how not to read

One more thing which I have to share with you today is this. In yesterday's Scotsman there was a small notice with a Bible verse and a comment by a minister. The verse was, "He shall gain life who is justified by faith," which is apparently Romans 1:17, and the comment was: "We need to know something of the linguistic, social and religious background of our text if we are to understand it correctly." (That's the comment quoted in its entirety.)

I had to laugh it was so tragic ... as if to say, Here's a bible verse for your edification, but unless you've got three areas of speciality you've really no chance of understanding it, sorry.

This sums up pretty much exactly the attitude which a reader shouldn't take when reading the bible. Or most other books for that matter, but you understand why I focus on the bible. You don't have to be a sociologist, a theologian, or even a linguist, before you can read a chapter and understand what it means. "He shall gain life who is justified by faith" (aka "the just shall live by faith") isn't really that hard to fathom. All the equipment you need in order to approach the Bible is a heart and a mind and a conscience; or, in short, to be a human being.

When you know "something of the background of a text" it obviously helps to add to your understanding, but the bible is for normal people, not experts. It is perspicuous, clear, with its meaning on the surface as well as deep down - and ministers who suggest otherwise, and imply that understanding it is best left to experts and learned scholars in a variety of disciplines, are doing a disservice both to the book itself and also to people who might be tempted by these suggestions not to bother reading it under the illusion that it'll just be too hard for them. Average folks on the street, as well as academics, although they won't ever understand it fully, are certainly able to understand it correctly, just by reading it.

a narrow escape

The government's plans to create a criminal offence of stirring up "religous hatred" have been defeated! The Christian Institute was asking people to pray. Atheists sided with Christians and called it an attempt to curtail freedom of speech. In a democracy, said Liberty, there's no right not to be offended. Thankfully, in a way that's becoming worryingly rare recently, our members of parliament have come down on the side of democracy and civil liberties - they listened to the Lords, and they listened to the protesters outside Westminster, and they saw sense. More on this once I've calmed down a bit.
:-D

bored? try a Christian youth conference

I'm afraid I get more and more exasperated with the local rag every time I read it. For one thing, it's adopting a very tabloidy feel, in a vain attempt to make local news sound dramatic - using oversensational headlines and quoting people in terms like: "'It came as a great surprise,' revealed Colin." As if that was some big secret we'd just been told. And "'About twenty people turned up,' explained Mary," as if something puzzling had just been made clear.

But that's just style issues. This evening's rant is really about one of their columns. It's a column for teenagers, which previews and reviews all the cool things that are available for young people to do in the area. Sports groups, dances, and, this week, a Christian youth conference.

The columnist, presumably a cool young thing himself, selfconsciously admitted that he went along to this conference, and sheepishly says that actually, we had a great time ... no really guys. He quotes one of the leaders saying, Your relationship with God gives you a lifestyle for happiness and contentment. One of the attendees says, Fantastic! Jesus is the answer!

Obviously, it's good to run seminars where people learn about Christianity. Obviously, it's good if people enjoy them. Obviously, it's also good if young people aren't bored in their local communities.

But religion was never meant to be a cure for boredom. The church was never meant to compete with badminton clubs and valentines dances as a way of having fun. And 'your relationship with God,' if you have one, intrinsically must involve crosses as well as happiness, and a contentment that rises above your life circumstances rather than being produced by it.

My personal view is that when church leaders buy into the myth that Christianity can be cool, they've already sold out, and lost the one thing that makes religion worthwhile - ie, the fact that being religious should only be with a view to getting converted, and converted from a life that wants to keep up with the coolness of a world that lies in wickedness, the best parts of which are only 'vanity'. Or, to put it another way, the way they've been saying for centuries, The church that marries the spirit of the age is sure to be a widow in the next!

a spirit of praise

I was listening to someone talking about revival the other day, and the need for revival both on the individual level, and in the church, and in society. He was saying that before there would be revival, there needed to be a spirit of prayer in the church. But he also said that McCheyne said that as well as a spirit of prayer, there needed to be a spirit of praise.

