@ RollieB:
As to your original comment, I think anyone who has actually lived under a totalitarian system would have, umm…. interesting things to say.

But I’m violating policy by saying that, so I’ll bow out.

@ numo:
We are not talking about the same thing in the same way. Saying that a public sector job is overhead is not saying that it is not valuable to the enterprise or even essential to the enterprise. So, the CEO of a company is overhead to the company but his job is essential. Overhead is not bad, but beyond a certain point, the enterprise cannot support more overhead. Does that make more sense?

Haitch mentioned the WPA and the CCC. I would argue that there is a difference between people producing products and getting a government paycheck *for a limited time* and an employee who is not producing a product *even though they are essential* to our society. This isn’t a discussion about what is valuable or what is better. It is a way of classifying sectors of the economy and what the entails.

WRT the Hoover Dam, it could not be done without the federal government for a number of reasons. It should be viewed as a capital investment rather than an expenditure, if that makes any sense.

Beyond that, we are getting into the weeds with economics. It is *not* about what is valuable or what is essential but rather a matter of how economies work, and economies are nothing more than the aggregation of individual decisions. Division of labor is a wonderful thing for everyone, IMO.

numo wrote:

I am not against all development, but ISTM that greed drives 99% of real estate and industrial development

@ RollieB:
Thanks for that link. I’ll take a look.

@Gram3
Indeed!

@ Gram3:
I also think that one of the trade-offs that you’re not factoring in is the paving over of everything. Just *everything.* There is no “green space” unless it’s a planned community.

Remember that Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi”?

They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot

Gram3 wrote:

It could be certified as a wildlife habitat,

Wildlife? Don’t get me started on what resides under the ivy-and up in the trees-and hanging out on top of the garbage can at night-and what has once climbed up in the engine of my truck and gnawed on some wiring-or what digs in the ground around freshly planted stuff-or what could possible be the critter that lives deep in some hole in the raspberry patch and keeps tunneling it out again every time I fill up the hole. But I can tell you what slithers in the liriope because I have seen him from time to time. I don’t mind any of that, though, and I try to keep an ample supply of available water available for them during the summer. Young daughter got scared speechless coming in late one night because there were reflective eyes looking at her from the compost pile. It was just a ‘possum, but we almost had to take young daughter to the ER.

Other than the vague feeling of being part of the earth there is an advantage to this, because when TEOTWAWKI comes I hope to cook and eat some of this. That and a little boiled kudzu and we might be okay.

Do you know why ‘possums cross so many roads at night and do not survive it? They don’t either or they would stop it.

@ numo:
Baltimore is a very typical city in terms of growth and development. The D.C. area is so not like that. It’s not as if it grew naturally, in that people settled there and then set up shop. it also had many large plantations (eespecially on the VA side) as well as small farms. It was, until very recently, largely agrarian. I moved there in 1983 and the surviving farmland in Arlingtown County had only recently been turned into wall to,wall shopping malls. One of yhe attractions of the D.C. area post-WWII was that you actually could live in a semi-rural setting and be only a few miles from the District line. Much of the early development was immediately after WWII, but that left huge swathes of countryside untouched until the mid-80s. Old farming families tended to hang onto their land until the owners were basically bought into retirement by developers.

One of the reasons i mentioned Tysons Corner is that it was the 1st mega-mall in the area, and, until right around the time construction began, it was a crossroads in the midfle of nowhere with a flashing yellow light. When i was still down there, people who had kept horses nearby wrre being forced to flee for the hills, not least because all the farms that had boarding stables were disappearing very, vety quickly due to these big land buyouts.

Haitch wrote:

PS I saw recent images of the Solar Thermal ‘farm’ in the Mohave Desert, incredible (though to be fair to Muff Potter, I did wonder what the ancestors of the earlier inhabitants thought of it).

The former inhabitants (Native Americans) are too busy making mega-bucks off their strings of gambling casinos here in Southern Calif. to much care about what goes on in the Mojave. But yeah, I think it’s fantastic that sane people thought enough of sustainable energy to make it a reality.

numo wrote:

It was just too depressing, and most of what i had loved about it was gone.

I know what you mean about my home town. It is *nothing* like what it was when I was a young adult even. Much less than what it was when I was a kid. America is nothing like it was in 1980, much less what it was in 1950. Or 1940 or 1900. We have had a huge population increase, and all of those people need a place to live and work and shop. I don’t know what the alternatives are, though Amazon will probably take care of a lot of the retail.

@ Gram3:
Yes, but most of the country is very, very rural. I try to explain to people that the closest large cities with any real amenities are 4-5 hours’ drive from where i live, and it does not compute – for city people, anyway. Their worlds are focused on urban centers, and they can’t conceive of a world that doesn’t work that way.

I would rather be closer to a city, but then, i don’t think i could ever tolerate living in one again. Just too stressful. I think it played merry hell with my overall well-being when i was living smack in the middle of it. (there were D.C. neighborhoods that would have bern a far better fit for me, but i couldn’t afford to live in any of them, even though they were not upscale.)

@ Gram3:
I used to work in book retail anf hate big box stores with a passion.

@ Gram3:
I was referring to a place in the country that was *never* an actual town – still isn’t, in that there is not an incorporated town called Great Falls in VA. it was a rural pwrt of Fairfax County, mainly small farms, adjacent to Great Fall National Park, which is a lovely place.

Now, Great Falls is just nasty suburban sprawl dumped into what was an entirely rural landscape during the late 1980s. I doubt there’s much of anything in the way of zoning regulations, except for the sound of slack being cut for developers by certain parts of the county government.

RollieB wrote:

@lydia
At the risk of getting too political, I want to push back a little on your statement “more and more people are dependant on gov creating a job for them through some gov sponsored program.” When one looks at public (gov) versus private job growth under the current administration, the clear trend is that the private sector is far out performing the public sector in job growth. How is this “close to Fascism here” in the U.S.?

Rollie, One problem is the public/private is so blurred one can hardly tell anymore. I worked on many economic development project in my workforce dev days and I was astounded at both state and fed money were funneled to very large mulitnational coruporations. The organizations that needed it least got the most and the ones who needed it the most were taxed and regulated to death. Not only that but government pays many businesses to deal with student loans, foreclosures, health care and so on. All of those jobs are a result of government activity. This gets a bit complicated and Byzantine but the real problem is we don’t seem to care.

Are you familiar with “too big to fail”? That is the sort of thing I mean by Fascisitic leanings. And worse, those who ran these banks, huge conglomeratesn into the ground walk away very rich. That is now our normal.

Here is some trivia for you: What was the worst economic year of the depression? The answer is 1936. Do some research. All the government jobs, programs, et. did nothing but prolong the agony. And I am very compassionate about the arguments defending that government grab. I just don’t think it had to get that bad to begin with. We are simply going further down that same road even further.

Personally, I am not interested in which president did what anymore. I am a libertarian so I don’t want my pastor micromanaging my spiritual life nor my government micromanaging my personal life, either. I do not think a bureaucrat is the best decision maker for such personal areas of my life. But that has become the normal. Gov protects big business and and the rest of us pay for it.

(BTW: A very interesting subject is how unemployment numbers are twisted)

@ numo:
I’m aware of the tourism and the universities. There is usually not just one economic base to a locality.

Here is my main point. What you describe at Tyson’s Corner is what is happening all over America. What is the solution? Should the local or state or federal government buy up all the farmland to preserve it? Should the current owners of farmland be required to hold it in perpetuity and pay taxes on it when it is no longer economically feasible to farm it? Should the local government decree that everyone must live in high-density housing? That’s what I’m getting at. For every benefit–open farmland in this case–there is a corresponding cost that needs to be accounted for. We as a society may deem that cost a worthy expenditure, but we need to acknowledge it. Choices always involve costs, even though we may not recognize it.

If a population increases, then they need someplace to live. Being a human being requires land. It always has. The question is how shall we use the land and how shall we decide the question of land use. This is the interface between politics and economics. I presume that the local governments have land use plans. So, either they followed that plan or they changed it for some reason.

What do you think the solution would be?

Lydia wrote:

Not only that but government pays many businesses to deal with student loans, foreclosures, health care and so on. All of those jobs are a result of government activity. This gets a bit complicated and Byzantine but the real problem is we don’t seem to care.

That would be government backed student loans, and government backed housing loans (like for vets) and health care commitments of the gov (like the debate over whether to contract VA health care) and so on? Stuff the gov is already responsible for? And are you saying that the gov is wrong to contract that out to private business instead of setting up their own agencies to handle it? And it it somehow wrong not based on some findings of corruption or ineptitude on the part of the contractors but wrong because the gov does it? I must be missing something in the explanation here, but if that is what you are saying then you are correct–I not only don’t care I think it may be a really good idea.

numo wrote:

@ Gram3:
I don’t have any answers, although i do believe decent ethics and better planning are part of the solution.

I agree totally. And I would add that there should be total transparency regarding interests that politically powerful people have in any of these decisions. That sometimes requires a lot of digging to verify.

@ numo:
Better planning still means that there are real choices that come with real costs. That’s the primary point I wanted to make. There is no free lunch for everyone. Somebody has to pay the bill at some point in one way or the other. And somebody has to make a decision about what is on the lunch menu and who pays for it and how much everyone pays or doesn’t pay for it and when they pay for it. Too many times these questions and their answers are obscured or ignored by interests of one sort or another.

@ Gram3:
I think this is a given.

numo wrote:

I was not advocating cows over people, though.

That is true. You were not. And that is one reason I addressed Gram, because I have heard people who do advocate cows over people, and I am betting that she has also.

I read what you said, and certainly urban expansion and suburban development can look really bad. Or not. No way am I advocating just any old thing that is an insult to people’s sensibilities. People can do better than just creating some mess and folks rightly object to some things that are done in the name of development.

@ Nancy:
Here’s the thing, though: cows need space to exist, as domdairy farmers (i live in a big dairy farming area). Less cows = more expensive milk (and less of it), not to mention less beef. We have to have space for growing crops and for livestock, else there will not be enough food to go around, or st leadt, certainly not at affordable prices.

numo wrote:

Remember that Joni Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi”?

They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot

I remember vividly Mitchell’s songs. My two favorite albums of hers are Ladies of the Canyon and Blue.
I remember long ago the orange and lemon blossoms from the groves in my town used to cast a spell on spring evenings that rivaled the Elysian Fields.
The groves are all gone now, cut down and bull-dozed to make way for the gentrification of what’s left of rural Southern California.
It’s obscene.

@ numo:
Scrape by.

@ numo:

This is getting more complicated by the minute. Surely no farmer should be forced to continue in farming of any kind, cows or not. What is this business I read about agribusiness making small farming unprofitable? If that is so, and certainly we have seen a lot of people ‘sell the farm,” why not be comfortable with that if it is more efficient and more profitable? I am not for forcing the small farmer off the land, but neither am I for telling him it is some responsibility to stay in the farming business since the nation has other options than the little guy on the old family place.

@ numo:
I understand your concerns. But what are the decision criteria for a local councilman? Increasing population is a given unless we are going to close the borders and forbid people from having babies.

Land value is a residual value that is determined by what people are willing to pay in a given location for a particular type of residence or income property. That’s from the POV of a land seller or purchaser. What I think of equestrian estates or private airstrip estates is irrelevant to rational land use decisions made (usually) by local governments.

Agricultural land is taxed at a lower rate, and I think that is rational. More people means more services of all kinds, and more services means more taxes which means that local governments need to raise that revenue somehow. Raise taxes on existing housing? Increase the tax productivity of agricultural land? Both?

I’m not equipped to discuss agronomics and have no idea whether decreasing pastureland increases milk prices which are regulated/subsidized in any case, or at least they used to be.

numo wrote:

I don’t have any answers, although i do believe decent ethics and better planning are part of the solution

Numo, have you seen the DVD “The Human Scale” about the Danish architect and professor Jan Gehl? (he has studied human behavior in cities over 40 years). If you haven’t, I think it might be up your alley…

@ Nancy:
Wha you say re. agribusiness is not the case in the mid_atlantic states. Most farms are small. we have mountains and valleys here, not open prairie with rolling hills. My art of PA, which has lots and lots of small farms (mostly dairy) looks like a whole pile of rucked-up blankets in satellite shots. The “rucks” are the ridges and mountains. But still, there is farming. Most of PA is still agrarian, even near Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Also, a lot of our land is part of state forests and game preserves and parks. The only open, rolling land is in SE PA (Lancaster and south and east) and up by Lake Erie.

New England is also full of small farms, partly due to topography, and (imo) mainly because people want it that way.

Now, I have never lived out on the prairie, where the enormous farms are. But I do know that something is wrong when most of our produce here – even during the summer – is trucked in from the Central Valley in Ca and Mexico.

I mean, ??? The supermarkets do NOT buy locally, even in the area around Philadelphia, which is nuts – SE PA, the part of MD that adjoins it, Delaware ditto, are *the* truck garden area of the mid-Atlantic states. Yet in supermarkets that I went to the last time I was down there, guess where the fresh produce came from? (Hint: it was not local.)

I am dumbfounded as to how and why things got to be like this.

@ Haitch:
No, but I’ll look for it!

Long ago I paid a brief visit to Zurich and was super-impressed by all the veggie gardens in peoples’ back lots and in allotments. I know London is full of allotments, too, and I have a friend who has made hers into a really lovely garden for produce, flowers and just hanging out. There were tiny allotments near where I lived in Arlington County, VA, and I do mean tiny. Postage-stamp sized plots in the middle of a median strip on a local feeder road (4-lane, but not a *big* road with lots of traffic).

I think city planning needs to include green belts. If that isn’t done, you get edge cities like Tyson’s Corner, which are a g*d mess. And downright terrifying for pedestrians trying to cross the 8-lane, constantly gridlocked highway which functions as the main street. It is just horrible. (I mean, it isn’t urban blight, but in its own way, it’s just as bad.) The thing is, rich people and rich companies own most all of the property, and they work outside and around the law, in that the business associations and homeowners’ associations are the actual government, even though they are (sort of) subject to the county government. It really is nuts.

@ Haitch:
I am not a big sustainable living advocate, though I think much of what those folks say is common sense. And one thing I liked about D.C. is that buildings are on a human scale (like central London used to be), with buildings that cannot be higher than 10 stories. (Because you cannot deliberately go higher than the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome.) That means that the skies are open and people at least have that, as well as far less shadow than is common when there are skyscrapers. I did like that very much!

But, being from a small country town, it just makes more sense to me that planning be done carefully so as not to destroy a lot of the natural resources in any given area, be they small farms, forests and rivers/creeks/lakes, or what have you. I cannot imagine what the Great Falls of the Potomac would be like if the land on both sides of the river (which is in 2 different states) had not been reserved in perpetuity as park lands.

L.A. is my nightmare. (Even though I like SoCal in general, and could probably live out there, in a beach city or town.)

numo wrote:

I am dumbfounded as to how and why things got to be like this.

Because people like strawberries in September and peaches in January and nice lettuce in August. Supermarkets have to have reliable supply chains and must buy in huge quantities to keep prices as low as feasible. People want things year-round nowadays and they want a wide variety. It wasn’t always that way. That said, I’ve heard more about local farmer’s markets with locally grown produce, and I think that is a good thing. But local farms cannot supply the supermarket chains or the vast demand of large cities. There is a reason that Whole Foods has higher prices than Kroger or Safeway. It’s a good thing that people can choose, isn’t it?

@ Gram3:
But here in the mid-Atlantic states, huge amounts of produce are grown for the restaurant trade and farmers’ markets up and down the NY-D.C. corridor. If supermarket chains refuse to buy local when they can (because the farms are *right there*) it’s their loss. Literally. Because locals would rather go to farmers’ markets and little produce stands during the season.

Muff Potter wrote:

The groves are all gone now, cut down and bull-dozed to make way for the gentrification of what’s left of rural Southern California.
It’s obscene.

Yeah. I agree completely.

