Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Energion.com

  • Gitmo Detainees have Rights

    Whoda thunk it? The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 that the detainees have constitutional rights and can appeal to civilian courts, according to this MSNBC story.

    While I believe that extraordinary measures may be needed in war, there are several reasons why I don’t think that is the case here. 1) This has gone on for a long time. 2) We have a very stable situation, unlike a battlefield in a more general war, so there is no reason that hearings can’t be afforded. 3) It should require extraordinary circumstances, such as being under fire in a war zone, to classify people as enemy combatants. Errors have already been made. 4) Finally, reports from Guantanamo suggest strongly that accountability is a necessity. I do not believe this will compromise our national security as some predict.

    Considering this was a 5-4 ruling, it should remind all of us, on either side of this issue, of the importance of voting in this election and considering the type of justices that each candidate is likely to appoint.

  • Ordination and Impartation Questions

    I called to congratulate a friend and former student who was just ordained a full elder in the United Methodist Church at annual conference, and he said, tongue-in-cheek, “Yes, I feel much more powerful now!”

    So since some of the comments here (from PamBG [her comment], Diane R. [her comment] and Peter Kirk [his comment]) have brought up the issue of ordination and impartation, and because it’s a topic on which I don’t have extremely set views, I decided to pick my newly ordained friend’s brain. (Note that each comment I linked is part of a thread, and it would be well to read the whole thread before concluding you have the commenter’s viewpoint.)

    I went to it directly. “I know you were joking, but do you believe that there is some kind of impartation involved in ordination?” He said he did, and pointed out how the ordination certificate, on the back, shows the number of generations of laying on of hands back to John Wesley, and then back through church history. That’s the Methodist version of apostolic succession, which, according to the Catholic church, we do not actually have.

    I thought I’d open this up to questions. I’m going to ask this young man who is very well versed in theology and especially interested in the early church, its practices, and traditions, just what he meant by that. What is imparted, and how? I’d like to see some comments. I’ll be meeting him the middle of next week.

    In the meantime, I had a conversation with my wife, and we’re more comfortable with the notion that God imparts, and the particular person or place is a matter of obedience. Take Gehazi, for example. He goes to dip in the Jordan River. Was the river water particularly efficacious? I’d tend to think not. What was efficacious was obedience. God could heal at any place and in any way he chose, but he chose that way and that place. Similarly, I think God could make someone a fully called and empowered minister without external events. He just chooses to work through the church.

    I’m not sure that’s actually different in substance. It’s just a bit different of a way of talking about it. I still have a great deal of question about just how important the way we talk about this is. I’ve been around someone who thinks that if you haven’t received prayer from someone with a particular anointing, say an anointed revival speaker, you will not have anointing. Another friend and pastor effectively denies that the laying on of hands is of any efficacy whatsoever. It’s just a symbol.

    Included in this question would be the relationship between ordination and the type of impartation involved in some modern revival meetings. I haven’t seen it myself, but I think there’s a similarity in Lakeland and what we had here ate Brownsville in that hundreds of people are touched physically during the prayer time, and that is frequently regarded as a time of impartation. I’m not trying to challenge that idea, even though you can probably tell I’m not entirely comfortable with it. Yet there is scripture that seems to back that up to some extent.

  • Explaining a Quiet Week

    I got to my office this Monday morning following my week in Niagara Falls for my mom’s 90th birthday, and discovered that my hosting provider, had finally moved my main and oldest site, Energion.com to its new server.

    I understand quite well why it took them some time to move. The site is complicated and large, in no small degree because I have been adding pages to it since the mid 90s, and if there is any bad coding practice I have ever used, it’s going to be somewhere in there.

    Unfortunately, though they did a good job overall, they broke one key point, the access to SOAP. They did so by simply starting to use the PEAR SOAP extension rather than the built-in ones from PHP. The result was that a good portion of the site, specifically anything that used the Amazon Associate Web Services died immediately. So besides trying to catch up on the inevitable stuff that gathers in one’s office while one is gone for a week, I had to translate that code. In the end, while it should have been simple to change the built-in SOAP stuff to PEAR, I chose to change the whole thing to use REST, which I have wanted to do, but never got around to.

