Stephen W. Hiemstra's Blog, page 85

Under God

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer. (Voltaire 1768)

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Out of respect for Voltaire, perhaps, since 1956 U.S. currency bears the inscription, In God We Trust, in spite of much complaining from atheists.⁠1 Voltaire’s (1768) comment that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” bears witness to the communal need for a common set of values, purpose, and loyalty without which community becomes much less likely.

Centering on the image of God unites us even in the absence of faith.

The Devolution Problem

The devolution of society today is a painful reminder of how de-centering leads to degeneration.

The effect is much like the problem of transacting business without a common currency. Coinage allows transactions to take place between two parties whose lack of common needs might otherwise make a barter transaction difficult. Consider barter between a country doctor and a chicken farmer. How many chickens is delivering a baby worth? Suppose the doctor charges one hundred chickens, how do the chickens get transported? What happens to the chickens between chicken dinners? What if the doctor delivers another chicken farmer baby that week? Business is so much easier if the doctor gets paid in a common currency.

Removing a common currency not only raises the cost of doing business, it demotivates civility and lowers productivity. Early in my career, I was a country analyst for USDA and shared an office with an expat, Russian analyst—let me call him, Yuri. Accustomed to living in a planned society with an active black-market tradition, when Yuri wanted to sell a car, he spent the entire day calling up his expat friends trying to find a buyer. Where we might trade a used car with a dealer or place an ad online, Yuri spent his day searching for a friend of a friend interested in a car.

Language Generation

Language is the most important commodity of culture. Historically, the translation of the Bible into local dialects has been an important catalyst in development of national  languages.

For a thousand years, Latin played a key role in the development and cultural unity of Western civilization. Luthers’ Bible helped unify high German accord the many germanic principalities. The King James Bible was the one and only book owned by most English-speaking people for about five hundred years. Languages not written down tend to devolve more quickly in a kind of Tower-of-Babel effect (Gen 11).

Linguist Guy Deutscher (2005, 1) begins a study of the evolution of language with an audacious claim that: “The advent of language is what made us human.” Even the Einstein of chimps, Kanzi, who can recognize up to 500 words and simple sentences, cannot string together these symbols and form real sentences. The human brain appears pre-wired for language, even if the potential was slow to be realized (Deutscher 2005, 17-19). 

Pre-wiring is an interesting synonym for creation. It is curious that the God who spoke the universe into being would create us with inborn proclivity to speak. What does it mean again to be created in the image of God?

General Revelation

A common thread running through the blessings of a life centered on faith in God is that these blessing represent a general revelation of God. One of the most important blessings we have seen during the COVID pandemic is the development of an effective vaccine in less than a year, something completely unprecedented in medical history with implications for all of humanity. Do you credit God or science for this vaccine? For years, I have described scientific discoveries as God’s Easter eggs—treats that we as parents hide where we know our kids will find them.

Confronted with an undeserved blessing, how do you respond? In Luke 17:12-19, we read the story of how Jesus healed ten lepers, yet only one, a Samaritan, returned to Jesus to give thanks. Oftentimes, the only difference between a general revelation and a special revelation of scripture is our response in thanksgiving, relationship, and faith.

References

Deutscher, Guy. 2005. The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention. New York: Henry Holt and Company.

OEuvres. 1885. Complètes de Voltaire. Edited by Louis Moland. Translated by Jack Iverson. Paris: Garnier, 1877-1885. Tome 10, 402-405.

Voltaire. 1768. “Epître à l’auteur du livre des Trois imposteurs.” Taken from OEuvres 1885. Online: https://www.whitman.edu/VSA/trois.imposteurs.html#english. Accessed: 7 March 2022.

Footnotes

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_....

Under God
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
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Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
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Cross and Guyer: Behavioral Traps

John G. Cross and Melvin J. Guyer. 1980. Social Traps.  Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press.

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

What is morality?  Why engage in conversation about moral behavior?  Why are some people unable to cope with the normal challenges of life while others avoid self-destructive behavior?  In their book, Social Traps, John Cross and Melvin Guyer suggest that many aspects of morality arise from weaknesses in the behavioral decision processes that we all normally employ.

