Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • In Defense of Elitism

    I was going to write a lengthy post with a great deal of substance, but then I spent the day working mostly on the Moderate Christian Blogroll and Blog Aggregator. I’ve already posted links to the new feeds I created, and will post the code for this tomorrow on my computer services blog, if all goes well.

    But I really wouldn’t want having nothing much to say keep me from writing something, so I nurtured my negative reaction to this article in the Washington Post, which talks about some folks in Findlay, Ohio, also known as Flag City.

    Now let me get several things out of the way. I appreciate these people’s patriotism. I’m glad they’re living the life they want to live. I also don’t think that one must be a racist in order to oppose Barack Obama. There are plenty of policy grounds on which to do so. In fact, were my priorities a little reordered, I could easily switch to McCain myself. There are many policy issues on which I disagree with Obama, they just aren’t the most important ones on which I’m basing my vote this year.

    Obama took a big hit for making a few snide remarks about some people. He did so in too general a way, though many suspected, with some validity in my view, that he let the truth slip out by accident. I imagine he is frustrated by just the people he mentioned, and he doesn’t think that much of their views. He probably said it with more acid than he intended, but such are the risks of politics.

    But some people are just plain stupid. I’m not running for office, so I can say that. If someone is opposed to Barack Obama because he’s going to raise their taxes, that’s a political difference. If someone is opposed because they think he’ll pull out of Iraq recklessly, that’s a political difference. But if someone is opposed because they can’t pronounce his name, or they think he’s an Arab, or they believe he just must be a closet Muslim, that’s just plain stupid.

    I recall Tolkien’s description of Hobbits as folks who liked books filled with lots of things they already knew set down plainly without contradiction. He said it with some affection, I think. There’s a great value in people who are ordinary, who don’t want to spend their time in college or some academic environment, yet who are actually quite intelligent and have a good sense of ethics. There are others whose stupidity and willful ignorance are dangerous.

    There’s another version of elitism, or perhaps it should better be called anti-elitism, which attributes everything that an educated person does to his education. I get this over my more liberal views on Biblical studies. “The seminary ruined you,” I was told. Never mind that the seminary was much more conservative than I am and refused to publish some of my work. They say I was brainwashed into accepting the theory of evolution, never mind that the schools I attended were one and all young earth creationist strongholds.

    These folks will look down on someone like Obama because of his Harvard education. That, again, is just plain stupid. If you don’t like his policies, argue against them. If you don’t like his attitude argue against that. But education is a good thing, whether or not you like the opinions of those who graduate. Give them the credit of actually having their own views. Oddly enough, the reason more educated people seem to tend to be more liberal may not be because of brainwashing. (And no, I’m not using “more intelligent.” “More educated” is intentional. I know too many genius level conservatives to say conservatives are less intelligent as a group.)

    So I’m in favor of elitism. I like intelligent people. I like educated people. I like people who are willing to apply all that learning and think for themselves. There will be bunches of those on both sides of this election. There will also, unfortunately, be quite a number of stupid, willfully ignorant people.

    I call the first group elite; the second group deserves no respect.

  • Traveling through to Romans 8:1

    So there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. — Romans 8:1

    Oh how we long to get to this verse in studying the Bible. If we’re reading through, we may be tempted to rush it. It’s like working forward through a tragic book to the point at which we know there will be a happy ending.

    Besides the theology, however, there’s also just the complexity of the text. Romans 7 is harder to read and to follow, and it’s certainly more controversial in its intent.

    But the book of Romans is a journey. It starts by letting us know that humanity is all fallen, that there are no “good guys” who don’t need any salvation, but that we are all human together in need of God’s grace. It continues by telling us that God’s grace has truly been offered, but then it seems to take a side trip into the labyrinth of Romans 7. Surely that chapter is a place of torment for Christian readers, and it describes a place of torment for the Christian life.

    But then comes chapter 8. If I’m choosing my texts on which to preach, I’d prefer to preach a nice upbeat sermon, letting people know how everything comes out.