    That, in turn, led me to work on a number of other annoying things, and one thing led to another. The site is not only my oldest, but it often gets the least maintenance. When I’m about nose deep in PHP code, I rarely think about things concerning which I might blog, and thus, well, I didn’t blog. I know this was a severe disappointment to my large[ly imaginary] audience, but I had to do it–I just had to!

    So here I am, beginning to pretend there’s a universe out there again. Hello World!

  • Politicians, Adultery, and Integrity

    Despite the broad and pretentious title, this is going to be short and simple. James Poulos wrote today about politicians who commit adultery (HT: evangelical outpost), and said:

    …What I’m angling for here is simple: a basic public consensus that if you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics, because we still have enough talent in America to replace you with someone who isn’t a bad person and is nonetheless capable of being a ‘gifted’ and ‘dedicated’ public servant.

    That’s good within certain limits, and I’ve argued the same myself for folks like David Vitter, Larry Craig, and Eliot Spitzer. But that’s not because of my view of marriage, which some might say borders on the puritanical, but rather because I believe your actions should reflect what you say. For example, I vowed to be faithful to my wife “till death do us part” and others are welcome to hold me to that.

    Why is this not a personal matter, to be dealt with by the family alone? In the case of someone in public office, I would suggest that it gives a strong indication of whether that person will do what he says. He took marriage vows, he took an oath of office. If he violates the one, why should I regard him as a person of integrity who will uphold the other? It is unfortunate, of course, that there are those who are faithful to their marriage vows, but quite unfaithful to their oath of office, but that is another topic.

    In my view this is not primarily about sex. We get excessively excited about such scandals because they involve sex. We are too ready to excuse because they involve sex. The question is whether we, the voters, have enough integrity to demand similar integrity of our public officials. Can we do so when the politician is on our side of the aisle in the same way that we do when he or she is on the other side?

    I would add that by integrity I mean one’s intention and reasonable success at remaining inside one’s own moral boundaries, and also that one’s own moral boundaries are what one proclaims. If one’s actions do not violate one’s own standards, then I would not question that person’s integrity. I might, however, question his or her standards.

  • Revival, Faith Healing, and Healing Prayer

    Update (5/27/08): Before you conclude that I’m a deist and that I don’t believe in any miracles at all, please read the discussion in the comments, where, to put it briefly I affirm both healing miracles and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. These are things I accept by faith, however, whilst doubting one’s ability to prove them. Now on to the post as originally written . . .

    The whole discussion about Todd Bentley and the Lakeland Revival has led me to think back a great deal about the Brownsville Revival. There were and are a number of concerns while at the same time I don’t want to be a blanket critic. But I have personally seen people seriously hurt by the excesses that tend to accompany a mass revival movement.

    Activity involves risk, so when I give cautions about risks one should not assume that I am saying to avoid the whole movement and everyone in it because there are risks. But there are more and less risky ways of going about spiritual business.

    Let me outline my starting point first. I will likely say more about these things later. I have been called a liberal charismatic, initially by an enemy. Though I personally prefer “passionate moderate” the label does have some truth. In fact, when I presented it to my wife and a number of our friends as part of the subtitle to my book (Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic), they thought it fit me perfectly. So if your friends (and your wife) think the label bestowed by an enemy fits, perhaps there’s something to it. I am charismatic in the sense that I believe any gift of the Holy Spirit can be present at any time. I do not hold that God spoke more in the time of the Hebrew prophets or the apostles than he does today. I don’t believe God was more willing to heal back in those times than he is now.

    I have personally experienced some of the “manifestations” that accompany revivals–speaking in tongues (or more accurately some form of prayer language), being slain in the spirit, and so forth. I have found occasions of each experience to be very spiritually helpful. Nonetheless I started using the term “side effects” rather than “manifestations” for these things, because I think the manifestation of the Spirit is focused on ministry that is characterized by the fruit of the Spirit. Those who teach that the side effects demonstrate that the Spirit is present can lead to a great deal of hurt. I encountered people who attended Brownsville and were not slain in the Spirit who felt that they must be spiritually inferior for that reason. Many charismatic and Pentecostal churches hold that a prayer language or speaking in tongues is a necessary demonstration of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and some that it is necessary evidence for salvation.