Introduction

Cross and Guyer write:

“The central thesis of this book is that a wide variety of recognized social problems can be regarded from a third view [Not stupidity; not corruption]. Drug use, air pollution, and international conflict are all instances of what we have called ‘social traps’.  Put simply, a social trap is a situation characterized by multiple but conflicting rewards.  Just as an ordinary trap entices its prey with the offer of an attractive bait and then punishes it by capture…’social traps’ draw their victims into certain patterns of behavior with promises of immediate rewards and then confront them with [longer term] consequences that the victim would rather avoid.” (3-4)

In other words, the normal learning process—do more of what feels good; do less of what feels bad—breaks down. Obvious examples of this problem include smoking, drug use, and sexual immorality.  Cross and Guyer want to know what causes these deviations from rationality (7).  Why do rational people engage in silly habits? (v)

Background and Organization

At the time of this writing, John Cross was an economist and Melvin was a social psychologist who worked at the Mental Heal Research Institute at the University of Michigan.  Their book is written in 8 chapters, including:

Introduction;Taxonomy of Traps;Time-Delay Traps;Ignorance Traps;Sliding Reinforcers;Who Got My Reinforcer;Stampedes; andJudicial and Legislative Escapes (vii).

These chapters are preceded by a brief preface and followed with a bibliography.

Smoking Example

The example of smoking is instructive. Cross and Guyer write:

“The pleasures associated with smoking have a physical presence and immediacy that is entirely absent in the case of its other consequences.  Moreover, any avoidance which might be induced through threats of future punishment is further reduced by the fact that the punishment by no means occurs with certainty, making it possible for the smoker to avoid even the anticipation of pain with the rationalization that that sort of thing only happens to other people.” (4)

Here we witness a breakdown in incentives to smoke or avoid smoking because the rewards and punishments of smoking are separated in time. The reward is immediate while the punishment is in the distance future (19). Consequently, if a behavioral decision process is employed—do more of what feels good and do less of what feels bad—people will decide to smoke and to suffer the consequences later.

Managing Traps

Cross and Guyer see warnings of future problems less effective than structuring incentives—rewards and punishments—to fit the behavioral decision process (14).  The heavy excise taxes on cigarettes are an example of this principle in practice because prospective smokers will be less likely to smoke if they have to pain a heavy tax today when purchasing the cigarettes. In an ideal world, the excise tax could be raised to the level of the present value of future social costs incurred through elevated lung cancer deaths (50).

Moral behavior starts with rational thinking and requires avoiding behavioral responses where short-term incentives lead to long-term negative outcomes [2].  Morality is accordingly a sign-post that warns the individual of future consequences of choices in the present that carry uncertain risks. Removing present penalties for immoral choices (for example, removing excise taxes on cigarettes) simply raises the probability that errors in judgment will occur.

Housing Crisis Traps

A socially-significant example of this breakdown in behavioral decision-making occurred in the recent housing crisis. In the 1990s and early millennial period, longstanding lending laws and regulations prohibiting lenders from making sub-prime home mortgages were relaxed. This change in law and regulation allowed lenders to earn high fees for selling mortgages to poor and minority individuals who had a high probability of not being able to repay the loans [3].  The present incentive to do these deals was high for both borrower and lender. Yet, the prospect for future financial problems was also high.

Cross and Guyer’s analysis suggests that  such risky lending choices should be limited because of the breakdown in normal incentives to behave prudently in making decisions about mortgages.  This was the law before the changes and it became the law again after the financial crisis.  Unfortunately, many people lost their life savings and many financial institutions were bankrupted during the crisis.  For observers in the finance industry, the crisis was expected—the only uncertainty was when it would happen.

Other Moral Traps

Traditional morality concerning drug  use and human sexuality work much the same way.  Drug users get hooked on the highs; later, they overdose trying to maintain the highs.  Premarital sex or having multiple partners is fun short-term, but the result longer term can be unwanted pregnancy, social diseases, and bad choices in relationships.  In a permissive society, the costs of poor decision-making are borne by those who lack discipline and fall into such traps.  Unfortunately, others are hurt by their bad choices.   What child wants to be borne with birth defects or without a father?

Traditional mortality is time tested—is 2,000 years enough of a test?—which is why it has not gone away in spite of the many attempts at technical fixes, like unnecessary medical interventions.  Is it any wonder that Jesus warned against false teaching: “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin [that is, encourage people fall into social traps for the sake of their own personal freedom, money or political gain], it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt 18:6 ESV)

Still, traditional morality and Christian morality overlap, but do not contain one another.  Traditional morality, for example, includes revenge—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—but Christian morality does not.  Christian morality recognizes that pain is not limited to the body or even the mind.  Our relationship with Christ is for us the tree of life—anything that cuts us off from Christ is a threat to our salvation.  Social traps are not the only traps.  Therefore, Christian morality is not necessarily subject to redefinition with changes in medical advances or social convention.