*

As for Mitchell, I especially love “Blue.” That might be my favorite of all of her work, even though I like a lot of the songs that came after (though not necessarily the albums as a whole). I love the alternate guitar tunings she used on Blue; they still sound so fresh!

@ Gram3:
but places like Central Park are essential for the well-being of humans who live in high rises, so I don’t think you can put a price tag on its actual value (the non-tangible type, not the real estate itself).

The northernmost tip of Manhattan actually has a park that is *virgin forest.* It is intended to stay that way for as long as people are living in NYC.

numo wrote:

I am concerned, though, about the way you speak of constantly expanding population, as if it is good for that to happen. What if we overrun the very resources that we need to live?

The irony is that I have a Malthusian living inside of me who is always struggling to come out. I don’t think I made a value statement about population levels, but the population is certainly a multiple of what it was some time ago. I don’t set immigration policy and I don’t decide how many babies are born, so it’s kind of out of my hands. I’m an observer and as much of a realist as I can be without lapsing into irreversible depression.

I have lived in several places and traveled to many more. You mentioned California and Florida. Well, a lot of people want to live there for very rational reasons. Lots of vets went through the west coast on their way to Japan or were stationed there in support of the Pacific war. Lots of them were from farms, and they liked what they saw and came back to live. It isn’t commonly known that Florida was also a strategic location during the war, complete with U-boats offshore and the Naval and Marine aviators hunting them and protecting our own ships. People like nice weather and beaches, and after the war more people had more money for vacations to places with nice weather, and some of them stayed or returned.

@ Gram3:
of course it’s a multiple, but the thing is, most people go to urban or suburban areas.The rest of the country is pretty sparsely inhabited, when you get right down to it.

@ Gram3:
just for fun, some info. on the Pine Barrens, supposed home of the (mythical) Jersey Devil.

@ numo:

So you are saying that the mid-atlantic states have plenty of food, some grown locally and some shipped in from elsewhere. And people can go to the supermarket or the farmer’s market or some can eat out of their own garden I suppose since there are all these gardens and such. How is any of that a bad thing? We do the same thing here. I do that. None of this sounds like humans have exceeded the carrying capacity of the environment relative to food.

Around here we have people who live with or on the verge of hunger, but it does not have anything to do with the nation running out of food, not as long as we turn corn into fuel instead of food, for example. One of our biggest health problems is at the other end of that spectrum–obesity which is partly due to elective overeating.

Might humans exceed the dreaded carrying capacity of the earth? Maybe. When I was in college one class talked about what various species do when they near the carrying capacity of their environments, but at that time they thought that humans did not have the necessary instincts (actually they thought humans had no instincts but that is a different topic) to avoid a disaster. But we do not know, of course, because we have not reached that point yet. And there are theories all over the place.

Do humans starve? Indeed. Right now I am giving a monthly donation to a ministry that helps feed aids orphans in one country in africa, but their food issues are not due to too many people with too little food in this particular country. It is due to too much AIDS and too little done too late to address that issue and now too many aids orphans and too little money to solve the problem even if one were committed to doing so. This is not about carrying capacity and population. It is about politics and money.

But there are things which might happen which could result in lots of problems. If the systems break down for any reason, then the mormons are correct and there could be food issues to deal with. Along with lots of other survival issues. That is a different matter however.

@ Nancy:
I meant that it was a good thing! I guess I was responding more to Gram than to you, or maybe I misunderstood some of what you were saying? Both you and Gram have been talking about development and population growth, but not about necessary resources to feed and sustain the people who are part of that growth.

That’s more my slant on it; am also a big believer in conservation of forests, protection of wildlife and such. There are places that really should not be exploited, and in some cases, there are areas that were exploited and ruined but have consciously been allowed to revert to wildlife habitats (many East Coast wetlands, for example). I’m all for that!

fwiw, when I was very young, one of my brothers took a college course in urban planning and I read some of his texts and was fascinated. What the “human scale” advocates were saying back in the late 60s tied right in to the emphasis on conservation and love of local wild places in my own family. I grew up in a town, but used to wish we lived up on the side of one of the local mountains. I still wish we’d done that!

@ Nancy:
we have a tremendous amount of poverty, both urban and rural.

@ gram 3
continued

This issue of stuff-images and procedures and stuff- has been an issue with me since childhood, and I think maybe I have an idea about it. Now let me say, there are abuses of everything. For example, food is good but how may of us abuse the proper use of food, just little health comment here. But stuff does not need to be abused.

By stuff I mean, for example, stained glass, pictures, icons, candles, bells, incense, vestments, verbal responses, standing, kneeling, going up to the altar rail to receive communion, bowing, kissing the bible (the priest does this) prior to the reading of the gospel, singing the psalm antiphon, sign of the cross. All of this is sensory and largely participatory. Our church web site says we worship with our bodies also. Only the relatively short but substantive homily is purely auditory (sit and listen.)

Some of us do better at learning one way and some another way. The schools know this-that there are different learning strengths-some visual some auditory and some of us have to do it in the lab or the field (or the hospital) before we internalize it. I am one of those who learn visually and by doing. When I get hit with a bunch of words as in a sermon or lecture I quickly lose focus and my mind goes off to do its own thing with something more interesting. There is no use telling people like me to just listen. We do listen–we do this other also and at the same time, while just trying to glean the basic topic from the barrage of words and let the rest go. We can’t help it. I can no more absorb anything from a long lecture or sermon than I can play football. If I read it in a book (visual) I understand it (unless it is fiction and then I lose interest.) It is a pity that the schools know this, that there are several learning styles, but some church traditions don’t seem to know it or else don’t seem to care. How does it make sense to aim formation (discipling) almost exclusively at the auditory learner when we know that this leaves out a lot of folks.

I am thinking that all the ‘stuff’ developed in old church tradition during a time when illiteracy was common and that it served a purpose then and now. It also developed during a time when the arts and the church were not sworn enemies. And it was funded by the wealthy but it also benefited the poor and the illiterate who had little else similar in their lives. No, the motives of the wealthy were not necessarily the best, but surely that does not totally destroy the entire idea.

I am also thinking that God deserves to be worshipped with every good thing human that we can muster, including but not limited to this sort of thing. How does it make sense to say ideas yes, works yes, self discipline yes, obedience yes, and some add their style of OT legalism, but beauty no. Really? Consider the lilies-are they not beautiful? Might that tell us something?

numo wrote:

Deforestation …

A secular writer who has treated this topic extensively is Jared Diamond. See his 2005 book “Collapse”.

numo wrote:

Deforestation is a big issue in this hemisphere and in Africa

There are some initiatives in Costa Rica to help people preserve their land in its natural state by creating tourist attractions that are family businesses. We visited some primary forest around the Rio Celeste area and made a hike down to the falls and the river. A family rents boots and poles and then has an open-air restaurant available for after the “hike” which is quite challenging. That’s a good example, IMO, of a sustainability initiative that is not coercive but rather creates incentives and assists in getting it started. They also use cooking fuel created by composting waste, IIRC, so they don’t have to burn the forests down to cook.

Gram3 wrote:

since he can make something that can make something beautiful

Isn’t that amazing? To create a self-perpetuating creature that can not only appreciate and understand but also create beauty. Like you say, relates to the image of God. I had not thought of it that way.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

… launch to solar escape velocity…

That is, New Horizons will carry on out of the solar system and keep going forever; the Sun’s gravity is still slowing it down very slightly but cannot pull it back. Had it been launched slower, it would have gone into orbit around the Sun like a tiny artificial asteroid.

“Solar escape velocity” in this context is sometimes called, informally, the “third cosmic velocity”. Absolutely none of you will be wondering what the first two cosmic velocities are, so I will tell you.

The “first cosmic velocity” is orbital velocity, or around 17500 mph – the speed you need to launch a rocket at to put it in low earth orbit. Simply put, this is the slowest speed at which you can launch something up, such that it doesn’t come down. However, it will keep re-appearing overhead every 90 minutes or so.

If you want to rid the earth of something (which, you may recall, the inhabitants of Jerusalem wanted to do with Paul), you have to launch it at the second cosmic velocity which is around 24000 mph. At that speed, it will leave the earth forever; earth’s gravity will not be able to keep hold of it. Depending on how you aim it, it will fly into the sun and be vaporised, forming part of the sun’s corona.

There is a fourth cosmic velocity: the speed at which you’d have to launch something from earth such that it would (in millions of years’ time) leave even from the Milky Way galaxy, never to return. From the earth, we would have to launch a space probe at well over a million mph to achieve this, which is beyond the reach of current technology.

@ Bridget:

From earth, it’s around 94000 mph. But that’s measured from a standing start, so to speak; i.e., if you were hovering in a magic balloon, stationary above the sun and level with the earth.

New Horizons, however, had a flying start: the earth is already orbiting the sun at around 68000 mph. So NASA had to accelerate it to at least 26000 mph relative to the earth; in fact they managed 33000. On top of which, New Horizons passed close to Jupiter and its speed was hiked by a further 4000 mph or so, at Jupiter’s expense.

Not sure how Open Discussion works, but I thought I’d mention this for those who are friends or not, of Capitol Hill Baptist. They got their parking lot (some time ago). I am not a sentimental person but I think it’s too bad the houses were demolished.
http://wamu.org/programs/metro_connection/15/02/06/capitol_hill_restoration_society_celebrates_60_years_of_battles_won_and_lost

Haitch wrote:

Godith wrote:
Not sure how Open Discussion works,

My view – ….

Whereas my view is that it kind of works by magic.

@ Mara:

It lost exactly as much momentum as NH gained, but it has an awful lot to spare.

Just a note because I want to say it. In our situation, after months of never anything much seeming to go right, we have seen several things get better within the last few days. One of those things is that we seem to have found a private school (Lutheran by the way) that could make it be a lot better for one of the grandkids who is apparently not going to make it in the public schools. And the school is within our price range-if we just give up food and transportation for a while. The resident educator at our house is fit-prone over the fact that the schools are no way what they were some 20+ years ago when she started teaching. The schools admit this, of course, even bewail this sometimes, so I believe her. Yes, well, neither is the health care industry and neither are the churches. The health care people have sounded the alarm. I am waiting for the churches to grasp some realities. So who needs food or transportation anyhow? At least it is a step in the right direction.

There are several other things that have also turned out either better than expected or else are in the range of so far so good, but these are not things that might stir up conversation here, whereas education might. There are also still some things that do not seem to be going well at all, but like the old song says, count your blessings.

And please, don’t any of you people try to launch yourselves into outer space. The comet is not coming for you. Interest in things astronomical is one thing; identifying with any of it would be unwise.

Mara wrote:

And the Problem with the ESV is that they pick and choose where to place gender-neutral language, best serving a view to put men in authority and to keep women out.
http://frombitterwaterstosweet.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-problem-with-esv.html
But perhaps you don’t like the ESV. What translations do you like best.

I’ve largely stayed with the RSV, partly (don’t laugh) because of the print size (I can’t cope so easily with Serious Eye Strain versions any longer). This is despite its occasional liberal tendency, in the OT in particular, and I have over the years put the odd note in the margin where words have been left out or the translation a bit too free in the NT. I’m also very familiar with it.

I have also used the NASB for a more conservative version, and the GNB for good alternatives to technical jargon if trying to explain something to those without a religious background. Not so keen on the NIV, though very readable. Even the liberal NEB sometimes has some excellent renderings in non-King James type modern English. Variety can be the spice of life!

I really would be careful about seeing agendas in translations. The RSV (which contributes 96%+ to the ESV) predates some of these controversies. Your linked example of 1 Cor 14 As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silence in the churches is still RSV, and the first part of the phrase could belong either to v33 and refer to the prophets, or be connected with v34 as here. It doesn’t make much difference to the meaning, the ESV seems to have kept the older version where there was no compelling reason to change it. You’ve still got to deal with the question of silence and submission and precisely how this is to be understood regardless of which alternative you opt for.

The ESV in places seems to lean towards an egalitarian rendering, for example, in 1 Cor 11 it dodges man being head of woman by changing to husband being head of wife. And it tells us to have nothing to do with godless and silly myths, rather than the more literal old wives’ tales. This latter is a moot point: do you stay literal and risk offending modern cultural sensitivities, or do you translate the meaning using other words?

I did re-read the introduction to the ESV last night, and it is clear what its policy on gender language is, so you get what is written on the tin. They seem to have tried to keep a reasonable balance between modern usage (with the danger of being politically correct and biblically incorrect) and not straying from the Hebrew and Greek usage, which also reflects cultural norms back then.

Comparing the German version is occasionally enlightening, though I’ve hardly looked at it for years.

The subject of versions and translation is fascinating, but does sometimes seem to generate a lot of hot air or intemperate comment, Gail Riplinger style!

The advent of google of course means it is possible to compare about 20 versions at the same time, so there is little chance of a bible with an agenda getting away with it these days.

@ Ken:
I think that women should be forced to remain silent in the church because that’s what the text plainly says. To allow women to say or sing or or read the Bible or prophesy or pray aloud or make announcements is to depart from the clear teaching of the Bible. Letting women say anything in church is the path to liberalism and ultimately to complete apostasy. We can see clearly from Genesis 2 what listening to the voice of a woman leads to. The ruin of mankind. I agree with Paul. Total and absolute silence.

Mark wrote:

I believe you agree with this viewpoint.

Don’t know if you knew it, but Ken and I kid back and forth about this issue, so I thought I’d pretend to be a Consistent Complementarian. Ken is *not* like them, I’m happy to say!

Let’s not stop at Aquinas. Let’s go all the way back to Aristotle. Woman is the gateway to all manner of evil and in every way inferior to the male. Have you heard that “woman” comes from “woe of man?” Shut us up before we cause more damage and bring the end of Western civilization. 😉

I did not know that there is a movement to ordain female priests, so thanks for that link. It was my understanding that the male (celibate) priesthood was based on Jesus being male and celibate and the OT priests being male. It will be interesting to check this out from the RCC perspective.

Gram3 wrote:

It was my understanding that the male (celibate) priesthood was based on Jesus being male and celibate and the OT priests being male. It will be interesting to check this out from the RCC perspective

What they told us in RCIA was that the male priesthood was based on the 12 male apostles. They told us that celibacy was something the church decided to do, was not a dogma and could be changed, was not instituted in the very earliest church, and that there are some married catholic priests–converts from some other branch of christianity, especially under the special situation the pope offered to episcopal churches not too long ago. Disclaimer: it was apparently not the most comprehensive RCIA program because a lot of my questions did not get answered, so take this for what it is worth. But those ideas might start you in the direction of researching it at least.

@ Nancy:
Celibacy was made a requirement in the early medieval period (am thinking 9th c., but need to check), and for the following reason: Rome did not want sons inheriting church property from their fathers (along with their jobs). Seriously. That’s the main reason.

The Eastern Rite Catholic churches have many married priests, as do some of the other rites that are in communion with Rome. Which, imo, is a good argument in favor of the RCC caving altogether and allowing priests to marry.

@ numo:

And also, as far as the assumption that Jesus was unmarried and celibate, that is an assumption. Probably a good assumption, but not specifically stated in scripture. And Paul never claimed for himself lifelong celibacy. Whether he had been previously married is not known. Nor do we have a list in scripture as to which of the twelve were married and which were not, apart from Peter who was or had been married. All this lack of information in the bible makes me think that the issue was pretty much a non-issue at the time.

Gram3 wrote:

I thought I’d pretend to be a Consistent Complementarian. Ken is *not* like them, I’m happy to say!

So you are now being a complimentarian, I am glad to see! 🙂

Ken wrote:

Gram3 wrote:
I thought I’d pretend to be a Consistent Complementarian. Ken is *not* like them, I’m happy to say!
So you are now being a complimentarian, I am glad to see!

Just wanted to make sure you are not put in the same box as the others! Now, I think you were about to comment on that “symbol of” being added by Grudem…

Gram3 wrote:

Now, I think you were about to comment on that “symbol of” being added by Grudem…

Indeed I was (not joking!), and here it is:

That is why a woman ought to have a veil* on her head, because of the angels. *Greek authority, the veil being a symbol of this. RSV.