    I may blog about some of those experiences in a later post. Right now I want to say some words on faith healing. I blogged recently about a healing service, and then yesterday healing prayer was included in a regular service of worship. Both of these services were a blessing to me just being present. That experience is detached from any physical healing that may have taken place.

    You see, I have no experience that will say that prayer, apart from the application of medical science will heal. I have seen people prayed for who went on to get better. I have observed this happen outside the predicted parameters. My own father’s recovery in 1971 was contrary to the predictions of the doctor, but in any scientific sense one must take into account the possibility that the doctor’s predictions were simply wrong.

    Further, I don’t expect to get such evidence, unless it’s accidental and comes from someone else. Why? I will never test healing prayer, laying on of hands, or any similar activity in that way. I have strong theological reason to suggest that prayer is not a substitute for medical science. One could always have a test group prayed over by faith healers, and another group offered the best medical science has to offer. My suspicion is that the first group will do much worse than the second. But I would regard it as unethical to try.

    My concern with faith healing is that the expressed expectation of the healer is going to lead the person who receives prayer to believe they are healed, or to believe that their healing will come apart from medical care. I have every reason to believe that they will probably be wrong about that. I previously related the case in which a pastor, who should have known better, told my 12 year old son who was in chemotherapy that God had told him that everyone he laid hands on and prayed for would be healed from cancer. For a 12 year old that logically meant he no longer needed to continue chemotherapy–but he did need to continue.

    I can testify that there are many things about having a child sick, for example, that go well beyond the obvious. In our case, my wife was forced to go to half-time on family medical leave. Despite having good health insurance, we piled up medical bills with the copays and deductibles. Our time was strained. Our mental energy was strained. Then someone would come along and say, “If you will just go to _____, they will pray for your son and I believe he will be healed.” If we made the decision not to go the obvious question was why we would neglect to do something that might possibly save our son’s life.

    The problem was that we had dozens of such suggestions, some from regular medicine though different from the course of treatment we had chosen with our oncologist’s advice, some from alternative medicine, and many from a spiritual perspective. We had suggestions on how to decorate his room, how to handle the water in our house, and how to organize his diet. At some point, you simply wear out from suggestions. You simply cannot do all of it, even if you want to.

    A major problem is desperation, which leads you to do anything that might help, without any concern about whether it is very likely to do so. Friends are desperate as well, and they want to help. Under these circumstances the faith healer looks pretty good. Just go get anointed with oil and hands laid on you and it’s taken care of. Well, the bottom line for many people is that it isn’t, and after that the recriminations start. I know of a family, for example, who were told by a Methodist minister that if they had had enough faith, their loved one would have been healed. If your business is spiritual, can you admit simply that God doesn’t always heal, or even do so all that frequently, or do you have to find a reason why the activity failed?

    Revival, American style, shares characteristics with American fast food. We want it to be exciting and fast. We would prefer to go to the faith healer, be declared healed, and go on our way. It certainly beats months of chemotherapy.

    But I don’t think healing prayer is primarily about that, which is why I would not test it in that way. Healing prayer is primarily about spiritual, and by extension emotional, health. The healing services I attended fed into that spiritual health by combining the prayer with worship, explicitly discussing the expectations, and doing this all in the context of a supportive praying community, the church congregation. This can be done in a mass revival service, but it is easy to miss it. Further, in the revival service there is most commonly no follow-up to help a person with their expectations. If the revival preacher or faith healer lays hands on you and you remain ill, who is going to help you deal with your expectations? I recall one young man in trouble with the Brownsville revival who talked to me about his situation. He was happy that I would listen, he said, but what he really wanted was a half hour with his own pastor, something he was unlikely to get.

    I believe that any time we put our primary focus on the physical–material wealth, physical healing, visible effects of the Spirit’s presence–we will produce many negative results. Pastors in the area of a revival need to be aware of this and be prepared to support their members. One key issue here which might need more comment: Being a blanket critic of the revival is likely to turn away the very people you could help. If you affirm a person’s desire for a touch from God, and then help them work through their expectations, you will have opportunities to provide balance for them that they are unlikely to get at a revival service. Implying that they were stupid for seeking prayer is unlikely to be helpful.

