the scriptural interpretations which support them to a group of blank-faced acolytes who can only sit there and nod.
Expanding one's understanding of the Bible requires its examination from literary, historical, and cultural perspectives, in addition to examining translation conventions and denotation/connotation (for ourselves in this place and time and for those who wrote it at their place and time).
Obviously, it's entirely possible that more items would be added to this list overall, but this seems to be a strong starting point, especially for anyone who has become disillusioned with Sunday School classes in general.
Especially after having many good and many terrible experiences with different styles of leadership and facilitation over the years.
Here are a few classroom rules I would put into effect from day 1.
1) No pressure to pray aloud.
Starting with this one because my wife and many of my more spiritually sensitive friends are introverts and or/suffer from social anxiety. Christian churches are notorious for applauding long, eloquent prayers as if prayer is an oration before a crowd instead of an intimate moment with God. Part of my goal in forming a class is to attempt to undo some of the long-term effects of this policy upon the community and upon its perception of Christianity by, insofar as I am able, removing the peer-pressure to pray loud and long and loquaciously. I will not take the go-around-the-circle approach to taking prayer requests, taking the responsibility of praying aloud upon myself and letting those who wish me to address their anxieties or concerns specifically mention them of their own volition.
2) No lectures.
As anyone who has read my blog in the past can attest, I have sufficient struggle dealing with the typical church service's sing-then-lecture format, and thus have no reason to extend that struggle to Sunday School. A Sunday School class is a small, more intimate setting, designed not for a single speaker to stand above everyone else and assume they all agree with him/her, but for everyone present to be able to voice concerns and make contributions to the discussion. Having only one person speak and everyone else just nod or stare at the wall is counterintuitive to the small-group setting, and counterproductive overall.
3) No rhetorical questions.
As an extension of #2, I will take special care to never ask a question without expecting an answer from the class. Rhetorical questions in a small-group setting just fill up the time with unnecessary and awkward silence that could have been filled with discussion and opportunities for growth.
4) No one-word answers.
A step up from #3, I will also take special care to either design my lesson plans to ask deeper questions than can't be answered with "God" or "Jesus" or "faith" or "sin," or push anyone who answers thusly to further elaborate, in order to challenge the class to think more profoundly and delve more deeply into the concepts we discuss.
5) Controversial topics welcome.
I fully expect to have disagreements among and with members of my class. How we handle disagreement among ourselves as Christians demonstrates our Christianity so much more deeply than how we behave sitting in church. Especially since many of the topics which would arise in class discussion are those which directly affect our perception of the world and/or our daily lives. I hope to ask the kind of armor-piercing questions that lead to major, long-term shifts in thought and spiritual perspective.
6) No platitudes. Ever.
This one gets a little gray for the locked-down church-kids in the class, but anyone who has left the church and/or left Christianity can see platitudes coming a mile away. This rule will likely step on more than a few hidebound toes because it will require a change in word choice, in an environment (the church building) which encourages using the same words over and over again until we're saying them in our sleep and are totally numb to them.
7) Cliches will be avoided whenever possible.
I differentiate semantically between platitudes and cliches because platitudes are used in place of genuine sentiments, while cliches can be genuine sentiments expressed in a repetitive manner. As the class leader, I would also differentiate in my approach to pointing out cliches vs. platitudes. Cliches can be addressed without confrontation, because in many cases the person is using an overused phrase or term without realizing that it is overused. Platitudes need to be shot on sight whenever they rear their ugly heads because their use only drives people away from the church and away from Christianity, and reinforces the negative stereotypes associated with American Christianity.
8) All Bible study will involve a holistic approach.
Too often, church Bible studies involve one person spoon-feeding a preselected set of dogma and the scriptural interpretations which support them to a group of blank-faced acolytes who can only sit there and nod.
Expanding one's understanding of the Bible requires its examination from literary, historical, and cultural perspectives, in addition to examining translation conventions and denotation/connotation (for ourselves in this place and time and for those who wrote it at their place and time).
Obviously, it's entirely possible that more items would be added to this list overall, but this seems to be a strong starting point, especially for anyone who has become disillusioned with Sunday School classes in general.
Friday, October 23, 2015
I don't want to say "There is no such thing as the devil," but...
