Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Community and Inspiration

    I’m continuing a fairly long series of essays on inspiration. Some of this material will be included in my new book, When People Speak for God, though I haven’t scheduled a time yet when I’ll complete that manuscript.

    In my previous entry, The Heart of Inspiration, I said that inspiration starts from any experience of God, not necessarily words that are dictated by God, or even specific messages that are presented to a prophet, but rather from very human people experiencing the presence of God and then trying in their own words to record what they experienced. I suggested that this model explained more of the Biblical text than other major models used in discussing inspiration.

    There should be at least some readers who are getting annoyed at the continuing lack of a foundation for all of this, or one could say my use of circular arguments. That frustration is likely to continue. If we had some standard by which to judge divine revelations, it would itself have to be revealed, and then we’d just start the same set of questions all over again. What made this new super-standard into a standard?

    In thinking about this, I’ve tried to avoid coming up with an explanation of how I think I should have decided what, if anything, is inspired. Rather, I’d like to look at how I did, in fact, make that decision. And that comes in two parts. First, I grew up with the Bible. From the earliest time I remember, the Bible was presented as true and as God’s word. That was just an assumption in our family and in our church community.

    When I was about 10 years old, I asked my father how one could know that the Bible was true. I suggested the idea of fulfilled prophecy as an option. Instead, he told me that one couldn’t know or prove that the Bible was true, this was one of the things we take on faith. I have come back to that little piece of thinking many times in my life.

    The second phase came after graduate school, when I left Christianity entirely for a period of time and then returned. Again, I was confronted with the question. I could not be convinced that the Bible was inerrant, and in fact, I remain convinced that the human element shows through scripture in the form of very human failures to comprehend and express the message or the experience of God. Now perhaps I could make an informed choice between various available scriptures. But there was still no acceptable standard by which one could judge the available scriptures.

    Muslim friends have suggested I should accept the Qur’an, and therefore Islam, because it is so comprehensive, and answers every question. I’m afraid that I don’t actually find that very attractive in a religion. Now understand that I’m not criticizing Muslims for what they want and what they find in their scriptures. I’m not talking about what I should want, but rather about what I do want. I still know of no way in which to discover what I really ought to want in religion or a scripture. What I do want from scripture is something that is challenging and provides an opportunity for discussion, and the Bible certainly provides me with that.

    What I see from this is that my choice of scripture derives from community. From an experiential point of view I am a Christian because I was raised in a Christian family as part of a Christian community. I have studied further and I believe have more reasons than that to remain a Christian, but the bottom line is that the starting point was that I was born into the community. Further, I have continued to have spiritual experiences that relate to the Christian community, and which reinforce my sense of the presence of God. These experiences relate well to the experiences of the scriptures, and thus these reinforce my belief in the validity of those scriptures.

    Which leads me right back to what my father told me when I was 10 years old: I’m taking it on faith.

  • NBC: The Book of Daniel

    Yesterday I received an e-mail from the American Family Association urging me to write my local NBC affiliate and asking them to refuse to air the program The Book of Daniel. I’m told that the program is anti-Christian, and must be stopped, even though it hasn’t aired yet. Somehow, I’m never supposed to watch this show, never supposed to make an evaluation for myself, and I must also try to force others to give up their own choice by making sure that the program is not seen by the general public.

    Now I could comment on how counterproductive this strategy can be. I recall when similar attacks were made on NYPD Blue before it showed. The attacks made the show even more unpopular.

    But what I really can’t understand is what is wrong with everybody’s power switches and channel changers. Why is it that we are presumed unable to make a simple choice and watch a different channel? Believe me, companies get the feedback from that because they need the advertising revenue that results from a popular show. I recall nearly 20 years ago that the local cable service in Bellevue, NE added the Playboy channel to their lineup. People were up in arms! We can’t have our children watching this sort of stuff! (And I agree–we can’t.) The thing that seemed to be left out was that one had to pay and explicitly ask to have the channel added to your service. If you didn’t want your children exposed to it, all you had to do was not order it. (I discuss the problem of the need to control our own television sets in my essay Off-Switch Censorship.)