    I would describe this as the primary failing of churches in the Pensacola area during the Brownsville revival. People showed up in churches after they had accepted Christ at the revival, or church members returned to their home church after the revival service, only to hear condemnation. Discerning comment on weaknesses is necessary. Affirmation of people’s needs and of the blessings that many receive helps establish the ground. Then you can fill in the blanks and balance the imbalances where they occur.

    I have been rambling a bit, but I hope these thoughts will be of help to people in relating to revival. I’m in no way telling people not to go and experience whatever they believe God has called them to do. But the more people there are and the more excitement, the more discernment is necessary.

  • Hunting Down the Holy Spirit

    One interesting privilege I had during the Brownsville Revival here in Pensacola was meeting groups going to and from the revival. At the time I was a member of Pine Forest United Methodist Church, and groups would stay in the Family Life Center there in order to be in range to get to the revival which was around 10 miles.

    They would come by bus, or less frequently in a caravan of cars, sleep on the floor, and then get up early in the morning to stand all day in line, hoping to get into the main sanctuary for the service. Sometimes they would try to talk to some of the Pine Forest UMC staff or members who had experience of the revival to try to find out what they were about to experience.

    At the time I lived in a trailer on the campus of the church. I had volunteered to check all the doors late at night. It is very rare at a church when you can’t find some door unlocked when it ought to be locked! In doing my late night check I would occasionally find groups that had returned from the revival and were trying to digest their experiences. Thus I could hear from them both before and after.

    I’m going to use these experiences to make a composite picture of two different pastors with whom I spent some time talking and praying during this time frame. There were many who could be represented by each of them, but I’ve chosen the extreme set of circumstances.

    The first was on a second or third visit. He reported new growth and new activity in his home church after he had visited Brownsville. “It isn’t really anything like Brownsville. It’s unique,” he told me. “But I was really blessed here, and I’m bringing others in my group this time so they can be blessed.”

    The second told me that he was close to retirement and expressed desperation that he wanted his ministry to count. To him, the revival at Brownsville represented the one chance of getting something real done in his ministry. Over time, his church shrunk to nearly nothing, and he had to move on.

    I am left asking just what was the fruit of the Brownsville revival. Is it best represented by the first pastor or the second? Is it represented by those who rededicated their lives to God and to service and carried it out in the way God called them to do, or those who became desperate and tried to duplicate what they saw?

    Those are, unfortunately, the type of binary questions that I tend to dislike. We tend to use the “know them by their fruit” model (Matthew 7:15-20). The problem is that quite frequently both sides have good “fruit” arguments. There are people who are greatly aided or even restarted in their spiritual lives. There are also people who go off the rails in one way or another, damaging themselves or others. The more adventurous tend to blame those who take some negative path on some force other than the revival. They claim the revival is good, but if you bring something bad there, the devil will get to work and ruin the result. The more theologically and spiritually cautious note the failures and are most concerned about those who are harmed.

    In my experience, however, you can say that about almost any movement and certainly most churches. I have seen the same church congregation be a tremendous blessing in one person’s life, while it becomes the very last church that some other person will attend because he has been injured in some way.

    Any time you have a group of people who are active, there is going to be a mixture both of people and of results. Even though Jesus doesn’t address this all that directly, I think a better model than the fruit is the weeds among the wheat (Matthew 13:24-30). This doesn’t mean that one should not check the fruit, but rather that one must realize that when people are involved results will generally be mixed. I would want to have a very comprehensive knowledge of a ministry before I said that its fruit was totally bad and it should be rejected as a whole. At the same time, I think it is very important to observe danger signs and give warnings.

    Amongst those things to watch are:

    1. A tendency to focus on visible but extraneous things such as being slain in the spirit
    2. Getting stuck, i.e. simply hanging around all the time “being revived” instead of finding a constructive calling and doing it
    3. A focus on a single person or place. Note that this doesn’t mean nobody should go anywhere to experience God’s presence. Elijah had an important experience after running to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19), surely a more daunting journey in his day than a bit of a flight to a church in Florida is now.
    4. Unbalanced emphasis either on personal experience and spirituality over study and community, or the reverse
    5. Desperation. Desperate people try to force things, and are very susceptible to pretending. If you must have a miracle, you just may invent one or see one where none exists.
    6. Duplication. What happened at _____ (wherever) must happen here. That’s how I’ll know God is working.