Assessment

John Cross and Melvin Guyer’s book, Social Traps, changed my attitude about the question of moral instruction and the role of institutions, like the government and the church, in guiding society through difficult decisions.  It is good read and well worth the time.  The life you save may be your own.

Footnotes

“…lengthy time lags may prevent learning altogether.” (19)

[2] If a plus (+) is a benefit and a negative (-) is a cost, the structure of incentives over time for social trap can be illustrated as:  ++++++++———-.  The benefits convince one to get involved even if the costs are illusive or occur in the distant future.  Debt works this way which is why a prudent borrower will focus borrowing on investments, not consumption.  Borrowing to buy a house or to get an education (investments) within your means is prudent; living day to day off a credit card (consumption) is not prudent.

[3] After the Great Depression and other experiences, federal and state laws and regulations forbid the sale of  sub-prime mortgages to borrowers if their financial capability to repay the loans was weak

Cross and Guyer: Behavioral TrapsAlso see:Webb: Analyzing Culture Books, Films, and MinistryOther ways to engage online:Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.netPublisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/hot_2022, Signup

 

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Youth: Monday Monologues (podcast), June 27, 2022

 By Stephen W. Hiemstra

This morning I will share a prayer and reflect on the Obsession with Youth. After listening, please click here to take a brief listener survey (10 questions).

To listen, click on this link.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Youth: Monday Monologues (podcast), June 27, 2022
Also see:



Monday Monologue On March 26, 2018 



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Prayer for Life’s Stages

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Almighty Father,

All praise and honor, power and dominion, truth and justice are yours for you have provided us with families that care for us to match the heavenly care that you have lavished on us all our lives.

Forgive us when we obsess about youth, neglecting our parents and wandering from the path that we were given in the life of Christ.

We give thanks for all the seasons of life in our own lives and the lives of our families, neighbors, and friends in Christ.

In the power of your Holy Spirit, may we always be aware of the times and seasons of life, following the examples giving in scripture and those laid out for us by the saints around us. Grant us mature desires and holy passions that reinforce your will for our lives.

In Jesus precious name, Amen.

Prayer for Life’s Stages
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
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Obsession with Youth

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

One of the defining characteristics of the Christian faith is honoring each individual, regardless of age, as being created in the image of God. The Apostle Paul’s writing is particularly clear on this point. He writes: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) No ethic group is better than any other; no economic class is better than any other; and no gender is better than any other. Paul goes on to extend his concept to the family:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Eph 6:1-4)

Paul is essentially saying that because we are all created in the image of God, no age group is better than any other. Neither a newborn, nor a senior standing at the gates of heaven is better than one another. Christians are to value life stages equally by honoring each stage, and not clinging to any particular stage as if it were intrinsically preferred.

In this sense, Christianity is a holistic faith that values maturity and embraces each stage of life with equal joy. This makes particular sense in a Christian context because our faith is rooted in history. Creation is the beginning and the second coming of Christ will be its end. Knowing the end is in Christ, we can journey through life in Christ meeting the challenges of each stage in life without fear.

The Allure of Youth

The holistic nature of the Christian lifestyle puts it in direct conflict with today’s youth culture where putting on a bit of weight or allowing people to see gray hair puts you at risk of being shunned and ridiculed. Celebrities in our culture—politicians, war heroes, athletes, movie stars, musicians, fashion models, the rich—all hide their age judiciously and show as much skin as possible to reinforce the illusion that they remain young. The Christian idea that beauty consists of character and appearance being in sync runs counter to this obsession with appearance (Dyrness 2001, 80).

Ironically, this obsession with youth comes at a time when fewer people are getting married and having children (Pew Research Center 2015). Those that do find less support from families, the church, and even schools for raising healthy kids because the focus has shifted to other age groups. 

The church is complicit with this youth obsession when it implicitly acts as though the Christian message is not fit for adults by:

◆ By refusing to practice evangelism and to argue apologetically for the Gospel,
◆ By energetically taking up various popular causes and cultural affinities,
◆ By neglecting the care of souls, and
◆ By putting itself out there as a defacto daycare facility.