    Now I have not yet seen The Book of Daniel. What I plan to do is watch the premiere episode on Friday night. After I’ve watched it, I’ll know what I think about it, not before. I have a working channel changer, and I can handle it. And whatever I choose, everyone else will have a similar opportunity. If it’s a lousy show, it will probably fail.

    I sent the following e-mail to my local affiliate, WPMI in Mobile, AL: “I have seen a number of messages asking people to bombard NBC affiliates demanding that they don’t show this program. As a result, I feel that I should speak up and tell you not to give in to pressure by censoring potentially challenging shows. I haven’t seen “The Book of Daniel,” but I will certainly take a look at it and decide whether to watch it for myself. The one and only form of censorship that is appropriate is my off-switch and my channel changer. Don’t be pressured into cutting down the range of choices available to your viewers.”

    They responded that they are going to air the program, and they agree that people should have a choice. I congratulate them. That’s the way to do it.

  • More on Military Chaplains

    As a follow-up to my prior comments on military chaplains, I’d like to call attention to the following article. I want to note as well that I found this link on the American Family Association web site, and I want to thank them for providing this link to balancing information.

    In this article, Navy rebuts fasting chaplain’s claims, we see the response of the Navy, and also the comments of a conservative evangelical chaplain, and I note that this supports my contentions about the rules for military chaplains.

  • The Heart of Inspiration

    I’ve been talking about inspiration and canonization in several posts, and I’m finally ready to get down to talking about inspiration. First, I’d like to remind you of my existing essays on inspiration, Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, which goes into some detail on the topic of Biblical inspiration.

    But now I want to look at what’s at the heart of divine inspiration. Then I’m going to follow with entries about various proposed tests for the validity of inspired writers and their value.

    What do people generally mean when they say that something written is inspired by God? There are many different answers to this question. Some options are:

    • God gave the very words and letters of the work in question
      This would apply to the Ten Commandments written on tablets of stone by God’s finger, to the Torah according to many Orthodox Jews, or to the entire Bible according to some conservative or fundamentalist Christians who believe in verbal dictation. Only those things God dictated would be regarded as inspired.
    • God impresses messages on the minds of certain people, who write those messages in their own words.
      Many conservative and moderate Christians hold a view like this. There is room for the personality of the prophet, and there is room for individual idiosyncrasies, but there must be a specific message sent by God.
    • People who experience God try to describe what they have experienced.
      This is a common liberal view of the inspiration of scripture. It is quite possible for there to be errors in scripture, but those who write do have a genuine experience of God. The validity of their descriptions may vary.

    (I discuss more options in my essay noted above.)

    There are different ways one can use to decide what inspiration means. All of these will be circular to some extent. For example, many people build their view of inspiration almost entirely from their understanding of the nature of God. God is all-knowing and truthful, so the Bible must be factually accurate and entirely truthful. This is the approach taken by those who believe in inerrancy. It has also been used in my experience by Muslims who have tried to persuade me that the Qur’an is the word of God. Others look heavily at human needs, and make the assumption that divine revelation would necessarily fill in what we don’t know and can’t know. There is a consistent assumption that God is intending to communicate knowledge to us, and specifically accurate knowledge.

    In either case, these people will take either the first or second view that I present about inspiration. The process is primarily about conveying information and the primary question to be asked is whether the information conveyed is accurate and comprehensible. I think that their view works fairly well for books that at least appear to claim to come from God. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel claimed to be receiving messages from God and to write these messages. But what about other books? Luke claims to be writing the results of research. Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles appear to be history, and find their source in previously existing royal chronicles. Psalms contains prayers that are individual, and seem to express the heart cry of the individual psalmist.

    I would argue instead for the third view. My problem is not that the other views are circular, and that my alternative is not. It is inevitable that when we talk about revelation, something revealed by God that we could not otherwise know, we’re going to get a bit circular. After all, how do we know it is God talking? If the information is readily available to us, we might as well look at a more natural source. If the information is not available to us, it’s impossible to check.

    If you accept the third view, then the other books I have cited fall into place. There are many ways in which God speaks, many ways in which we can hear, and many ways in which we can express what we hear. The core, then, of an inspired writing is that the person doing the writing, or producing the information, has genuinely experienced God in some way. That experience may come through direct impression of messages from God in the mind, visions, dreams, guided study, or even guided experiencing of the world. The Biblical writer experiences God’s presence and writes it down.