I've apparently been very motivated theologically lately.
The character called "the adversary/the accuser" ("ha-satan," not capitalized and not a proper noun) doesn't show up until Chronicles, which were written after the conquest of Babylon by the Medes and the Persians.
Which resulted in the introduction of Zoroastrianism to Judaism.
Prior to that, Judaism was strictly and utterly monotheistic.
Meaning they treated God as the only force in the universe.
EVERYTHING, good and bad, was attributed to God.
A key doctrine of Zoroastrianism is that the universe is held in constant tension between two equal and opposing forces, one good and one evil.
The introduction of this doctrine influenced monotheistic Judaism to adopt the idea of an opposite-yet-not-equal number for YHWH/Adonai.
Compare 1 and 2 Samuel/1 and 2 Kings with accounts of the exact same events in 1 and 2 Chronicles.
2 Samuel 24 vs. 1 Chronicles 21 is a good example of this.
"Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.' So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-2 Samuel 24:1-2
"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.” So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-1 Chronicles 21:1-2
Events attributed to God in the former writings are attributed to "the accuser/adversary" in the latter.
Apparently, it was only the need for a named spiritual bogeyman upon which to cast all blame which created the tradition of capitalizing "ha-satan."
As well as the tradition of assuming that the serpent in the Genesis creation myth is also "ha-satan," even though there is zero evidence that "the serpent" was given any such negative deification until after the Persian conquest.
Moses made a statue of a bronze snake in Numbers (in response to an invasion of venomous snakes which like everything else pre-Zoroastrian Judaism is attributed to God), and none of the Hebrews are recorded crying "Ha-Satan is here!" or referencing the story recorded in Genesis at all in response to the real snakes or the bronze snake.
Even the accounts of Jesus interacting with "the devil" (in Matthew "ha-satan," in Luke "diabolos," Greek for "slanderer") are from JEWISH sources, who had inherited the centuries-old Zoroastrian-influenced Judaism.
And notice the lack of Jesus-adversary interactions in Mark and John, especially the latter, who in every other way devoted his account to the deeper truths of Christ's life and ministry.
The tradition of treating "ha-satan" as a proper noun was in full force by the time the English language rolled around and needed translations of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
So it's no surprise that Jesus' rebuke of Peter in Matthew 16:23 / Mark 8:33 is read as "Get behind me, Prince of Darkness/King of Hell/Supreme Demon!" instead of "Get behind me, adversary! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Merely human concerns.
Not hellish concerns, not demonic concerns, not even overtly malicious concerns.
Decide for yourself which interpretation makes more sense.
And this doesn't even get into the fact that there are MEN referred to as "ha-satan" in the Old Testament as well.
Hadad the Edomite in 1 Kings 11:14 and Rezon the Syrian in 1 Kings 11:23 are just a few examples.
We keep ourselves in the dark age of enforced ignorance as long as we continue to pass on cultural myopia, blind adherence to tradition, and refusal to examine the texts we hold sacred with their original writers and readers in mind.
The character called "the adversary/the accuser" ("ha-satan," not capitalized and not a proper noun) doesn't show up until Chronicles, which were written after the conquest of Babylon by the Medes and the Persians.
Which resulted in the introduction of Zoroastrianism to Judaism.
Prior to that, Judaism was strictly and utterly monotheistic.
Meaning they treated God as the only force in the universe.
EVERYTHING, good and bad, was attributed to God.
A key doctrine of Zoroastrianism is that the universe is held in constant tension between two equal and opposing forces, one good and one evil.
The introduction of this doctrine influenced monotheistic Judaism to adopt the idea of an opposite-yet-not-equal number for YHWH/Adonai.
Compare 1 and 2 Samuel/1 and 2 Kings with accounts of the exact same events in 1 and 2 Chronicles.
2 Samuel 24 vs. 1 Chronicles 21 is a good example of this.
"Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.' So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-2 Samuel 24:1-2
"Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.” So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, 'Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.'"
-1 Chronicles 21:1-2
Events attributed to God in the former writings are attributed to "the accuser/adversary" in the latter.
Apparently, it was only the need for a named spiritual bogeyman upon which to cast all blame which created the tradition of capitalizing "ha-satan."