I've been thinking a bit more about that since then. For example, there was an outburst in the comments section of an American blog that I sometimes visit (I won't name and shame it, cos on the whole I think it does a good job) - it was on the occasion of the BBC series, Who killed Christianity. Without engaging much with the programme, they were quite convinced that the embedded proposition in the series title was true - the drift of their comments was only to lament that Christianity in Britain was indeed dead.

Thankfully, several voices from the UK chimed in to say, Hello, reports of death exaggerated! But I still came away a bit depressed. I don't think I'm particularly over-optimistic about the health of religion here, but we're not exactly dead either; and it just isn't very encouraging when people only focus on the deadness, the smallness, the ineffectiveness, the voicelessness of the church, in this part of the world or anywhere else. There clearly has been a reduction in the depth of people's religious convictions compared to several generations ago; it also seems that there's been a reduction in the depth of people's religious experiences too; and our society is much more materialistic and hedonistic than it used to be. However, this is the situation that we're in: there's no use sitting around wringing our hands and wishing things were like they used to be. We surely have to acknowledge that it's a day of small things, but we can't, shouldn't, despise it even so.

This just shows that the reasons for praise can't come from what we see round about us. But God is always worthy of praise, even in a day of small things. We should know better than to judge him by the problems and difficulties and sinfulness of our present situation - our opinions of him need to be formed by what he says about himself, not the faulty conclusions we would be led to draw from observing the day of small things. His arm is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor is his ear heavy, that he cannot hear. He is as kind and powerful as he always has been (and that means, infinitely, eternally, and unchangeably). As it happens, however bad the situation is, there are always more mercies surrounding us than we can count. But when things are very bad, there is always reason to praise him for his own sake - like it says in the psalms, especially in the last few in the book - Psalm 150, O praise him, as he doth excel in glorious majesty ... Let each thing breathing praise the Lord ...

Psalm 148

Praise ye the Lord.
Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights.
Praise him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.
Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.
Praise him, ye heavens of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Lord:
for he commanded, and they were created.
He hath also stablished them for ever and ever:
he hath made a decree which shall not pass.

Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps.
Fire and hail, snow and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:
Mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars;
Beasts and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl;
Kings of the earth, and all people;
Princes, and all judges of the earth;
Both young men and maidens, old men and children.
Let them praise the name of the Lord:
for his name alone is excellent;
his glory is above the earth and heaven.
He also exalteth the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints,
even of the children of Israel, a people near unto him.
Praise ye the Lord.

trade ethics

I've already been talking to some people about the role that English Christians played in abolishing the slave trade. If I could find a copy of the article that set me off on this, I'd give you more details, but as it is I'm relying on memory (it was an article in the Banner of Truth sometime in the middle of last year). It named six people, including William Cowper the poet, who campaigned tirelessly against slavery; one of them at least took the drastic step of deciding not to take sugar in their tea any more in protest (sugar being contaminated with the blood of fellow human beings).

Then the other day I was dipping into old church magazines, and right alongside articles on things like the inspiration of scripture, quotes from the Puritans, and sermons preached at Highland communions, there were repeated comments and observations on the opium trade with China which was going on at the time (1906-ish). The magazines were inveighing against this as a degrading and immoral practice, and they were every bit as vehement against it as against, say, the evils of Higher Criticism. On a nearly monthly basis there was some comment or other, either applauding the efforts of the Chinese to stop it, or exhorting the British government to get more diligent about taking their part (eg in clamping down on the trading companies, who were taking advantage of some loophole I couldn't quite follow). They also kept a close eye on legislation to do with 'sweating': they slated it as oppression and they were scathing about employers who didn't save their workers from atrocious conditions like that. Also, of course, they loudly championed the right of postal workers (among others) not to have to work on the Sabbath.