Bonhoeffer (1995, 114) observes: “The Church confesses herself guilty of the collapse of parental authority. She offered no resistance to contempt for age and idolization of youth, for she was afraid of losing youth and with it the future.” For an organization with a limited staff and budget to focus on anything other than the Gospel is to be complicit with culture.

Christmas as a Family Event

Think about the holidays. Halloween used to be about little children; now, playing dress up for Halloween has become an obsession for older people. Likewise, the family orientation of Thanksgiving is being eclipsed by retailers anxious to increase Christmas sales.

The secularization of Christmas directly mutes the Christian message on family. The Christmas story in Gospels of Matthew and Luke is a family story, one of the few biblical stories almost exclusively focused on family relations. The image of God in Genesis plays out in the New Testament with two very worried parents trying to cope with a stressful, even murderous, environment.

Later, the Gospel of John records Jesus caring for this mother from the cross:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son! Then he said to the disciple, Behold, your mother! And from that hour the disciple took her to ahis own home. (John. 19:26-27)

This personal statement in a public execution—a family moment—suggests that the Apostle John was an eye witness, but more importantly it gives us a glimpse into the person of Jesus, who cares for his family even in inconvenient circumstances. Obviously, Mary was also an eye witness and family-focused person.

Promotion of Inadequacy

While the postmodern obsession with youth may seem random, the disfunction of remaining an adolescent well into adulthood and encouraging adolescent attitudes about market purchases may be a direct consequence of strategies employed by advertisers. Inadequacy marketing directly assaults the spirit of most religious teaching, irrespective of theology, because most religions aid our maturation and help us to contribute to society.

Marketing expert Jonah Sacks (2012, 89, 93) writes: “All story-based marketing campaigns contain an underlying moral of the story and supply a ritual that is suggested to react to that moral.” This advertising might be harmless, if it were not repeatedly, endlessly chipping away at our basic morality and promoting a materialistic worldview. Blamires (2005, 74) observes:

In the world of advertisement no man ever grows older than thirty-five and no woman grows older than twenty-seven. It is a cosy picture of life, full of color and ease. There is always plenty to eat and drink. The furniture never gets old or drab.

While this is less true of advertising today than in the 1960s when Blamires wrote, even the old in advertisements are fitter than most Americans, more fashion aware, and enjoy the active lives of the rich and famous. If large corporations find it in their financial interest to keep us feeling inadequate, then the increasing focus on youth in our culture is not a random outcome. 

Implications

Much is at stake in encouraging people to follow a normal pattern of maturation rather than getting stuck in a particular stage in life. Centering on the image of God in Jesus Christ is an antidote to the immaturity being promoted today in secular culture.

References

Blamires, Harry. 2005. The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think? (Orig Pub 1963) Vancouver: Regent College Publishing.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1995. The Cost of Discipleship (Orig Pub 1937). New York: Simon and Schuster.

Dyrness, William A. 2001. Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue. Grand Rapids:  Baker Academic.

Pew Research Center. 2015. The American Family Today. December 17. Online: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-family-today. Accessed: 10 December 2018.

Sacks, Jonah. 2012. Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories Will Rule the Future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Obsession with Youth
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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Vanhoozer: Understand the Bible, Part 3

Kevin J. Vanhoozer. 1998. Is There a Meaning in This Text:  The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge.  Grand Rapids:  Zondervan. (Go to: Part 1  or  Part 2)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

What does it mean to be a faithful follower of Jesus in the postmodern context?

Ironically, the problem of finding meaning in a postmodern world points to God.  Framing a faithful response to the postmodern dilemma consumes more than half of Vanhoozer  book.  He  writes:

“Derrida’s announcement of the death of meaning alerts us to the indispensable tie between literary theory and theology. Deconstructionism, wholly inadvertently and with some irony, proves that God is the condition for the possibility of meaning and interpretation.” (198).

Following Plantinga, Vanhoozer believes:

“…we as Christians have both a right and a responsibility to begin our reflections about God, the world, and ourselves from Christian premises.  To this list, I now want to add meaning. My contention, briefly stated, is that because the undoing of interpretation rests on a theological mistake, we need theology to correct it. Second, I will argue that Christian theology, not deconstructionism, is the better response to the ethical challenge of the ‘other’.” (199)

His response therefore begins with the question:  “What happens if we begin with explicitly Christian assumptions about reality, knowledge, and ethics?” (200)  Vanhoozer organizes his proposal in terms of the author, the text, and the reader.