As well as the tradition of assuming that the serpent in the Genesis creation myth is also "ha-satan," even though there is zero evidence that "the serpent" was given any such negative deification until after the Persian conquest.
Moses made a statue of a bronze snake in Numbers (in response to an invasion of venomous snakes which like everything else pre-Zoroastrian Judaism is attributed to God), and none of the Hebrews are recorded crying "Ha-Satan is here!" or referencing the story recorded in Genesis at all in response to the real snakes or the bronze snake.
Even the accounts of Jesus interacting with "the devil" (in Matthew "ha-satan," in Luke "diabolos," Greek for "slanderer") are from JEWISH sources, who had inherited the centuries-old Zoroastrian-influenced Judaism.
And notice the lack of Jesus-adversary interactions in Mark and John, especially the latter, who in every other way devoted his account to the deeper truths of Christ's life and ministry.
The tradition of treating "ha-satan" as a proper noun was in full force by the time the English language rolled around and needed translations of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
So it's no surprise that Jesus' rebuke of Peter in Matthew 16:23 / Mark 8:33 is read as "Get behind me, Prince of Darkness/King of Hell/Supreme Demon!" instead of "Get behind me, adversary! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”
Merely human concerns.
Not hellish concerns, not demonic concerns, not even overtly malicious concerns.
Decide for yourself which interpretation makes more sense.
And this doesn't even get into the fact that there are MEN referred to as "ha-satan" in the Old Testament as well.
Hadad the Edomite in 1 Kings 11:14 and Rezon the Syrian in 1 Kings 11:23 are just a few examples.
We keep ourselves in the dark age of enforced ignorance as long as we continue to pass on cultural myopia, blind adherence to tradition, and refusal to examine the texts we hold sacred with their original writers and readers in mind.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Sunday School for Introverts
For once, I'm posting more questions than opinions.
So bear with me.
As my wife and I have been trying to get back into regular church attendance, and have had vastly different experiences at the same churches, I've become more aware of just how anti-introvert/anti-social anxiety the typical Sunday School class is.
Especially for anyone not raised in church.
The pressure to pray aloud usually means the prayer will be the most forced and rushed affair ever.
The pressure to read Scripture aloud tends to lead to completely ignoring the meaning of the text in an effort to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.
And then there's the pressure to take part in the class discussion.
A discussion which, depending upon the individuals in the class, can go into spiritual deep water (meaning, tons of theological jargon and assumption that everyone is deeply familiar with the minutiae of Scripture) within seconds.
And which requires that each person interrupt someone else just to contribute.
All of these contribute to an environment which leaves introverts and/or the socially anxious huddled in the corner waiting for the ordeal to end so they can vanish into the crowd for the main church service......at least until "Pass the Peace," in which tons of strangers invade their personal space again and again and make them want to run screaming from the room, but that's for another discussion.
The above are all impressions and experiences conveyed to me over the years by my wife, who is very much an introvert, and generally suffers from a large degree of social anxiety in everyday situations, which is ramped up in church services, in large part due to the above and due to her not attending church regularly until adulthood.
Being an extrovert who doesn't tend to feel socially anxious, and having been raised in church, I never noticed these issues until my wife and I got married and started looking for a church to call home together.
The three sources of anxiety for my wife seem to eliminate the entirety of every Sunday School class I've ever been in (group prayer, group Scripture reading, and group discussion), so it seems that an entirely new set of activities would be required, unless the peer pressure inherent in the three could be lessened.
How do we minimize and eventually eliminate the above peer pressures, which seem so ingrained in American mainline church practices, so that we can create an environment which does not alienate introverts and those who suffer from social anxiety (a specification I make because extroverts can suffer from it as well)?
I just don't see how it could be done, aside from the class leader doing the praying and the reading and making a lecture of it instead of a discussion.
But we already have that in the form of the pastor's sermon during the regular service.
Should we just recommend that introverted/socially anxious churchgoers avoid small-group meetings and stick to the main church service?
So bear with me.
As my wife and I have been trying to get back into regular church attendance, and have had vastly different experiences at the same churches, I've become more aware of just how anti-introvert/anti-social anxiety the typical Sunday School class is.
