Category: Rants (Page 4 of 6)

I get a little riled up occasionally, and then I think about why I am angry. I will continue thinking long after I should have let it go. One great way of getting beyond the issue is to write about it.

Christians Can’t Simply Be Conservative

October 4, 2016 / Trent / 0 Comments

Just the other day, I was listening to a pastor casually commenting on social issues, and underlying all his comments was the foundational belief that being Christian goes hand in hand with being conservative.

I have been uncomfortable with this attitude since I was in high school and have been arguing that on some issues, Christians ought to find themselves agreeing with the liberal positions. I was recently introduced to the work of Dr. Barry Johnson. I think he has provided me a way of communicating the dangers of believing that to be Christian is to be conservative or, if you want, Republican.

Johnson says that there are two basic kinds of arguments we find ourselves in.

There’s the kind where either you are right or you are wrong. Let’s call these either/or disagreements. In these instances, the purpose of the argument is to establish who is right and who is wrong. Theoretically, these arguments are resolved once the truth is established.

Sometimes we get into arguments where there isn’t a right or wrong answer–both/and disagreements.

For instance:

Is social media good or is social media bad?
Shall we save or shall we spend?
Is it better to development or to preservation?
Action or Reflection
“You are either with me, or against me!”
Ford or Chevy
Liberal or Conservative

It is vitally important that people understand which sort of discussion they are in. When you think you are in an either/or argument, but it’s really a both/and disagreement, you are essentially arguing that inhaling is better than exhaling.

If there is no right answer and people are really passionate about their position, how can we possibly navigate through this minefield?

Barry Johnson has come up with a useful tool he calls it Polarity Management.

Let me use the question, Liberal or Conservative? to illustrate how it works.

I know many people will disagree with me here, but this question has no clear right or wrong answer. It is a both/and discussion that many have made into an either/or argument. I’ve placed the Christian view of this question, as I see it, into Johnson’s Polarity Management model.

polariz1 The questions we want to address with the model is, “Liberal or Conservative? How can Christians best be the salt of the world?” So in Johnson’s model we put the two neutral terms on the wings. Christ told us to be salt in the world; he told us that we are to season, preserve and heal the world. He also said that if we aren’t salt, we would be cast before swine. Serious stuff. On the model I have placed where we are headed, the “Higher Purpose” above and at the bottom, the “Deeper Fear,” or what lies in the opposite direction of the higher purpose. All Christians, both liberal and conservative, have the same higher purpose and the same deeper fear.

The boxes just above the neutral terms describe the positive side of both options respectively. On the liberal side we have collective responsibility and individual rights. These are good things. When Jesus calls us to be salt, he means that we must do what the law and the prophets have always told us to do: take care of the vulnerable. In Biblical times, this was the stranger, the widow and the orphan. If you translate this into contemporary terms it means we take care of the immigrant, the refugee, and the poor, for they are the vulnerable in our society. This collective responsibility is a Biblical injunction, and if we don’t do it we are in danger of being cast before swine. The reason we take care of the vulnerable is because of the Biblical view of humanity–everyone bears the Image of God. The poor and the refugee are dear to God. The liberal principle for the protection of individual rights comes right out of image bearing as well, so all Christians ought to be very interested in the protection of individual rights. These liberal principles are, then, biblical; they advocates loving one’s neighbour. The liberal position also takes into account the Fallenness of humanity; they predict we will naturally be selfish and so advocate the use of government to ensure that our neighbours are loved.

Conservative ideals are also aimed toward saltiness. Biblically, human freedom and individual responsibility are probably as foundational as bearing God’s image. These conservative principles are also based on true understanding of the human condition, we are good, but fallen.

[tweetshare tweet=”Both liberal and conservative ideals are rooted in biblical principles.” username=”Dryb0nz”]

The lower boxes illustrate the “downside” of over-focusing on one pole to the neglect of the other. If we neglect the good that we find in the conservative position we may end up in a bad place–as conservatives are very willing to point out. But if we neglect the liberal ideals we, as Christians, will also lose our saltiness and end up in the eternal pig pen.