    But the fact is that there will be many people in any congregation who are living something that looks much like Romans 7. The solutions to problems may look very clear, but be nearly impossible to implement. It will often look very much like the person who is told that the solution to his or her problems is to train for a new job. But supposing the person is a single parent and has to arrange childcare and transportation, has to have money for tuition, and has to be able to live in the meantime. The solution is clear, but life remains in turmoil.

    For such a person, preaching about the victory is important, but so is preaching about the struggle and how to live through it. I’m an Arminian, sometimes I say I’m more Arminian than Arminius. The stereotype is that Arminians hold Romans 7 to be a pre-conversion experience, while Romans 8 is after conversion. I disagree. I think everyone will have struggles, to various degrees, and everyone can benefit from realizing that struggle is a part of the Christian life.

    My primary point in bringing this up today is not to expound on Romans 7 or 8, but rather to point out that it’s easy to skip the hard parts and jump right to the easy parts in studying, teaching, or preaching scripture. But the hard parts are there for a reason. The person who is struggling may not be encouraged by hearing a sermon about the wonders of victory; he or she may, instead, be discouraged, thinking that everyone else is living this gloriously victorious life.

    We like to claim that the Bible is all equally inspired, but we often don’t preach and teach that way.  Victory comes after struggle.  Knowledge after study.

    It works in life and in Bible study.

  • What is the Best Bible Version?

    There a teacher’s saying that there are no bad questions, except the ones you don’t ask. There’s another saying that says that once you know the right question, the right answer will follow. As with many one liners, these two seem to clash.

    On the front of my book What’s in a Version?, I have printed the line, “The best Bible version is one you read.” That saying suffers from the same problems as any one liner. It may quite easily be construed in ways that would make it quite false.

    On the other hand, such sayings do have the value of making us think a little bit about our assumptions, and even a question you might evaluate as “bad” may well help you understand an issue as you analyze the question.

    Every time I have been at a show or a teaching event at which I have used or displayed my book, I’ve heard the question “What is the best Bible version?” That’s even after they look at the cover of my book. If I point to the line on the cover they’ll laugh and say, “Yes, but what is really the best version?” That question is, in a sense, a bad question. It doesn’t really have a very good answer, and that’s because of things that are lacking in the question. But it can lead us to think profitably about the question.

    I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t say what the “best” version is without asking just what the version is to be used for. For example, if you want to read extensively for pleasure and to get an overview, then I might recommend an easy reading version, such as the CEV, because it is easy to read rapidly. Yet if I were personally going to read for an extended period of time, I wouldn’t prefer the CEV. I’d more likely use the REB, or as an intermediate point, the NLT.

    For rapid reading, I would regard all three translations as adequately accurate in the way they convey the general story, but they differ in style and vocabulary. Some people find the CEV very attractive. Attention has been paid to style and to how it will sound when read orally. But other people find its shorter sentences and simpler vocabulary tedious. The REB is music to my ears and to my mind, yet I find that most people to whom I read passages don’t hear the same thing I do in it.

    So which of these translations is best? I go back to the line on the front cover of my book: The best Bible version is one you read–especially in this case.

    No translation conveys all meaning from the source to the target language. To simplify that, when you read the Bible in English, no matter what English version you use, something will be missing over what might be received by a person reading in the source languages. (Another point that should be mentioned here is that different amounts are conveyed to the reader in the source languages depending on language and other skills.)

    Here are some things that a translator might try to convey:

    • Style of the original writers
      Hebrews is written in a substantially different style of Greek than Mark, 1 John, Revelation, or Galatians, and each of those four examples differs from one another. Translations tend to obscure these stylistic differences. The CEV, for example, is aiming at an easy reading level, and will break up long, complex sentences in the Greek of Hebrews in order to make them easier to read, thus losing much of the sense of literary style in the book. At the same time, the intended audience of the CEV will probably get more of the sense of the book than they would if it was translated into a style of English that matched the elevated style of the Greek. A translator has to choose. What to you convey? What do you leave behind?
    • Literary devices
      If you want to get an argument going about translation mention literary devices. In this case I use the term broadly. In translating Hebrew poetry do I want to convey the style of Hebrew poetry, i.e. make an English representation of the structure of the Hebrew, or do I want to provide English poetry with a similar impact to that of the source? Personally, I’m happy to have translations that try for either option or a variety of compromise approaches, but the translation will be quite different depending on how one answers this question.
    • Form and vocabulary
      This issue was discussed extensively by the KJV translators. Do you want to have a single English word always represent a particular Greek or Hebrew word? How about a limited subset? This question lies somewhere near the foundation of the dynamic equivalence/formal equivalence debate.