I had to ‘correct’ this chapter quit a bit to replace veil with covering, but in this verse the underlying Greek original is fairly clear. Nevertheless, veil is more an interpretation than covering, and in any event here is is actually authority.

I’m afraid I don’t see adding symbol of authority on her head as too drastic, but I agree the ESV here should have put a footnote to indicate this is not absolutely literal. Simply to say a women should have an authority on her head is more accurate but less easily understood. I don’t see any agenda at work here, and any bible teacher worth his salt will have looked up this somewhat enigmatic verse in more than one version and checked a decent commentary.

The covering is not a sign of submission as some versions state; it’s the opposite, a sign of authority, in the context to pray or prophesy. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on male and female alike, and there is no distinction in their justification or inheritance, or potential for spiritual gifts.

Nevertheless, this does not obliterate them as distinct, and this should be clearly seen in appearance. I think that is the minimum you can still take from this passage. The men should look like men, and the women look like women, and it is still disgraceful for a man to have long, feminine hair; inappropriate appearance is here applied to both men and women.

Whether the veil or headscarf or hat for women is still necessary as an additional covering you could argue until the cows come home. Personally, I don’t think so, but Christians have liberty of conscience to do so if they wish.

The more tricky aspect is that of ‘order’ in the church. The angels mentioned here should not see women either in appearance or behaviour taking responsibility from men, whether hubby or pastoral leadership, and the ‘silence’ verses in chapter 14 to me confirm this. It is during the judging of prophecy, in that context, they are to be silent and in submission as detailed in chapter 14, based on the Law. When people should or shouldn’t speak (i.e. keep silent) is a running theme in that chapter, and its goal is that all things are done decently and in order. It’s not putting anyone down.

It’s a good idea to read chapters 11 to 14 in one go. You get a broader view, and both the head/submit theme, and mutual interdependence are beautifully balanced. It also stops those who want to run off with the silent women verses and make these negate what Paul has said earlier. I don’t think he got lost in the argument, and is also very consistent on this perennial theme.

In my experience, the ‘system’ in most churches seriously impedes the operation of the Holy Spirit whether through men or women; this is far worse than the somewhat limited restrictions placed on women otherwise. If ‘body ministry’ for all were encouraged, it would take a lot of the heat out of the argument.

Ken wrote:

The covering is not a sign of submission as some versions state; it’s the opposite, a sign of authority, in the context to pray or prophesy.

Actually, in Middle Eastern culture, a woman covered her hair as a sign of modesty, since hair was/is considered sexual. I asked some friends from the Middle East what the significance of a woman’s hair covering is, and they told me that removing the covering from her hair in public would bring shame on her, her husband, her father, and the entire family and/or tribe. But a woman is allowed to remove her headcovering while in private among her family. Her male family might include very close friends who are regarded as “uncles” or “brothers.” Thus, she can remove her headcovering without shame in private if her family’s close friends include males.

The entire chapter is about shame and honor. I agree that it is about gender to the extent that a woman and a man are to conduct themselves in such a way as to honor their Lord and not bring shame on his name. This is a frequent theme of Paul. The believing woman had the right to remove her headcovering in the Christian assembly, but praying and prophesying with her head uncovered could bring shame and be considered very inappropriate to observers from the outside. There would be cause for the church to be brought into disrepute.

Paul is telling her that she has authority over her own head and she should decide what is proper and fitting to do so that the Lord’s name is not profaned. There is nothing about her husband’s authority anywhere in that verse or in that chapter. Paul is explicit in his summation that woman and man are interdependent and neither can claim privilege over the other. Woman came from Man originally, but now all men come from women. In Christ, such things no longer matter.

The only reason to add “symbol of” to “authority on her head” is to make Paul say that her husband has authority over her in Christ when he is actually saying that she has authority to make a decision to honor the Lord regarding her headcovering. Paul is clearly talking about a cultural practice and not some proof of male authority. Therefore, the only reason to add those words is to *confuse* Paul’s instruction rather than to *clarify* it. The fact is that the thought that a woman might have any authority at all over herself was unthinkable until very recently, and that is why this has been such a troublesome passage for translators. If they would just let Paul speak for himself instead of putting words into his mouth, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

It is simply not necessary, and for translators to continue to do that is simply dishonest and agenda-driven, in the case of Grudem and his dudebros. It is only their own lust for authority over others that blinds them to the actual words of the text and motivates them to hide God’s actual words from God’s people.

Nancy wrote:

How is that a bad thing to have some sort of symbol on your head?

It’s not a bad thing at all. What is bad is to make that symbol mean something that it does not mean. In Middle Eastern culture, headcoverings for women are symbols of modesty and virtue. To remove one’s headcovering in public would be like removing clothing. My Muslim friends tell me it would be like going to the mall food court and removing your clothes. It would have been grossly inappropriate and would bring shame on the entire family. They would be disgraced, and that is why we still have honor killings, even in the West! It is also why Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair.

There is no reason to make the headcovering a symbol of male authority except that the idea of a woman having authority did not make sense to male translators who believed that was an impossibility.

@ Gram3:
Muslim men very often wear various kinds of skullcaps as a symbol of being under God’s authority (*not* as a sign of patriarchalism, but of submission to God).

@ numo:
Exactly. Headcovering is a cultural practice, and particular cultural practices are no longer binding in the church except to the extent that not observing them would bring disrepute on Christ and the church.

I remember when a proper lady wore a hat and gloves to church and elsewhere. When we travel, we try to observe at *least* the cultural norms of behavior. Not because there is some rule but rather to not give people cause to complain about Americans and/or Christians. The obnoxious American role is already overstaffed.

Gram3 wrote:

. Check out the interlinear where there is a disjunctive used before Paul asks the rhetorical question of whether the Law came to them only.

Loren Cunningham in the book “Why Not Women” lists 14 times in 1 Cor. where this “expletive of dissociation” is used by Paul. It’s the equivalent today of saying “Nonsense” or “No Way.”

Many translations have eliminated that little expletive, but here’s the list and it can be confirmed most likely in an interlinear.

1 Cor. 1:13; 6:2; 6:9; 6:16: 6:19; 7:16; 9:6; 9:7; 9:8; 9:10; 10:22; 11:22; 14:36

These are evidence that Paul was quoting another’s opinion and uses an emotional rebuttal.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

That is, blood sugar level significantly above the control target of 7 mmol / l, rather than acute ketoacidosis

Even relationships between SI (metric) units measuring the same thing aren’t always obvious. Here in the states the unit used is mg/dl (milligrams of glucose per deciliter). There is a unitless factor of 18 between these: 7 mmol/l = 126 mg/dl. Isn’t science fun!

Nancy wrote:

…a (not or without) emia (having to do with blood). Elevated glucose without blood.

Actually, no.

aem- from αἷμ-. Since a- in the sense of “not or without” is from the Greek (α-), I’m not sure to which ancestor language you were heading with “emia” there. But it does not mean “blood” in Greek.

Still, I suppose you’d better go back to “gotten” if it makes you happy.

@ Gram3:
yes, i do remember that! 😉

numo wrote:

@ Nancy:
“Gotten” is very common, and I certainly have no problem with it.

I have got no problem with gotten, either. I had got(ten) the impression from somewhere that it was the French who are finicky about their language.

@ Nancy:

Er – you knew I was joking, right?

I use elevated blood sugar readings as a quantitative film-tenseness index, is all…

Just for fun:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-treats-women-with-respect-asked-what-his-s,35487/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=Pic%3ANA%3AInFocus

Ken wrote:

It’s an interesting point, but it falls foul of Ken’s 7th Law: it depends on a subtle nuance in the Greek missed by the standard translations.

Actually, the KJV, among others, did translate it clearly as a disjunctive.

http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-36.htm

It makes no sense in light of Paul’s summation of his argument in vs. 39 that he is putting any restriction on women. He is calling for order at the same time as he is refuting extra rules *added* by the oral law. Jesus frequently ran afoul of the same oral laws.

I agree about the necessity to read in context. Since you ground your understanding of this in light of 1 Timothy 2, how do you ground Paul’s argument there? Verse 12 cannot be separated from the other verses to which it is attached by conjunctions. This is not a nuance but rather standard grammar. Do you ground Paul’s argument in some Order of Creation, and, if so, where is that in Genesis?

Are you saying that the reason women are not allowed to teach is that the Woman was the one deceived and the Woman represents all women as our federal head of sorts? What do you do with the reference Paul makes to Eve in 2 Corinthians 11:2 where Eve is used as an example of *all* who are deceived regardless of sex?

What does verse 15 mean, and how is that linked to Paul’s argument? These are all questions that need to be answered before one can simply say 1 Timothy 2:12 is a plain and universal restriction on women and use that understanding to interpret other verses like 1 Corinthians 14.

There has to be some grounding for Paul’s argument, and I think that is why this ultimately comes down to some supposed Order of Creation that isn’t in the text of Genesis.

@ Nancy:
I think I’m misunderstanding. I believe that the expressions “a man after God’s own heart” is commonly understood to mean that God approved of David’s actions. But I believe that the point is that David is the man whom God intended to rule Israel. David was an unexpected choice, it seems, but God had a plan. “Heart” has come to have connotations of approval where it used to mean something more like “intention” or will rather than emotion.

The problem with the 1 Timothy “appeal to creation” argument is that there is nothing in the text to indicated that there is any significance attached to the order of “birth” or creation. That is a cultural belief, not a divine order. That makes the “appeal to creation order” basically a circular argument. The order must be assumed from Genesis to find it that meaning in 1 Timothy and 1 Timothy supposedly informs our understanding of Genesis 2 which then supposedly supplies the Order of Creation via various “hints” and “whispers” as RBMW puts it. That is what the Comp/Patriarchal argument comes down to when you strip out the flowery language and confusing illogical assertions.

I think Paul has been grossly misunderstood, but the misunderstandings made sense in the cultural contexts which have existed since Genesis 3. It is only recently that those cultural assumptions have been tested. If we set those assumptions aside, then Paul makes more sense in the context of the New Covenant and all that entails.

@ Nancy:
I don’t remember saying that about the David issue, though I’m also not denying I did, especially this week! Do you remember the thread so that I could go back and look at what I wrote? I do remember being troubled that people felt that God approved of rape and murder because of how this expression is commonly misunderstood (at least IMO.)

I do agree that Paul had apostolic authority. At least that’s how I understand things. However, to say that Paul is instituting a new law under the New Covenant or a new authority order between the genders that is nowhere indicated in the revealed text goes well beyond apostolic authority. When Paul seems to contradict himself, I think we need to probe a little deeper to see if we are not misunderstanding him. Same thing when he might seem to contradict Jesus or Peter or human authors of the texts.

Ken wrote:

I’m afraid I still think the silent women verses need to be understood in the context in which they are found, the theme of silence for specific people and contexts running through the chapter

It’s simple imo. Paul is responding to a question posed by the new Corinthian converts. The fact that the inquiry mentioned “as the law says” should be a red flag as to the origin as Paul would know with certainty that there is no such law that prohibits women from speaking, teaching, etc. and must remain silent.

That explains Paul’s sarcasm in verse 36. He finds such a statement absurd.

Victorious wrote:

The fact that the inquiry mentioned “as the law says” should be a red flag as to the origin as Paul would know with certainty that there is no such law that prohibits women from speaking, teaching, etc. and must remain silent.

Good point. As Cheryl Schatz pointed out: God is always clear about His Law.

@ Victorious:
Thanks for that helpful summary. To me, the combination of Paul contradicting himself, his explanation in vs. 39, and the fact that this prohibition is nowhere recorded is very, very good evidence. The fact is, no one I know of actually practices total female silence in Protestant churches. Just like we know that braided hair is OK and pearls are OK and men praying while not lifting their hands is OK and men with long hair and women with short hair is OK. Ostentatious and disruptive and selfish behavior is not OK, regardless of cultural particulars.

I agree with you about the law, and ISTM that if these laws against women teaching and having authority and speaking are so “clear” then we ought to have instruction that is not bound to verses that are notoriously difficult to understand, as all agree. God demonstrated with the Big 10 that he is capable of doing that if it is important.

@ Gram3:
Jericho was not destroyed during the period in question. There are absolutely zero remajns of fallen walls at the corresponding level. (You’ve been to an excavation site, so are likely aware that there are *many* layers, as people built on top of older buildings again and again.)

The current scholarly consensus is that Judges was compiled and edited either during or after the exile (probably both). It was not intdnded to read as fact in the way that we commonly assume. Of course, there is a serious problem with the book, re. God’s apparent endorsement of genocide. I cannot accept that as either the nature of God, nor as a reflection of actual historic events, and i do not think it is good to brush aside the many questions it raises. It has some truly appalling passages, and i will freely admit that, to me, they sound like a combination of the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s reign of terror in Cambodia, and the genocide in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

@ numo:
Which actually allows for those texts to open up…

@ numo:
Jericho is not near Megiddo, obviously. I’m not qualified *at all* to comment one way or the other, so there’s that. I believe Sailhamer makes a good case for the notion of an editor compiling at least the Pentateuch. I thought he made a pretty good argument. But I simply don’t know enough. I believe that inerrancy is something like an axiom for me. It’s the place where my chain of authority of scripture begins. Others don’t see it that way, of course!

I do think that we can make mistakes with evidence. One is thinking that absence of evidence means no evidence exists and will never be found. Another is to appeal to unknown evidence which is out there somewhere which will ultimately prove a POV. Another is to misinterpret evidence we do have which leads us to wrong conclusions. Regardless, ISTM, we have some difficulties with the conquest narratives as we have them. How we resolve that is going to look different.

The conquest is awful, no doubt about it, and I don’t have good answers just like I don’t have good answers for the problem of evil. The older I get the more questions I have, ironically. There is no question that we read Hebrew literature with modern Western eyes, and that has its own problems.

@ Gram3:
It isn’t just Hebrew literature, it’s everything from the past. Anyone who looks at any text at all is inevitably going to see it through the lenses of their own time, culture, etc. This is as true of Shakespeare as it is of the Bible.

@ Gram3:

I think the conquest stories are plausible because we see that sort of thing elsewhere including in the middle east right now. And some of the tribal warfare in Africa in the not too distant past was staggering in brutality, or so said the media. However, I also think that the lack of corroborating evidence is important. What bugs the life out of me is why we can’t just say “we don’t know.” Why do we have to have a theory or an opinion? Well, IMO, we only have to have a theory if we are wedded to inerrancy, otherwise we can wait it out and see.

numo wrote:

@ Gram3:
It isn’t just Hebrew literature, it’s everything from the past. Anyone who looks at any text at all is inevitably going to see it through the lenses of their own time, culture, etc. This is as true of Shakespeare as it is of the Bible.

That is true, of course. Translating culture is dicey and only gets more so the further back we go. Lots of assumptions and missing pieces that get filled in and possibly not accurately so. When I referred to Hebrew texts being misunderstood, it is because we can make a big mistake if we assume that the texts mean something just because that is what texts mean today because that is how we use texts.

Jericho is a puzzle, no doubt about it, along with a lot of other questions I have.

@ Nancy:
Genesis 1 is certainly about God bringing order out of chaos. The Order of Creation isn’t exactly about that though it involves that idea. The Order of Creation has been applied to both race and sex. The thinking is that God has built social structures into his creation such that there are hierarchies of race and sex. The temporal order of the Man and the Woman is supposed to be an indicator of God’s intention regarding their ontological order as well. Complementarians have recognized the problem with an ontological ordering, so they say that the authority ordering is merely functional. Of course, that functional ordering is determined by sex, so it’s really a word game.

AFAIK, those who call themselves egalitarian don’t deny that there are differences in the sexes but only that sex does not determine who is over whom and who is allowed to do what.

Whether it is classism or racism or sexism, the idea is that God has designated a certain group to be rulers and the other group/s to be followers/servants.

