Biblical Assumptions....

We all make them.  And they can cause "issues".  As is proven quite regularly in this forum (most recently for me in a debate about whether there are 2 separate Creation stories or not).

Do we assume that the words we read in Scripture are direct from God or another person's (people's) account of their experience of God?
Do we assume that we are interpreting as we read?  Do we assume that our interpretation is the only way to see the passage?
Do we assume that everyone has the same assumptions about the nature, history, and content of Scripture that we have?  Or at least that they know what our assumptions are?
Are we willing to be open to the assumptions others make as we attempt to see where they are coming from? (whether we agree or not)
Do we read the passage for itself or do we carry understandings from other experience of Scripture with us?

And perhaps most telling....do we ourselves know what our assumptions are?  Can we explicate them to others in the interests of clear communication?

A memory surfaces that deals directly with assumptions we bring to the reading of Scripture.  And how those can radically change what we see.

In my first year introductory course on the Christian Scriptures we had a mix of students.  Some of us (maybe 2/3 of the class, likely closer to 1/2) were seminary students from the United Church and Anglican colleges.  The rest were Religious Studies students from the University--some of whom, it became obvious as time went on, had little or no background experience with Scripture.  The task in the first class, once we went through the syllabus and the list of required texts etc, was to read and discuss the letter to Philemon (a good choice because it is so brief).  There was an extra limit though.  We were to read and discuss as if this was the ONLY piece of Scripture we had ever seen.

That was a challenge.  It is harder than you would expect to forget everything you "know" about the story(ies)  of Scripture, about the background from which Paul is writing.  One person in the class, who honestly had no background but was very eager to learn, took the "brother" language as referring to actual blood relatives and the "slavery" language as purely metaphorical.  And in fact you can make sense of the letter with that reading.  It was a great way to begin the course because it showed us how much we assume we "know".  The next realization was that some of that needed to be unlearned, or at least challenged as the course progressed.

We all make assumptions.  But we are often better at naming the assumptions we see others making than the ones we make.  ANd that can get in the way of open and clear discussion.  Refusing to
acknowledge that there is more than one valid approach to Scripture also get in the way of that discussion -- and people on all sides of the Christian spectrum can be guilty of that.

Some of the assumptions I bring to Scripture are:

• it is impossible to read Scripture without interpretation, none of us simply takes the words of Scripture as they are and applies their plain meaning (all the more so since we are reading translations and every translation includes interpretative choices)
• there are things we can learn from historical, source, redaction and literary criticism/analysis of the Scriptures--even (or perhaps especially) if that analysis causes us to rethink how Scripture came to be in the shape we now have it
• Scripture does not tell one story, or one version of the same story.  It sometimes contradicts itself, it sometimes offers mutiple versions of history (even in the same book), it sometimes offers theological visions that appear mutually incompatible (the passage in Ezra where foreign wives are to be put aside in the name of cultural purity and the genocidal passage in Joshua vs a book like Ruth or Jonah which are openly welcoming of foreigners being part of GOd's community.)
• there is no one proper interpretation of any passage.
• what we see in Scripture is shaped by our background:  what have we been taught before, how widely have we read within Scripture, what life experiences do we bring, what are our political opinions, how do we understand God, how do we understand human nature, what is our understanding of this collection of books we are reading

Those are some of my assumptions.  On specific passages there will be specific assumptions.

What are some of the assumptions you bring to Scripture?

Education: PArental vs Society Rights.

Let me start with a very clear statement.  It is my belief that in the vast majority of cases (95%+) homeschooling is not the best option for the good of the child or for society at large {remembering that part of the basic reason for public education is that it benefits society by creating good citizens--whatever that means}.  I do not think it should be outlawed because there are instances when it is the right (or possibly only) choice but it should be subject to quite stringent guidelines and oversight.  I just wanted to name my bias from the start.

Currently the province of Alberta has a new Education Act before the Legislature.  Within the act is language discussing how the Alberta Human Rights Act interacts with the educational system, including those who choose to home-school.  And this has caused some distuption because parents feel that their rights to decide what their children learn (particularly among the home-schooling crowd but to a lesser extent with parents who want to object to/have their children excused from portions of what is taught at school) are being infringed.  Today there was a protest on the steps of the Legislature Building (story here or here).

Well yes, because heaven forbid we require that every child in the province is taught in a way that upholds the human rights act.  Yes that means you have to teach them that different religious expressions have the right to be expressed and that information about them presented as if they were valid.  Yes that means you have to expose your child to accurate (and potentially life saving), if uncomfortable, information about human sexuality.  Yes it means that your own biases may have to be counterbalanced on some issues.  And yes, in my opinion that is a valid limiting of your parental rights in favour of the general good of society.