    That is just a very basic start at looking at the various questions. Every translation I have read or studied includes passages I wish were translated differently, or makes choices I wish had been made differently. Yet nearly every one has some quality I can appreciate as well.

    To answer the question in the title, requires that one consider these questions, and consider the audience as well, without knowing who will read, for what purpose they will read, and under what circumstances they will read, I can’t even take a stab at saying what Bible version will be best.

    The final step in choosing a good Bible version should always be to read from it under the circumstances for which you are choosing it. The best test of a tool is whether it performs the intended task.

    I have complaints about

  • Evolution as God’s Tool

    A post on the Panda’s Thumb today calls attention to this post from Uncommon Descent, which claims that theistic evolutionists must believe contradictory things:

    I would not have a problem understanding evolution as God’s “creation tool,” if TEs conceived of evolution as a “tool” in the strict sense. A tool in the strict sense is fully in the control of the tool-user, and the results it achieves (when properly used by a competent user) are not due to chance but to intelligence and skill. . . .

    I immediately thought of the six sided “tool” that might be encountered in a casino or in a role playing game or other simulation. Of course, there are many other “tools” used to generate random or pseudo-random results. But those tools, used properly, produce random results, or nearly so. One may, of course, have the goal of cheating, in which case one tries to prevent the tool from functioning correctly.

    There are a number of failures of logic in the referenced article from UcD, but I want to focus on just this one. There seems to be a tendency both on the part of advocates and opponents of Christianity to assume that all elements of the faith must remain static. If one doesn’t adjust to a new scientific discovery, one is stubbornly clinging to outdated ideas, and if one does adjust, one is obviously abandoning the faith.

    But I believe that God created the universe and I believe that as an obvious corollary of that belief whenever we discover new things about God’s creation, we may discover new things about God. There is no direct information. Science is ill-equipped to study God. Yet the process of science is admirably suited to discovering information about the physical world. If I tie to that the belief in creation I must also acknowledge that the created thing can say something about the creator.

    Unfortunately, many Christians have tried to do precisely the opposite. Because they assume that certain things are true about God, they believe that there are certain things that must be true about the created universe. When one [seems to] discover something that contradicts this point, one challenges the data based on the assumption of what must be. In effect, this argument tells us that what must be, is.

    The universe does not seem to bow to this logic. It does not conform to what I expected it to be when I was a child. I thought that God had created the universe specifically for human beings, that the earth was the center of the spiritual universe. (I studied astronomy almost as soon as I could read, and realized that we were not physically the center of the universe.) I thought that each kind of plant and animal had been lovingly designed by God’s hand to have a precise set of features.

    When I became a man–and after much struggle–I put away such childish things and realized that the universe is what it is, irrespective of what makes me feel better. And therein lies my major beef with the term “theistic evolution,” because that phrase suggests that theistic evolution is a different theory regarding the diversification of life than just plain evolution. For some, it implies that one must somehow shape one’s understanding of evolution in view of one’s belief in God. Theism becomes the means of making evolution more palatable.

    But evolution is what it is. The theory of evolution is the best explanation we have at this point for a large and varied array of physical observations–the sort of stuff that science does well. The important issue is whether the theory of evolution is valid or invalid, not whether it is troubling or comforting, demeaning to human beings or affirming, or whether it is too bloody to be the tool of a loving God.

    So could evolution be the tool of the God posited by orthodox Christianity? Well, that depends on just what one calls orthodoxy. Personally, I accept it, and I repeat the apostle’s creed without my fingers crossed, one definition of orthodoxy that I sometimes use facetiously, though I do have a point. Often we are dealing with embellishments to the creeds when we find objections to scientific data, not the creeds themselves.