@ numo:
Joshua was compoled…

@ Gram3:

I got that. I understand what people are saying. But I am saying that while I think the comps are in error, I also think that there is evidence of order of creation thinking in scripture and that Paul (or whoever edited his comments and may have inserted some stuff) believed it to some extent, though apparently not going nearly as far as the comps do now. I am good with saying that it was mostly related to culture. I am even good with saying that while we are not expecting further revelation we do continue to increase in understanding of things (a pope said that.) I am not comfortable in saying that it is not in scripture at some level. That is what I am saying.

@ Nancy:

It seems to me that some of our scripture arguments as to what scripture meant by this or that come from starting with our own cultural values (especially in social issues) and then thinking that surely scripture agrees with our current values so let’s see if we can’t find a way for that to be true. This looks like an attempt to rescue scripture from itself. How is it a bad thing to think that such and so was how people thought then (but not now) and scripture advised people how to live in that time and place (but not applicable now) because times have changed and issues have changed and god is not dead.

@ Nancy:
indeed.

@ Bridget

Both of these quotes were from Ken (arg!!)

Nancy –

This is one of those cases where I quoted Ken but the ‘system’ put your name there instead. Frustrating.

Bridget wrote:

No one has said anything about wanting everything to be unisex.

That is the appeal to fear that Grudem and Piper and company make. It is totally false but is scary enough that people don’t stop and think about it. Same with the appeal to Scary Feminists. Not one of these guys will specify what, exactly, about female emancipation has brought the erosion of culture. They will not specify which right needs to be rolled back so that everything will be OK again.

Ken wrote:

and in all the head/submission passages of Paul, he bases his argument on the ‘created order’ in Genesis plus his own apostolic revelation, rather than culture

Ken, Paul knew that created order held no significance. He was well grounded in OT history and would have known that…

God chose:

Isaac over Ishmael,

Jacob over Esau,

Ephraim over Manasseh,

the tribe of Judah over that of Reuben the eldest,

Joseph over all his older brothers,

and David over all his older brothers

He also knew that neither does God show partiality in regard to age, gender, ethnicity or marital status.

Don’t know if any of you have heard about this state Rep in Arkansas that rehomed some adoptive girls after thinking they were demon possessed. The story gets sadder from there. http://m.arktimes.com/arkansas/casting-out-demons-why-justin-harris-got-rid-of-kids-he-applied-pressure-to-adopt/Content?oid=3725371

@ oldJohnJ:
Thanks OldJohnJ!

“Now I see this scenario as explaining Paul’s thinking in 1 Tim 2. Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent (quiet) is to prevent a repetition in miniature of the events of Genesis 3. He grounds this in Genesis 1 – 3 For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. There is a responsibility laid upon certain men in the church to be custodians of the word of God as Adam was, and men who are not called to this (cf. Titus 1 10 – 11) and all women are called to submit to this order to avoid any similar deception as Eve succumbed to. ”

So let me understand you. Being deceived and admitting is WORSE than sinning on purpose. The one who sinned on purpose is therefore more qualified to lead the one who was deceived and admitted it?

This presents a God with no common sense.

Gram3 wrote:

Ken wrote:

The attempt to negate 1 Tim by making it local and temporary rather than universal and permanent in my judgement makes the church vulnerable to spiritual attack in its own right.

How?

The answer to that I have seen is because Satan deceives women and leaves the men who knowingly sin on purpose, alone. So that means it is better to knowingly sin on purpose than to be deceived. And worse, the Cross/resurrection was not even enough for women to stop being easily deceived. Sad, huh?

Bridget wrote:

No one has said anything about wanting everything to be unisex.

This is the scare tactic. It is the default position. A bigger problem with this is what does that mean for women as their Savior is a male? Does present problems for women? Is there a pink and blue salvation? Women are even referred to as “sons” in the NT with full inheritance from the Father.

Gram3 wrote:

Or where in the OT did God say anything about a universal prohibition of female authority over males?

This is the big problem. The only thing they can appeal to is what is “modeled” in a very evil culture that God worked around, with, over and under. A stiff necked people who were constantly doing it their way. That is what we are to take as “evidence” that males are superior in some way.

The irony is that the horrible evil that came about from sin and caused all the problems was seeking a pecking order. Who would rule who. Everything from patriarchy to conquests to slavery is part of that evil.

As I have said for years, many are teaching sin as virtue and don’t even realize it.

Lydia wrote:

So let me understand you. Being deceived and admitting is WORSE than sinning on purpose. The one who sinned on purpose is therefore more qualified to lead the one who was deceived and admitted it?
This presents a God with no common sense.

You are correct…makes no sense whatsoever. And btw, look who’s doing all the deceiving in the church today….:(

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

“Bakewell tart” is named after the Derbyshire village of Bakewell. It may or may not be baked well.

We’ve had a holiday (vacation to everyone else) in the Peak District for years now, and know Bakewell well. We did on one occasion try an authentic Bakewell tart, and I am please to inform you for your edification that it is definitely not as good as the Mr Kipling ersatz version. In fact is wasn’t very nice, so go for the substitute. 🙂

As for Greek nuances, we are virtually in agreement, the remaining difference being very difficult to describe in terms an ordinary layman would understand.

As for dry senses of humour, mine has got me in trouble with the frozen chosen to happy clappies and everything in between on more than one occasion. So thou art not alone in thine affliction.

Nancy wrote:

So, am I understanding this correctly?

I’m afraid not. I like your contributions here and I’m sure if I met you we would get on fine. I’m sorry if I have upset you.

The whole of comment was very much tongue-in-cheek. None of it is intended seriously. I’m pretty certain – but I hope he comes along to confirm this – that Nick would have picked up on this. I think there may some cultural differences at work here, the comment is I suppose in-house British humour.

For example, I don’t know Greek, let alone subtle nuances; and I do actually agree with Nick on this, the rest of the comment is only a send-up of this.

I don’t believe in using humour to hide barbed or sarcastic comments rather than using straight talk, but there is always the danger of being misunderstood.

I don’t take myself that seriously, and there is a time for everything under the sun, including self-deprecating humour. This is a characteristic of British humour, and can be misunderstood.

@ Nancy:

One last explanation. The reason why I can’t go to church reliably alone is the vertigo which seems to be going to be a chronic problem. I did not have a falling out with anybody, and I am not senile or crippled.

@ Nancy:
Nancy – in order of priority, I sorry to hear about your vertigo. My dad suffers from something similar, and it is certainly something not nice to have.

Regarding your church, there is a strain of dry humour in the Anglican church which I like, where they are trying not to take themselves and their churchianity too seriously. I hope your Father S is not someone who is constantly using witty remarks, this can get on your nerves (I know an ex-Baptist pastor who was like this).

If he or a member of the congregation is someone who as a rule does not hide behind this humorous veneer to criticise or correct others, I think all you can assume if he says something that to you appears rude or out of order is that he intends this as something none too serious, and perhaps the humour has passed you by/what he is saying isn’t actually funny even though he thinks it is. There are people you could shake and ask for once to stop fooling around and say what they really think, this can as I say get very annoying. It’s all very well being diplomatic, but this can be taken too far sometimes. Someone who speaks in public really ought to make sure his listeners know how to understand what he is saying.

I hope that helps if only a little bit. Perhaps others here have experienced a similar thing and have something a bit more practical to say on what you do when you meet it.

Bridget wrote:

The doctors have no help or answers?

Actually it is interesting. Depending on the cause, and depending if there was residual damage to the inner ear (like scar from an infection) the condition may be a rest-of-your-life situation, or not. Like everything else this happens on a sliding scale. So what the best approach is, or so some of the information says, is for the brain to learn how to process the new information and establish new patterns of explaining the environment. The brain gets one kind of signal from one ear and a different one from the other ear and it does not know what to do with that. Fortunately there are also signals about the environment from vision and from the feel of things we get from feet and hands and whatever is sitting on what. We both feel and see and perceive the environment and its relationships. So, the brain has to be allowed to experience the confusion (like don’t take the pills and mask the symptoms) and it will plot new understandings of how to cope with inconsistent information. This approach seems to be helping.

At church I am okay to walk in and sit down. I am unstable to go up for communion but so far have been able to do it. But after church when everybody is pouring into the aisles and they become a swirling mass of visual confusion, that takes away a necessary visual stable object and I have to literally hold on to either some person or some piece of furniture or run my hand down the wall or something to keep from actually staggering at best and falling at worst. But this is light years better than before and there are plenty of things and people to hang on to. The swirling crowds (church, movies, mall, parades) are the problem. For example, I can shop alone at the grocery because the cart acts as a stable object and nobody is swirling in the aisles. I can drive just fine, because my body is in contact with the car at several points, and the roads are stable objects, and the cars are mostly going in the same direction and not swirling around like people at church, and I am not standing up. The brain is a fascinating thing. Almost makes you think we were created on purpose by some intelligence or something, don’t you know.

@ Victorious:
I’ve got an idea I would like to run past you, but must disappear for while!

@ Lydia:

I agree, Lydia. There are a couple points I’ve observed in Genesis that no one seems to think are significant so provide no answers. Maybe you can…

1) Only the man is told to leave his father and mother. This is directed to the man as the object of his leaving and cleaving is his wife. Therefore my conclusion is that the man leaves his “tribe” and dwells with his wife in her “tribe” which is her natural protector imo.

2) Only Adam is said to have been sent from the garden. Verse 23 specifically states that he is sent out to cultivate the ground.

3) The words …”Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return” were specifically directed to the one who was taken from the ground. Eve was not.

Any thoughts?

@ Victorious:

I think I do need to clear something up first. I think some great arguments against gender roles can be made from reading Gen 1-3 literally as a sort of “how to/what happened” account but I also think by reading it like that we miss the even bigger message and that has hurt us all tremendously.

God predicted (not commanded) that Eve would allow Adam to rule over her so it is no surprise she follows him out of the garden. The big word that has been so misunderstood is teshuqa which means “turning” as in turning to Adam instead of God. So the question would be: Did she have a choice whether to follow or not? I say yes but also add she wanted to give birth to the one who would bruise the evil ones heel and she needed Adam for that, too. They still had a command to be fruitful and multiply. And we see the evil results of patriarchy after that in living color.

I think all of Genesis is a story of God’s rescue because humans chose to do it their way instead of grow in maturity and wisdom with God’s guidance. I also think the most important aspect of Gen 1-2 is the tree of the “knowledge” of good and evil…. not how creation happened. That is the part we miss because we either want it to be a treatise on gender roles or a science text on creation. We miss the bigger points of what happened because humans did not work in relationship with God to mature and become more wise and how He tries to rescue us. The humans are His image here! Why do we miss that part? And how significant is it? I say, big time significant.

I say there is free will all over it! Otherwise it is scary stuff.

I do think that since Eve ADMITTED she was deceived,God promised Messiah would come through her. I also think what God told the Evil One is extremely important:

And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.

I think the Evil One particularly HATES women and wants them subjugated at every turn. I am just heartbroken that so many Christians go along with this in varying ways.

BTW: Bushnell believes the same as you mentioned about the man leaving mom and dad and cleaving to his wife. If we read this literally the question has to be who is Adam (as male) parent’s that he must leave to cleave to Eve? It really makes no sense when read literally from the creation account. Unless I am missing something. (IOW-there were other tribes and I think that is who Cain married from which is what the narrative is communicating)

I do agree with Bushnell’s position I just think the story is communicating women were safer in that culture when they stay within their tribe.

I just think we are better off leaving gender stuff out of it when it is really a story communicating God’s rescue, God’s wisdom, etc. I would think the message is more about us being His image here and choosing wrongly and what lengths God goes to to rescue us.

Lydia wrote:

I just think we are better off leaving gender stuff out of it when it is really a story communicating God’s rescue, God’s wisdom, etc. I would think the message is more about us being His image here and choosing wrongly and what lengths God goes to to rescue us.

Lydia, thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. I agree with everything you’ve said and agree as well that we would be “better off leaving gender stuff out of it.” I use those points only as a rebuttal since men most always use Genesis 3 as permission to keep women in a position of subjection and ignore the other obvious male/female “instructions.” If they want to use it as a passage for male entitlement, then it’s pertinent to use all of it rather than cherry-picking words of their choice.

I’m a fan of Bushnell’s as she makes an excellent case refuting male supremacy.

Thanks again for your comments!

Ken wrote:

I must admit I hadn’t seen the significance of Adam being created first until comparatively recently. It’s nice to still be learning something!

I’m going to assume you are making a joke.

Victorious wrote:

I use those points only as a rebuttal since men most always use Genesis 3 as permission to keep women in a position of subjection and ignore the other obvious male/female “instructions.”

I think a clear case can be made even reading it literally there is no command from God for any gender subjugation/submission. I think that is the result of sin and God continued to work with them where they were in that mindset. In fact, I think God’s intention was the opposite. Mutual and wise dominion over what God created for them.

You know, God is very clear with His commands and laws. We should never read any new laws or prohibitions into the text. That would be taking His Name in Vain. Putting words in His mouth that are not there is the real meaning of that Commandment. This is nothing to fool around with. If creation order was the indirect message from God for subjection then why form animals before forming the woman? They present a god who makes no sense.

@ Gram3:

yes, it must be a “joke” because a “male” was not created first. The “human” was created first. Referred to as a plural “Them”. The genders were “formed” in chp 2.

Lydia wrote:

And Paul refutes that in 1 Corin 11!

Exactly, but the Comps never read Paul’s entire argument so they don’t get to the verse where he sums up his argument. Actually, they read all of chapter 11 with a “chain of command” hermeneutic when there is nothing in that chapter about a chain of command. At all.

Gram3 wrote:

the Comps never read Paul’s entire argument so they don’t get to the verse where he sums up his argument.

They seem to need some sort of educational evaluation to remedy their problems in this area. But first some sort of testing needs to be done to see if the problem is reading fluency (speed and word accuracy) or if the problem is reading comprehension (understanding.) But they do not seem to be reading all of what the bible says or else their comprehension seems to be pathetic. All the while they are claiming that their only source of information or instruction is the very bible they seem unable to read and comprehend.

But, you know. I don’t think they have either problem. I think they know exactly what they are doing but are listing to the wrong “voice” whisper in their ear. The same voice that says “power” and “money” and “fame/recognition” and “control.”

Case study of deception.

In other news:

I’m working on a co-authored book today, but
 It’s a sunny day in Scotland
 There’s work to do in the garden
 There is a near-total solar eclipse due at around 9:36 GMT

I may not get much work done.

Hi Guys,

I just checked yesterday to see what was up on the Open Discussion. I was delighted to find that the discussion was around the ‘women thing’ topic which inevitably gets into the two main and sticky verses from 1 Tim 2 and 1 Cor. 14. Many of you guys have done your own homework and are well able to explain clearly —point by point! Keep up the good work!! These verses have to be explained and re-explained so that at least some of the folks get the understanding–that people don’t have to be locked into a patriarchal or complementarian mind set! People need to hear the truth that mutuality is in the Bible and that it is/was God’s idea in the first place.

The ‘un-silencing’ of women is a subject which needs to be heralded whenever there is opportunity. Clarifying the misconstrued thinking is an imperative. I head up a Linkedin discussion thread that has been going on for over 15 months! around this topic: if women can biblically be permitted to be pastors or elders or not. That topic naturally opens up all of these other ‘women thing’ discussion areas, especially the Genesis 1-3 passages. That is why this Linkedin discussion has continued for so long.

I have been motivated to put a number of articles on my Church Exiters.com website which address these various topic areas. I have borrowed from the expertise of a number of scholars in order to make this information available.

Here are a few of the titles that I offer as resources for further study on these topics:

• Women in the Church and the Silence Issue Dr. Waldemar Kowalski looks at 1 Cor. 14

• Women in the Church Dr. Gordon Fee looks at 1 Corinthians 11:7-16, Man, the Glory of God, Woman, the Glory of Man and Women’s Head Coverings in Corinth

• Women in the Church 1. Which Book Came First—Timothy or Romans? by Dr. Cynthia L. Westfall and 2. Looking at Women from the Context of the Priesthood by Dr. John Jefferson Davis

• Women in the Church and Evangelical Feminism by Dr. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

• Women in the Church—American History, Slavery, and Feminism by Dr. Rebecca Merrill Groothuis

Comments welcome.