    The question has been put to me by friends of whether I’ll find my way to Lakeland or at least follow it on GodTV. The answer is that this is not very likely. Is that because I have made a studied and negative decision? Well, simply the fact that I haven’t even watched it where conveniently available on TV should answer that. No, I haven’t made any studied decision. The things I have said are not, and cannot be directed specifically at Lakeland, because I have too little knowledge.

    The reason, however, that I’m not involved is that I’m already involved with what God is doing in my life and in the life of the church congregation I have just joined. The Holy Spirit is moving at First United Methodist Church in Pensacola. It bears no resemblance to rumors of Lakeland. I can say emphatically that it bears no resemblance to Brownsville, with which I had some acquaintance. There are no large altar calls and nobody has fallen on the floor.

    What is happening is that the church is experiencing steady growth. It is unable to accommodate all the activities of the members and the ministries to the community within existing space, and that space is not small. The ministers are preaching a strong gospel message, and people are responding. The leadership has determined that they are going to serve the community, help those less fortunate, and generally be a witness for Jesus in their downtown community. The senior pastor declared that the one and only reason for the existence of a church was to fulfill the gospel commission, or you could restate that to be a witness for Jesus Christ. I’m excited to be joining in with that in whatever way God calls me to do so.

    Do I want to set one way up against another? No. Never. But it’s the latter to which I am personally called.

    Peter Kirk wrote about a visit to the Dudley outpouring. I was interested in his experience. While he was unhappy with some elements he still received a blessing which he was able to bring back to his church. That is a positive testimony. He also provides a list of links to other comments on either Dudley or Lakeland.

    Again, I’m struck by the “weeds and wheat” metaphor for these events. The ideal is often the enemy of the good, and I think this can be true in the case of outpourings. Unfortunately, many on either side expect one to either be wholly for or wholly against, using another set of sayings of Jesus as their model. Well, I’m wholly for Jesus and wholly against that other guy, but when a number of people are involved, I suspect the division is a little harder to make.

    (PS: Peter Kirk has also written a great deal on the Holy Spirit, and I’ve been bookmarking some, intending to write, but I have simply not had time to do the subject justice.)

  • Yes, Race Influences my Vote

    There! That should be provocative enough as a title. Actually this post will be more of a gathering of election thoughts at this point in the campaign.

    But first, to honor the title, I think that there are very few people in this country who can honestly claim that race has no influence on their vote at all. That 1 in 5 thing from West Virginia just catches honest folks. I’m not saying that the vast majority of people are racists. What I’m saying is that we don’t have race issues so thoroughly removed from our systems that we don’t even think about it.

    At a minimum, I’m guessing most Democrats have at least discussed whether Barack Obama can win because of the prejudice of other people. That’s a dangerous argument to have, because in some ways it’s allowing the bigots a veto without even having to make the effort to vote. Perhaps a better plan would be to make a positive effort to educate wherever possible and then hope that there are enough people of good will to make the difference.

    For me, however, there is an additional point. I think the nation benefits from some diversity in government. Thus both Democratic candidates entered the race with a positive bias from my point of view. If Hillary Clinton were elected, she would be the first woman president, and that would be a positive model for girls and women across the nation. If Barack Obama is elected he will be the first African-American president, and that speaks of a whole other set of barriers being broken. I don’t put diversity very high on my list of priorities, but other things being equal, it could tip the scales to one or another candidate. In this case, the scales are tipped by the Iraq war. I believe Obama is right about it, and continues to be right about it, and that’s why I continue to support him despite a number of economic policies with which I am less pleased.

    I think we ought to be honest and admit that issues of race and gender are still functioning. The statistics don’t prove it as they can’t give us the real reasons for a person’s vote, but they are very suggestive. It’s probably not a policy issue that is causing the vast majority of African-American voters to support Obama, and it’s not policy that is doing the same thing amongst women for Hillary Clinton. As far as I’m concerned, I think that’s nothing either group needs to be ashamed of.

    It’s easy to pontificate about voting pure issues, but the fact is that our perception of a candidate’s personal integrity, and whether we trust that person is part of most people’s thinking. I try to be more objective, and go through lists of issues, comparing my own position with that of the candidate, but there will still be other elements.