Especially for anyone not raised in church.
The pressure to pray aloud usually means the prayer will be the most forced and rushed affair ever.
The pressure to read Scripture aloud tends to lead to completely ignoring the meaning of the text in an effort to get out of the spotlight as quickly as possible.
And then there's the pressure to take part in the class discussion.
A discussion which, depending upon the individuals in the class, can go into spiritual deep water (meaning, tons of theological jargon and assumption that everyone is deeply familiar with the minutiae of Scripture) within seconds.
And which requires that each person interrupt someone else just to contribute.
All of these contribute to an environment which leaves introverts and/or the socially anxious huddled in the corner waiting for the ordeal to end so they can vanish into the crowd for the main church service......at least until "Pass the Peace," in which tons of strangers invade their personal space again and again and make them want to run screaming from the room, but that's for another discussion.
The above are all impressions and experiences conveyed to me over the years by my wife, who is very much an introvert, and generally suffers from a large degree of social anxiety in everyday situations, which is ramped up in church services, in large part due to the above and due to her not attending church regularly until adulthood.
Being an extrovert who doesn't tend to feel socially anxious, and having been raised in church, I never noticed these issues until my wife and I got married and started looking for a church to call home together.
The three sources of anxiety for my wife seem to eliminate the entirety of every Sunday School class I've ever been in (group prayer, group Scripture reading, and group discussion), so it seems that an entirely new set of activities would be required, unless the peer pressure inherent in the three could be lessened.
How do we minimize and eventually eliminate the above peer pressures, which seem so ingrained in American mainline church practices, so that we can create an environment which does not alienate introverts and those who suffer from social anxiety (a specification I make because extroverts can suffer from it as well)?
I just don't see how it could be done, aside from the class leader doing the praying and the reading and making a lecture of it instead of a discussion.
But we already have that in the form of the pastor's sermon during the regular service.
Should we just recommend that introverted/socially anxious churchgoers avoid small-group meetings and stick to the main church service?
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
This Might Be a Sermon Someday...
Why do church people assume that everything recorded as the spoken words of Jesus were meant to be taken as stand-alone, pithy sayings?
That's what PROVERBS is for!
Aside from the Sermon on the Mount (which only occurs in that form in Matthew's account of Jesus' life, but that's a different discussion), Jesus is seen constantly speaking in CONVERSATION, answering specific questions or rebuking/encouraging specific acts of his disciples or others.
For example, John 14:6 - "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"
Why is it the traditional practice to not mention those first two words when quoting this verse?
Because we might actually need to read the whole chapter, and thus find out what specific QUESTION he was ANSWERING?
That we might need to read the whole conversation, instead of taking a single sentence out of context to justify whatever whenever?
It was in fact a very specific question.
14:5 - "Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'"
Which of course was the result of another statement of Jesus', which has also been stripped of its conversational context and thrown around to justify a whole lot of random dogma and doctrines over the centuries.
14:1-4 - “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
This little chunk of text has been misinterpreted to mean:
"I'm going to Heaven, and you'll be coming with me!"
And of course the 14:6 verse has been chained to that interpretation as well to lock Christ down into the us vs. them Greco-Roman version of Christianity which post-dates Christ and everything else included in the Bible by centuries.
The word "house" here is the exact same word Christ uses when running the money-changers out of the temple (John 2:16 - "To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!'"), yet no one interprets that verse to mean some existential point about the afterlife.
When we only grind individual verses into our children's heads instead of encouraging them to read the surrounding text, examine the person or persons believed to have been responsible for writing the particular book included in the Bible, and so on and so forth in exploring the context, we reduce them to spiritual parrots, or worse, set them up to be platitude-spewing hypocrites later in life.
Especially when we take a one-to-one approach in justifying dogma and doctrine and public policy with verses of scripture.
Which of course is the time-honored tradition of American evangelical leaders, just as it was with European Roman Catholic leaders, just as it is with Middle Eastern Fundamentalist Muslim leaders.
In the words of Dr. Donald A. Carson:
"A text without a context is just a pretext for a proof-text."
That's what PROVERBS is for!