@ Nick Bulbeck:

Lovely. Run on!

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

n other news, I went for the first extended fell-run of the year yesterday (10k, 550 metre climb)

Up hill and down dale, Nick put in the effort to chase a fine ale…

@ Mr.H:
1) sure, but many rank and file churchgoers believe it, which is one thing i was attempting to address. I think a lot of evangelicals are wary of scholarship, or don’t see it as relevant (even though it is).

2) Good points, and some things are new to me and very helpful,- thanks! Again, it would be so helpful if these things were generally known, as the context is extremely helpful and puts Joshua into perspevtive.

numo wrote:

@ Mr.H:
Also, no need to apologize!
I wish there were more folks with your background out in circulation, writing material for lay people to read/study. i truly abhor many things re. literalist interpretation of texts that were never intended to be read in the way that we read/interpret newspapers, etc.

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I very much appreciate, and agree with, evangelicalism’s commitment to Scripture. The tragic irony is that many evangelicals, in their well-meaning attempt to honor Scripture by “taking it seriously” actually end up dishonoring Scripture by misreading certain texts.

If I tell someone that it is “raining cats and dogs” outside, it most certainly does not honor my words to interpret them as meaning that there are real canids and felids falling out of the sky. (I know, I’m preaching to the choir here…)

I grew up very close to, but not exactly in, the so-called fundamentalist subsection of evangelicalism, so I was exposed to all sorts of silly interpretations. The problem is that I didn’t really find out how silly they were until I underwent rigorous academic training under the mentorship of some excellent scholars.

If you have any reading suggestions, i would be most grateful for them. And it’s good to see you here again, however briefly!

Oh, gosh. I confess that there aren’t many quality, popular-level monographs that cover these sorts of topics. And regarding the books that do exist – everyone has their biases and also their specialties, so that no one book covers all topics equally well.

What I’d probably end up doing is recommending clusters of books and articles, organized by a common topic, to be read in conjunction with one another, with the hope being that they complement one another.

If you’re interested specifically in the archaeological context of biblical history, I’d probably recommend a cluster like this:

A History of Ancient Israel and Judah, by Miller & Hayes. (This one is more towards the so-called “Minimalist” camp, and gives a glimpse of their perspectives and opinions).

The Bible Unearthed, by Finkelstein and Silberman. (Also more towards the “Minimalist” camp, although Finkelstein is a bit of an enigma in that he has vacillated back and forth throughout his career).

Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?, by William Dever. (This one is a sort of middle-of-the-spectrum perspective).

A Biblical History of Israel, by Provan, Long, & Longman III. (Right-of-middle, with very high quality scholarship).

On the Reliability of the Old Testament by Kenneth Kitchen. (This one is closer to the so-called “Maximalist” camp).

Rather than simply reading each book cover to cover, one at a time, I’d recommend reading them in tandem, and going topic-by-topic (Patriarchs, Exodus/Conqest, United Monarchy, etc.), allowing them to create a sort of dialogue as each book presents their perspective and also reacts to the other perspectives. From there, you can begin to form your own opinions and conclusions. (Although it may admittedly be somewhat difficult to evaluate the methods of conclusions of each author without a little bit of technical background).

If you’re interested in the ANE contextual world of Scripture itself, I’d recommend a cluster of:

The Lost World of Scripture, by Walton & Sandy.
The Art of Biblical Narrative by Robert Alter.
Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament by John Walton.
From An Antique Land, ed. Carl Ehrlich.
Hidden Riches, by Chris Hays.
Old Testament Parallels, by Victor H. Matthews
Readings from the Ancient Near East by Bill Arnold.

A cluster for Israelite religion and ANE religion:
Israelite Religion by Richard Hess.
Stories from Ancient Canaan, by Michael Coogan.
An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion by Tammi Schneider.
Religion in Ancient Egypt, ed. Byron Shafer.
Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt, by Emily Teeter.

Last but not least, if you’re really interested in the Conquest account, I highly recommend Lawson Younger’s monograph Ancient Conquest Accounts. It’s not popular-level, and it’s fairly scholarly, but it’s an excellent work on exactly the sorts of issues we briefly touched on.

If I had more time, I’d compile a more detailed recommendation list. Apologies! I obviously left quite a few off, mostly because they go beyond the popular-level and bleed over into more technical discussion.

Maybe, when I get more time, I’ll think about starting up a little blog or website that offers a bit of guidance to folks who want to dip their toe into this sort of thing…we’ll see!

@ Mr.H:
Thanks muchly! I’m Lutheran (born and raised), but spent about 30 years in a more evangelical/charismatic-type world, where there was (and still is ) *tons* of bad/wrong exegesis and interpretation. I hear you on popular-level monographs as well – it’s hard to find those in many fields of study, not just yours. (I know; ’tis true of my academic specialty as well.)

I *love* the idea of a blog (by you) on these topics and do hope you’re able to do it, whenever.

@ Mr.H:
also, most scholarly monographs don’t scare me, though some academics really don’t know how to write. I pretty much had to be deprogrammed when I stated writing music reviews, because I’d been so heavily influenced by academic-speak and the way people who work for the feds write. It was a deadly combination, believe me!

@ numo

The original issue was why would some people have certain ideas about certain things in the first place. I have not waded through all the comments for the specifics but is was about music. And I said here might be a reason why, a variable if you please, and here is what I saw that gives me pause in this area.

The larger question is this. Remember when I said that Father T in RCIA told us that the catholic church had ‘baptized the idols’ and some people got offended by that? Father T of course thought it was a good idea and a good explanation, he being a catholic priest. Not everybody agrees that this is a good idea, or even a permissible practice. So the question is; is it right to baptize the idols (bring non-christian practices into the church and declare them christian now.)

Okay, here we are at easter, and one idea in more conservative christian circles is that christianity has baptized a non-christian festival dedicated to a goddess and called it easter and maybe that ought not be done. We go though this every christmas also with the keep christ in christmas crowd on the one hand and the do away with christmas crowd on the other based on the pagan festival origins, or so they claim.

In a similar way, but with a different arguments we have some people raking through the OT for applicable laws which can be applied to christians while others say that it is misguided to do that. Some say, that was for the jews and not us, while others argue about some of it should be or is a part of christianity and therefore where to draw the line.

So the issue was music, and I said that some music (in this case using the illustration of talking drums used to summon the spirits-which is what I happened to witness) and that some people may be aware of this/ know about this/ and this may be one of the variables in the discussion about church music etc etc. And I said, that this also gives me pause.

Well, it does. I am not really sure we need to be having so much of baptizing stuff and appropriating it for use in christian practices. Maybe I think that because I was raised that way. Certainly I was influenced by the lecture series about the history of western church music that I referenced. Maybe the ‘catholic’ practices of my kids’ church are bothering me more than I have dealt with. Who knows why this is an issue with me, again, and right now? But it is.

What I am saying is that this is all part of a larger picture of how we ought to do church. It is not about demons under church pews. I never even suggested that, but I don’t know what else would make this such a contentious matter unless you thought that was where I was heading. I did not say that. I said, in effect, was that repentance needs to precede baptism (metaphorically) and that applies, in my mind, also to the music, since music was the topic in the first place. And I also said that in my opinion bringing something into church tradition is entirely different from absorbing something from one culture to another, as in a concert of street festival is different from a mass.

Now there is plenty said and written about this larger issue, some of it in official church statements, as in when the X have been said to accuse the Y of idolatry and the Y have been said to accuse the X of being schismatics. (I am getting so good with complicated verbs!) I am not , however accusing anybody of anything, or least of not knowingly doing anything for bad reasons, but I am saying that the music issue falls within this larger area of debate.

@ Mr.H:
Lawson Stone from Asbury Theological Seminary did a three part series on the ANE context of the violence in the OT. Like what you said, he notes how the accounts can often be exaggerated and gives attention to details in the text which people like me have not noticed. I personally found it to be very helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hotJ7p0f9I

@ Nancy:
I think we have a fundamental disagreement over whether music (of any kind) is good, bad, or morally neutral. My position is that it depends on how things are used. I mean, in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, secular songs (and even quite secular texts) were incorporated into plainchant. Whole masses were composed on variations of the popular song “L’homee armée” (the armed man). During the early days of the Reformation, drinking songs were used as hymn tunes, though, obviously, with different texts.

I think differently than you do about this, and I believe some of that has to do with my background in non-Western music. But hey, to each his/her own!

@ Nancy:
You know, in many black churches, guitars are still a rarity, because they are associated with blues (aka “the devil’s music). So, keyboard instruments are fine, but not that other great Western chordal instrument, the guitar.

That is about culture, not about guitars in and of themselves.

As I mentioned, when gospel music began, back in the 30s, a LOT of church people ranted against it as being “the devil’s music,” and they believed that the Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey and other gospel innovators were trying to “baptize” something that didn’t belong in church. Fast-forward far less than a generation, and gospel was the norm in most black evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Why? Not because someone was trying to make things “relevant,” but because people got over their initial qualms.

So. That’s my other point. Cultures change, and opinions change, and what was once beyond the pale has long since been accepted as being part and parcel of worship, since the beginning, I think.

Re. “falling out,” in black churches, that’s more about people dancing, or doing otherwise fairly “uncontrolled” things under the influence of the Holy Spirit, as they see it. It is *so* much like what happens in many African religions (there and in this hemisphere) as to be identical, in many case, and actually far less controlled than in some of those African religions. (Though not always.)

Culture: something that is part of our lives, like it or not. Certain African cultural practices have been retained in the New World, whether in black evangelical churches or in candomblé ceremonies in Brazil. That’s just how it is. It isn’t about spirit possession, it is about typical behaviors that are learned from a young age and perpetuated. Equally, it is not about something weird going on in many black evangelical and Pentecostal churches. It is just how some people behave during their own worship services.

It is not like 99 & 9/10ths % of white churches, that’s for sure. But neither do I think being super-formal and emotionally buttoned up are necessarily ordained by God. Though they certainly *are* cultural practices that have become part and parcel of the order of worship, and deportment during said worship (liturgical or not) in many churches.

Of course, I remember when folk masses upset a lot of older Catholics, post-Vatican II. Now, they’re pretty much passé.

@ Bridget:

Not yet. I watched the link on my phone so did not see the others. Am looking for them now. Asbury is close, so to speak, and I have known quite a few people from there. I have reading Witherington.

numo wrote:

Fast-forward far less than a generation, and gospel was the norm in most black evangelical and Pentecostal churches. Why? Not because someone was trying to make things “relevant,” but because people got over their initial qualms.

I think there’s something else going on as well here. People tend to assume that whatever they’re used to must be of God. Admittedly, that too may be nothing more than common-or-garden fear of the unfamiliar, and as soon as it becomes familiar, it’s not frightening any more. But it does frustrate me (as an incorrigible neophile) when other Christians try to warn me that new things are dangerous, with no regard for the fact that the traditions they find so comforting and secure were also once new, dangerous and clearly_of_the_devil.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

People tend to assume that whatever they’re used to must be of God.

I bet there are people who do, like the bunch over at my kid’s church apparently. But the questioning of christmas and easter that I mentioned, for example, is not due to the newness of the ideas of easter and christmas. It is partly related to the idea that the ‘new testament church’ is thought to have started going off on tangents extremely early on and that the process has continued and built upon itself over the centuries, and apparently totally dropped off the cliff with Constantine and there was no hope after that compromise with Rome and all that entailed. Think some of the ideas of the radical reformation, I think.

@ numo:
One other thing: at the ceremony you witnessed, the people *believed* that playing the drums in a particular way would summon the spirits/deities. To them, the drums are a means of communication with the sacred, so… when the rhyyhms gor specific spirits/deities are played, the devotees *expect* them to show up. That sets the stage, psychologically, for people to be ready to greet (and in some cases, be temporarily possessed by) the spirits/deities.

In Yoruba religion (which carries on in this hemisphere in a couple of different iterations, one from Cuba and now in the US, the other mainly practiced in Brazil), those who experience trance possession are then taken aside and dressed in the kind of clothing that the spirit/deity they are manifesting customarily wears. The devotees believe that the spirit/deity is right there with them, in the body of the person (s) possessed. Those people are treated as the vehicle for the spirit/deity. Certain people are dedicated to particular spirits/deities, and they manifest them if and when they go into trance. Not other spirits/deities, but those they are dedicated to. It is orderly, even though it does not seem so to outside observers.

Further, over here (not sure if Nigerian practices are identical), the music played by the drums is actually complex, highly ordered, difficult to learn and memorize – and it is, essentially, set up in a liturgical order. Different parts of that large body of music are played at different points in a given ceremony, and (iirc) generally only portions of these long suites are played in most ceremonies (both the private, for devotees only segments, as well as the parts that are open to the public). The order of the various segments is logical, even stately, though to outsiders, it doesn’t seem so. In a word, it is formal.

Now, even knowing all that, and having seen videos of various open to the public ceremonies on YouTube, i have no doubts whatsoever that i would feel overwhelmed if i were to arattend a ceremony. But then, i have felt overwhelmed in the church services i attended where people “fell out.” Yet, to those in attendance at the latter, there is an order as to how – and when – such things occur. They are not random events, and i can imagine that if/when ecstatic dancing, etc. happen at the wrong time, or in an unusual way, that moves would be made to get the person and the service backmto where it is meant to be.

Do you see what I’m trying to say? What appears crazy and frightening to outsiders is intended to hsppen (people *expect* it to happen), @and it is intended to happen at specific times and in a specific fashion. It is understood, in the Yoruba ceremonies, when someone is faking a possession. It is also though inadvisible for non-initiates to experience possession, and any visitor (including regulars who aren’t initiated) is taken outside by devotees, away from the drumming and dancing. It is all very decorous and follows certain protocols; there are fine points of etiquette as well. That’s also true in black Pentecostal churches.

Many people grow up attending services (of all of these religions), and they know what is expected and all the rest of the cues and protocol. Knowing this, they are socially, pdychologically and spiritually primed for various levels of participation.

And that is true of most any ceremony you could name, from High Mass to the order of precdence given to people who are taking part in a street parade.

One other (last) thought: for many people in W. Africa, drum/ddance are an integral part of normal events in a community. That can be harvest time, the celebration of a wedding or the birth of a baby, even at funerals in some cultures. Drum/dance – and many other kinds of music – are part of daily life. This is also true in many countries in the Western hemisphere that are home to people of African descent. It is much less pronounced in N. America, much more pronounced in the Caribbean and Latin America. People of all ages take part – most celebrations aren’t age-segregated in the way they are up here. You will find people from age zero to 90 and above, and some of the older folks will get out and shake it a bit.

Personally, i like that way of doing things. It is also common in Arab countries, and in former Spanish colonies like the Philippines.

I have found folks from all of these groups of counties and cultures to be markedly more sociable and welcoming than many of the folks who look just like me. All are welcome, and people will go out of their way to make sure that guests feel included and are enjoying themselves.

In the case of African, Caribbean and Latin American folks, dridrums are primarily used for secular music. Just because there are drums at religiius ceremonies (aand very particular drums at that) does not mean that all drumming, and all drums, are inherently religious. Usually it’s the other way around.

Which is a longwinded way of saying that for these folks, it isn’t a case of “baptizing” something for use in church, but rather, using instruments that are a normal part of life. I do not see anything amiss with that, myself. (I will “out” myself as a former church band percussionist, because you all might understand what I’m trying to say more clearly if you know that.)

So there it is. As William Booth is supposed to have said, “WWhy should the debil have all the good tunes?” I’m with him on that!

@ Nancy:
It is one thing that i admittedly do not understand, although I’ve certainly been exposed to it. In fact, due to my own decades in the evangelical/charismatic world, i am very opposed to that kind of thinking, at least, in the ways i have seen it played out.