    There are some problems, however, and some adjustments to be made. If you want to make human beings, as such, the intended result of evolution, then you’re going to have to play with the randomness somewhere. If you even believe that God intended to create sentience, and did not have even the contingency that it might not happen, I believe you are talking about a process that is not entirely random.

    Now there’s a perfectly good theological fall back point here, even though it is one I choose not to use. One can suppose that at the most basic level–some theists use the subatomic level–God intervenes, but in a way that cannot be detected. I think it is fairly likely that one could conceal quite a lot in the masses of random movements of particles. If that gene over there is mutated rather than this one here, and the two were of equal probability, who is to detect that God interfered?

    For me, however, this seems a little odd. Why is it that God wants to make things happen a certain way, but pretends that they are happening a different way? Why make things appear to have a strong random component, while actually accomplishing a predetermined result? I don’t see any contradiction in this, simply because we are talking here about a personal God who chooses, and while I may find the choice weird, it doesn’t contradict anything except my sense of aesthetics.

    But I suggest a different option–a God who actually does take chances, one who does, in fact, play dice with the universe. I suggest that evolution is much more like the random tool I describe at the beginning than like a fabrication device. To truly create free creatures, I think God had to allow all options.

    As I have noted before, I do remain open to interventions, provided those interventions are designed to communicate with free creatures in a non-coercive manner, in other words, they do not change the way the universe functions. I’m actually much more comfortable with a resurrection, which happens once, is clearly contrary to the laws of nature, but doesn’t alter the way the physical universe works in general, than I am with the idea that God provides an appearance of randomness, but guides it to a predetermined goal. The resurrection seems more blatant, but actually has substantially less effect.

    This may not be very comforting. It means that human beings might not have existed. Perhaps there was a moment when if a landslide had gone a different way, some essential line of development would have been cut off and humans would never have appeared. Just for fun, think of giant, intelligent cockroaches digging up the fossilized remains of our potential, but doomed, ancestors.

    I think it would be quite easy to imagine an earth than went through it’s entire life cycle as a planet without producing intelligent life. For the entire universe, it would be vanishingly unlikely that no such life would develop anywhere, but I suspect that is a contingent possibility.

    Does it make you feel insecure? It did me when I first read about the possibilities and thought about them. But if there is one thing that the study of the universe should teach us, that is that physical life is risky and ephemeral, on the universal scale of things, and even when we look at it very locally. It seems to me that the nature of the universe suggests that God likes freedom much more than he likes security.

    (I’m working on another post dealing with the bloodiness of evolution and the implications of that, which I will hopefully post yet this week.)

  • A Simple Witness

    The man was a good Christian. Any of us would be quite pleased to have his reputation for faith and Christian charity. He was part of a study group I led, and we were discussing witnessing.

    “I’m afraid to put a fish symbol on my car,” he said. “I might do something that’s not Christlike, and then what would someone think?”

    There is a risk in being a witness, but at the same time, a silent witness may not be sufficient. It’s important to be identified as a recipient of God’s grace through Jesus Christ, i.e. as a Christian person and not just a nice person.

    I was struck by the simplicity of it today in reading the lectionary passage for a week from Sunday. It starts with Genesis 24:34:

    And he [Abraham’s servant] said, “I am Abraham’s servant.”

    It’s easy to read right past that, but this morning it halted me. How simple! Abraham’s servant wasn’t certain he was going to be successful. In fact, he had asked Abraham to absolve him of failure ahead of time, should that failure result from a negative response from the family in Haran.

    It reminded me of a missionary who told me that he simply did good deeds, in his case feeding children in need. If asked, he would say, “I’m doing this because Jesus told me today.”

    Might it be possible that the one thing that needs to be added to your life and Christian witness is that simple statement, something like: “I am Christ’s servant?”

  • Good News and Bad News on Religious Tolerance

    . . . but which is which?

    MSNBC.com reports on a study of religious attitudes that shows that Americans are still very religious (92% believe in God, for example), but that they are much more tolerant of other faiths.

    Among the more startling numbers in the survey, conducted last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: 57 percent of evangelical church attendees said they believe many religions can lead to eternal life, in conflict with traditional evangelical teaching.

    In all, 70 percent of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68 percent said there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.