The Author

If God is the ultimate author of scripture, then paraphrasing Proverbs 1:7 Vanhoozer writes:  “the fear of the author is the beginning of literary knowledge” (201).  Citing Ricoeur, Vanhoozer writes:

“To consider the text as an authorless entity is to commit what Ricoeur himself calls the ‘fallacy of the absolute text’…Strictly speaking…texts do not have intensions, nor do they act.  We do not ascribe agency to texts, nor do we praise or blame books; we rather direct our praise or blame to their authors.” (216)

In other words, Vanhoozer writes:  “the author is not only the cause of the text [that it is], but also the agent who determines what the text counts as [what it is].” (228)

Vanhoozer spends an enormous amount of energy reviewing the literature on speech acts.  He writes that: “to respect the moral rights of the author is essentially to receive his or her communication, not revise it.” (202)  Understanding speech acts is one way to receive this communication. The need to respect the author is no less for the ultimate author of scripture. Vanhoozer’s writes:

“My thesis is that the ‘fuller meaning’ of scripture—meaning associated with divine authorship—emerges only at the level of the whole canon…the canon is a complete and completed communication act, structured by a divine authorial intention.” (264-265)

We resurrect divine authorship by consulting the full counsel of scripture.

The Text

The idea that a text can have meaning and understanding that meaning are two different things (281)  Vanhoozer posits that:

“…the text can be a source of evidence and a means of knowledge not only about an author…,but also about what the author feels, knows, observes, and imagines.  Indeed, much of what we have in texts is testimony to something other than themselves or their authors.” (282)

To interpret is to make a claim and be willing to defend it (292).

Vanhoozer reviews a number of views of how to interpret and perspectives on dealing with disagreement. What is more interesting, however, is his view on the nature of the church. He writes:

“..the church represents that community of interpreters who share a primary concern for the Bible’s literal meaning.  It may also be because the church is that community in which the interpretative values—intellectual, ethical, and spiritual—are cultivated…literary knowledge is not simply a matter of having the right descriptions but also having the right dispositions.” (320)

Vanhoozer also explains the doctrine of “sola scriptura” as:

“a reminder that textual meaning is independent of our interpretative schemes and, hence, that our interpretations remain secondary commentaries that never acquire the status of the text itself” (321)

He sees “scripture interpreting scripture” as consistent with “sola scriptura” (331).  According to Vanhoozer, we redeem the text with:  “Correct interpretations describe the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that guided and shaped the text as a communicative act.”  This is what he means by a “thick interpretation”.  By contrast, a thin interpretation is necessarily abbreviated or reductionistic (332).  He rounds out his discussion of redeeming the text with comments about genre.

The Reader

Vanhoozer is interested in an ethical response of the reader.  He writes:

“Some of the radical-response critics have concluded, consistently enough, that the role of the reader is to play, and to create.  There is no need, they urge, to go beyond aesthetics to ethics.” (368)

Vanhoozer reforms the reader in 4 steps:

Distinguishing using, criticizing, and following a text;Reading involves implied moral rules;Honoring the limits imposed on interpretation by the text itself;Rooting the interpretation in the theology and spirituality of the reader (368-369).

He likens the church as an interpreter of scripture to a musician who is an interpreter of a score (441).  He sees the sins of interpretation as pride and sloth (462).

Kevin Vanhoozer’s Is there a Meaning in This Text? is a good read.  If you are able to spend the time to study it thoroughly, it will form you.  And you will never look at the Bible in quite the same way.

Footnotes

The biblical cite is: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Pro 1:7 ESV)

Further Readings by Kevin Vanhoozer

First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics. 2002.  Colorado Springs:  IVP Academic.

“Body-Piercing, the Natural Sense and the Task of Theological Interpretation: A Hermeneutical Homily on John 19:34”, Ex Auditu 16:1-29

“Imprisoned or free? text, status, and theological interpretation in the master/slave discourse of Philemon,” pp. 51-94 in Adam, Fowl, Vanhoozer, and Watson, Reading Scripture with the Church.

“Ezekiel 14. ‘I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet: divine deception, inception, and communicative action,” pp. 73-98 in Michael Allen, ed., Theological Commentary: Evangelical Perspectives (T & T Clark)

“Ascending the Mountain, Singing the Rock: Biblical Interpretation Earthed, Typed, and Transfigured,” Modern Theology 28/4: 781-803

“Theological commentary and ‘the voice from heaven’: exegesis, ontology, and the travail of biblical interpretation,” pp. 269-98 in Eckhard Schnabel, ed., On the Writing of New Testament Commentaries: Festschrift for Grant R. Osborne on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday (Brill)

“‘Exegesis I know, and Theology I know, but who are you?’ Acts 19 and the Theological Interpretation of Scripture,” in Darren Sarisky, R. David Nelson, and Justin Stratis, eds., Theological Theology: Essays in Honor of John B. Webster.