But, not having been raised in a denomination that holds it as a key tenet of the faith, i cannot easily “gget” the kinds of thinking involved. I have always been interested in the arts, and i think that might actually account for where I’m coming from more than my denominational background – far, far more. My parents were/aare wewell-read people who encouraged creativity. My mom’s gifts in some of the arts inspired me to develop my own. The lovd of reading and learning and encountering new ideas and perspectives has fueled me since i was very young, and to me it serms like a worthy pursuit in and of itself.

Does that make sense?

@ numo:
I will freely admit that itmis the music in thd Lutheran church tradition that captivates me. It is very much a participstory thing, too – Luthersns are very bigmon congregational singing. And that does something for, and in, me that no sermon could ever do. Reverence, joy, a sense of wonder, an awareness of God’s love – music can help bring these things into being in every person, as well as giving them an outlet to express them.

I have found this to be equally true of the time that I’ve bern involved in W. African percusdion ensemble music. It produces a contagious sense of joy.

@ Nancy:
I was not intending to ttivialise anything. Sorry thwt whst i wrote came across that way – my intent was the opposite, so it seems that i might need to be more careful as to whst I’m trying to say and how i say it.

@ numo:

If you are talking about all or nothing thinking, then I agree with you. But I read what Jesus said in the high priestly prayer about he was not asking the father to take his followers out of the world but was asking that they be kept from the evil in the world. These two parts of that sentence need to both be paid attention to. To embrace the world in entirety no questions asked, no discernment applied, is to ignore that idea of being kept from the evil, perhaps even to deny that there is such a thing as evil. To think that one can or should deny the world like perhaps some of the early severe ascetics is not in keeping with being in the world, at least not for the majority of people.

Now the trick is, of course, how does one get that done? Can we all agree on what is good and what is evil? Obviously not. We can’t even agree if there is such a thing as evil and good. I believe that you personally don’t use that word, but Jesus did so I am going to stick with it so that I don’t get washed away by the flood of evil that has been with us since the get go. I think it is important to call a thing by its right name. Do not apply all or nothing thinking to that; that is not what I am saying. But if one tries to be in the world (let us say vocationally) and then runs smack up against the evil in the world (and for sure this happens) one will either capitulate to the evil or one will get hurt. Neither option is pleasant.

With me it was when one of the OB docs decided to start doing elective abortions, but he had no ultrasound equipment in his office to determine fetal age to try to comply with the law. He then asked the hospital (I had the only ultrasound lab in the county at the time and did OB ultrasound among other things) for permission to send his abort patients in for fetal age determination. The hospital and I and the ultrasound tech had to put up or shut up at that point. So there you are. In the world? Sure? Is medicine/ healing a good thing in the world? You bet. And then the evil comes sit down in your office and wants to have a little conversation. In this case the hospital admin and trustees found a solution, but otherwise I would have had to become unemployed or else co-operate with evil. This, I think is why all or nothing thinking thrives. One can convince oneself that everything is okay (total acceptance of ‘the world’), or else one can maybe joint a cult and homeschool and move to the hinterlands and get some chickens (as an attempt to escape) -neither of which approach solves the problem.

But yes, I do think that there is this dichotomy in the world. I think that God is in the process of redeeming both people individually and eventually the world itself from this problem, but right now we have what we have. And Jesus prayed for us in this situation. There is no easy solution nor is there any painless treatment. At least that has been my experience.

And I am not talking about zithers, obviously.

@ Nancy:
Fwiw, here are acouple of the evil things i experienc3dz:

1. Having curses from Deuteronomy called down on me

2. Being told that if i cocontinued to use a cane, my “ddays would be short.” (I very much needed that cane for about 6 months.)

3. Being totally ostracized, and then being accused of lying when i stated as muvh.

There’s mmuch more.

@ Nancy:
No, that wasn’t me, and no worries!

I’ve only given you a few highlights. The false accusations that were leveled against me were part of the reason for the ostracism, but that is a longish story.

@ Nancy:
Fwiw, on another thread we were talking about original sin, and i said that i do not believe in it in the way it has been taught in the Western church. Our Eastern O. brothers and sisters have differing views on this, and i am pretty much eith (some of) them, as well as much Jewish thought, on this matter.

But believing that evil doesn’t exist is not only naive, but just not part of the picture. People can and fo sin and say and do evil things. The worlf is very imperfect, as far as i can see, Jesus was the only sinless person in yhe history of the world.

Hi Everyone,

I am delighted that this article is now posted. It has been 2 years since I got the idea and it has been brewing ever since. Now it is done and online. It is entitled: Spiritual Abuse and Shamed into Silence.

http://www.churchexiters.com/2015/03/spiritual-abuse-and-shamed-into-silence/

Barb

For a strange experience this morning, read Tony Jones’ Twitter feed. He’s repeating lines from stories re: The Rolling Stone retraction — but that doesn’t seem to be the reason he’s tweeting them…

It’s a little icky.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
very cool! It will be even cooler when women have their own tournament in Augusta, on the same course as the men.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
they have a LONG way to go.

@ Albuquerque Blue:
wow! does she play 9 or 18?

@ Gram3:
The course always looks so beautiful, but equally, the place bothers me whenever I see it on TV, not least because of the old, old prejudices that still linger there. No matter what we now know about Tiger Woods, seeing him win the tournament was truly amazing. He broke a *huge* barrier by qualifying and being allowed into it in the 1st place. (Though how anyone can not see that he looks mainly Asian, I don’t quite get.)

But then there were those ill-spoken words by, iirc, Fuzzy Zoeller afterwards.

We all have a very long way to go. I hope there’s a green jacket for women before too much more time goes by.

(I haven’t watched golf on TV for a couple of years now, the reason being that I bought a Roku streaming box and no longer have cable TV. Since I’m not a huge sports fan, it works just fine, except for those times – pretty rare – when I would like to see events. There’s a sports bar down the road, but somehow I doubt that they put PGA/LPGA events on their TVs…)

numo wrote:

@ Nick Bulbeck:
they have a LONG way to go.

You know, I wonder if it won’t happen rather suddenly. At some point, the abstract “woman” becomes “my daughter” or even “my wife” and then excluding women and not having a women’s even will become implausible and impossible to sustain. Especially now that we have a couple of generations of young women who grew up in competitive sports.

I think something similar will happen with hierarchy in the church. More and more women are earning terminal degrees in theology and related fields, and the presuppositions upon which the hierarchical model exist will crumble as more and more women study the texts, as more and more men study alongside these women, and as more and more daughters of these men move into full participation in society.

I also believe the Complementarian married women are going to wake up one day when the nest is empty and wonder what this was all about, anyway. The Complementarian single women will be long gone, IMO, because the System has nothing to do with their lives. The shock will be very great in conservative churches, causing Owen (not John) no mean distress. I believe it is inevitable.

@ Gram3:
Couldn’t agree more, Gram. It’s just a matter of time….

https://disqus.com/home/discussion/nadiabolzweber/do_you_have_questions_about_the_cross/

This situation is getting very creepy. These almost 900 comments were erased off Nadia’s site by her husband but screen shot by some enterprising folks.

We can see from the comments there is a person called Kandance (sounds eerily like xitanatty in the comments) “investigating” those who are public supporters of Julie. Kandance says that “Dee” is in a different category than the others they are investigating and their ties to Julie. There are even organizations who sponsored some JoPa events who claim they investigated Tony Jones and found no “criminal” activity so he is ok. One commenter claims he represents that nameless group.

I have followed this for the sake of those spiritually abused having a voice but there is another part of me that had to see how an NPD minor Christian celeb would be dealt with by the Christian Industrial Complex. It is quite telling. Actually it is chilling.

It is simply amazing the tactics of an NPD. And how many people fall for it. Makes you wonder.

dee wrote:

@ Lydia:
I know about this and it startled me. I did not know I was in a different category. Can you find the comment? Do you know why?

After my eyes stop crossing, I will see if I can find it. :o) “Kandace” names names of who she is investigating as supporters of Julie. Your name was mentioned but as being in a different category.

I honestly think Tony and his crew are trying to scare people. Tony forgets the imbalance of power in this situation.

When you read the entire convo note how clever it is to change the convo to being “scared” of the “mean” Julie supporters. After all, she is just trying to be fair and balanced.

Also note how these people totally ignore the imbalance of power in this situation from day 1.

Oops! Should’ve hit “refresh” before posting. Ah well.

In other news, Andy Murray and Kim Sears were married in Murray’s home town of Dunblane today. In a startling development, Murray was observed smiling at one point.

When asked how he felt the day had gone, his response (apparently) was “Alright, thanks.”

In other space news, New Horizon has taken the first color pictures of Pluto, which is not a planet. ^_^ http://i.space.com/images/i/000/046/967/original/pluto-charon-new-horizons.jpg?1429056995

Nancy wrote:

Didn’t Pluto used to be Rover and belong to Minnie until he became Pluto and belonged to Mickey?

I’ve always wondered why Pluto was like a real dog but Goofy could talk and drive.

By the way, will Kandace post her tax returns with all of her income (W-4’s and 1099’s) from all sources, etc. I think we should follow the money trail and that will lead to the Emergent Crowd (Tony Jones, Brian McLaren, and Doug Pagitt).

I found this to be interesting. Many of us have wondered what people see in leaders like Mark Driscoll in the Calvinista crowd. We have wondered how those at Mars Hill could be so easily schmoozed by charlatans like Driscoll.

I’m sure there are many more reasons than this one. However. I’m sure this one also contributes a bit.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/9-scientifically-verified-ways-to-appear-more-attractive/ar-AA9NvZG#page=4

May I humbly offer one perspective for readers/users/members of this site. One quibble I have with the terminology used here, and elsewhere, is “progressive/emergent.” As a 70+ year old christian progressive, I do not identify with the emergent tribe at all. Most emergents are way to evangelical for my taste. I’m a “universalist” (many paths lead to reconciliation, closeness and a deeper understanding with our creator-God). I’ve mainly discarded atonement theories and have embraced a concept of a loving God, not a punitive God. There are many issues that we progressive christian embrace that most christians don’t. Emergent I am not. Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks. Peace.

@ RollieB:
Speaking just for myself, I appreciate the clarification and explanation. For me looking on from the outside, the distinctions and terminology have not been clear. Thank you.

In obscure other news, England are 151-4 at tea on the first day of the final Test in Barbados. I have to say that this is a disappointing score for the team that won the toss – at first I was convinced the Windies had won the toss and put us in. Joe Root, having finished the second test on 182 n.o., went for a duck. Though Cook’s still there on 60.

It’s a funny old game…

Muff Potter wrote:

*more than just wishful thinking:

Have a look at this: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/dawn/spacecraft/index.html

My BS detector has gone off scale but I can’t refute what is claimed. We do live in interesting times.

RollieB wrote:

May I humbly offer one perspective for readers/users/members of this site. One quibble I have with the terminology used here, and elsewhere, is “progressive/emergent.” As a 70+ year old christian progressive, I do not identify with the emergent tribe at all. Most emergents are way to evangelical for my taste. I’m a “universalist” (many paths lead to reconciliation, closeness and a deeper understanding with our creator-God). I’ve mainly discarded atonement theories and have embraced a concept of a loving God, not a punitive God. There are many issues that we progressive christian embrace that most christians don’t. Emergent I am not. Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest. Thanks. Peace.

Hi, thanks for this comment -I’m still getting my head around all the terminologies, still learning. Can I suggest that you post this comment on the current Tony Jones/Julie McMahon post?

Muff Potter wrote:

Chemical thrust technology (in the conventional sense) has reached its limits just as canvas and sail did in olden times. But as it has always been in the past, humans will always find work arounds that breed new technologies*. I think it’s part of our divine nature as inherited from the Almighty.

It’s worth bearing in mind that, when humans did built a faster-than-light propulsion system, the crew ended up travelling to hell and died horribly ; it was documented in Event Horizon.

Although, now I think about it, Event Horizon was actually a sci-fi/horror film, not a documentary. Please ignore the above.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
Are they up against the Gayle force? Or did he bow out after the World Cup?

Further sporting news:

Alex Dowsett today became the fourth man in the last eight months to break the “blue riband” record of cycling, the one-hour record. Dowsett covered 52.937 km, beating the previous record by 446 metres.

Dowsett has haemophilia. As a child, he was advised by doctors to take up a musical instrument or chess. He did neither! An extraordinary achievement.

Gram3 wrote:

The Complementarian single women will be long gone, IMO, because the System has nothing to do with their lives.

As a never married, 40ish old lady who used to be complementarian, who was brought up in comp churches / culture, I can say yes, that is true.

Though I started out noticing that comp teachings actually violate or contradict several passages in the Bible…

It wasn’t until I got older, like around my late 30s, that I started to notice that another reason complementarianism is faulty is that it does not and cannot truly take into account women of all ages and stations in life – it mainly deals with young married mothers.

If you are a never married woman, married- but- infertile, married- but- child- free (you don’t want kids), are elderly, kids moved out of the house, you are widowed, divorced – most complementarianism does not or cannot apply to you.

Some of their material will pay passing lip service to mature ladies, or the infertile, or the single, but 99% of their obsession is focused on wives, and mothers who have kids at home.

Since more and more women in the USA are arriving to their 40s with never having children, and more and more women are opting out of marriage, or want marriage but can’t find partners, or are not marrying until later in life, they too will start to notice how complementarianism isn’t relevant to their lives or spiritual beliefs.

The complementarians have not picked up on any of this, for the most part. All they do is fret that this is occuring, and yelling at the teen girls of today to marry by the age of 21 and have ten children.

Comps are doing nothing to help or minister to women who are single and childless over the age of 25 or 30. They are not addressing single / childless / childfree women in most of the material of theirs I’ve seen.

Complementarianism is damaging not only to married women, but to un-married women as well. It had negative ramifications on me, and I never married.
(I did a couple of posts about that at SSB in the “Encouraging Shift from Bethlehem Baptist Church Regarding Domestic Abuse and Care for Abused Women” thread.)

Comp can and does hold single ladies and teen-aged girls back in life too, but most of the focus on its problems goes into the topic of marriage.

Gram3 wrote:

You know, I wonder if it won’t happen rather suddenly. At some point, the abstract “woman” becomes “my daughter” or even “my wife” and then excluding women and not having a women’s even will become implausible and impossible to sustain.

There was some kind of poll or study released about a week ago that showed that the qualities some men want in a daughter are different from what they want in a wife.

The men surveyed said they don’t care so much if a daughter they have is sweet and pretty – they would prefer a daughter who is intelligent, tough, and independent.

But then, these same guys turn around and say beauty matters to them in a wife, they don’t really care if the wife is smart, independent, etc.

Something isn’t matching up, there.

If you are a man, the potential wife material you are looking at is another man’s daughter, after all. I don’t see how you can want a pretty but dumb, submissive wife, but then want to raise a daughter who is smart, tough, proud, independent and you would expect other men to want to marry your daughter.

Albuquerque Blue wrote:

I wonder why Buddhism isn’t growing like Judaism and Hinduism.

I think one reason is that Buddhism is not a strongly proselytising religion. Another factor here is that the popularity of Buddhism is distorted in the west by the easy appeal of “büdism” (note the umlaut) or “boodism” – the kind of faux-Buddhism professed by the fictitious Lisa Simpson who likes the comforting, middle-class pick-n-mix environmental spirituality that it offers.

Interestingly, we have over here an Anglican intellectual lassie by the name of Elaine Storkey, who hosted a very clear demonstration of this a few years ago. In brief, she invited two Tibetan monks to her church to give a talk on Buddhism – meaning, of course, real Buddhism. A lot of people who came expecting to hear a nice talk about a nice possibility for some nice gentle religion, experienced a rude awakening! Because, of course, to be an authentic Buddhist is no easy ride. I’m far from an expert, but I do know that Buddhist character grows out of years of patient self-discipline. A lesson that I wish a lot of hot-headed young Christian preachers (and Muslim militants) around the world would learn; their reputations are bigger than their characters and grow out of years of zealously disciplining other people.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Interestingly, we have over here an Anglican intellectual lassie by the name of Elaine Storkey

Nick, this is just the most hilarious description of her I’ve read.