    With those numbers, what can it possibly mean to be “evangelical” any more?

    While I celebrate tolerance, I’m disturbed by the tendency to identify tolerance with weak beliefs. Unfortunately, that is what is happening. People become tolerant by becoming less committed. The article refers to this as “humility,” but it doesn’t seem so to me. Humility in one’s beliefs would require one to have some beliefs, but to admit that one might be mistaken and to be open to correction. The particular evidence for this is those who try to keep the label “evangelical” while altering the definition.

    I would prefer a society made up of people with strong beliefs, who were willing to defend those beliefs, but were also determined to do so respectfully, and to respect–not agree with–the beliefs of others.

    As one last note, let me add that I think this is the attitude that fosters hate speech codes. The tolerant in this sense are not really tolerant. Rather, they are tolerant of those who agree with them that their religious ideas don’t matter all that much. They are conformists, but they conform to a culture of apathy and indecision. Thus when they encounter someone who doesn’t fall within that culture, they feel justified in suppressing that person’s expression.

  • Robert Reich on Offshore Exploration

    One of my disappointments in John McCain is the amount of pandering he has done to various people. I regard his vacation from gas taxes as simple pandering. It solves no problems. It potentially creates many more. The only reason to favor it is that some people who don’t think beyond the next paycheck.

    Now before someone accuses me of elitism, I should note that I have been hit badly by the high gas prices. They hurt. But sometime, I expect within my lifetime, we’re going to have to bite the bullet, change the way we use energy, reconstruct some of our infrastructure (public transportation), and use less energy. I’m not one of those who think we will have to give up huge chunks of lifestyle to do this. I think there’s a very good chance technology will allow us to do very well whilst using much less energy. But there will be a cost. Developing, and more importantly implementing new technology will cost money.

    Which leads me to the actual topic. I think McCain is pandering on offshore drilling. It’s the wrong way to solve our problems. I would say it’s a short term solution, but it’s really a solution that will take a long time to provide a short term result.

    Robert Reich has a post today on this that says it succinctly, titled No To Further Offshore Drilling. When Reich was labor secretary in the Clinton administration I didn’t think much of his opinions, but I have now become a regular reader of his blog. He has been providing very wise advice on things like infrastructure spending, and now on oil drilling.

    It’s worth reading and considering.

  • Public Financing, Integrity, and Mixed Emotions

    Barack Obama has opted out of public financing for his presidential campaign.

    I greet this event with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Obama said that he would accept public financing and the limits that go with it. He is a supporter (or so he says) of public financing. Thus there is a question of integrity. It is simple political tactics–one might say politics as usual rather than “change.” On the other hand, I regard public campaign financing as a very bad idea, and I hope its time is passing. Obama’s action, I hope, will help underline the problems.

    I view public financing as an effort to limit free speech. I know the arguments in favor, in particular the idea that “ordinary” people get more say when you limit the contributions of the rich. But I simply don’t think that is a function that government can or should perform, and I think the history of campaign finance “reform” amply demonstrates that. In effect we have taken the power from those who have money, and given it to those who know how to manipulate the legal system.

    So while Obama has broken a promise, I hope that some good will come of it. The best good, in my view, would be complete elimination of public financing of elections, and also the end of the choking of free speech by attempting to regulate the money. Of course, that is way too optimistic, but I too can dream, can’t I?

  • Louisiana Coalition for Science

    I’m a bit behind on this, but a group of citizens in Louisiana have formed the Louisiana Coalition for Science, which is responding to similar legislative efforts to the one that died at the end of the legislative session here in Florida this year. Both personally and as a board member of Florida Citizens for Science, I would like to express my support for their efforts.

    I will also be adding their site to my blogroll and continuing to watch.

  • With Critics Like These

    I will probably have to repent for posting this, but I can’t resist. Post in haste, repent at leisure–probably much leisure.

    I received the following comment on YouTube responding to my video Why I Hate the KJV.

    SHUT UP! “Thou fool”. The only obstacle is your own wickedness selfishness laziness and stupidity. The only hinderance is your nausiating self absorbed slop. Repent and get saved you ignorant unsaved pharisee!

    I guess that will teach me!