Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Some Dialogue on Inerrancy

    . . . via if i were a bell, i’d ring. Check it out and the links.

  • Prayer or Medicine

    I was going to write about his, but Laura has already done a good job. Like my dad the doctor taught me, there’s no need to make it either/or; it’s both/and.

  • No More -MORE-

    OK, the votes are in and I see some people who don’t like -MORE- tags, and nobody who really, really wants them, so I’m going to go with my inclinations and not use them at all. I used them so rarely, and so inconsistently that it was probably not going to work anyhow.

    Thanks to those who responded, and to those who didn’t, thus allowing me to imagine that their viewpoint supported what I wanted to believe in the first place!

  • Church and Health Care: Remembering My Parents

    Mark, at Pseudo-Polymath has written a post, The Christian Response to Healthcare and End of Life, which has what I consider the greatest quality for blog posts: It deserves to be discussed. My immediate problem is that there are simply too many things to discuss, and I’m a long winded person in any case.

    So I’m going to divide things up a bit and write several posts. In doing this division, I will use a couple of my own beliefs, which I may discuss later if I remember. The first is that I believe that Christian motivation and Christian strategy or courses of action are different. For example, we are to be motivated by love for our neighbor, but we can disagree on just how we go about it. We can desire that nobody suffer for lack of health care, and yet take completely different paths. This doesn’t mean that all courses of action are equal; it’s just that they should be discussed in practical, empirical terms. The liberal who believes fervently that everyone must have health care, and therefore advocates a single-payer government system because he believes that’s the only way to make it work, is not less or more of a Christian than the conservative who believes that system will destroy health care in his community. There’s lots of room for debate there as to just how a Christian should act, but I would suggest regarding both as properly motivated by Christian principles.

    The second division is between the things we accomplish through the government and the things we accomplish privately. As a Christian, I want my community to be safe. To what extent is this the work of my church, and to what extent is it the work of the police and courts? As a Christian where do I get involved? I think this type of question is important. For example, local churches provide various services to young people including tutoring, sports programs, and facilities for their activities. All of this helps make a safer community. I’m a firm believer in the Christian community as salt, or perhaps I might say more directly, the kingdom of God intruding on earth.

    My previous post that Mark linked was very much in the secular community, and reflects me looking at solutions that involved action in the political arena. Mark makes an important point in mentioning that fact. I’m several steps beyond my basic motivations, and trying to resolve at least a part of the problem through public action. I don’t apologize for that, but it is by no means a complete picture.

    It’s difficult for me to find the language for some of what I’m thinking, so I’m going to start by reflecting on my parents’ lives. Why? Because they embodied, in my view, the other side of the picture. There are things on which I disagree with them. My father has now gone to be with the Lord, but my mother is still very active at the age of 89. We now belong to different denominations. They are Seventh-day Adventists; I’m United Methodist.

    I’m guessing some of my more secular friends would not be terribly happy to have my father treat them. Dad would offer to pray with every patient, whether it was a consultation in the office, surgery, or on hospital rounds. He didn’t force it. If someone refused, he didn’t use the sarcastic, “Well, I’ll pray for you,” but I know that he did pray for all those patients on his own anyhow.

    For both my parents, providing health care was the way they lived out the gospel. They would not get along with many of the modern Christian hospitals where the only specifically Christian thing is the name of the sponsoring organization. There was no division. That was a difference between me and my dad. I speak “secular” when I feel it’s appropriate. His world was undivided.

    When I was in my teens I asked him whether God healed his patients or his medical care did, considering he prayed for every one. He said, “God always does the healing. Sometimes he uses my medical skills.” At the same time, he was passionate about the best information, the best equipment, the best techniques, and absolute thoroughness and integrity in medical care. I only recall my father becoming truly angry a couple of times, and all were cases when it appeared that someone’s negligence had harmed a patient. That was something you just didn’t do in his world.

    Though he was an MD, and was married to an RN, both professions in which one can make just a bit of money, my father lived and died with very little. One of the humorous incidents in our lives came while he was working in north Georgia, and my parents had applied to be a foster home. They were notified that they were approved, but then no children came. Since they had been told the county was desperate for foster homes, they wondered why. Suddenly, a year later, a new social worker arrives with child in tow, asking if we were prepared. Sure enough we were, but my mother wanted to know the reason for the delay. “Well,” said the social worker, “my predecessor didn’t think your husband was a real doctor. He doesn’t look like one or act like one.” We never did get the details, so we have to guess!

