Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Jena 6 Documents

    Laura Curtis has worked with Joe Carter to make primary documents from the [tag]Jena 6[/tag] case available on the internet. This is an important effort, and I would like to make sure it gets maximal exposure in the blogosphere. Thanks to Laura for arranging for these documents and to Joe for hosting them on his server.

    I had already noted that I disagree with the “free the Jena 6” slogan, although it appeared, and still appears to me that justice is not being handled even-handedly. This latter view is subject to correction based on these documents, but that is not a correction I will make today.

    The source of these documents, a resident of Jena, LA, made what I regard as a good statement in a letter posted on Pursuing Holiness:

    If you are looking for the truth about what happened in the Justin Barker beating, look no further than the eye witness statements (shown here) and the court transcripts. It is evident that some Jena 6 supporters are so keen on furthering their cause, they attempt to discredit anything that they disagree with. I agree there are valid racism issues in this country. I believe that punishment for crimes should always be equal. If these students are punished more severely for the color of their skin, an investigation should be conducted and corrective action will be necessary for the culprits responsible. To tell the world that the Jena 6 should be set free and all charges be dropped will not solve the problem, but only foment an ideology that violence in our school system is okay.

    I agree with all aspects, though I think I take a less positive view of the amount of [tag]racism[/tag] likely present in a small town. This isn’t a comment on Jena in particular, but on many rural towns that I have experienced. It does not require a directly racist majority. It simply requires a strong minority whose attitudes are tolerated. It’s much easier to tolerate racism in your friends if you’re white. You may not even realize what’s going on amongst your African-American neighbors.

    As I’ve thought about this I would also ask the question of socio-economic status. Often a small amount of racism is exacerbated by the attitude of the general population toward the economically disadvantaged. This is just something to look at, not something I have actually observed or even intuited about this case.

    I commend Laura Curtis for her tireless efforts on this issue, and I look forward to her analysis of the case. I think her read of these manuscripts is likely to be better than mine, since she has studied the situation much more closely. I won’t abdicate my responsibility to look for myself, but do commend her comments to you.

  • Creation-Evolution Links 9/26/07

    Well, this is rather quick for another round, but there have been some more good posts I’d like to call attention to.

    • Aetiology has a good post and updates on the community college teacher fired apparently for calling the early chapters of Genesis a myth. I referred to this event in an earlier post
    • I found this post at The Questionable Authority very helpful in understanding fossilization and its relation to reconstructing the history of organisms. The principles are very similar to those in archeology, and make good sense to me.
    • Ed Brayton has this article on the Louisiana Family Forum to which Louisiana senator [tag]David Vitter[/tag] wants to give some of your tax money. It appears there are less savory activities than employing the services of prostitutes, such as taking your money and giving it to groups that will use it to harm your children’s education..
    • A post from Florida Citizens for Science reports that Cheri Yecke is in the top three for the Florida Education commissioner job. I have blogged previously on why she should not be selected.

  • Grief: Finding the Candle of Light



    Note: I want to give fair warning on this post. It’s both commercial and personal, and deviates from my normal approach on this blog to a considerable extent.

    When I married my wife Jody, our son (my stepson) James Webb was already in chemotherapy for cancer. Over the next five years we experienced remission twice, but always the return of the cancer. Finally, it returned in multiple locations, and on the evening of September 22, 2004 James passed away.

    Both my wife and I are teachers in the church, with ministries that are relatively small, but extend beyond the boundaries of a single congregation. We teach about various topics including [tag]prayer[/tag]. Teaching was very interesting while James was ill. There were some who assumed that if we really knew anything about [tag]prayer[/tag], we would be able to pray “properly” for our son and he would be healed. We experienced the complete range of reactions from other people. I would like to emphasize that the vast majority of responses to our situation were very supportive and helpful.

    Some responses were well-intentioned, but not very much on target. I myself made any number of errors in supporting my own wife through this situation. Our relationship was strong enough to withstand those errors, and I would suggest to others that they are unlikely to make it through such a situation error free.