    Voting is a good area for a bit of affirmative action, and I would say highly visible political appointments are as well. It is important that the justice system, for example, not only operate impartially insofar as possible, but it needs to be seen to do so. An all white judiciary, however well qualified, would leave an impression of unfairness. Those in cabinet positions are often seen representing our country. I have appreciated the way in which George Bush’s cabinet has shown better than average diversity. I don’t like much else about it, but I give him points for that!

    Those who might claim that race or gender is extraneous on these types of appointments would probably suggest that we take the person who is the best candidate, irrespective of such irrelevant factors. But such a selection occurs only in imaginary worlds. In practice, such appointments have to do with community relations, personal interaction, and subjective impressions. Just as the campaign staffs for Obama and Clinton can each provide a spin for just about anything that means it’s good for their candidate, so one can spin the job application or the list of candidates for an appointment. One might as well admit the subjective factors and use them out in the sunlight.

    Finally, I’m not with the folks, even now, who urge Clinton to quit the race. Yes, I support her opponent. Yes, I want him to beat her. But if I were a Clinton supporter and she were running, I’d want my chance to cast my ballot and at least have my say, even if victory was already impossible or incredibly improbable. Electability is low on my list of reasons to support a candidate anyhow.

  • Faithful Promises: Psalm 12

    One of the long term projects I have for this blog is to take a brief look at the major passages of scripture that relate to inspiration or that are used in discussions about it. I’m taking these passages from various sources, including comments made on this blog, but also from personal conversations, books, letters, e-mails, and so forth.

    In theological debates, the actual intent of Biblical passages often gets subordinated to a theological agenda. I recall one debate, or perhaps it would better be called an argument, in which both my opponent and I were citing Hebrews 4:12, yet our positions were polar opposites. That’s why an assertion with a parenthetical scripture reference, such as “the Bible is inerrant (2 Tim. 3:16)” have a tendency to fail in discussion.

    One favorite of the KJV-Only group is Psalm 12, of which they regularly cite verses 6 and 7. There are several things to look at about this Psalm. First we must ask just what type of literature it is. We know it is a Psalm (I wonder what our first clue was!) but just what type of Psalm?

    We can make some generalizations about Psalms. They are poetry and will tend to use figurative and picturesque language as is common in poetry. They are written from various perspectives and intended for various occasions. Thus it is very dangerous to pick a few lines from a Psalm and apply it theologically. There is the great example of quoting “there is no god” from Psalm 14:1. Of course, the Psalmist is quoting some unspecified group of fools, or perhaps some particular fool.

    Psalm 12, in particular is a prayer that is divided into some quite precise divisions. Verses 1 & 2 lament the lack of good people and describe the depravity of those who surround the Psalmist. This is followed in verses 3 & 4 by the actual petition, which is to cut off those who are flattering and arrogant. Verse 5 is YHWH’s response to the situation, in which he declares his intention to respond to the petition presented. Finally, verses 6-8, we have the expression of faith that despite the way in which the petitioner(s) is surrounded by the wicked, God will be faithful to his word–his promise–of protection given in verse 5.

    The two elements that the KJV-Only advocates have grabbed out of this Psalm are the statement that the Lord’s words are pure, and in verse 7 that the promise is forever. They take this to mean that the KJV is God’s pure word and that it will remain forever. Of course, the Psalm says nothing of the sort.

    Note that many modern versions (NRSV and NIV among them) translate “words” in verse 6 as “promises.” That is a correct reading of the Hebrew in which the specific words are the ones just spoken, and are thus promises in context. This meaning is similar to our use of “give your word” in English.

    Thus this passage says nothing directly about the Bible or its inspiration. It does, however, say some things indirectly, by talking about God and the nature of his promises. God’s promises are amongst God’s words, and he will be faithful to what he has declared. We can expect God’s word as reflected elsewhere, such as in scripture, to share characteristics with his word expressed to worshiper(s) here.

    Psalm 12 is a good example of a prayer of petition in the Bible, and it declares God faithful in what he says.

  • Fairness vs. Fairness

    With a hat tip to evangelical outpost, I present this quote from P. J. O’Rourke in the LA Times.