What we have, both in the culture at large and in the church, are people on both side of the political spectrum treating the argument as an either/or. They fail to realize that their political opponents have an equally valid, alternate view of reality. They accept the principle that if I am right, the one who disagrees with me is necessarily wrong.

[tweetshare tweet=”Both liberals and conservatives accept the fallacy that if I am right, the one who disagrees with me is necessarily wrong. ” username=”Dryb0nz”]

Consequently, there is disunity in the church. The first step to unity would involve understanding the legitimacy of the opponents position, but this is impossible when one is locked in the polarity paradigm. So they resist.

Both sides have an equally valid, alternate view of reality.

In a true either/or argument, clarity is an asset–once things are clear, we will be in agreement. In a both/and argument, simply communicating your position clearly will not result in your opponent changing their mind because it will be clearer to them that you are missing what’s right in front of you–their reality–and they are not wrong.

For Christians to be salt and light in the political sphere, they will have to abandon rigid adherence to just one side of the political spectrum. They will have to see that there are two legitimate–biblical–realities at play here. The conservative Christians need to adhere to the positives of conservatism, but they also need to respond with grace and generousity toward the liberal reality, even the negatives, for by doing so, they may also gain the benefits of that position. In possession of the strengths of both sides, the Christian impact on the world is potentially far saltier than we currently are.

Poop Packages

April 24, 2016 / Trent / 1 Comment

Dog Poop bagged

Am I missing something, or are people complete idiots?

We have decided that we don’t want to have dog poop all over our community. To this end we expect pet owners to bag the feces of their beloved canine, and dispose of it in a convenient garbage can. If there is no readily available waste receptacle, we expect it to be packed home and disposed of it there. Fine.

But not every seems to understand all aspects of this complex procedure.

There seems to be a number of dog walkers who struggle with the important steps beyond the first.

I go walking up my local trail almost everyday and regularly find neatly packaged bags of dog poop protected from the elements in bright white or neon blue baggies. I don’t understand. Why don’t the pet owners move on to step 2.

If the stuff was just left, unpackaged, beside the trail, the rain, sun and snails would erase it from memory. But inside its protective case, this doggie dump can sit like a monument for months commemorating the site of this momentous movement of digested kibble for the devout pilgrims who pass it on the trail.

I suggest that this dog poop ritual is an all or nothing kind of thing. Either go through the entire procedure and take the bag home with you, or don’t even start down the road of courtesy–just knock the stuff off the trail with a readily available stick and let nature take its course.

YOLO: The Wisdom and the Folly

March 22, 2016 / Trent / 0 Comments

szanyierika97 / Pixabay

“YOLO” — You may have heard a young person say this just before they do something stupid, or as an explanation as to why they did something stupid.

It means “You Only Live Once.”

It suggests we ought to live for the present, as opposed to thinking too much about the future.

The Wisdom of YOLO

There is some wisdom in YOLO. Focusing too much on the future is foolish.

I know I think too much about the future. I think about the airplane crashing. I think about my future health. I think about next year’s writing projects and potential speaking engagements. I think about retirement. I don’t think I am alone in my obsession with the future.

Our obsession with the future plays right into the hands of the demonic powers–this is C. S. Lewis’ view articulated in The Screwtape Letters. Senior tempter, Screwtape, says that God wants us “to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which [we] call the Present.” The devils purpose, then, is to get us “away from the eternal, and from the Present.” They do this by making us ” live in the Future, because thinking about the Future “inflames hope and fear.”

By thinking about the future we are focused on “unrealities.” I can simultaneously worry about never marrying (being alone for the rest of my life) and about marrying the wrong person (being miserable for the rest of my life). That both of these would occur is impossible, still I manage to fear both.

And one lifetime is not enough to encompass all that I have ever hoped for. I will not get one of those $20,000 grand pianos that play all by themselves. I won’t live in New York City and write books. Won’t get PhDs in history, philosophy and literature. I won’t work as an author/artist in Brittany. With all its hopes and fears, the future is filled with unrealities, and to live in the future is to live outside of reality.

We [says Screwtape] want a man hag-ridden by the Future . . . We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The #YOLO mantra correctly breaks us away from obsessing on the future, and turning toward the present. #Screwtape” quote=”The #YOLO mantra correctly breaks us away from obsessing on the future, and turning toward the present.”]