Aside from the Sermon on the Mount (which only occurs in that form in Matthew's account of Jesus' life, but that's a different discussion), Jesus is seen constantly speaking in CONVERSATION, answering specific questions or rebuking/encouraging specific acts of his disciples or others.
For example, John 14:6 - "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"
Why is it the traditional practice to not mention those first two words when quoting this verse?
Because we might actually need to read the whole chapter, and thus find out what specific QUESTION he was ANSWERING?
That we might need to read the whole conversation, instead of taking a single sentence out of context to justify whatever whenever?
It was in fact a very specific question.
14:5 - "Thomas said to him, 'Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?'"
Which of course was the result of another statement of Jesus', which has also been stripped of its conversational context and thrown around to justify a whole lot of random dogma and doctrines over the centuries.
14:1-4 - “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
This little chunk of text has been misinterpreted to mean:
"I'm going to Heaven, and you'll be coming with me!"
And of course the 14:6 verse has been chained to that interpretation as well to lock Christ down into the us vs. them Greco-Roman version of Christianity which post-dates Christ and everything else included in the Bible by centuries.
The word "house" here is the exact same word Christ uses when running the money-changers out of the temple (John 2:16 - "To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!'"), yet no one interprets that verse to mean some existential point about the afterlife.
When we only grind individual verses into our children's heads instead of encouraging them to read the surrounding text, examine the person or persons believed to have been responsible for writing the particular book included in the Bible, and so on and so forth in exploring the context, we reduce them to spiritual parrots, or worse, set them up to be platitude-spewing hypocrites later in life.
Especially when we take a one-to-one approach in justifying dogma and doctrine and public policy with verses of scripture.
Which of course is the time-honored tradition of American evangelical leaders, just as it was with European Roman Catholic leaders, just as it is with Middle Eastern Fundamentalist Muslim leaders.
In the words of Dr. Donald A. Carson:
"A text without a context is just a pretext for a proof-text."
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Bible Stuff
Part 1 - Lost in Translation
One of the most insidious tactics of the American church money-machine is to inflict modern vernacular upon ancient texts via "new translations".
Idioms, gender-neutral pronouns, definition-inserted-in-place-of-term...these are forcibly inserted in a seeming attempt to make overquoted Bible verses feel less overquoted, and more relatable or relevant to an audience which has heard them all before.
But this is not only semantically dishonest, it removes, or attempts to remove, the cultural context of the writing and skew its literary context.
The various texts chosen to be included in the Bible each have a rhythm to them, especially the more poetic works.
The word choice in these only seems trite to modern American audiences because most Americans were raised in or around a church, especially in the Bible Belt, and most mainline denominations defend their doctrines and dogma with a relatively small number of Bible verses to serve as "spiritual pillars".
This small group of verses are thrown around again and again in sermons and Bible studies across the country, to the point that elder church members treat them like mantras of the good ol' days, and younger church members get sick of hearing them (and generally yearn for leaders and teachers to convey spiritual concepts in their own words instead).
Thus, we see attempts by Bible publishers and church leaders to modernize the ancient words, but in so doing remove the sense that they are in fact ancient.
This attempt at modernization, by removing the cultural context of the texts, blurs the Old Testament's progressive discovery of God's character by the ancient Hebrews, and dumbs down the radical nature of the New Testament's "HERE HE IS" message.
Ironically, instead of being perceived as an overquoted authority, this tactic makes the Bible seem petulant and pedantic, subject to the whims of fickle vernacular rather than being the rock-steady divine Word which fundamentalists proclaim it to be.
Part 2 - Lost in Interpretation
Any Bible verse which seems cut-and-dry in favor of a fundamentalist position must, like any single line of text used to support any opinion, be delved into much deeper than "face-value".
Its cultural, historical, and literary context must be thrown open like the doors of an ancient ruin to discern whether ancient, tribal Hebrews with no concept of astronomy or biology or psychology REALLY meant that disrespectful children should be executed.
...and then decide if we REALLY want to emulate them if they REALLY believed that.
Of course, the very practice of reinforcing our dogma with handpicked lines of text without any cultural understanding was not the practice when the texts selected for including in the Bible were written...but don't tell the fundies that.
One of the most insidious tactics of the American church money-machine is to inflict modern vernacular upon ancient texts via "new translations".