Vanhoozer: Understand the Bible, Part 3Also see:Webb: Analyzing Culture VanHoozer and Strachan Argue Case for Pastor-Theologian Vanhoozer Confronts Dualism Dramatically, Part 1 Books, Films, and MinistryOther ways to engage online:Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.netPublisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/hot_2022, Signup

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Difficult People: Monday Monologues (podcast), June 20, 2022

 By Stephen W. Hiemstra

This morning I will share a prayer and reflect on Difficult People. After listening, please click here to take a brief listener survey (10 questions).

To listen, click on this link.

Hear the words; Walk the steps; Experience the joy!

Difficult People: Monday Monologues (podcast), June 20, 2022
Also see:



Monday Monologue On March 26, 2018 



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Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net,
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Prayer for the Difficult

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

Gracious and most Merciful Father,

All praise and honor, power and dominion, law and justice are yours for you advocate for us in our hour of weakness, when strength fails and we find ourselves all alone.

We confess that we seldom feel sorry for the immigrant, the widow, and the orphans in our midst in our busyness, aloofness, and greed. Do not leave us in our ugly moments.

We give thanks for the witness of the saints, the resurrection of your son, Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let us not despise the Holy Spirit or close our eyes to the  apathy of the world, but give us hearts for your people.

In the power of your Holy Spirit, make us advocates for your tender mercies. Waken our spirits to the evil around us and soften our hearts to bear the burden of others who cannot bear it for themselves.

In Jesus’ precious name, Amen.

Prayer for the Difficult
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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Difficult People

By Stephen W. Hiemstra

The Gospel of Mark alone tells the odd story of an encounter between an exhausted Jesus and a persistent Syrophoenician woman, who won’t be denied.

Now the woman was a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. And he said to her, Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. But she answered him, yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs. And he said to her, For this statement you may ago your way; the demon has left your daughter. And she went home and found the child lying in bed and the demon gone. (Mark 7:26-30)

People today love to hate this story because it looks like Jesus is disrespecting a woman, but this story teaches an important lesson about intercessory prayer, justice, and care for other people.

What kind of care (justice, rights) should a difficult (unsympathetic, undeserving, inconvenient) patient receive? We are all in need of an advocate at some point in this life. Jesus heals the woman’s daughter, not because of her faith, but because she will not be denied. Her faith is displayed in her persistence. She is not Jewish; she is a gentile. The face of evil many times is displayed through a lack of care for the other.

Apathy and Care

One of the first things that you notice working in an institutional setting is that not all residents (or patients) receive equal care and treatment. For example, everyone knows that Alzheimer’s patients cannot remember things so those who do not have family visits get less attention and staff may push family members who do not get involved in patient care for early Hospice care or do not resuscitate (DNR) orders.

One reason that I felt called to Hispanic ministry was the poor treatment I observed in the hospital for those picked up by emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Drunks who could not speak English were simply strapped to a gurney and left to dry out, often screaming for hours. One Hispanic man I met was classified as mute and confined to the psychiatric ward—he was not mute if you addressed him in Spanish. Since 2011, many hospitals have employed bilingual staff so these conditions have hopefully improved.

Street people are likely to have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic in that they rely on hospital emergency departments that have been (2020-2022) overflowing with COVID patients. Street people are often ”frequent flyers” who would normally have only received minimal care because staff know them by name and refuse to refer them for more intense care. Intensive care might include more diagnostic procedures, longer stays, or referral to psychiatrics in view of the many traumas that street people endure. Street people not admitted to emergency departments may have no alternative and may delay care until their conditions become life threatening.

A similar problem may arise for elderly people living with relatives who used to dump them off late Friday night to an emergency department for nondescript reasons, knowing that they would not be discharged until Monday morning. While you may not agree with offering this sort of service, the time off given worn out caregivers and the hot meals given the elderly played an important role in some people’s lives that has simply gone away.