Coffee can only be enjoyed in the present.

A good book can only be enjoyed in the present.

A friend can only be enjoyed in the present.

A lover can only be enjoyed in the present.

We can only be kind in the present.

We can only be happy in the present.

We can only be honest in the present.

The Foolishness of YOLO

But if you dig a little deeper into the YOLO philosophy, you will find it empty.

Lewis says that the Present is the most real component of time, and it is “the point at which time touches eternity”; it is “all lit up with eternal rays.”

The YOLO philosophy says that the present is important, but not because “it is all lit up with eternal rays,” but because it is all there is. This life is all there is. When it is over, there is nothing. So if you don’t do it now, you will never do it. There is no eternity, so have fun while you can. Live for pleasure; live for the present.

Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever, and this must be either true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. –C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Sameness or Surprise?

November 26, 2015 / Trent / 0 Comments

brenkee / Pixabay

My three most memorable hamburgers are:

The Kobe Beef Burger that I eat at the Issaquah Brew Pub every spring with my gaming buddies.
The burger I ate at Norma’s in Lacey, Washington, was by no means a gourmet burger, but it tastes great and had that 1950’s diner flavour to it.
This past summer I ate at a hamburger joint off the highway in Redding, California: Bartel’s Giant Burger. It too was a great burger–it was fast, served in a paper basket, but it was one of my most memorable burgers.

All three of these burgers are very good and all three are very different.

Sameness

TheDigitalArtist / Pixabay

Then there’s the approach to the hamburger that McDonald pioneered. No matter where you eat your burger, it will be exactly the same. This approach was obviously extremely popular and Americans believe that difference in hamburgers is a bad thing.

And McDonald’s is exporting this ridiculous idea. Did you see that commercial? I ranted about it a while back.

Craft Beer versus Factory Beer

harassevarg / Pixabay

This philosophy of marketing sameness for profit was also found in the beer industry. Since the lifting of prohibition, we were forced to drink just one kind of beer, the American Adjunct Lager. It’s fizzy, light bodied, has low bitterness and thin malts. This beer was made for mass production and consumption, not flavour–thank goodness that’s changed–if you want, you can get a wide variety of locally brewed craft beers all over North America.

The story of beer suggests that there is some resistance to the homogenization of experience, but we are still very comfortable with sameness. It used to be that all coffee was the same–cheap and industrial. The forces of sameness are still at work on us, it’s just that the product is a lot better.

Starbucks is the same whether you are in Seattle or Spain. A lot of people think this is a good thing–it’s called the Starbucks Experience. Of course, I don’t want a bad coffee experience, but this is not the same thing has having a different coffee experience.

Then there’s Kraft Dinner.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”By homogenize our experiences there no possibility of having a disappointing experience, but we will just as certainly not have a surprising one.” quote=”By homogenize our experiences there no possibility of having a disappointing experience, but we will just as certainly not have a surprising one.”]

By homogenize our experiences there no possibility of having a disappointing experience, but we will just as certainly not have a surprising one.

Is it worth it?

Cervantes and Praise Songs

November 1, 2015 / Trent / 2 Comments

Donations_are_appreciated / Pixabay

I find it difficult to praise Him, while singing Hillsong’s “Praise Him.”

I’m reading Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel De Cervantes. I came across the passage today where the Cannon discusses the inferiority of the popular books of chivalry whose authors write “without paying any attention to good taste or the rules of art.”

I’m not sure if the views expressed by the canon are those of Cervantes, but they are close to mine when it comes to much of Christian art, particularly that branch that gives us the songs we sing in church each week.

Don Quixote on Art

In this passage from Don Quixote, the canon is speaking of drama, but his comments apply to all art forms, I think, including praise and worship lyrics. I have made some changes, that I am sure Cervantes would not object to.

The praise songs ” that are now in vogue . . . are, all or most of them, downright nonsense and things that have neither head nor tail, and yet the public listens to them with delight, and regards and cries them up as perfection when they are so far from it . . . . the [lyricists] who write them, and the [worship leaders] who [perform] them, say that this is what they must be, for [congregations] wants this and will have nothing else. . . .