The point of mentioning all this is because it adds to my suspicion that it's only relatively recently that people have started divorcing doctrine from social practice - making out that people or churches who care about doctrinal issues are uninterested in the welfare of others round about them, or expecting those who are active in social causes to only have a vague and fluffy kind of theology behind them. It's maybe most evident when you implement the fourth commandment that closely adhering to the truths in the Bible actually obligates you to take an interest in the bigger social issues. If you really believe in the connection between the sabbath and redemption, just say, then it has to be a concern that other people are free to make use of the sabbath too. 'In it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant.' Even at that level, regulating and safeguarding the amount of time that people have to spend working, is an outworking of a doctrine.

The other thing I wondered was what today's predominant ethical issue is. Your first instinct is to name abortion and euthanasia, but in a way, these are maybe issues in the lives of individuals, who have the ability to make a choice. On the grand scale, in the realm of things that are outwith their victims' control, I would suggest that it's unfair international trade practices that call loudest for attention - tarriffs and subsidies affecting Third World farmers say. When there are means and tools within our reach which might help to reduce or challenge the negative impact of trade injustices (just say for the sake of argument, buying goods that are fairly traded) then I'm feeling an increasing obligation to use these. 'Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God.' Leviticus 25.

too much information

The two most menacing bogeys in the world at the moment are Terrorists and Pornographers. Just mentioning the existence of either of these is a shortcut argument which the government is using repeatedly to sneak in all sorts of measures and policies which could never otherwise be taken seriously. Oh, I forgot Yobs, but that's a story for a different day.

For example, it's the existence of Terrorists which means that we have to start carrying ID cards and having fifty-odd categories of personal details stored on a national register, with leaky rules about who could access the information and the ways they'd be allowed to use it. Never mind that the House of Lords thinks that the government is being unconstitutional in the way they're introducing them, the London School of Economics says they should be scrapped, the Tories call them unBritish, and the Lib Dems are opposed on principle. (That last bit may sound like an oxymoron, but bear with me.) It is back-to-front that the government should expect us the people to answer to them: they are in fact the ones who we should be monitoring and holding accountable and keeping tabs on, not the other way round. That is one of the fundamental principles of a free society; it's yet to be explained how undermining it can help to defend our freedoms from Terrorists.

Next up - Google is getting slated in the US for refusing to provide information about what people search for on the internet. But their stance does make sense - even if it's harmless to provide this particular batch of data that's being asked for, there's no guarantee that the next request won't be more sinister - if people were able to be traced from the information they can't help leaving behind them on the internet, for example. It's not that we shouldn't find things out to catch criminals (and it's not just any old criminals you see, we're talking Pornographers here) - the issue is about how much data can be collected about a person, like you or me, with or without their knowledge, in a way that makes it impossible for them to go about their daily lives without being spied on (with or without their knowledge). To qualify further - I'm not even talking about being able to do things without being observed; the issue is that when you are observed, it's important that won't be a way for someone to use what they know about your movements in a potentially harmful way.

The way that information is used: that's the problem with a blanket ban forbidding people to work in schools if their name has been on the sex offenders list, to pluck an example from the air. Having this list enabled decisions to be made about job applicants and the risk they posed to the rest of society, on a case by case basis. So that if you were on the register for indecent exposure because a policeman was passing when you used a doorway as a urinal one weekend night (just say), it would have been possible to assess whether that offence disqualified you from working somewhere like a school. But Paedophiles (that's equivalent to Pornographers in most people's minds) have to be stopped from working in schools, don't you see - so anyone that's remotely connected with a sex crime has to be excluded - just in case.