    Amongst Christians there were some very interesting views on [tag]grief[/tag] as well. Some felt that there should be no grief. James went straight to heaven, so what’s to be sad about? Other’s would see every moment of peace or joy during his illness as a sign of denial. I was approached about both my wife and James with the suggestion that they were in denial. The only thing I could tell people that as a hospice nurse with 12 years experience, and a manager of an oncologist’s office prior to that, Jody was more aware than any of us of the realities of cancer and its treatment.

    Over time, James became an expert far beyond his years. He was more aware of reality. I remember when the cancer returned for the final time. Jody was in Hungary on a mission trip, and so James came to me to report pain in his side. We had to decide when to go. I said that under the circumstances a few days one way or another wouldn’t make much in the way of a medical difference, so I’d go with what he wanted to do. He chose to go to his primary care physician immediately.

    I related his pain to a pulled muscle due to practice for marching band. I didn’t catch it at the time. I was too anxious to believe what I wanted to believe. (Though few people ever thought I was in denial I was the least fully aware of the situation from beginning to end.) But James gave me a look of pity; he was pretty certain this was cancer again. He was right.

    Jody has been planning to write about this for some time. This year it came together. She has combined her years of nursing, and especially 12 years as a hospice nurse with the skills of Janet Wilkie, LCSW to produce a short, simple, concise, and practical guide for dealing with grief as a Christian. She’ll answer questions about resentment, anger, the reality of grief, and how to deal with the various stages and with other people.

    It is unplanned, but this book has just arrived, and it is also just past the 3rd anniversary of James’s death. In a way, we can celebrate his life in this way with a book that will hopefully help others in the same situation.

    On our Energion Publications web site we will be honoring the prepublication price of $7.00 through midnight tonight. There are already a couple of slightly lower offers through various internet dealers, though I believe combined with our $2.50 shipping and handling charge, the prepub offer is still a good deal. (Some dealers are listed on the detail page for the book.)

    As I said, this is both personal and commercial, but I hope the material is also helpful.

  • Larry Craig and Accountability

    I regard [tag]accountability[/tag] as an extremely important, even critical value. Not that it’s more fundamental than others logically, but it helps hold people to such values as they profess and as are expected of them by law and custom. If people are not expected to uphold the values they profess, then there is little point being concerned precisely what those values are.

    Senator [tag]Larry Craig[/tag], who hopefully won’t hold that title for long, has fallen afoul of this value of mine. He wanted to avoid public scrutiny, so he plead guilty. Now he wants to pretend that his pleading was improper. Is it possible that in some way a United States senator did not understand precisely what he was doing? I see two options. Either he knew what he was doing, and now he’s trying to avoid the consequences, and thus should not be a Senator because he lacks integrity, or he didn’t understand his own situation, and thus should not be a Senator because he’s too stupid.

    Having said this, I think there is a stronger reaction to Craig’s action largely because of the involvement of homosexuality, which is not fair. Senator [tag]David Vitter[/tag] has more to answer for morally, in my view, even though he has not been convicted, nor has he displayed the same level of stupidity that Craig displayed. I think much of this case doesn’t look so good from the police side. But if a U. S. Senator can’t take responsibility for his own actions who can we expect to do so?

    We are told that Senator Craig might decide not to resign if his guilty plea can be vacated (Source: MSNBC.com). I think that is ridiculous. We have a serious need for leaders with integrity. What we’re getting is loud claims and no accountability.

  • Complegalitarian

    Wayne Leman, in a commendable effort to maintain a tighter focus on Better Bibles, has started a new group blog Complegalitarian, which he defines as “Adj. Pertaining to complementarianism and egalitarianism.” This would take the largest single topic not directly related to Bible translation off of the Better Bibles blog.

    As I read it, discussion of translations related to such issues would still be welcome at Better Bibles, but discussions of the broader related issues of theology and how egalitarianism or complementarianism works in practice would be left for the new blog.

    I think this could be an enjoyable new blogging option.