    Of course, this view continues to be circular. I don’t know, except through my community and others that I study, what divine presence is. I can read about what others claim it is. I can describe what I have experienced, but I cannot ultimate get outside it and test it. The only protection I have is that I operate in a community. But that, in itself, is a subject for a future essay.

  • REAL Christians and the Military

    I’m going to make this a short note, because what I suggest is that you read the two stories (and even search for other sources) on this story and consider the issues for yourself.

    First, in the Washington Post: Military Wrestles With Disharmony Among Chaplains. According to this story there are definitely some issues to be dealt with. There are places in the military where it is appropriate for a chaplain to be sectarian and places where it is not. No final answer is given as to whether Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, who is on a hunger strike, was actually justified in his actions or not. But the issues involved in the military are examined, as well as the nature of the chaplain’s work. I congratulate the post on a good story.

    Now look at this response: Dont Ask, Dont Pray; Jesus Gets A Dishonorable Discharge. Jesus is being discharged from the military? Chaplains are no longer being allowed to mention the name of Jesus? All the subtleties are lost in an effort to make this into a divisive issue. The difficulties of those of other faiths are not the concern of the writer. Terms such as “weaker, more timd Christians” as opposed to “practicing Christians” (presumably those who agree with the author).

    Well, perhaps I’m one of those weaker, more timid Christians, but I’m not going to be timid in saying that the kind of commentary being made by conservative Christians (and you can find plenty more such commentary on the internet with a simple search) is not well considered, is not appropriate, and is not a good representative of Jesus, my Lord and Savior. I especially dislike the statistical sleight of hand. We’re told that 85% of the country is Christian, which apparently is to justify support for Christian prayers in the military, following which we exclude the “timid Christians” who might not agree. Apparently I’m included in the group of real Christians when it’s convenient and excluded when not.

    Christian chaplains can pray in Jesus name at appropriate, non-mandatory services. It’s not a problem. I strongly suspect that the reason President Bush has not taken action in this case is that the military is fully capable of investigating it, considering all the issues, and making a ruling. What is happening in the commentary is a simple case of grabbing the one, headline generating story of a hunger strike, and then assuming that the person who is yelling the name of Jesus the loudest must be in the right.

    I rarely congratulate President Bush, but I can certainly commend him for letting the standard military process investigate and deal with this one. I hope he continues to have the courage to resist demagoguery like this.

  • Inside and Outside

    Note: I wrote the following for my wife’s devotional list, but I thought some might be interested on this blog as well.

    “I baptized you with water, but he will baptize you in the Holy Spirit.”

  • Redeeming Time

    It’s a new year. Resolutions have been made. Best wishes have been passed on to friends and loved ones. We even added in a leap second into last year to even out time very precisely.

    We care quite a lot about time. We like to measure it carefully, divide it into various bits and pieces, celebrate or mourn its passing, and discuss and criticize the way we use it. All in all, time is very important to the way we live in the year 2006 in America.

    I am pretty time conscious. I have generally worn a watch, and I sometimes make people nervous by looking at it as a conversation goes by. They think I’m in a hurry or have an appointment somewhere, or that I’m bored and would like to see the present activity end. A few months ago, the battery ran out and I decided to try not wearing a watch. You might think this was a tremendous hardship, but I’m normally in front of my computer, which has a clock displayed, or I’m in the car, which has a clock. In the house, there are clocks in every room. I can’t recall more than once or twice in the last several months when I’ve had to ask someone to look at their watch for me.

    Last night I attended a watch night service at my church (Gonzalez United Methodist Church). It started at 11 PM, and was to go until just after midnight. I wasn’t wearing a watch, as has become my habit. I was able to enjoy the service thoroughly, and then when the leader put on a CD of a bell choir over the church speakers, and told us it was now 2006, I was able to be in the moment, be surprised by it. But it didn’t take up my time before it got there. During that time I was able to think about the time of praise, prayer, and meditation that had been planned.