Apparently there is no point to “go by rule and work out [lyrics] according to the laws of art” because these “will only find some half-dozen intelligent people to understand them, while all the rest remain blind to the merit of their composition. I have sometimes endeavoured to convince [worship leaders] that they are mistaken in this notion they have adopted, and that they would attract more people, and get more credit, by [writing praise songs] in accordance with the rules of art, than by absurd ones, they are so thoroughly wedded to their own opinion that no argument or evidence can wean them from it.

“I remember saying one day to one of these obstinate fellows, ‘Tell me, do you not recollect that a few years ago, there were three [songs sung in the churches] of these kingdoms, which were such that they filled all who heard them with admiration, delight, and interest, the ignorant as well as the wise, the masses as well as the higher orders?'”

“‘No doubt,’ replied the [worship leader] in question, ‘you mean the “Blessed Be Your Name,” the “10 000 Reasons,” and “Revelation Song.“‘

“‘Those are the ones I mean,’ said I; ‘and see if they did not observe the principles of art, and if, by observing them, they failed to show their superiority and please all the world; so that the fault does not lie with the public that insists upon nonsense, but with those who don’t know how to [write] something else.”

The song that inspired this post is Hillsong United’s “Praise Him.”

“Praise Him” by Hillsong United

I think I know a formula when I see it–it has that progression that almost all of the popular praise songs have these days. My problem with this song is the lyrics are so general. I will commend its writers that the clichés they employ are at least on the same subject, but they aren’t really about anything except there is lots of praising going on.

There is nothing in the lyrics that engage either the mind or the imagination. Without this engagement, even if the music is really excellent, the experience is, at best, only emotional. Under these conditions, my worship experience is about as meaningful as watching clothes tumble in the dryer.

I believe that we should bring God our best–not just our best music, but our best everything–this includes our lyrics.

I leave you with just a few lines of Josh Garrels’ song “Colors” which are about praising Him.

So let all the creatures sing
Praises over everything
Colors are meant to bring
Glory to the light

In my series The Poetry of Worship, offer ways we can improve the lyrics of the praise and worship songs we sing. More importantly, I explain why we ought to.

Bible Altered by Homosexuals and Satan Worshipers?

July 15, 2015 / Trent / 2 Comments

I’m on summer holidays so I have the luxury to scan my Facebook feed before I get out of bed. This morning, my peace was disturbed by an incredible post. It said:

PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE!! I’m sure you know that NIV was published by Zondervan but is now OWNED by Harper Collins, who also publishes The Satanic Bible and The Joy of Gay Sex.

The NIV has now removed 64,575 words from the Bible including Jehovah, Calvary, Holy Ghost and omnipotent to name but a few…

The NIV and ESV and other versions have also now removed 45 complete verses. Most of us have the Bible on our devices and phones.

Try and find these scriptures in NIV or ESV on your computer, phone or device right now if you are in doubt:

Matthew 17:21, 18:11, 23:14; Mark 7:16, 9:44, 9:46; Luke 17:36, 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37…you will not believe your eyes.

. . . There is a crusade geared towards altering the Bible as we know it; NIV and many more versions are affected.

I feel compelled to respond to these claims.

First: I think the church has more to worry about than Satanists and homosexuals. Enough said there.

The NIV has removed words from the Bible

“The NIV has removed . . . words from the Bible.”

From which “Bible” were these words removed? The author of the post does not make this clear. I suspect he is talking about the King James Version (KJV). The KJV is the standard of comparison at this site which uses similar numbers to make similar claims.

I did a quick comparison between the NIV and the KJV. The KJV contains 2736 uses of the word “thee,” 4599 uses of the word “thou,” and six uses of the word “pisseth.” Are these the words that the NIV has removed? Is this the evidence of the “crusade geared toward altering the Bible as we know it”?

Translations do not come from previous versions of the Bible (paraphrases do and ought to be treated accordingly). They come from materials that are as close to the original sources as possible. These are translated into some language, like Modern English, Swahili or Spanish, etc. One could accurately say that a Spanish translation of the Bible has altered 100% of the Bible, if by Bible, you meant the King James Version. Does this make the Spanish Bible less valid than the KJV? Does the translation into Swahili constitute a “crusade toward altering the Bible”?