AS it happens we are about to go into a provincial election so this could become an election issues, depending on whether the bill passes before dissolution.  Here is the far right party's (IMO misguided) take on it.  When it comes down to it, the province giving in on this issue does not further the cause of education in this province.  In fact it weakens the idea that there are certain things that we believe EVERY student needs to learn.

I truly hope that the government does not give in on this one.  Mind you I also believe that every student in this country, as a condition of receiving his or her high school diploma, should be required to take at least one year of comparative religions/world religions.  I also believe they should be required to travel, by land (probably rail) from coast to coast as a part of their high school education.  SO what do I know.

Ch-ch-changes

In chapter 8 of  For The Love of Cities (see previous post) Peter Kageyama talks about the importance of co-creators in creating lovable cities.  For much of the chapter he discusses two cities (New Orleans and Detroit) that have been decimated in recent years, almost to the point that one could honestly wonder if a come back was possible.  {and in the case of NOLA it seems reasonable to ask if making a comeback in that particular location is a truly good idea anyway--history aside}.  NOLA was of course devastated by a single day.  But there are signs of people making a big difference in that city.  Detroit was the victim of "death by a thousand cuts" rather than one event.  But after the crash of 2008 and the bottom falling out of the auto industry ithe city's decline became most evident.  And there too people are making a difference.

Kageyama points out that in cities like NOLA and Detroit it is alomost easier for co-creators to make a real difference--simply because they are fish in a smaller pond.  But he also points out that there is a big difference.  People in NOLA know that a total rebuild is needed.  People in Detroit maybe not so much.  On page 184 he writes:

If you talk to people in New Orleans. there is a sense that they are on a mission.  And that perception is reflected in public awareness.  The small group of co-creators I have met in Detroit are also on a mission, but that mission has yet to be understood across the city.
Dan Gilmartin, Executive Director of the Michigan Municipal League said to me, "Many of our leaders are trying to recreate the economy we had here in the 1950's and 1960's.  They still believe that is possible.  And until we break from that thinking, we cannot move fully forward."  Gilmartin is representative of many up and coming leaders who are battling with decades of tradition and industrial era thinking.

While I already thought that there was much in this book that applied as much to the church as to cities, this sunk it for me.  HOw many of us who are leaders in the church have run into what I once heard someone call "Golden Era Syndrome", that belief that we can return to what once was [note that it is my belief that GES also involves a whole lot of false or selective memory which blinds us to the flaws of that time].  There is a belief that if we just do something, or some set of things we can recreate the church, or the economy, or the community that we had once.

Of course it is not that simple.  Things have changed.  Detroit will never be what it once was.  It may avoid becoming a Robo-Cop world.  It may rebuild itself.  But it won't be that anymore.

I lived for 9 years in a community that suffered from the same problem.  There was a recurring desire to bring in the next big project that would employ hundreds (at high paying jobs) and bring the town back to what it was when the mines were running {currently that community is banking on a proposed gold mine, although it has a lot of work to do if it hopes to fully benefit from that project as this editorial points out}.  There was little appetite to hear those voices that pointed out that such mega-projects were more and more unlikely, that the town needed to find something other than rocks or trees as an economic base.

Currently that discussion is happening, to a large extent, throughout the province of Ontario.  That province was Canada's manufacturing heartland.  ANd as such it was, for many years, one of the two major economic engines of the country (the other being the oil industry, mainly centered in Alberta).  Now, due to a combination of factors, this is no longer the truth.  And yet the politics of the province tend to revolve around which party is going to bring those days back (the answer is none given that provincial/state or federal governments have much much less control over the economy than people like to believe).  There is less of an interest in figuring out what the next economic engine for the province might be and more in restarting the engine that has stalled.  A government which pledges to (and actually does) invest in new, risky, endeavours is called out for taking too many risks and spending money foolishly (especially when those risks don't pay off within the election cycle) when what they "should" be doing is investing in old-style mills/plants/factories. {Of course if they don't invest in new ideas they are then lambasted for that too -- sometimes government is a no-win propostition.}  And to a degree I understand.  THe new economy doesn't bring jobs that pay at the same level or the same number of jobs.  ANd we have led ourselves to believe that we can only survive with what we know.  After all change is always a challenge.

In our churches, the same thing happens.  New-style programming is looked on, all too often, with askance.  And that assumes that there are people with the vision of a new-style program.  Many of us are not naturally co-creators.  Many of us are not naturally people who can envision a whole new way of being the church.  But we need to give those co-creators room.  In our churches, in our community groups, in our cities, in our provinces/states, in our nations we need to give room (and possibly $$$$) to theose people who see a new way forward.  We can't go back.  The table has turned.  Which way are we going now?