  • Personality and Bible Translation Preference

    My post yesterday, titled must personality, is in response to a two part series by Wayne Leman over at Better Bibles. You can check out part 1 and part 2 there, along with a quite substantial number of comments.

    Wayne says that his initial thesis, which he presents even though he feels it was disconfirmed, was this:

    Those with whom I disagreed with about Bible translation were so set (whoops, sorry, deeply principled!) in their ways. And those with whom I have had some of the most difficult interactions in the past often have scored with a “T” (Thinking) on the Myers-Briggs profile. So I assumed that those who believed so strongly in the value of literal Bible translations and lack of value of idiomatic Bible versions must also be a Myers-Briggs “T”.

    I’m wondering, however, if there isn’t still some point to his hypothesis. I’m one of those Ts, though I generally agree with Wayne on Bible translations. But I have an almost compulsive need to read things in their original languages. Even in such languages as Akkadian which I read only with the most tedious effort, I still like to at least check key points of any translation I’m using. Now my limited ability indicates I should probably give more credence to the translation, but I still go look.

    Now perhaps many T personalities don’t have the same experience I have had with discovering translations that are literal but misleading. If they don’t have the time, energy, talent, or whatever else it takes to study the original languages, perhaps they would be driven, unlike me, to go to the translation that feels closest from their point of view. I rarely use the NASB, for example, because I can produce that for a passage in a few minutes, and do so regularly as my “working translation.”

    On the other hand, even having produced an essentially literal translation, I am often at a loss for English words that express well the thought that I’m sensing in the text. I can go to the [tag]NRSV[/tag] to check my work, so to speak, but to get effective wordings in English I’m more likely to check the [tag]CEV[/tag], [tag]REB[/tag], [tag]NJB[/tag], or [tag]TNIV[/tag], along with a number of others.

    It’s just a thought.

    PS: For those in the comment thread over at Better Bibles, I haven’t commented because one is required to have a blogger account, and I can’t even remember my ID. Hopefully I’ll find it at some point. I’ve never had a “blogger” blog, but I did at one point have an account.

  • Christian Carnival #191 Posted

    . . . at Pseudo-Polymath. I’m not in it for the very simple reason that I forgot my submission. Oh well, next week is already here!

  • Personality

    OK, Wayne Leman started it, but I’m only doing it because Peter Kirk did. Here are my personality results:

    Click to view my Personality Profile page

  • A Lab for Parables

    I like to use Luke 16 as a training ground in interpreting parables, because so many of the possible problems are presented within a few verses. On Monday, I wrote a devotional, Outside the Box, in which I use what I believe is the primary focus of the Parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-9) in challenging Christians to think outside the box.

    In my essay Interpreting Parables I state that the primary key to interpreting a parable is to discover what the single point of that parable is. This could be stated in a different way by asking just what question is the parable intended to answer.

    In the case of the Unjust Steward, try reading the parable as an answer to two different questions. 1) What is proper behavior for a steward? or 2) How diligent and creative should a follower of Jesus be in building the kingdom? If the parable were intended to answer the first question it would give an answer that is contradictory to much of the moral basis of scripture. If taken as an answer to the second question, the parable tells us to exercise great diligence and to be willing to think outside of our normal parameters–outside the box–in order to build the kingdom. (Note here that I believe verses 10-13 are not part of the parable itself, but are a collection of sayings that Luke placed here because of the theme.)

    An additional issue that a Bible student should address is the difference between an allegory and a parable. In simplified terms, a parable is intended to make a single point, and that other elements of the story need not have specific meaning. An allegory attaches meaning to many elements of the story.

    The first response of new students is to believe that the idea is to achieve high accuracy in identifying which is which. But in fact, the boundary is not nearly so clear. The question is important because it gets the student to consider just what is and is not part of the purpose of the story.

    And that is where the next parable comes in, The Rich Man and Lazarus, Luke 16:19-30. Often it is interpreted more as an allegory, and arguments can be made in favor of that interpretation. In order to examine this issue, let’s ask just what it is that Jesus is trying to teach, or what question he is answering.