My point is, the NIV did not add, take away, or alter any part of the King James Version of the Bible. They translated the same source material using a different philosophy of translation and wrote it is a different style. It is completely appropriate to question the materials, philosophy and style of a Bible translation, but it is completely illegitimate to criticize its differences to other translations.

Let’s look at the specific words that were identified by the Facebook poster as having been removed:

“Jehovah” accounts for 7 of the 64,575 words that have been removed from the Bible (which I am assuming to mean the KJV). It is necessary for us to understand where the name Jehovah comes from. One of the Hebrew names for God was the tetragrammaton YHWH which was Romanized to JHVH. The term “Jehovah” was likely created by cramming the vowels of another name of God, Elohim (or ELOAH), between the Latinized name for God. The God of the Bible was never referred to by anything remotely resembling Jehovah. It is no more appropriate to call Him by Jehovah than it is to refer to me by the name Annette Funicello. The NIV uses the capitalized “LORD” to designate the name YHWH and the term “Lord” for adonai. I think that these designations add clarity to the names for God and this is a good thing.

“Calvary” is the Roman name for Golgotha which is the Aramaic word for “skull.” Are we really arguing that we should use the Latin name rather than the Aramaic name for the place Jesus was crucified? How does dropping the Latin name in favour of the Aramaic name show that the newer translations of the Bible are being twisted by a malevolent homosexual agenda?

Holy Ghost was changed to Holy Spirit — is this scandalous? I imagine the change was made because the term “ghost” has different connotations that might create a lot more confusion to modern readers than the term “spirit.” Are we seriously arguing that this change is some subversive plot of Satanists?

The one time the term “omnipotent” is used in the Bible was changed to “Almighty” by the NIV. How do the forces aligned against the church benefit from this change?

NIV has removed verses from your Bible

Matthew 17:21 — Jesus has just cast out a demon that the disciples were having some trouble with and he says that “this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” The newer translations of the Bible do not include this verse because the older and better manuscripts of Matthew do not include it. In Mark 9:29 which recounts the same story, Jesus said, “This kind cannot come out by anything but prayer.” It is likely that a later copyist of the book of Matthew added these words from Mark and also added the word “fasting.” The newer translations are likely closer to what Matthew actually wrote.

Matthew18:11 — The same issue as above.

Matthew23:14 — The same issue as above.

Luke 17:36 — The same issue as above.

Luke23:17 — The same issue as above, and again, the meaning of the text is not changed in the slightest.

John 5:4 — The same issue.

Acts 8:37 — The same issue.

Mark 7:16 — The same issue.

Mark 9:44 — The same issue here too, but an interesting difference. Older manuscripts have the words, “the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched,” only in verse 48, but the newer versions repeat this line in verse 44 and 46 as well. The NIV goes with the older version which only records these words one time in verse 48. Scholars believe this is more accurate.

I find myself wondering, how the suggested agenda of Harper Collins is advanced by including this phrase one time rather than three.

There is some legitimate discussion about whether or not the translation philosophy of the NIV is the right one, but the accusations leveled against the newer translations of the Bible in the Facebook post that I read this morning are completely inappropriate.

The devil is attacking the church in many different ways, but we do nothing but serve his cause if we manufacture attacks where none exist. The good people at Zondervan and the experts responsible for the development of the NIV have dedicated their lives to provide Christians with an incredibly powerful tool for understanding God’s word. That all these lifetimes of effort can be brought into question by one post, which took about 10 minutes to write and then shared on Facebook 60, 631 times, is very concerning to me. How much does the devil delight in groundless attacks on Christians by other Christians?

There is no conspiracy to alter the Bible. Harper Collins is only interested in profits–in order for that to happen all their small publishing companies need to make products people will buy. Thus, they are interested in what the NIV people are interested in–the most accurate translation of the Bible that they can produce.

If you want to post anything on Facebook, complain that no room at all for conviction in a world governed only by profits.

The God of Judgement

February 7, 2015 / Trent / 4 Comments

Free-Photos / Pixabay

We live in a culture of tolerance.