Sporting news:

Tennis
Murray beats Nadal in the final of the Madrid Open. [Many people spray their drinks across the room] Naebdy saw that one coming, as Rafa has been on decent form this week; it’s Murray’s first Masters-level win on clay, and his first win over King Rafa on the surface as well. Though realistically, you’d have to say that Rafa remains favourite for Roland Garros.

Athletics
Ethiopian distance-running legend Haile Gebrselassie has today announced his retirement from competitive running at the end of the Great Manchester Run. After finishing in 16th place in the men’s 10k elite race, he returned to the start and ran the 10k non-elite race! Surprised fun-runners were queueing up for selfies with The Great Man, who duly obliged. Gebrselassie has always been popular in Blighty (I suspect he’s popular everywhere else too) and it is not hard to see why.

Fitba’
Following our draw away to Premiership-winners Chelsea, it is now all but mathematically impossible for Liverpool to qualify for the Champions’ League * – though realistically we were out of the running ages ago, when we lost at hame to Scumbagchester United.

Or “The Give-Us-Yer-Money Cup” as Jimmy Greaves called it

If I could ask for all your prayers this morning. I am in Frankfurt and not doing well. The Belgian/German railway systems were in a disaray from a strike yesterday and 8 train changes has killed my already bad back. ( many trains were cancelled or running way behind, so much for the legendary ” on time” German Rail System. We were lucky to make Frankfurt after 14 hrs on trains. ( Many times we were forced to stand on the train. Packed like sardines. We had assigned seats…..and other people were also assigned the same seats.)
My back was in so much pain last evening, I was vomiting.
Anyway, we are spending a couple of days to recoup and see what we may wind up doing.

@ K.D.:
Oh, owwwww. Get well soon xxx

In further other news:

Kevin Pieterson is currently 324 not out against Leicestershire, who are 529-9. The 10th-wicket partnership between Pieterson and Matthew Dunn has been worth 108. Dunn’s contribution? 5. (And, obviously, not getting out while Pieterson has scored like the clappers at the other end.)

It’s a funny old game…

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Another problem is that there is a complement now

Whoops. Never mind – I need to go and dig the garden the noo.

nwhiker wrote:

In re: to today’s link about “nones”. The article is stating that “nones” are those who have little or no place for religion in their life.
TWW seems to have discussed this previously with “nones” being those who have a strong personal faith but are not attached to a specific church/denomination usually due to frustration/disappointment in the hierarchy of the said church.

Perhaps the terminology is changing, but I thought there was a ‘none’ and also a ‘done’.

Since Tony Jones is so opposed to the First Amendment and those giving support to his ex-wife Julie is trying to silence Dee and Deb, Brad Sargent, other bloggers in the U.S. and Canada (David Hayward at The Naked Pastor in Canada and Bill Kinnon in Canada), why doesn’t Jones leave the United States for a country with zero free speech rights and give up his U.S. citizenship?

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs website:

“Renunciation of U.S. Nationality

A. THE IMMIGRATION & NATIONALITY ACT

Section 349(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (8 U.S.C. 1481(a)(5)) is the section of law governing the right of a United States citizen to renounce his or her U.S. citizenship. That section of law provides for the loss of nationality by voluntarily

“(5) making a formal renunciation of nationality before a diplomatic or consular officer of the United States in a foreign state , in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State”

B. ELEMENTS OF RENUNCIATION

A person wishing to renounce his or her U.S. citizenship must voluntarily and with intent to relinquish U.S. citizenship:
1.appear in person before a U.S. consular or diplomatic officer,
2.in a foreign country (normally at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate); and
3.sign an oath of renunciation

Renunciations that do not meet the conditions described above have no legal effect. Because of the provisions of Section 349(a)(5), U.S. citizens cannot effectively renounce their citizenship by mail, through an agent, or while in the United States. In fact, U.S. courts have held certain attempts to renounce U.S. citizenship to be ineffective on a variety of grounds, as discussed below

C. REQUIREMENT – RENOUNCE ALL RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES

A person seeking to renounce U.S. citizenship must renounce all the rights and privileges associated with such citizenships. In the case of Colon v. U.S. Department of State , 2 F.Supp.2d 43 (1998),the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected Colon’s petition for a writ of mandamus directing the Secretary of State to approve a Certificate of Loss of Nationality in the case because he wanted to retain the right to live in the United States while claiming he was not a U.S. citizen.

I just took another read of the letter that Tony Jones’ lawyer sent his ex-wife Julie, ordering her to remove blog posts and to communicate with bloggers. For those of you that don’t know how this works, Tony Jones’ family lawyer drafted the Order and got a judge to sign it. I don’t believe that Julie has legal counsel right now to represent her and to fend it off.

But it’s not the judge who drafted the Order, Tony Jones’ lawyer did.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Messenger had already far exceeded its expected one-year mission lifetime,

That’s one of the things that continue to amaze me – that most of these space probes keep working a lot longer than their projected lifetimes. And even those are often extremely long: The Voyager 1 and 2 probes are expected to work until 2025.

And they were launched in ’77. That’s almost half a century. Half a century before that we didn’t even have surface to surface ballistic missiles.

@ Albuquerque Blue:

LORRI is well within 40 megamiles now – all being well, they’ll look even better soon. I await with interest as, no doubt, do you!

@ Gus:

Agreed. The computational power that put men on the moon (and there is an excellent website called clavius.org debunking the conspiracy theories brick-by-brick) could now fit in a pinhead.

Although, when things go wrong, they tend to go very wrong indeed; like the probe that crashed into Mars not long ago because of the metric/imperial units confusion. I’d love to have been in the meeting at which that was first realised. #yourekiddingright?

So there’s been some fairly awful events. Thought I’d share some music that fights the awful with something beautiful.

Bright Eyes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a502RejLz8s
Light and Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX4cgukN0DI
When You’re Falling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXDDFUrcU4o

This is the secular example of a bill of goods being sold as one thing which is exactly the opposite of the actual product. Who would not be in favor of modernizing air traffic control, increase flight safety, and decreased carbon emissions? How could that possibly be a bad thing?

Our own FAA is subjecting countless people, including children, to excessive aircraft noise and collision hazard resulting from their new fly-by-wire air traffic control system, NextGen which is being rolled out gradually to the 20 ATC centers. The flight paths for climbout and approach have been altered, and densely-populated areas are being pounded by aircraft which used to climb out and approach over less densely-populated rural or industrial zones but which now go either low and slow or low and accelerating over the densely-populated areas which to this point had been intentionally avoided due to the impact on people of low aircraft noise. People report that it sounds like the Blue Angels or an air show is flying over their living rooms and bedrooms. Your kids and grandkids will not be able to just leave the building where the health-damaging noise is, because the building is your own home and yard and school and park. If you fly anywhere controlled by the FAA, you have been placed at immensely greater risk without your knowledge and without your input.

The folks in Phoenix, New York, Baltimore, Charlotte, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other places see clearly that the selling point of “environmentally responsible” and “safer” are false. Your city may be next on the list, and unless you are at least 50-60 nautical miles from your airport, you may be in line for this. Your fellow citizens and neighbors certainly will suffer from this debacle.

Aircraft are now permitted to fly nose-to-nose and right on top of one another as a practical matter. This is just coming to the attention of people because the word is just getting out about what is going on and why things have suddenly changed. This is a prime case of regulatory capture, in my humble estimation. It is the Obamacare implementation flying over your head. Google NextGen. I was appalled by this totally covert taking by the FAA, or at least I consider it a taking, though I am not a lawyer and have not heard whether the 5th amendment is still in effect. No hearings were held. It was entirely under the table and is a wealth and safety transfer from citizens to the airlines. Pewpeons who pay and Leaders who take. Same story, different setting.

The FAA has also changed the horizontal and vertical separation between planes and recalculated the wake turbulence of various aircraft to greatly lessen the margins of safety. I’m not talking about little changes, either. I’m talking about horizontal separation that has been cut by 2/3. Now 1 nautical mile. Vertical separation is now less than 1000 feet. Consider this in light of Friday’s near-miss at LaGuardia between an aircraft and a drone which could have ended with a great loss of life on the plane and on the ground. Wake turbulence has been rejiggered to make it possible for the aircraft to fly closer together on takeoff by eliminating the safety margins that were put into place due to the Queens crash in October 2001, IIRC. We are supposed to believe that all of these changes were made in secret with no notice or hearings in the interest of “safety” and “environmental” concerns. Those were the selling points. But the real reason is that the airlines want to operate more flights on smaller aircraft to regional airports. So, if you live near a regional airport with occasional traffic, get ready. There is no net savings of fuel, and the PR that the FAA is putting out is patently false and misleading. The fuel “savings” are calculated based on current flight schedules and not on the increased flights which are anticipated from these “safety and environmental enhancements and modernization.” It is a total lie, and people are being harmed by this thuggery.

People all over our country are just realizing what has taken place because the media has not been reporting this with the sole exception of isolated reports on CBS. People wondered why planes were suddenly flying continuously overhead when they rarely heard them before. And they are waking up and organizing.

Beware of people who sell you things with labels that are attractive. Peace and Safety and Environmental Responsibility are actually No Peace, Much less Safety, and increased noise pollution, particulate pollution, and carbon emissions. You have to read between the lines of the PR releases and you need to heed the stories of those who have been abused by the System, which in this case is Regulatory Capture.

Albuquerque Blue wrote:

So there’s been some fairly awful events. Thought I’d share some music that fights the awful with something beautiful.

Thanks for posting those songs. Lovely!

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

In other news, I believe the time is ripe for the introduction of hashtags on TWW. #amicoolorwhat

Hi Nick,

What do you suppose “God”‘s hashtag(s) would be?

Cheers from California,

“Velour”, sister in Christ to “Satin” (sic)/daughter of “Stan”(sic)/aka Dee!

@ Bill M:
[Nathan] Poe’s Law: parodies of fundamentalism are indistinguishable from sincere expressions of fundamentalism.

@ Albuquerque Blue:

Maybe the Tleilaxu bio-engineers spoken of in the sci-fi of the Herbert men (both the elder and the younger) are not that far off eh?

“Sounds like an awfully good game there John. But to use a metaphor, why do I get this gnawing feeling that if I schlepped myself over to your site kinda’ sorta’ like a wandering medieval Jew in say Krakow or Prague, I might be allowed a money changing booth next to a brothel for a time, and when my usefulness has expired (as in disagreement with a tribal Schtick) , I’d wind up outside the city gates on me arse?”

John is a professed free enterprise person. I would sell my ideas if they were worth anything. I have always thought that was the American way. You can read there for free, too.

I don’t really understand this preoccupation and criticism of him. He puts his ideas forth and we are free to engage or not. Buy his book or not. Someone brought him up here and he responded.

Bill M wrote:

Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness wrote:

Poe’s Law: parodies of fundamentalism are indistinguishable from sincere expressions of fundamentalism.

This can also be used for much that comes from politicians.

Easy there, sonny boy.

One more thing about the Duggars: I am appalled at their attacks on the woman police chief of Springdale, Arkansas, who complied with Arkansas law’s/Freedom of Information Act and produced a redacted police report to a news agency, as she was required to do.

The Duggars decided to blame the police chief for their son’s problems and family’s problems. They decided to say nasty things about her. That’s un-Christian and we aren’t supposed to do it.

Those parents are arrogant. They are to blame for putting their family on national tv and for this whole thing. They mishandled their son Josh’s sexual abuse of at least five victims, four of his sisters and Victim No. 5 a babysitter.

The Duggar parents have emboldened their son Josh every step of the way. How did Josh get the money and the temerity and an attorney to sue an Arkansas social services agency that investigated him for sexual abuse?

The Duggars, under Arkansas law, could have lost the ability to homeschool their children due to Josh’s sexual abuse.

That family is always trying to play the blame game and get special perks. Simply disgusting. The outrage about them from around the world is deserving.

Michaela wrote:

They are to blame for putting their family on national tv

I haven’t seen a whole lot of good emanate from couples or families who participate in reality tv. I truly don’t understand the people who participate and those who watch (oh rats, memory has kicked in, I must be having cognitive dissonance, because I do watch “Hoarders” and any extreme cleaning type of show). The Duggars and Kardashians don’t count.

Haitch wrote:

And in other news from the other side of the pond:
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/hillsong-church-cancels-pastor-mark-driscolls-australian-visit-after-backlash-20150607-ghijl9.html

Oh, that’s good news for a Sunday morning! Thanks, Haitch!

Lydia wrote:

I am a big time privacy person so I don’t understand these types at all.

It’s always amazing to me that these types want the spotlight until it shines on something embarrassing (or illegal). Then they become privacy types.

Bill gothard
Mark Driscoll
The Duggars

Was going to put Bill Clinton, but he was only a politician. Not the lowest of the low who claim special favor with God.

@ Lydia:

That IS brilliant.

Bilbo Skaggins wrote:

@ Lydia:

That IS brilliant.

So brilliant I told my family about it when we were out hiking this afternoon!
We all had a good laugh. Thanks, Lydia!

Completely off-topic, but please bear with me… Is there anybody here from Ohio (or knowledgeable about Ohio) that may help me?

Last week I was told that I will be soon travelling to the USA (First time ever!) to meet with a company that is working with us in a research project… I will be staying in a place called Hudson, north of Akron (by the way, apparently Akron is the rubber capital of the world or something like that) and south from Cleveland. I’ll be busy with work from Monday 15th until Thursday 18th of June.

Anyway, I thought that I could extend my stay a couple of days, do a little sightseeing and return to the UK during the weekend… Could you recommend any interesting places to visit in Ohio or in nearby states? I’ve also considered visiting New York or other far away cities, but if I do that I will end up spending too much time in a plane… And, believe me, flying from and to the UK in a week is enough for me.

Martos, try this:

http://www.ohio.gov/tourism/

@ Martos:

Also, if you head about an hour south from Hudson you will find a large Amish population. They have catered to tourists quite a bit (and some “Amish made” stuff isn’t), but I have visited this working Amish Farm with guests from out of town and it is pretty accurate, even if a tourist setup. I think of it as an informational field trip. The Amish that work there are truly Amish and they are very kind and love to answer questions.

http://thefarmatwalnutcreek.com/

has, not had, the NFL Hall of Fame.

@ Martos:

“Born and raised in NE Ohio” mentioned some good things. If you head south through Akron on the highway (I think it’s I-76) you will see the hangar in which they keep the Goodyear blimp(s). It looks like a giant inverted ship hull. I have no idea if they have tours, but I am told it sometimes has its own clouds due to its size. Be that an urban legend or not, it is a huge structure and now if you drive past, you will know what it is.

Bilbo Skaggins wrote:

Anyone watch the Driscoll sermon at James River Church?

I didn’t.

I hope this is helpful.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
I already make a hash of enough posts not to want this additional burden, thank you very much …

@ Martos:
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs. Great city, tons to do. Totally recommend it. Fantastic museums if that’s your thing. Amazing architecture.

@ Albuquerque Blue:
Oh and be sure to eat at Portillos while there.

Albuquerque Blue wrote:

@ Lydia:
Say what you want about Slick Willy (and you’re spoiled for choice), the man is an amazing politician. That’s brilliant.

Is that a compliment for him? (wink)

@ Bilbo Skaggins:

We aim to please!

(I should add that “we” refers to the community here; I wasn’t trying to use the royal plural…)

In other news, the Dawn space probe is now in an orbit approximately 4,400 kilometers from the surface of Ceres. Researchers are no closer in determining what those ‘bright’ spots are in the floor of one of her large craters. However, one of the chief scientists on the project says that water ice is probably the best candidate for explanation right now because of its high reflectivity.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

We aim to please!
(I should add that “we” refers to the community here; I wasn’t trying to use the royal plural…)

🙂 and I really enjoy the community here because it is much more diverse than the one I grew up in.

@ numo:

My daughter in law went to the Art Institute in Chicago and said it was great. She brought back some children’s T shirts with the museum’s identifier on them, so we decked out the kiddies and sent them off to school looking like maybe they had been there. That is called a poor man’s trip to Chicago.