Book 3 of 2012 --For the Love of Cities

A while ago I went to this event:

At the event I got a copy of this book.  It is a book I heartily encourage people in leadership positions in the church to read.  Why chuirch leaders and not just community leaders (who I also encourage to read this book)?  Two reasons.

One reason is that I believe that much of what Kageyama says about cities holds true for churches.  If we view the church as a community the we need to talk about what makes us love our churches -- and how to grow that love.

The other reason is that I strongly believe that one of the roles of the church in the larger community is to help that larger community grow into a more lovable place.  Can the church be a locus for co-creators?  Historically the church has been a big (sometimes the biggest) force for both creativity and community development.  Historically the church has also done the exact opposite.  We have to choose which way we will go and act.

There was one line from near the end of the book that expecially struck me.  But it will get its own post.  Maybe tomorrow evening while watching the Brier final that post will get written????

I Miss Boulevards

In the community where I grew up (and the community where I lived from 2001 to 2010) residential streets all had boulevards.  Your front yard would go down to a sidewalk and then between the sidewalk and the street would be a strip of grass with trees planted at intervals between the driveways.  This community does not have these.  And I miss them.

Boulevards are a blessing. In the winter they make snow shoveling easier (both by allowing one to pile snow on both sides of the sidewalk and by providing a buufer to keep people from driving on the sidewalk and packing the snow down before one can clear it).  They make street cleaning more effective because plowed snow can be piled on the boulevard without blocking foot traffic or needing to be hauled away.  Year round they make it safer for pedestrian traffic, particularly children, by keeping them farther awayfrom (and less like to stray onto) the street.

But more than that boulevards, in my opinion anyway, have a civilizing effect on a neighbourhood.  THere is a far different feeling to walk down a street with grass on both sides of you and trees shading the path than there is to walk down a street where cement and asphalt just run together.  In a mature neighbourhood, where the trees have grown tall (and in my experience boulevard trees are generally deciduous so you have the canopy effect rather than evergreens with branches reaching out all the way up the trunk) it almost gives a park sensation in a way.  A community which mandates boulevards is making a statement about green space, about priorities.

It is my belief that developers don't like boulevards.  They take up space, even that 4 ft width adds up over a few blocks.  ANd that means fewer lots can be fit into the same area.  Knowing how much prime farmland has been lost to urban sprawl I can have some sympathy for making best use of urban space.  Some residents grow resentful over boulevards.  They feel that it is unfair to be responsible for the maintenance of the grass on city property.

But on the whole I miss boulevards.  They make a city more livable somehow.

Book 2 of 2012 -- New York

When I was a teen I went through a phase where I read many James Michener novels.  ANd I found that I liked that historical epic novel style.

As an adult I discovered Edward Rutherfurd, whose works are the same style.  The first of his that I read was Sarum, about the area around Salisbury in England.  New York is the first novel of Rutherfurd's I have read that is set outside the British Isles (though not the first he has written, as he has one about Russia).

The historical epic is an interesting animal.  The author has to decide how to balance historical detail with the fictional detail of the story.  And has to do so in a way that the story works without doing violence to the facts.  When well done (and I am sure that these authors do some pretty good research) they are a joy to read.

I liked this book (as I expected to).  It may end up being a bit of a love song to the city --something I have noted in Rutherfurd's other works-- but it names some of the less lovely aspects of the history.  In this book we mainly follow one family's line from the Dutch era through to the Epilogue set in 2009.  Over the course of time there are other families who appear, disappear, and reappear.  And in a nice piece of bookending the first chapter and the epilogue both speak of freedom--one of the holy grails of USan culture.

Family Day

Today was Family Day.  Alberta was the first province to have this February holiday, although many have followed the lead (Manitoba actually calls the day Louis Riel Day to honour their Father of Confederation but it still follows the logic of "we need a holiday weekend in February").  In Alberta the third Monday of February has been a "sort-of stat" [in that workplaces had the choice of taking this holiday or the civic holiday at the beginning of August so it was not automatically adding in another day off to the year--largely to appease the business lobby] since 1990.  For example, we had mail delivery today.

Mind you in Alberta all stores are allowed to remain open on a stat holiday, and most choose to do so.  Is that a Family Day activity?  OTOH, I hear about more organized Family Day activities now then I remember when I last lived in the province 13 years ago.  So maybe the idea of a holiday to get families together (unless one or more of them is required to work of course) is catching on.