Consequently, we don’t like the idea of a judgemental God. We don’t like a God that draws a clear line between right and wrong and then judges the wrong. Many reject a judgemental God. They just want a God of love.

But deep down, we all want a God of justice. And love.

The God of Justice

When we look at the cosmos we see that God is as creative as he is powerful. And he must like human beings a lot because he gives us all sorts of good things: love, food, sex, sunsets, beaches, oranges and wine.

God is perfect justice.

This is usually only a stumbling block to those who experience no true injustice.

[click_to_tweet tweet=”The people who are repelled by the idea of a just God are often people who have never experienced any significant injustice. ” quote=”The people who are repelled by the idea of a just God are often people who have never experienced any significant injustice. “]

Who loves Divine Judgement?

Consider all the crap that some people have to live with at the hands of others; then the God of justice moves from an embarrassment to a necessity to get up in the morning.

It is definitely wrong to machine gun children, or to rape teenaged girls and string them up in a tree to taunt their grieving, and helpless father or to force women and children into sexual, or any other kind of, slavery. You know that people do these things, right? If one’s life is filled with this kind of injustice, justice isn’t so easy to dismiss and the God who is justice isn’t so easy to reject.

God is Love

He’s also perfect love. Yeah, I know, perfect justice AND perfect love? How do you put those things together?

Well, if there truly is a God, I think it’s reasonable to expect that there’d be some things that would be, intellectually, a little hard to grasp.

He knew it was hard to grasp so he showed us what it looks like–his son on the cross–he judged Jesus as if he were us (justice), and then he treats us as if we were Jesus (love). Perfect justice and perfect love are right there at the cross. It’s pretty clear that he will do anything and everything to bring you into a relationship with him. Everything, that is, except force you to be in a relationship with him. That’s perfect love.

So if you are rejecting God, walk away from the one who heals the sick and blesses the poor, away from the one who eats with prostitutes and then lifts up those that are abused and seats them at the best seats at his table. The one who will bring justice to those who use people like objects and to those self-righteous folk who already have everything that they are going to get, away from the one can only woo you to him with the sacrifice of his love, and who loves you so much he won’t force you.

5 Ways to Help Profs Who Don’t Give As

January 24, 2015 / Trent / 4 Comments

Pexels / Pixabay

I was saddened to hear that there are still professors that inform their student at the beginning of the semester that they don’t give As.

It’s sad because it seems as if little has changed since I sat in my undergraduate classes and heard exactly the same thing. How long will this go on?

That these men and women, who have studied so long and so hard–who have given their lives to the education of young people, would be brought so low as to toss in the towel on the very first day of class. The degree of their despair must be great for them to resignedly suffer the humiliation by admitting to their students that they will not be able to teach even the brightest of them.

I for one will no longer stand by and do nothing. I will modestly propose 5 practices which might bring some hope and dignity to these beleaguered scholars. Each is a component of effective pedagogy and engaged assessment and the cumulative effect will be more learning, which means higher marks–hopefully not a few As.

If your students aren’t getting As try the following:

[click_to_tweet tweet=”5 practices to give hope and dignity to university professors who do not give As. ” quote=”5 practices to give hope and dignity to university professors who do not give As.”]