    As I was thinking about this post, I was reminded of a passage of scripture. As often happens to me, I remembered the scripture as I’d memorized it in the King James Version as a child: “Redeeming the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:16). It might be better translated as “Make good use of every day, because these are bad times.”

    How are we to make good use of every day?

    Paul has some suggestions. In the verse before, he says not to be unwise, but to be wise. Sounds like a good idea. Some of my Spirit-led friends seem to think that being Spirit-led and applying wisdom are contradictory. “Don’t think about what you’re doing,” they say, “just go with the flow of the Spirit!” And that idea has some merit to it. We can kill things just by thinking them to death.

    But at the same time thinking about how we use our time is not contradictory to knowing God’s will. In the verse following, verse 17, Paul says, “Because of this don’t be foolish, but understand what God’s will is.” Wisdom and thinking in the use of our time is important, and is one of the ways we know God’s will.

    I think that in order to really “redeem the time” we need to get both elements involved. Both the open, free, unfettered leading of the Spirit, including our dreaming, visioning, imagining, and even resting, and at the same time our understanding and wisdom.

    Let me illustrate with two roles I play–writer and editor. These are hard to combine. You’ll find errors in many of these posts, because I don’t have someone else to proof-read them. Writing requires that free flow, quantity production, that gets words and hopefully thoughts on paper. If I spend too much time thinking about each word and about the whole document I’m trying to produce, I will produce a stilted and boring manuscript.

    When I edit, I have to change modes. (This is very difficult to do with your own work!) I look at each word asking whether it is accomplishing what it is supposed to accomplish. Is it necessary? Is it sufficient? The results of the free-flow of my imagination may be curtailed by an editorial hand, and usually will be better for that change.

    Balancing these out can be an interesting exercise. But to “redeem the time” we need to do both. In our lives, we need to have vision, dreams, and imagination. We need to have rest and relaxation. We also need to have boundaries, goals, schedules, and other means of dividing our time into manageable portions.

    Think about your life this new year’s day. Are you overbalanced in either direction? What would make your life better, more fulfilling, more in line with God’s will? Consider altering the balance a bit one way or the other.

    Redeem the time.

  • Education and Funding in Escambia County

    I apologize to any readers outside of this area, but the following blog entry deals with the politics of Escambia County, and to a lesser extent to Florida politics in a more general way. I know that others do have similar problems in their counties and states, so you might be interested in this just a bit, but the focus is local.

    My step-son James was a student at Tate High School in Escambia County, Florida before he passed away in September 2004. (His Deeds Keep Following Him). One of his greatest sources of pride and joy was his participation in the Tate Band. This was what took up his time and energy day in and day out. He had planned to try to go to college on a band scholarship. His motivation for everything else he did at school came through the passion he had for the band.

    My wife, Jody, and I have continued to keep in touch with the Tate Marching Band (Showband of the South) and to support them as we can. We still get the newsletter, and the current edition reminds us that Escambia County Superintendent of Schools Jim Paul has proposed that the school day be cut from seven periods to six. I was already aware of this, and was considering writing something about it, but the band newsletter article motivated me to get the job done sooner. It is programs like band and sports, sometimes called extra-curricular activities, that will be most hit by the reduction in the school day.

    But academics will be hit by this move as well in two ways:

    1. Directly through eliminating programs and classes, especially electives
    2. Indirectly through removing some of the balance in students’ lives and some of their motivations

    The reason for this proposal is simple, and I have to sympathize with Superintendent Paul as he tries to solve the problems with which he has been presented. Escambia County teachers are much more poorly paid than those in neighboring counties (Unlikely group queries 6-period plan). If he is to improve teacher pay, the money will have to come from somewhere else. Right now, that “somewhere else” appears to be school buildings and the extra hour in the school day.

    In the past, Escambia County voters have been very reluctant to approve taxes as additional support to our schools. Our primary funding comes from the sales tax, and is distributed by the state according to some mildly complext formulas. (You can get more information on how this works from Education News You Can Use (School Funding Data), provided by the Florida School Board Association.