Finally, if I'd written this rant yesterday as I'd intended, it wouldn't have included this mention of the government's database of DNA collected from juveniles. That's young people who haven't necessarily committed a crime, or been charged with anything, or even been cautioned, but because they were arrested (say, because of being mistaken for someone else), the government can take DNA samples and keep them. Claims from the Home Office that "proper safeguards" are in place are somehow less than reassuring. But presumably these youths would have turned out to be Yobs anyway, so it probably shouldn't worry us overmuch.

representations

I've been reading a book by the psychologist JJ Gibson called Reasons for Realism. Gibson worked mainly in the field of visual perception, but I've been interested in him for a while because he rejected both behaviourism and cognitivism as psychological theories (most people seem to reject behaviourism but opt for cognitivism instead). When I was looking in more detail at the developmental aspects of linguistics (aka language acquistion) a couple of years back, it became increasingly important to challenge some of the field's currently fundamental theories about human cognition and the nature of language. For one thing, I became confirmed in my scepticism about the notion of "the language faculty", and started to realise that mental representations of language might not, in fact, be symbolic after all. Which involved a fair bit of mental upheaval, and which may yet mean that I have to dilute the word "theoretical" beside "linguist" in my blogger profile a good deal further than its currently feeble "semi".

There is inevitably a lot more to JJ Gibson than what I've read/understood so far, but one thing that did strike me was his realisation that you can't really study visual perception adequately by analysing static representations of the visual field. In other words, if you want to know how people perceive the things they see around them, you have to get a more realistic approximation of what they see than you get from pictures or photos. The reason why that matters for me is because I am developing a suspicion that in linguistics too we can be overly dependent on static, second-hand representations of aspects of language, and fail to notice the intricacies and complexities of language in its natural environment - ie in the sharing of messages between people. The linguistic analogue of photographs in visual perception would be writing, I think. The symbols posited to exist in people's mental representations of language can be uncannily similar to the symbols you see on the page, for example; or maybe it's not that uncanny really. Decades ago Fred Householder commented on linguists' aversion to written text, excluding it from the things that linguists study ... unless it's a transcription, that is. In other words, we seem to be quite prone to study real-life spoken language only within the restrictions of a written representation of it, still proclaiming that we're only interested in spoken language, and still postulating letter-like symbols in speakers' minds - messy as that scenario is.

I'm not sure yet what the way out of the mess would be: it's not like we can undo all the ways that written language shapes and modulates our approach to (or use of, or investigation into) spoken language; in any case undoing it would be more unhelpful than beneficial in a variety of other ways. My only attempts at the moment are to favour approaches that analyse speech data without making recourse to transcriptions, where possible, and to look for aspects of spoken language which have no written-language counterparts as areas of study. And maybe in a couple of years down the line we'll know if this gamble has paid off, or whether I really will have to take up my plan B career and become a taxi driver instead.

there is but one only

The other day I had a conversation with a man who's been doing street evangelism for 18 years. Which would be great, except that he was a hare krishna monk. It is a worrying thing, that the only people who will happily stand on the street in the cold at dinnertime talking about who God is, are people who follow false religions. It was the same when we had the Mormons who kept coming back and back to the flat, not for a cup of tea or anything since they don't do caffeine, but to talk about salvation, and puzzle over the eternity of the Sonship of Christ, and ask questions about how repentance is a gift, not something you can do for yourself. If they're not a member of a cult, it just seems that people in this country would rather not hear about the existence of God, or the religious way of living your life. (Unless there's coffee involved - see this post from a blog I'm keeping an eye on from time to time.)

Both of the mormons and the hare krishna man were (a) nice people, (b) happily sacrificing themselves, money wise and time wise, to their respective religious causes, and (c) they believed in (some kind of) God.

That makes it all the more distressing, when there was this willingness to serve and worship, and this sincere acknowledgement of the existence a powerful good divine being, that they were channelling all their devotion towards a false god, directing their worship to a being who at best exists only in their respective imaginations. The hare krishna man believed God is a spirit, and that he is the Father of us all, and that Jesus was one of his eternal sons just like the rest of us. Which was his way of trying to establish a point of agreement with me, after I mentioned the three persons in the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and these three are one God. The point was that he did not worship the same God as this, and that is a problem. If he is worshipping a God other than the triune God, and if it is the triune God who is the one living and true God, then the problem is that he is devoting himself to a false god, a being which is not worthy of worship if it exists at all, and one who can't save him. That's as compared to the one who is the one true God, the triune God: "Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with blessings ... He that is our God is the God of salvation." Psalm 68:19-20.