Apathy and Violence

Johnson, a sociologist, spent two weeks living inside several jails in Rio de Janeiro and interviewed numerous prisoners and former prisoners. He observed:

When the pastors embraced rapists, prayed with murderers, sang worship songs with drug dealers, and treated all the inmates as people endowed with inherent worth, they were participating in an activity that subverted the social order. (Johnson 2017, 165)

What is perhaps most surprising is the level of respect afforded pastors among the poor generally, prisoners, and even the narco-gangs to the point that: “Gangs generally allow members to leave if they join a Pentecostal church as long as their conversion and subsequent [religious] practice are deemed genuine.” (Johnson 2017, 10; 77). In this context becoming a Christian is the only way to leave a gang, other than in a body bag.

Pentecostal support for prisoners in jail under the most inhumane conditions speaks loudly against the attitude that gang members are sub-human, “killable people” (seres matáves). Killable people in Rio de Janeiro are generally poor, unemployed, descendants of slaves who live in the favelas and who “Brazilians do not cry for” (Johnson. 2017, 39-61).

While Johnson only documents police violence in the Brazilian context, these same issues of apathy and violence have also been witnessed in recent examples of police shootings in the United States. Like hospital workers, police have their frequent flyers who without a doubt disappear or turn up dead more than others.

Advocates in an Apathetic World

The story of the Syrophoenician woman highlights the important role of advocacy in an apathetic world. People in need often cannot defend themselves: Shock and depression can easily advance one’s passing.

Consider these situations:

◆ The patient being diagnosed with cancer who likely cannot hear what their doctor advises and may not be able to advocate with lazy schedulers for prompt care, when the cancer is aggressive and timeframes important.


◆ The elderly person without means of support who has no caring relatives.


◆ The unborn child whose mother lives on the edge and cannot care for herself, let alone a child.
◆ The street person, addict, and psychiatric who have lost the ability to keep up with life.
◆ The prisoner who likely cannot resist a prejudiced or bullying corrections officer.
◆ Small countries who may be unable to defend themselves from aggressive neighbors.


◆ The immigrant who having escaped poverty and violence knows no one and cannot support themselves.


 

At this point in our history, many people fall into these situations, not just immigrants, widows, and orphans (Exod 22:21-22). 

Human rights simply means seeing people in need as created in the image of God and, as such, deserving of respect and care.

References

Andrew Johnson. 2017. If I Give My Soul: Faith Behind Bars in Rio de Janeiro. New York: Oxford.

Difficult People
Also see:
The Who Question
Preface to a Life in Tension
Other ways to engage online:



Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.net
Publisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com




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Vanhoozer: Understand the Bible, Part 2

Kevin J. Vanhoozer. 1998. Is There a Meaning in This Text:  The Bible, The Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge.  Grand Rapids:  Zondervan. (Go to: Part 1 or Part 3)

Review by Stephen W. Hiemstra

Each of Vanhoozer’s three aspects of interpretation—author, text, and reader—have been subject to postmodern “undoing”, leaving interpretations to seem arbitrary and subject to manipulation. Vanhoozer writes:

“…the very meaning of ‘interpretation’ has shifted; instead of being a knowledge claim concerning some discovery one has made about the meaning of the text, interpretation has become a way of referring to what the reader makes of the text.  The new-fashioned interpreter recognizes no reality principle (the way it is), only the pleasure principle (the way I want it to be) (38).

Who then is responsible for the consequences of such interpretation for the church and society after the text has been deconstructed and discredited?  Vanhoozer discusses implications of deconstruction for the author, the text, and the reader.

Author

In some sense, the author is to the text as God is to creation.  Vanhoozer writes:  “The author is the one who originates…Authorship implies ownership” (45-46) The author instills both authority and meaning to a text.  When in Genesis we read:

“Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (Gen 2:19 ESV)

When God, the author of creation, delegates the task of naming the animals to Adam, Adam is functioning as an co-author and regent over creation.  This is why, for example, the word, authority, includes the word, author.

Vanhoozer writes:

“The author is the foundational principle in what we might call the traditional metaphysics of meaning.  According to this standard picture, the author is the sovereign subject of the sign, the one who rules over meaning, assigning names to things, using words to express thoughts and represent the world…Derrida’s deconstruction of the author is a more or less direct consequence of Nietzche’s announcement of the death of God (48).

Clearly, if the voice of the author is obscured either deliberately or by the text itself, then the attachment of the text to a particular social reality is severed and its authority impugned. Who said X, Y, Z?  We clearly care who said what .