    Some facts you might want to notice there include these:

    • Florida ranks 29th in teacher salaries. We should note that Escambia County is not one of the highest paid counties in the state.
    • Florida ranks 49th in citizen spending on education.
    • Florida ranks 43rd in student : teacher ratio

    So we are not spending an extraordinarily large amount of money on education in the state of Florida, in fact, we seem to be going backward. I recommend reviewing the following page from the National Education Association site, Good News about Public Schools in Florida. Look at the source studies as well to see where they got this information. There are obviously some good things going on, but there are also problems.

    I’d rate declining spending on education as a problem. I stated my own views on the problem in a prior essay, Make Education a Priority. I know that the trend today amongst voters and politicians is to cut taxes and to cut spending, but I’m going to swim against the current on this particular point. There are things that can be cut and should be cut. The simple solution, and in my view the cowardly solution, is to cut spending and taxes across the board.

    Let me illustrate. During our son James’s illness, we had to watch our spending. Since my wife and I were self-employed we had to make a decision as to some things that would be cut, and some things that wouldn’t. We quickly agreed that those things that were part of the process of generating income should not be cut. It didn’t take lengthy thought or discussion, because it’s too obvious. We needed to continue to generate income.

    In government spending, the equivalent decision is the one between infrastructure spending and other items. If you cut on infrastructure spending you will pay for it over the long term. Notice in the items on the NEA page cited above that many of Florida’s school buildings are deteriorating. That’s an obvious issue of infrastructure spending. But I would argue that education as a whole is a matter of infrastructure spending. If we educate and motivate our kids we are contributing to the future economic power of our county and our state. We will be reducing the number of inmates for our prisons, and recipients for our welfare rolls. Both of these will make our economic condition better. Unfortunately we seem to prefer to put a bandaid on the cut, rather than avoiding the knife. We’re more willing to put people in jail than to prevent them from getting there in the first place.

    Yes, I do believe education is a silver bullet. This means well-balanced education that motivates kids, instills community values in them, and prepares them for a productive life. Will simply making education available suffice? Absolutely not! We need to uphold high standards of discipline, academic accomplishment, and community involvement. I’m glad to see that Florida schools are cited for high standards. I hope we make them higher.

    So what do we do?

    Write to your school board members, school superintendents, and also your representatives in the state legislature. When you write, let them know specifically what you want to accomplish, and let them know you understand the cost and are willing to stand up and help with paying the bill as well. We can write the school superintendent as often as we want, and fill his files (or his wastebasket) with letters telling him how we want schools to stay open or the school day to be seven rather than six hours, but if he doesn’t somehow get the money, we may simply be urging him to accomplish the impossible.

    My wife and I are going to write these officials–the school board member from our district, the superintendent, our representative and senator in Tallahassee, and our governor urging them to support education. We will tell them we aren’t interested in words. Practically every politician out there claims that education is a priority. But as I have told church leaders who are wringing their hands about the failure of church projects, you can tell the real priorities by looking at the spending and the personal presence of the people involved.

    Politicians will try to claim they can provide the highest quality education without any additional taxes. They do that because that is the popular thing. The politician who tells you the truth–quality costs money–gets in trouble. You should ask them precisely from where the money is going to come and how they are going to make it work. And don’t be misled by those who believe simply putting money into the schools will solve the problem. We need adequate resources with accountability.

    As citizens we need to be involved, and we need to be involved for the long term. We not only need to work for and vote for the candidate who promises to do more when running for office, we also need to be there to work for the finances and to defend the politician who has the courage to admit that the finances are necessary. We also need to be there for the politician who has the courage to increase accountability.

    For those of you in Escambia County, use the following web site to find your school board member and contact information:

    To look up contact information for your superintendent and school board members: Escambia County School District.

    For Florida state senate: Find Your Legislators.

    For the Florida House: Florida House of Representatives – Representatives.

    Florida Governor (Jeb Bush): Contact Governor Bush.

  • Child of God Living

    Note: I wrote this for my wife’s devotional list for today’s (12/30/05) entry. Jody puts out an e-mail devotional every weekday, and has also created a collection for her book, Daily Devotions of Ordinary People – Extraordinary God. I’ve included an ad (Amazon.com) for the book and a link to subscribe to the e-mail list. We probably only cross over between my blog and her list a half dozen times each year because they have a different flavor and purpose.