    Let me suggest some questions:

    1. What is the fate of those who die?
    2. Can people in hell communicate with those in [tag]heaven[/tag] (or paradise as the case may be)?
    3. Is a reading of the Torah (Pentateuch) equal to the presence of someone raised from the dead in convincing someone to believe?
    4. Do riches show that one is especially blessed by God?
    5. Is indifference to the poor a sin?

    Now I would suggest that Jesus is answering something between questions four and five. You can look through the parable at other elements and decide whether the parable should be regarded as the final answer on those particular points. I personally would not use this parable as a proof of heaven, hell, or any communication between them. I would say that judgment and final reward and punishment are strongly implied, but the details should be found elsewhere.

    I have, however, heard this parable preached as the one final proof of an eternally burning hell. But you will not find people who make that argument arguing equally forcefully that people in heaven can communicate with those in hell. If you make one argument and not the other you should ask why one element is has meaning while the other doesn’t.

    But a more interesting point is the meaning of verse 30: What is it that the brothers will not believe? Apparently the testimony of of the law and the prophets should make them believe something they will not believe even should someone rise from the dead. What is this?

    It’s easy to think something like “believe in Jesus” or even “belief in God” but those do not fit with the question. How about acceptance of the truth that caring for one’s neighbor is the basis on which one will be rewarded or punished?

    This is just a suggestion and hopefully a pointer toward how to work it out.

  • Not Looking for a Poster Child in Jena

    Joe Carter at the evangelical outpost has weighed in on the [tag]Jena 6[/tag]. It seems to me, however, that he has mirrored the fault of the rally that was held in Jena. At that time I commented:

    The important thing here should not be a battle between extremes, but rather the search by all people of good will for a just way to handle the situation. I’m not asking that nothing happen to those accused. I’m asking that they be treated in an even-handed manner.

    I would also note that “Free the Jena 6” has never been my slogan. Why? Clearly these young men committed crimes. The problem that I see is that the treatment is not even-handed. The way the authorities involved are trying to respond to that is with a kind of “trust me” approach. They haven’t found anything wrong, so all us ignorant folks should just shut up. But that is not the proper way to respond to bad behavior in government in a bureaucracy. If something looks bad, I’m going to call attention to it. If the official in question has an explanation, he or she can bring that up. But trust them? Absolutely not.

    If I were a public official I would expect to be accountable. In fact, I would demand that my actions were seen and reviewed by others. That doesn’t mean that secrets are not occasionally necessary, but they are not necessary nearly so often as authorities would have you believe.

    But the more important issue is this: We aren’t looking for, nor do we need poster children for civil rights. Carter says:

    . . . When we are willing to exonerate murders in the name of “civil rights” it shouldn’t be surprising that thousands of Americans can excuse the actions of these six young, cowardly thugs.

    The problem here is that it may be fun to promote civil rights for victims who are innocent or even heroic. Perhaps the civil rights movement of the 1960s has given us the false impression that civil rights is about protecting heroes and the innocent. We like to have such issues portrayed in clear, moral lines. Then we can rally for the good guys and against the bad guys.

    But in fact civil rights are most important in the marginal cases. Whatever these young men did and whatever their record was they should have been treated in a manner that was similar to the way others were treated. They should be given justice. The excuse of the authorities and their defenders is that some had criminal records and that the crime they committed was terrible. But none of the above removes the need for those in authority to behave in an even-handed and fair manner. Those in the rally were wrong with the cry “Free the Jena 6,” but they respond to the other crowd all over the country that says, “We see nothing wrong here.”

    Further, none of it removes the need to eliminate the underlying racism that allows such situations to escalate, and that even provides the cause. That some official from the justice department says the events weren’t related isn’t even remotely convincing to me. It just suggests that there are many people out there who would like to pretend that everything is fine.

    Civil rights doesn’t need a poster child. Poster children aren’t the ones in the greatest need. It is the folks who face the courts with limited hope for justice and no means with which to defend themselves. This is about the non-poster children.