Idioms, gender-neutral pronouns, definition-inserted-in-place-of-term...these are forcibly inserted in a seeming attempt to make overquoted Bible verses feel less overquoted, and more relatable or relevant to an audience which has heard them all before.
But this is not only semantically dishonest, it removes, or attempts to remove, the cultural context of the writing and skew its literary context.
The various texts chosen to be included in the Bible each have a rhythm to them, especially the more poetic works.
The word choice in these only seems trite to modern American audiences because most Americans were raised in or around a church, especially in the Bible Belt, and most mainline denominations defend their doctrines and dogma with a relatively small number of Bible verses to serve as "spiritual pillars".
This small group of verses are thrown around again and again in sermons and Bible studies across the country, to the point that elder church members treat them like mantras of the good ol' days, and younger church members get sick of hearing them (and generally yearn for leaders and teachers to convey spiritual concepts in their own words instead).
Thus, we see attempts by Bible publishers and church leaders to modernize the ancient words, but in so doing remove the sense that they are in fact ancient.
This attempt at modernization, by removing the cultural context of the texts, blurs the Old Testament's progressive discovery of God's character by the ancient Hebrews, and dumbs down the radical nature of the New Testament's "HERE HE IS" message.
Ironically, instead of being perceived as an overquoted authority, this tactic makes the Bible seem petulant and pedantic, subject to the whims of fickle vernacular rather than being the rock-steady divine Word which fundamentalists proclaim it to be.
Part 2 - Lost in Interpretation
Any Bible verse which seems cut-and-dry in favor of a fundamentalist position must, like any single line of text used to support any opinion, be delved into much deeper than "face-value".
Its cultural, historical, and literary context must be thrown open like the doors of an ancient ruin to discern whether ancient, tribal Hebrews with no concept of astronomy or biology or psychology REALLY meant that disrespectful children should be executed.
...and then decide if we REALLY want to emulate them if they REALLY believed that.
Of course, the very practice of reinforcing our dogma with handpicked lines of text without any cultural understanding was not the practice when the texts selected for including in the Bible were written...but don't tell the fundies that.
Reading the Bible Backwards
So much of our current mode of thought is the result of a combination of Greco-Roman philosophy and Enlightenment philosophy/theology.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either, and each generation is naturally the rhetorical, intellectual, and spiritual offspring of its forbears.
But it becomes an issue when we apply our modern sensibilities on ancient texts.
Many of our "traditional" doctrines are not the result of some great movement of the Spirit, but the application of Plato, Aristotle, or John Edwards to texts which predate them.
For example, the traditional doctrine of "The Fall" is basically Plato's descent into the cave of illusion.
The original tellers of the story (remember, it was passed down orally for generations) did not think in terms of perfect "forms," or more precisely, changeless states.
Especially since most of the first four chapters of Genesis were originally POEMS, meant to reflect on higher truths in figurative language rather than portray hard facts of reality.
Another negative effect of this application is that we tend to read the Bible backwards, for example reading the Old Testament with Jesus in mind, instead of forwards with the contexts of the individual writers in mind.
We fail to understand the cultural context in which each book of the Old Testament (or in the case of Genesis, in which each section of each book) was created, because we operate under the flawed unconscious assumption that the Bible is essentially a legal constitution.
We assume cohesiveness and continuity from cover to cover because our current philosophical context demands such, even though a basic reading of each book demonstrates a vast variety of literary, cultural, and historical contexts across the anthology.
Up to and including many contradictions, internally and with our present spirituality.
But the storytellers and writers whose works are included in the current canon obviously did not think of themselves as "Biblical authors", and the historically earlier authors had no notion of the historically later authors' existence or ideas or cultural context.
Thus if we are truly to apply our present standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants philosophical methods, we must abandon the legal-constitution assumption which has driven so much of the church's methodology for generations, and re-examine the Bible as a cultural exploration of an evolving understanding of God.
Too many people have been driven away by the church's iron-fisted approach to "divine inspiration" (to say nothing of "inerrancy") for us to continue to pound the pulpit with unrelenting tradition which fears doubt and curiosity and basic questions from anyone, especially those already in its grip.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