    5What is mankind that you remember them?
    Or human beings that you pay attention to them?
    6But you made them a little lower than God,
    And crowned them with glory and honor.
    7You made them rule over the works of your hands.
    You put everything under their feet. — Psalm 8:5-7 (TFBV)

    4Now when the time was fully right, God sent his son, made of a woman, made under the law, 5So he could ransom those who were under the law so they could be adopted as children. 6Now because you are children, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts with the cry, “Abba, Father!” 7So that you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if you are a child, you are also an heir through God. — Galatians 4:4-7 (TFBV)

    It’s coming up on New Year’s Day, and many of us will be making some resolutions. Some of those will mean a change in our lives. Others will be forgotten within days, or perhaps even within hours. I think the practice of making resolutions is, on balance, a good one. Times of commemoration and renewal are good for us, though it might be better if we had them more often, and were more careful to remember them between.

    But the question I want to suggest to you in this last devotional before New Year’s is this: What kind of resolution is appropriate to a child of the king?

    While you’re thinking about that, consider something else. Tonight, my wife and I were watching “Criminal Minds

  • Inspiration and Canon

    I’m back to thinking about inspiration today. Many people think about the terms “inspired” and “canonical” as nearly synonymous. Generally they are not.

    The term “canon” relates to idea of canon law, in other words a book is canonical when canon laws defines it as authoritative. Now the edges have become blurred over the years, and we have many different churches, but in general you will still find a statement in any church’s statement of beliefs that designates certain books of the Bible as canonical. For protestant churches, this is almost always the 66 books that have been accepted as canonical since the protestant reformation. The Roman Catholic Church, various eastern Orthodox churches and some smaller bodies have a different list of books.

    The books listed as canonical are generally assumed to be inspired, and thus to carry divine authority. But the act of making certain books canonical does not necessarily make them the only books that are inspired by God. Other works may be inspired. A person may regard other works as authoritative.

    This brings up the concept of a “personal canon.” In one sense, that is a contradiction in terms, since “canon” by nature involves a community to which the standard applies, and not an individual. But as used, it simply means those books that a particular individual regards as authoritative in some way. Alternatively, some people use that term to designate the list of those books they regard as inspired. I prefer not to use that second sense, because it reinforces the notion that “canonical” and “inspired” are synonyms.

    So how does an organization establish a canon? That would depend on the organization. In the case of early Christianity I would suggest that it was in many ways a contest of popularity, with the proviso that I’m referring to popularity in use as an authority on doctrine or practice. By the time the church councils got together to make authoritative lists, there was really very little wiggle room. By virtue of the earlier victory of what we now call “orthodox” doctrine, and the fact that generally orthodox bishops and officials attended the councils, we get a canon that was acceptable to orthodox churches.

    I don’t have a problem with the procedure. In effect, I think that popularity must be a primary consideration. It would be hard to force a community to accept material that they truly did not like as authoritative. But this does relate directly to the idea of inspiration. Very frequently a community later accepts as authoritative someone who was not popular in his own time. Jeremiah is an excellent example. He was persecuted when he spoke, his work was cut up when he wrote, and he ended up forcibly taken to Egypt against his will. But his book later became an authoritative part of scripture.

    This leads me to point out almost a contradiction between immediate inspiration and immediate relevance of a message and its acceptance as canonical. Some of the most inspired and challenging statements that have ever been made have been given to communities that really didn’t like them at all. I suspect that in most times the message of a true prophet will not be well received. A message may receive very mixed reception. Gandhi was poorly received by the British occupiers and by those who wanted to turn to violence. Others received his work joyfully. Inherent in the way he inspired people to action was the fact that he angered other people.

    My point is that simply asking whether a work is canonical or not is not a very good way to determine its value to your own spiritual life. Most of the material we now have in the Bible and which are regarded by all Christian churches as authoritative, was once poorly received by at least a part of the community. The things that truly correct us and call us to greater action are likely to be frowned upon by those who need them most.

    What a defined canon does for us is tell us what defines our community. It does not define the boundaries of what helps us grow spiritually.

    (I will discuss inspiration in a later post.)