Closely tied to the author’s ability to express intention or meaning is the idea that an independent reality exists that can capture and carry that meaning.  Vanhoozer writes:

“‘Realism’ is the metaphysical position which asserts that certain things are mind independent. Hermeneutical realism is the position that believes meaning to be prior to and independent of the process of interpretation. For the ‘naïve’ realist, there is a perfect match between language and the world…For the non-realist, on the other hand, human language and thoughts do not correspond to objective realities or to stable meanings.” (48)

Following the work of Jacques Derrida, “deconstruction is a painstaking taking-apart, a peeling away of the various layers—historical, rhetorical, ideological—of distinctions, concepts, texts, and whole philosophies, whose aim is to expose the arbitrary linguistic nature of their original construction.” (52)  Such analysis can yield new insights and interpretations or it can obscure the author and the intent of the author.  Vanhoozer observes:  “If there is no Author, then every interpretation is permitted.” (98)

The Text

In postmodern thinking, texts and books are distinguished.  Vanhoozer writes:

“Whereas the book resembled an unchanging substance, the text is more like a field of shifting forces. Whereas the book can be studied as though it were a discrete object at some distance from the interpreting substance, the text only comes to light as it is observed from some distance from different points of view.” (105)

The idea that the Bible as a book is unified by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit means that it is a discrete unit with meaning beyond the words found in particular chapters.  Thus, a book can have a stable meaning, if we believe in an objective reality and find unity in the authorship of the Holy Spirit. This idea, however, is taken as a theological assumption in postmodern thinking, which questions such assumptions.

Citing Gadamer and Ricoeur, Vanhoozer (106) notes that: “meaning is the result of a two-way encounter between text and reader.”   In this sense, the postmodern sees no stable meaning. Rather, Vanhoozer reports:  “the text is a network of signs and other texts, radically open and indeterminate.” (111)  Meaning requires a context (112).  Because deconstructive literary criticism places no priority on particular contexts, anarchy rules (138).  The idea of dismantling texts in playful interpretation gives no comfort when, having deconstructed the biblical text, nothing is offered to replace it—a kind of theft of meaning and security.  Despair is substituted for purpose like a thief steals a purse yet there is no accountability (182-185).

The Reader

Vanhoozer observers:

“…if the author is not the origin of meaning and if there is no such thing as ‘the sense of the text’, then meaning must be the creation ex libris of the reader… Meaning in the age of the reader is located neither behind nor in the text, but rather in front of it … Every literary theory is ultimately a theory about reading. Moreover, to say whose reading counts is ultimately to invoke an ethics, perhaps even a theology, of interpretation.” (148)

Vanhoozer further writes:

“Every reader is situated in a particular culture, time, and tradition.  No reading is objective; all reading is theory-laden.” (151)

It is at this point that cultural presuppositions become important.  If I only read books that were discussed on Oprah’s website, it is more important to know how Oprah picks her books than to know about my own tastes and preferences .

Having convinced us that understanding biblical interpretation in the postmodern age requires a sophisticated knowledge of philosophy, where does that leave the anti-intellectual majority of postmodern people? Clearly, the potential for manipulation is far-reaching—especially outside the church where there no presumption of an omnipresent, benevolent God. Is it any wonder that our young people are enormously skeptical of all forms of authority and leaving the church?

Assessment

Kevin Vanhoozer’s book, Is There a Meaning in This Text, gives us a clearer picture of what all the shouting is about in biblical interpretation.  This second part of my review outlines Vanhoozer’s problem statement of our current dilemma. In part 3 of this review, I will examine Vanhoozer’s proposal for how to respond to this dilemma.

Footnotes

 Postmodern fights over the authorship of a biblical text frequently infer that the author’s words were “redacted” which implies that only subset of the text has authority over today’s reader. The fact that different critics find different ways to redact a particular text, the idea of placing oneself under the authority of scripture is practically impossible or, alternatively, one can claim that one believes in the authority of scripture but never have to actually change one’s behavior to comply with “authorative” texts.

 http://bit.ly/1O4lWC6

Vanhoozer: Understand the Bible, Part 2Also see:Webb: Analyzing Culture VanHoozer and Strachan Argue Case for Pastor-Theologian Vanhoozer Confronts Dualism Dramatically, Part 1 Books, Films, and MinistryOther ways to engage online:Author site: http://www.StephenWHiemstra.netPublisher site: http://www.T2Pneuma.com Newsletter at: https://bit.ly/MayDay_22, Signup

 

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