    The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin. Observe the Tenth Commandment. The first nine commandments concern theological principles and social law: Thou shalt not make graven images, steal, kill, et cetera. Fair enough. But then there’s the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.”

    Now please, please go read the whole article before you comment on how I used it. There is absolutely no way I could get the flavor while staying within the bounds of fair use. The article is funny, and if you read closely, you’ll find some truths lurking in it, just waiting to jump out and bite you. But above all, it’s quite humorous.

    Nonetheless, I’m grabbing a sentence that involves equivocation in the use of the term “fairness” that is all too prevalent in our society. Being humor challenged, I’m going to deal with it seriously. I hear or see “fairness” used in two substantially different ways.

    First is the fairness of approach. For example, in a game, a “fair” game is one in which the umpires ruled impartially, the rules were followed, and generally cheating was prevented. That’s fairness of opportunity or potential. In politics, we might be talking about the opportunity to make money. The government doesn’t deny me the opportunity to start a business or to take a job. I’m not blocked for some irrelevant reason, such as gender or age. That doesn’t guarantee me the ability to sell my idea and acquire or borrow the capital to put it into action. It doesn’t make me succeed at the resulting business. But all else being equal I am not prevented from access. (Note that there are move controversial points in economics than in sports because the possibilities are more complex, but that’s not my topic.)

    The second is a fairness of results. In this case we assume that people should win a certain amount and lose a certain amount. We usually find this amongst young children who think a game is fair when they win, or when they’re a little older they think it’s fair when they win the appropriate percentage of the time. In politics we’d look at the idea that everyone should receive either similar incomes, or incomes that are rated on some scale of non-economic value of their work. Why, for example, is a doctor rated as less valuable than many entertainers, and a school teacher less than either? This view of fairness results in some sense of moral outrage at economic inequalities, and often in an attempt to directly address those inequalities rather than looking at opportunities that lie behind them.

    The 10th commandment would certainly stand against fairness in this second sense, but I would suggest that this second type of fairness is a muddled concept, incapable of being resolved into clear thinking. The reason an entertainer gets more money is that more people want his or her services and are willing to pay more for it. (Note that each individual pays less to the entertainer than they do to the doctor, though the total income for the latter is less. Should the doctor learn how to serve patients in the millions he would likely get very rich!)

    But in the first sense, fairness of opportunity, the 10th commandment creates no problems. I think it’s unfortunate that in discussion these two senses are so rarely sorted out. In social policy, the line may not be so clear at the edges, but it is certainly a distinction that needs to be made.

  • Lazarus: The Beloved Disciple

    This is finally a continuation of my series blogging through Ben Witherington’s book What Have They Done with Jesus? (Previous post here.) Part of the problem is that I have been very busy, and this book tends to fall through the crack. It’s not the sort of thing I read for my own devotions, yet it’s not my light bed time reading.

    But I’m also rather disappointed in it, because I don’t feel that it really is contributing that much to understanding of historical Jesus studies. It’s written at a popular level, so I don’t expect it to advance scholarship that much, but I frankly find the approach a bit bizarre.

    In chapters seven and eight, Witherington continues, this time dealing with the beloved disciple and thus possibly the author of John. He maintains that this is Lazarus. I’m not going to go into the details of his argument. You’ll have to buy his book for that. The historical data that he surveys is coming to this point is rather interesting. He surveys authorship issues in the book of Revelation, concluding that John of Patmos is neither John the apostle, nor to be equated with the author of the gospel or epistles. He believes that the same person wrote the epistles and the gospel, and of course that person was not John the apostle. The authorship issue is dealt with effectively.

    If he stopped at that point I would find it interesting. What’s disappointing is that he continues the process of trying to establish who Jesus is based on his restoration of these eyewitnesses. I find many conclusions in historical Jesus research are based on very limited evidence. In this case we have Lazarus based on very skimpy evidence, and then we see him used as a witness.

    To quote:

    Finally, let’s summarize what the material bequeathed to us by the Beloved Disciple tells us about Jesus. The first and perhaps most important conclusion we learn from examining this material closely is that there is no major gap between the historical Jesus and the Christ of later Christian faith . . . (p. 165)

    Say what? That may be true, though it would be another debate. But based on the information contained in this chapter? Hardly.