This God: who is he? One answer is this, that God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. And in the Godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one God. And this is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world, to save sinners. Even idolaters can be washed, can be sanctified, can be justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. He is able to cleanse sinners from all filthiness and from all idols, as he says: I will yet for this be inquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them. (1 Timothy 1:15, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11, and Ezekiel 36: 25, 37.) There are lots of things I wish I'd told this man now, I must have missed out an unbelievable amount of the gospel, but it's too late for that now. We met in providence and we talked in providence, and none of it was in my hands really anyway. Psalm 45 v 3-5.

receiving the gospel offer

Here's a quote from John Flavel's book, The Method of Grace, which I was dipping into over the holiday (it's available here) . Here he's explaining how the Saviour is received in the same way as he is offered in the gospel (it's not the complete section - I've abbreviated it here).

1. The gospel offers Christ to us sincerely and really, and so the true believer receives and accepts him. ...

2. Christ is offered to us in the gospel entirely and undividedly, as clothed with all his offices, priestly, prophetical, and regal, as Christ Jesus the Lord, Acts 16:31; and so the true believer receives him. ...

3. Christ is offered to us in the gospel exclusively, as the only Saviour of sinners, with whose blood and intercession nothing is to be mixed; but the soul of a sinner is singly to rely and depend on him, and no other. Acts 4:12; 1 Corinthians 3:11. And so faith receives him ... Psalm 71:16.

4. The gospel offers Christ freely to sinners as the gift of God, John 4:10; Isaiah 55:1; Revelation 22:17; and so faith receives him. ...

5. The gospel offers Christ orderly to sinners, first his person, then his privileges. ... Romans 8:32. In the same order must our faith receive him. ...

6. Christ is advisedly offered in the gospel to sinners, as the result of God's eternal counsel, a project of grace upon which his heart and thoughts have been much set. Zechariah 6:13 ... And so the believer receives him, most deliberately weighing the matter in his most deep and serious thoughts; for this is a time of much solicitude and thoughtfulness. ...

There's a short biography of him here, which quotes one member of his congregation as saying that a person must have had "a very soft head, or a very hard heart, or both," if they could sit unaffected under his ministry. The book is worth a read anyway.

given the choice

I've just finished reading Families Without Fatherhood by Norman Dennis and George Erdos (third edition 2000). Their interest is the family, and they review a large and comprehensive body of evidence which suggests that if children are born to married parents who are committed to each other and to bringing up their children, on average, these children do better in life than children who aren't part of that situation. That's "doing better" as in: lower mortality rates, less likelihood of child abuse or neglect, better health, higher educational achievement, you name it.

Based on this evidence, in the afterword, Peter Saunders makes the comment that any child, given the choice, would opt to be born to married parents, rather than be part of any other kind of living arrangement (single parents, step families, cohabitation, two mums or two dads, etc).

The book also queries why there is such clear public opinion that it doesn't matter what kind of living arrangements you're in - ie, why it is that people in general believe that there are no adverse consequences of choosing to raise children within or outwith the context of marriage (either for the adults or for the children), even when the evidence points so overwhelmingly in the opposite direction. The book's conclusion is that this is not a case of people turning a blind eye to unwelcome information, as if they were just ignoring what they don't want to hear. Rather, this information is not actually being made available - the general public is not aware that the evidence exists, and are therefore not in a position to live out their lifestyles on the basis of an informed choice.