    For my dad, being a Christian and a physician meant being available. Everyone who came to him received treatment. During the few years he was in private practice he wouldn’t even send bills to collection. He sent two reminders and then forgot about it. He asked his church where care was needed, and he went there, serving in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Guyana (South America).

    One of the more amazing things my parents would do, besides praying with patients was occasionally to sing for them, again during hospital rounds. This was especially likely in terminal cases, or cases of great hardship. Many patients remember Dr. and Mrs. Neufeld singing a duet for them at the bedside in the hospital.

    What I’m asking myself as I write this is just how they would fit in the context of modern Christian medicine. I know that my father complained that there were very few places where he could practice the type of personal, caring medicine he believed in. I’m guessing that situation hasn’t gotten better. I also have to ask, when I consider things that I said such as “health care must be produced” (and it does), just what can and will motivate people to provide good health care. I know my parents weren’t motivated by money; they rarely had more than just what they needed.

    I’m going to use this as a launching pad to get into discussing health care more broadly than I have, not just talking about what governmental programs might be proposed, but discussing what duties and opportunities the church has. And no, I will not forget end-of-life care either, which is close to my heart. But I’ve already written more than I intended in this initial post.

    [I must add a brief commercial announcement, however, since I talked about my parents. My mother has written, and I published, a book on her experiences, Directed Paths, and my wife has co-authored a book on grief for Christians that rose out of our experience with our son who passed away at age 17. It is titled Grief: Finding the Candle of Light. OK, that’s all the commercial stuff!]

  • Christian Carnival #CCXVII Posted

    . . . at Diary of 1.

  • Christian Health Care

    Pseudo-Polymath has posted on Christian duty and health care, and used one of my quotes, though I’m not sure what the relevance of the quote is. His comments, however, are interest, and are making me think. As the son of a missionary MD (father) and RN (mother) I’m very interested in the topic and may respond after further cogitation. In the meantime, read!

  • On the KJV

    I’ve been posting on this topic over on my Participatory Bible Study Blog, and since it has started to involve religion and society, especially education, I thought I’d call attention to it. I feel a rant coming on about the descent of modern education into irrelevance, but it will have to wait for tomorrow.

  • Audiences and the KJV

    . . . or any Bible translation, for that matter.

    My post on reading from the KJV elicited a response from Iyov, who doesn’t agree with a number of things, some of which I haven’t said. But some of them I have said, so I want to clarify just a bit.

    Note that I will make a couple of comments that are direct responses, which will be headed by quotes from his post as linked above. Where I am not directly responding to one of these quotes, I am making general comments, and these comments should not be read as directed at Iyov. I agree with a number of things he says, and would prefer that readers not assume disagreement where it doesn’t exist.

    I related my experience with young readers who did not comprehend passages from the KJV, and Iyov responds thus:

    Neufeld’s argument is odd. Certainly we expect young people to learn material substantially more difficult than the KJV. I do understand that Shakespeare and Milton remain in the high school curriculum, and those works use language far more complex than the KJV.

    I’m afraid I find his counterargument odd. I cannot comment on his hypothetical young people who have supposedly studied more complex English literature in High School, but the actual young people in front of me were not comprehending the KJV. Further, when I asked them to read from the not-so-good NASB they were quickly able to comprehend things that they did not from the KJV. The NIV was even better.

    Now I don’t want to make assumptions as to Iyov’s position, but I have had many people argue that I should teach the young people to read and understand the KJV. So in response to those who have made such an argument to me, I must say that I find it ridiculous. I also like the French Louis Segond version. Should I perhaps teach them French before I teach them a Bible class? Whether the educational system should prepare them to read Jacobean English or not (and I would say NOT as a general rule), when I teach Bible class I need to start from a text they can read. If I’m going to teach them anything about a language that is foreign to them, it will be about Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, as appropriate.

    Of course there are varying levels of difficulty in the Bible, but that is hardly the point. In general use, a translation should not make the text more obscure than is necessary in order to convey the intent of the writer.

    Iyov states further:

    The Bible, even to those who have access to Biblical languages, is difficult. The Hebrew of the Bible is often obscure and difficult. Translations that hide this fact from readers (and this category includes the vast majority of all translations) are not accurately reflecting the text.

    Again, I find this argument odd. One of the difficulties with the Hebrew text is that we lack cultural context and knowledge of the usage of certain words and constructions. In order to translate at all, one must make decisions on these matters and convey the result. There is no particular value to maintaining obscurity, except by indicating in a footnote that there are alternatives.

    I’m not sure what Iyov expects translators to do with these obscure texts. Perhaps they should translate obscure Hebrew words with nonsense syllables in English so that the English reader can experience the frustration of trying to work through a difficult passage. No, that would be a bad idea. On of the tasks of a translator is to work through that sort of difficulty. He is a specialist, presenting a text to non-specialists.