Clear expectations: these usually fall under the categories of knowledge, skills, intellectual habits (and, if you are in a liberal arts university which still understands its historic raison d’etre, character). These must not only be clear to your students, but they must also be clear to you, for everything you do hangs upon these learning objectives. You can’t point to those six objectives you put on your course syllabus; these are certainly expectations, but you have more, lots more, and students need to know what these are as well. Perhaps your students’ poor performance is simply because your expectations have not been clearly communicated.
Appropriate expectations: Perhaps you are confusing appropriate standards with low standards. An A is not a designation of perfection. Perfection can never be achieved, not even by a professor (the editors of your books will back me up on this). An A represents excellence at a specific level. When it comes to writing, I teach English 9 students pretty much the same thing as English 12 students–I teach both how to write using strong controlling sentences, correct MLA documentation, manipulation of language, sentence variety, transitions, the conventions of Standard English, and a lot more. The high standards by which I assess each is different because an appropriate standard for grade 12 is not the same as that of a 9th-grade student. Perhaps you are a better teacher than you think you are. Perhaps your students are earning much higher scores than you realize because your expectations are inappropriate for the level of the students with whom you are working.
Modeling excellent work: You may understand exactly what you want for an essay, or a lab report or a chapter review, but they don’t. This can be quickly remedied by showing them examples of excellent work. Show it to them and ask them to articulate what makes it exemplary. Perhaps the reason your students aren’t getting As is not due to your incompetence, but because they don’t really know what A work looks like.
Helping students to understand their specific academic failings (and strengths). Very little learning can occur when students are locked into self-fulfilling generalizations like, “I suck at essays.” Real growth occurs when they understand that the reason they are getting Cs on papers is that they underutilize transition words within paragraphs, but they excel at the academic voice. How do they come to be aware of this valuable information? We go back to numbers 1-3 above, and possibly add some peer review to the mix. By doing this, students know exactly where to direct their efforts for improvement and improve they will.
Assess your effectiveness: You can’t just ask the class, “Are you with me?” and assume that because the keen one in the front has nodded assent that you have taught anything. There are a plethora of methods to check for understanding, but for heaven’s sake don’t count them for marks. At this point, these are more an assessment of your teaching than their learning. By using some methods to daily assess how well you’ve been understood will save you the tremendous disappointment of discovering after the final exam that you’ve been completely ineffective as a teacher.

These are just some of the practices that I have found that translate into more learning and higher marks. Importantly, these are only the first step, for they will only help you’re A students get As. That’s the easy part.

You will you need even more skill to help the C students to get Cs, but let’s save that for another day.

For all you university students. If one of your professors is discouraged and has told your class that there will be no As, feel free to forward them my 5 practices.

No problem with Revelation Song

October 26, 2014 / Trent / 2 Comments

Tama66 / Pixabay

I love “Revelation Song” by Jennie Lee Riddle, but there’s this one line that I wonder about.

All the lines but one contributes to the feeling of being overwhelmed by the incredible vision the Apostle John describes in the heavenly throne room where innumerable voices of the heavenly choir sing,

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” Rev. 5:15

and

‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty,’ who was, and is, and is to come. Rev. 4:8

It also includes similar images and language from the Old Testament including Psalm 98:1

Sing to the Lord a new song

and

Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. Psalm 96:13

The reference to the “mercy seat,” which is the cover on the Ark of the Covenant–the seat of God, relocates the mercy seat to heaven and links the reverence of the Old Testament Father to the eschatological Son. Other lines have a similar feel when they echo Ephesians 1: 20-21 where Paul reminds us that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God “in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” The splendor of the scene is reinforced with multi-sensory images of “living colors,” flashing lighting and “rolls of thunder.” The song is so good it takes me there, and I even get to join the choir with all creation. I love that!

The last time I was in Revelation, I didn’t just read it, I experienced it. At least a part of my experience was enhanced by just having read Discipleship on the Edge by Darrell W. Johnson, which is a commentary on the book of Revelation. The combination of this book, The Book and the Holy Spirit was incredible. I felt that I was in the heavenly throne room.

The “Revelation Song” brings me back to that place until I get to the line “You are my everything and I will adore You.”

That line evokes a feeling that was not a part of my original experience in the throne room when I read it.

The splendor of the scene before me evokes so much awe that subjective self is almost lost in the object of worship. Then comes the adoration line, and I shift the focus to my own feelings of adoration, which, is inconsistent with what the song so excellently expresses in every other line.

Let me say again, I love this song.

I think the line is fine–why not have a personal and individual reaction to the sight before us?

“Just a Story”?

May 18, 2014 / Trent / 0 Comments

Trixieliko / Pixabay

It’s quite common for Bible detractors to derogate this or that part of scripture by saying it is “just a story.” But in the last month, I heard two different church leaders use the negative of the same phrase in their defense of the Bible’s reliability. Defending a historic Adam, they insisted that Genesis 1-3 can’t be “just a story.”

By using this phrase, both the detractors and supporters of biblical veracity are making the same error. An error rooted in the way our modern minds understand story.

We can’t do much about the detractors, but I want to steer Christians from adopting the ideas that lie behind the phrase “just a story.”