LAst week I read this article.  It speaks to the mixed message of family day in an economy that so often pushes people into workaholism.  It also questions how family friendly Alberta really is--without even getting into the question of why the richest province in Canada has such an abominably high rate of child poverty.

So is Family Day all hype about the importance of family with little to back that up in the rest of the year?  After 22 years I am still not sure.  ALthough I do remember a degree of suspicion that Don Getty was using the holiday as something of a distraction from other issues when he first announced it.

But I did avoid working today.  And even when I went to the church to do a bit of stuff the girls went with me to "help".

Are We Odd?

Often I hear people complaining that they have mountains of laundry each and every week.  Sometimes I hear (or read) people saying that they have enough laundry to do a load every day.

There are 6 of us.  In a regular week we do 6 loads of laundry [3 of clothes and 3 of bedding/towels] plus a pail of diapers every 3rd night.   Now granted that is partly because it is a good-sized washer and sometimes it is quite well filled.  But still, that is half a load of clothes per person [although lets be fair the adult clothes take up a whole lot more space than the toddler clothes].  so are we just odd????

The Spirituality of Money -- A Newspaper Column

Several years ago the Bare Naked Ladies mused about what they would do “If I had $1 000 000”. AS I sit down to write this column the Western Canada Lottery Corporation website is advertising possible jackpots of $25 million or $30 million. Their commercials invite you to dream what would be possible if you won the “big money”. Over the next few weeks both the Federal and Provincial budgets will be unveiled. But did you know that all this money talk is a spiritual issue?

In many ways there are few documents more spiritual than a budget. After all, a budget talks about what we think is important, and shows that importance with money and resources rather than just words. And so we have to ask ourselves what our financial decisions say. Do tax cuts show an attempt to favour the rich or an attempt to provide for the poor? Is increased spending a waste of money or an active provision of needed service and support? Do our personal finances focus on our own wants or what is best for the society as a whole? Do we, in fact, put our money where our mouths are?

Note that the answers to these questions are rarely straightforward. There is nothing wrong with watching out for our own needs and wants. There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich. Scripture suggests that wealth can get in the way of following God's Way but Scripture is at best ambivalent on whether it is a sin to be wealthy. At the same time, the Law, the Prophets and the Gospel are clear that being wealthy while your neighbours starve (especially if you become wealthy by taking basic necessities from your neighbours) is a moral problem. Money is morally neutral. It is the choices we make that have moral or ethical value. Scripture always calls us to use what we have for the betterment of God’s whole Creation.

So I took time to think about the question asked in the lottery advertising. (Of course in my case the question is purely rhetorical since you can’t win when you never buy lottery tickets.) What would be the thing to after winning the jackpot?

Some things are obvious. Provide for the girls now and in the future, create education savings for them. Replace both vehicles, pay down the mortgage, take care of some of those “if only” projects around the house and yard, help out our families. But that doesn’t take nearly the amount of money we are talking about here. So what else?

For me some of the “what else” would be to support ministry in various places and ways (inside and outside of the church). Give to worthy causes, nationally and internationally. Do those things that allow people of all sorts of backgrounds find the abundant life that is the hope of us all. Find ways to help pick each other up out of whatever hole we find ourselves in.

But I would also set aside money to support other parts of creation. I would take time to set up a fund for building ultra-high eco-efficient, LEED certified, houses and buildings. I see a fund for a wide range of public and private and public/private projects to improve our ecological quality of life.

And yes, I would happily pay taxes on my taxable income and investments, I would avoid the temptation to find ways to hide that income in tax shelters. Because that is part of how we support each other, part of how we build a better society.

That, in part, is what I would do. What would you do?

Oh and lets be honest. In all our minds part of the answer is given in the end of the song:

If I Had $1 000 000, If I Had $1 000 000

If I Had $1 000 000, If I Had $1 000 000

I'd be rich.

(http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/barenakedladies/ifihada1000000.html)

Book 12 of 2011/Book 1 of 2012 -- Ordered Liberty

I started this one last fall and have been working away at it for a few months.  The first half of the book (which went more quickly for me) is excerpts from Primary sources in the history of UCCan liturgy/worship.  The second half is excerpts from secondary sources in the same area.

I found this to be a very worthwhile book.  Maybe not a "must read" but very worthwhile.  The various sources give one a feel for how worship was being discussed over the years.  And the introductory blurbs Kervin puts before each one were quite helpful.  Then Kervin finishes with a concluding essay that I personally found would have been very worthwhile as a standalone piece.

I do recommend this book.  But I think a non-worship oriented book is called for next.