    Quoting Iyov again:

    Even stranger is the claim the implication that the KJV allows religious leaders to “infuse meaning” through interpretively biased readings in a way that more modern translations do not.

    It may be strange, though I think it is actually quite plain, and I have observed it many times. This is not, as Iyov seems to have understood me to say, the fault of translators. In fact, I regard the KJV as the greatest single achievement in English Bible translation. I fault the translators for practically nothing. Most criticisms are based, in my view, on applying a later standard to their pioneering work.

    But in many modern congregations, some very near to where I live, the majority of the people do not understand the KJV, and the KJV-Only preachers tell them that the KJV is the sole word of God, superior even to the source texts in Hebrew and Greek. They then use the fact that the congregation is ill-equipped to question them as part of the process of manipulation.

    The KJV was once a great translation for use in church. It is not so in present day America. In fact, I have not seen it used in any church where I would say the choice of the KJV was appropriate to the congregation in question. Hypothetically, I believe there could be such congregations. I have simply never encountered them.

    One of the things I found after I left seminary, went to work in the secular market for some years (also dealing with language), and then returning to the church was that I am simply not the best judge of what a text means. I started learning Biblical languages in my teen years. I have been fascinated by history, geography, and sociology since I could read. What I read in scripture is heavily influenced by this broad exposure to the backgrounds.

    When I first started teaching after returning to the church scene, I tried to teach based on what I assumed people were understanding. I found out very quickly that my assumptions were wrong. So I did something that seems to escape many people, especially scholars–I started asking my audiences what they were hearing or understanding from the scripture texts I used.

    What I found was that they were very often not hearing the same thing, especially from formal equivalence versions such as the NASB (which was once a favorite of mine) or even my much favored NRSV. The situation became much worse when they used the KJV.

    Many languages scholars assume that ambiguity from the source text that is translated by ambiguous English text is more faithful, giving the audience the option of choosing for themselves. (My uncle, Don F. Neufeld, who started me on both Hebrew and Greek, made this argument to me, and it took me some time to realize it was not so.) But the audience doesn’t hear the same set of options that the scholar does.

    A much better approach is for the expert to make a choice, and indicate alternatives in footnotes. Now the audience can comprehend the text with a probable reading, and those who are willing to put in a very small amount of work, much smaller than would be required to learn the source languages or Jacobean English, can get good alternatives.

    I recommend to my students now that they use a variety of translations, and read those footnotes. If they want to get closer to the source languages, a standard battle cry of the formal equivalence advocates, they need to learn the source languages. Formal equivalence has its place, in my view, but it does not better reflect the meaning of the text.

    The meaning of a text is only properly reflected in translation if that translation is understood by the target audience. There is no such thing as accuracy without understanding. If the target audience for a translation is scholars who have some knowledge of the source language, then perhaps formal equivalence will work as it is claimed. For the vast majority of the people I teach on a regular basis, formal equivalence fails to meet that promise.

  • -MORE- Tags: To Use or Not

    The -MORE- tag in this blog software breaks out a portion of the post to show on the main page, while requiring you to click on a link if you wish to continue reading. I keep trying to remember to use them, but I generally forget.

    What do you readers think? Do you like to see just a sample on the main page, and only see the full post if it interests you, or is it easier just to scroll through even the longer posts? I’d be interested in any comments.

  • Political Purity and Small Political Parties

    With Ralph Nader on the left and Allan Keyes on the right, and the Libertarian Party wherever they may be found, we certainly have options for voting third party this year.

    I have voted for third parties in the past, specifically for the Libertarian Party, though I once offended a roomful of Libertarians who were trying to persuade me to join the party by telling them that the best characteristic of the Libertarian candidate in my view was that he had no chance of winning. For me, voting for a third party is a protest vote, designed to point in the direction in which we need to move, and not to indicate full support for the person I vote for.

    There is a critical difference between all of our current minor party movements and the major parties. The major parties seek some kind of compromise and consensus. As an independent, I often think they do a very poor job of this, but at least coalition building is a goal. The minor parties tend to seek political purity, and to provide a “correct” option for which their supporters can vote.

    A party that remains in that minor party mode will never become a major party. They will remain minor. Political purity is not going to win elections. Compromise is a requirement of political life, and a requirement of governing. Compromise laws and policies will always find plenty of critics. It’s easy to criticize when you don’t have to provide a positive alternative that not only would work, but that could be passed.

    (more…)