Narrative Truth

The original audience of every narrative in the Bible would be very puzzled by this use of the word “just” in relation to the stories they heard. It is only since the Enlightenment, after which we severely limited what fell into the category we called Truth, that our use of the term “just” in conjunction with stories is possible.

Up till about the 17th century, truth came at us in many forms. We could encounter it in dreams, through traditions and previous generations. Truth was in our experiences, and it was in the stories we told.

In the Scientific Revolution, some people realized that in some contexts–scientific ones, for instance–it was beneficial to use only objective, observable, measurable truth. All sorts of wonderful things came out of this approach—a better understanding of the universe and the human body, advances in navigation, manufacturing, and agriculture, and bifocals.

The success of this narrowing of truth to fact when doing science was so exhilarating that we began to apply it to practically everything. Subjective, narrative and experiential truth came to be thought of as unreliable because they weren’t true in the same way a quantifiable or observable fact was true.

Truth Equals Fact

Our Modern approach equates truth with fact, and we believe that the best way to transmit factual information is in simple and exact language. It follows then that plain, literal human language is the best way to describe history and human experience as well. From this perspective, the pejorative “just” makes sense. Facts are true, and stories are not true. If the Bible is true, then it can’t contain “just” stories.

Unfactual Stories and Truth

Pretty much every culture in the world, past and present, that hasn’t yet bought into our Modern way of thinking, believes that stories can be true even if unfactual.

This includes the writers of biblical narratives, who sometimes put factual information aside in order to communicate far more important truths about relationships and human experience.

The Ancient Hebrew faith is about a relationship with, and experience of, a transcendent God. They communicate relational truths in narratives–the genre best suited to communicate such things. What’s the best way to get at the truth about your mother? Telling stories or offering a list of factual information about her.

In order to get at complex truths, we often will use the tools of literary language. The language of story is not nearly as clear, simple or exact as literal language, but it’s far better at saying things that cannot be said. It’s full of metaphor and symbol so as to help us articulate the truth about love and betrayal, beauty and death, despair and redemption. In order to communicate the truth about these subjects, we need more than literal language and fact–we need symbols and stories. This is as true now as it was a thousand years ago.

The Truth of Genesis

In the first chapters of Genesis, the original audience would have heard stories that directly challenged the dominant narratives of the ancient world. The Egyptian and Babylonian stories make it clear that mankind is nothing more than a slave whose sole purpose is to serve the gods, and their representatives, the priest-kings and pharaohs respectively.

The Adam story told its original audience that human beings are created in the image of the One God. And in a shocking turn, Adam even names the animals; in the other ancient stories, naming was something that only gods could do.

In the stories of Egypt and Babylon, women were even lower than men, but the first chapter of the Bible we find the radical idea that both Man and Woman bear the image of the creator. Think about the significance of this–here is a document that is thousands of years old which proclaims that humans are precious, and that male and female are equally valuable. Given the context of the creation stories in the ancient world, these are radical truths; truths that are the basis of our concern for human rights and equity in our culture today.

There’s are many more truths we learn from these first chapters of Genesis. We learn that all of creation was declared “very good,” and that God wants a relationship with the people He created. We learn that human beings are moral beings with a strong tendency to choose Evil and that we are responsible for our choices. We are presented the truth that we need divine action in order to live our life as it was intended to be lived. How we, deep down, want to live it. We are taught that the Creator God loves us enough to accomplish this life on our behalf. It’s not crystal clear from Genesis how this will be achieved, but we do learn that it will be by the actions of another human being who will defeat both evil and death.

These are some of the truths of the story of Adam and Eve. Communicating these all-important truths was, I believe, the purpose of the author(s). These truths are true, whether or not the people or events actually happened in the way it’s presented in the story. Truth is truth, however it is communicated.

What is true for the first audiences of these stories, is true for the modern one. We will need to have conversations about the degree to which individual biblical stories are historical, but whether they are or not the truth they contain will have nothing to do with the degree to which they conform to modern assumptions about what constitutes truth. The authors of these stories didn’t write them so that his listeners would know things; his intention was that they experience truth at the level of their identity and live them out in their lives—this is the power of story.

Whatever it is we do find in the biblical narratives, we never find “just” a story.