Families Without Fatherhood is actually the first thing I've come across which argues in favour of traditional marriage on the basis of evidence. Maybe it's my lack of reading widely, but I'm more inclined to agree that the evidence is simply not available to the average wo/man on the street - if you'd asked my opinion I'd have told you traditional marriage was best, but I'd have made that choice on ideological grounds, because I'd have believed that the data on the benefits of marriage were still ambivalent (ie we still don't know what effect the dismantling of the institution of marriage is having - the too soon to say argument). But since this blog has such a vast readership, I'll share this evidence with you here - do my bit to publicise the existence of clear and consistent findings that, on average, children raised in the context of the traditional lifelong committed two-parent family are better off than those raised in other contexts.

the respect initiative

I'm not sure whether in principle legislating can ever really produce a respect-based society or not. If families and the church aren't taking their responsibilities seriously enough, ie if they are failing to bring up their members to behave in a civilised and moral way, then perhaps I can see a case for a concerned government to start taking action and living up to their responsibilities even if no one else is.

But: I have a major qualification to add here. This particular government has not particularly excelled itself in being either civilised or moral so far. Instead, it treats the electorate with contempt, lies to us on a variety of issues in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle ways, introduces its own legislation unasked to further devalue the norms and traditions of a once-respectful society, and is intent on chipping away at our civil liberties (mostly in the name of safeguarding us against a threat which they themselves stirred up against us by their deceitful ill-judged illegal conduct a couple of years ago: don't get me started). All this adds up to make me say that Mr Blair's "respect" "agenda" deserves to be every bit as much of a laughingstock as Mr Major's "back to basics" campaign was before it, because of the same hypocrisy that produced it (the same in kind, much grosser in degree).

There's also the small issue of what particular kind of legislation we're talking about. As it happens, I've had a minor rant in the pipeline for a while about the stupidity and liberty-infringing nature of things like Asbos, and never got round to writing it down. (It would have basically centred on the wrongness of criminalising people for doing things that are not actually criminal, and of using mere hearsay evidence, eg.) But the proposals of the "respect" policy go much further. On-the-spot fines, for example, it seems to me, are a really serious matter: they do turn the principle of innocent until proven guilty on its head - and in addition they hand over to the police the authority not just to decide whether a person is guilty or not, but also to punish them if judged guilty. Leaving it up to the person to appeal against the fine afterwards, is back to front: it's a presumption that the person deserves to be fined and a giving of permission to appeal, whereas what it should be is the presumption that the person is innocent, and that it's their guilt that needs to be proved.

This isn't really ultimately an issue about spitting at old folks and playing music too loud - it's really an issue about the extent of the powers that the government (or indeed the police) are awarding themselves, and the magnitude of their right to control individual citizens. It isn't right that we should become so vengeful against our disruptive fellow members of society that we don't have any way of responding except to fine/evict/disperse them first and ask questions later - in exactly the same way that it isn't right to make ourselves so safe from terrorists that we end up with no freedoms left either.

(re)discoveries

The first real day back in the office, and I'm trying to work out how I spent all that time away so easily ... all those bits of work which I took away with me have come back with me still undone. One thing which we unearthed was an old tape of Brahms's Hungarian Dances, which I used to listen to years ago without even knowing that's what they were called. Bright and cheerful and completely forgotten, till we turned it up two weeks ago. We also went out for a spin in the car and discovered this beautiful scene of telephone wires:

I also read, at long last, The Lord of the Rings. Some time I want to thrash out some questions about artificial providences in fictional writings, but in the meantime, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the book. The values are unambiguous, and the story is full of imagination and interest - the good guys are actually good, and you aren't being manipulated to sympathise with the dark forces of evil, and after the grand heroism of destroying the Ring, the finale comes with sorting out the lives of ordinary hobbits, getting back to normal after all that excitement. Now I have to re-read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - even though I already know that I'm not suddenly going to find any Christian imagery or worthwhile analogies in there, however much I might have enjoyed the story as a story. But in the mean time, I have some work to catch up on.