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Michaela wrote:

Hi Nick,
What do you suppose “God”‘s hashtag(s) would be?

Sorry, Michaela – missed this one.

I’m speculating, of course, but it might be something like #ikeeptellingthosementogetrealjobsbuttheywontlisten

Utterly brilliant…

Nick Bulbeck wrote:

Michaela wrote:

Hi Nick,
What do you suppose “God”‘s hashtag(s) would be?

Sorry, Michaela – missed this one.

I’m speculating, of course, but it might be something like #ikeeptellingthosementogetrealjobsbuttheywontlisten

Good one, Nick!

Just a random thought I had:

Saul went around having Christians thrown in jail before he became Paul – do we ever get a hint of him trying to right those wrongs after his conversion? Wouldn’t that be a part of repentance?

BTW, just read an article on Piper’s tweet from April: “The Bible says there are men who rape and women who seduce. United in sin, distinct in form.”

(Great article at http://fiddlrts.blogspot.co.at/2015/04/john-piper-steps-in-it-on-rape-and-sex.html )

Piper is getting weirder – and more dangerous – by the day.

Chèr Sopy
Vous serez dans mes prières.
Que le Bon Dieu vous bénisse.
Salut
Estelle

@ Gus:

We could do rounds on Piper weird tweets. I am still amazed he admits he listened to Eliz Elliot teach!!!

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/peaches-in-paradise

He has to be the most confusing -contradictory man in all of Christendom. Well, I guess it is ok because he is under his own authority. :o)

Sopy,

Sorry to hear about the medical issues you are dealing with. I will be praying for a full recovery along with peace to you and yours.

Praying for you, Sopy!

Sopy, your friends here are praying for you. Thanks for all you contribute here and for reminding us to keep Jesus first!

Oh, sopy. Sorry to hear that. Stay in touch. We don’t want to lose touch with you.

Sopy, I’ve said a prayer for you too. I hope this all works out satisfactorily.

In other news, New Horizons is now within a fifth of an AU of Pluto. This is equivalent to around 100 billion standard pieces of spaghetti laid end to end.

I hope this is helpful. #uselesscomparisons

@ Nick Bulbeck:
Mind=blown. Always down for those sorts of comparisons.

Can’t wait for Pluto’s closeups. It’s done well for a planetoid.

Sopy, so sorry to hear your news. You are in my prayers.

@ Nick Bulbeck:
That is so great that Philae woke up early.

Seriously… Lifting up Sopwith to da gracious Heavenly Father in prayer.

The SBC just keeps getting wierder and weirder:

http://sbcvoices.com/breaking-news-james-mcdonald-and-harvest-church-are-southern-baptist/

Basically, the typical pastor response is: Yes, he has done/said some pretty bad things but he preaches a great sermon! Oh, and he is bringing 13,000 more people to the SBC! (which they did not vote on, btw)

@ Muff Potter:

Not sure, Muff. He has only been on my radar for the last 6 years or so. But this is an interesting move after all his scandalabras…especially his cozy relationship with Driscoll before his grand fall. What kills me is how he can simply decide that 13,000 people are now SBC. I blame the 13,000 people who still think he has any credibility at all.

But in the celeb pastor game, all one has to do is say “I repent” and we are mean if we bring anything up.

Sopy, one of my favourite songs for you (Sting: Whenever I Say Your Name)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PLmyPUp7VI

@ Estelle:

The Almighty puts on the best light shows there ever was. Hands down. If you trace the ecliptic line Eastward you’ll see that Saturn is close to the pincers of Scorpio with Antares down and to the left of her.

Wow, Tullian really threw his wife under the bus with that “statement” crafted and released the Washington Post. “She sinned first and made me eat the fruit”!

@ Andy:
@ Lydia:
@ Muff Potter:

I was sad to hear about Tchividjian. I have been listening to a lot of Lutheran preachers lately and he was friendly to that doctrine, it seems, even if he is a Calvanist or YRR or whatever. I have come to the point of just waiting for the next scandal, though so I wasn’t too surprised. I am glad he resigned. It shows me that he somehow is owning his sin, or at least being held accountable. Here’s hoping he doesn’t show up in less than a year ready to preach as if nothing happened. Like all the rest of the fallen mega pastors.

@ Muff Potter:

I have got to read that book. Great passage! Yeah, Tullian should have kept his mouth shut about her. It had all the earmarks of revenge and blame.

I have never been a fan of Tullian’s because I have this aversion to anything celebrity preachery. And he screamed celebrity cool pastor in it for the fame/ money– in all respects to me.

His statement “prepared for the WaPo” seems to totally negate the concept of Grace he was big on teaching all the time. He often bragged about doing nothing “good”. So why not give his wife a pass with what he taught?

It makes NO sense to me.

Bilbo Skaggins wrote:

I fail to believe that he was powerless against the temptation because of her sin.

I have been through marital discord and separation and divorce. The thing I read that TT said is that he turned to a female friend for consolation. I want to say two things. When one is betrayed one can be desperate for some sort of affirmation from the opposite sex. It is a howling need at that time. Now I think he should have known that, and maybe should not as a married man had that close a relationship with some woman that he could turn to her for consolation, and where were his men friends when he needed them. Lots of mistakes were made. That does not excuse any of it, but I can understand how something like that happens unless one is fanatically cautious at such a time.

IMO there is more to the story, and I am just as happy if they take it off front page and solve it privately. Enough harm has been done as it is.

@ Muff Potter:
Thanks, Muff. I’ll check it out, may have to stand on my head to follow your directions, I’m in the southern hemisphere.

@ Okrapod:

I get your point. To be clear, I in no way was trying to kick TT while he is down. I hope the best for him and his family. I was only commenting on his mentioning his wife’s transgressions first. I also was thinking about Joseph and how he would not succumb to Potiphar’s wife in her advances. He was basically her slave, but he said he could not sin against God. May I have that strength if ever put in a compromising situation with the opposite sex. Though, I admit, women are not stumbling over each other to get to me. Lol.

Okrapod wrote:

When one is betrayed one can be desperate for some sort of affirmation from the opposite sex. It is a howling need at that time. Now I think he should have known that, and maybe should not as a married man had that close a relationship with some woman that he could turn to her for consolation, and where were his men friends when he needed them.

I have not been betrayed in that way, but when I was betrayed I was desperate for affirmation. So what you say makes a lot of sense. I think it is exactly why Billy Graham had the policy that he did. It was not, as some here have suggested, a legalistic rule for others, but rather one that he had for his own protection from his own human nature, for protection from possibly predatory women and for the protection of the ministry. It was a matter of prudence and wisdom, considering the reality of human nature, and not a matter of law for everyone else to follow in every circumstance. I think Billy has been misunderstood on this point.

@ Muff Potter:

Did he continue as a pilot when he got out? I am often amazed to read how many trained as pilots for the war but then did something totally different when they got out. Anyway, God bless him for what a tyrant forced so many to do.

Gram3 wrote:

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
Do you think that the concerns of those on the religious right who worried about this decision leading to coercion of religious belief and practice are unwarranted? In other words, was this about securing equal rights or was it about securing the rights of some? I’m curious because I’ve seen reactions from libertarians who say that they like the result but that the process and the things that will flow out of this do not favor religious liberty.
In reading some here, I wonder if people are as concerned about the totalist left as they are about the totalist right? Is there a way to preserve freedom of conscience as well? We oppose authoritarianism in the church, but do we oppose authoritarianism from government, too?

When anti-marriage equality Christians work to keep same-sex couples from having the recognition of civil marriage (and decades before that, any protection at all from police brutality and government persecution), is there something that makes their position not a form of coercion of religious views? To your point specifically, is that issue inseparable from the question of whether churches should be forced to marry people whom they object to marrying?

In fact, churches are still not required to marry interracial couples, or divorced couples, or any other couples they don’t want to marry. And for what it’s worth, I fully support churches having the freedom to refuse to marry (or hire) anyone that they do not believe they should marry (or employ), and while I celebrate the SCOTUS’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, I would oppose any attempt to force churches to marry people against their consciences.

To the implied question of whether the SCOTUS should have ruled on the matter or left it up to a vote of the people, I do not agree that it was authoritarian for them to rule on this, given that it was a question of equal protection for civil rights, and I do not believe that civil rights for a minority have any business being put up to a vote of the majority. It took the Supreme Court’s action in cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia to protect civil rights when majorities in the states in question were unwilling to correct injustices purely through the legislative process. With an airtight argument, I might be convinced that the Supreme Court overreached in the case at hand, but good luck, because it won’t be easy…

Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness wrote:

In fact, churches are still not required to marry interracial couples, or divorced couples, or any other couples they don’t want to marry.

That does not mean that changes may not be in the offing. Both the counsel for the gov at the hearing and Justice Roberts have talked about how this might affect a church’s tax exemption. It is does, and whether one thinks that churches should have tax exemption or not, this nevertheless would be attempts at coercion. So, yes, the thought has crossed some minds.

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:

I agree with Okrapod, this goes right to the very heart of how we govern ourselves and it has been evolving for years to which party holds the majority on the unelected SC. This is such dangerous ground as it really is a precursor to Oligarchy. Governing ourselves is a messy business and it is about having debates in the public square and voting. And what if this gone through the ratification of an amended Constitution? The process would have been horribly messy and divisive but at the same time involve the actual citizens. That is part of being able to govern ourselves. Being grown ups.

As a civil libertarian I have no problem with marriage for homosexuals. And yet, I do not understand this need for people to be so scared of a debate yet thrilled at the prospect of a few unelected appointees deciding for us on these issues. That is a dangerous slippery slope.

I think what happens is we get all emotional about an issue and therefore cannot see past the issue and take a good look at how the processes employed might end up being our worst nightmare one day. That is where this is headed.

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
word.

Lydia wrote:

One of the problems with this sort of argument is that the Gay Lobby in America is quite wealthy and very well connected to media and government. Those representing this Lobby are in the top percentage of income earners in America. And they have the ear of the elite in media, business and government. And they have hijacked the plight of African Americans as their own— which has not helped their cause for “civil rights”.

So is this connected to the “gay agenda”? LOL!

They are not the same issues. But every time this is discussed someone brings in police brutality and government persecution. While there might be pockets of this (for other non gay people too) happening it is by no means even in the same league as the civil rights movement and all leading up to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_violence_against_LGBT_people_in_the_United_States

And that only goes back to 1970. Come again, please?

Okrapod wrote:

So the issue is way beyond just gay marriage in this case. It is, like Justice Scalia said, about who rules the nation and is it just the majority of the supreme court. Is the court a legislative body? The dissenting opinions make some interesting reading, what I have read so far. Do we need an oligarchy in which a few unelected persons legislate from the bench? Is it legitimate for the court to basically say that here is an important issue so we are going to do this. Note that Justice Roberts said this is not about the constitution in this ruling. Then read what Justice Kennedy said about freedom and see where you think he would draw the line, based on his own comments.

Yes, well said. It is a much bigger issue than same-sex marriage, though I understand if you are gay and want to marry, then it certainly is a big deal and it is tempting to want to put that in place by any means. But there are always unintended consequences when things are pushed through on a results-based method where the only thing in view can be the desired result with no unintended consequences.

For me, the issues are much broader than even the Supreme Court. They are whether or not people can be free to dissent from the elites of whatever kind. Can a little person still be free, or are we only to serve our betters?

I am also interested in where the bright line is now drawn. Is polygamy legitimate or not, and if not, why not? What is the decision principle?

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:

Josh, I am not reading organized ingrained persecution or brutality there as it was for African Americans.

In the case of “hate crimes” I will relate a incident of a friend of mine who was a property manager. She had to bar some teens from a pool because of their behavior. They were a mixed group who had given her a very hard time for 2 years. One day, she found her car vandalized with all sorts of “white slang” insults carved into the paint.

She called the police who came out but upon seeing her told her to call insurance as it could not be a hate crime because she is white.

So what do we do with that?

All of this is being overcomplicated. Now we have “worse” crimes simply because of whom they are perpetuated upon. Are they lesser crimes if perpetuated on others who do not fit the category? Are those victims not as worthy? Hate is hate for whatever reason.

Sorry, I’m having a hard time following the discussions from every different angle. I’m going to address Lydia’s issue with persecution one more time, and then I’m done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_the_United_States

When police are constantly raiding places where LGBT people gather, harassing, beating, arresting, and imprisoning them, with the full force of the law behind their actions, and you choose to pretend that it wasn’t an issue, then I have no words. I’m not trying to say that LGBT people had it worse than black people, or even that the treatment was equivalent. But you just want to brush the history away, as if it was a minuscule issue and doesn’t really matter. Good night!

Gram3 wrote:

There are some here who have expressed concern about Reconstructionists gaining power and the resulting infringements of liberty that they would impose. My question is, if those Reconstructionists gained sufficient power that they were able to push through their agenda using the Supreme Court, would it be OK? If that hypothetical Supreme Court ruled that magistrates could force attendance at Sunday services using civil or criminal penalties, would that be OK?
I do not think it would be OK. In my opinion, we need to separate the instant issue with the way that we go about resolving that issue. There can be a tyranny of the minority as well as a tyranny of the majority. Tyranny by either is still tyranny.

I see your point on that.

I am also interested in where the bright line is now drawn. Is polygamy legitimate or not, and if not, why not? What is the decision principle?

I’m not arguing for polygamy, but I would say that traditional polygamy is not based on a relationship of equals, so there is the matter of consent, which is a huge deal [that is often overlooked when people compare same-sex relationships between adults to pedophilia]. A modernized polygamy between three or more equals creates what to me, as a non-lawyer, seems like it would be a legal nightmare. How do you handle inheritance in the case of the death of one partner? What happens when a man who married two women dies? Do the wives remain married to each other, even if they’re [presumably] both straight and were most significantly connected to the deceased (but assuming that they still love each other in some sense, because the husband would have decided in concert with his first wife to include the second, because remember equality…). But I digress, and my head is hurting now. Point is, I’m sure as heck not arguing for it, but if someone wanted to, and had a framework to address the myriad of legal questions, they could put it forward. I have to say that there’s less Biblical support for banning polygamy than there is for banning same-sex relationships…

Gram3 wrote:

I’m not making a slippery slope argument. I’m asking a question about what the real issue is. Is the real issue that gay couples can be married with a marriage license like a man and a woman, or is the real issue that we must all bend to the Gay Orthodoxy? I do not at all mean that to you personally, but rather to what is really in play here.
The fact is that businesses were fined and harassed because the owners did not want to participate *only* in a wedding celebration. Those businesses were perfectly willing to serve those gay customers for other occasions or no occasion at all. But their consciences were violated, in my view, and unnecessarily so.

I see the issue as being about the rights, responsibilities, and protections under the law of a civil marriage certificate. That was the issue that was resolved yesterday. The remaining issue of protection of religious freedom is an important one, and one that even amongst LGBT people there is disagreement (falling somewhat predictably on party lines, it seems to me). I’m not inclined to force someone to sell me a product that they don’t want to sell me (even though it’s a product that they already sell to everyone else … this isn’t the straw man of the Gentiles wanting the Jewish deli to sell them ham), because I don’t think there’s a productive path from being antagonistic on an individual level.

That said, I would appreciate some protection on the basis of sexual orientation (n.b. not relationship status, but core orientation) for housing and employment. Right now, in many states, you can be kicked out of a rental property or fired merely for being found out to be gay (never mind being in a relationship, “rubbing it in someone’s face,” or anything of that nature). If people are protected from being fired on the basis of their religion, which they choose, I feel that there’s a place to argue for protection on the basis of orientation, which I most assuredly did not choose (though now that I’ve accepted who I am, I really don’t mind it, except for that whole worrying about being discriminated against, because employment discrimination still happens on that basis).

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
First I want to thank you for responding. I know that this is a deeply personal issue and involves things which I have no way of knowing.

The problem, as I see it, with your approach to the polygamy question is that it deals with the consequences rather than the principle of “who should be permitted to marry and why.” You also mentioned consent, and I think that is very, very important. But the practical objections you raise to polygamy can also be raised WRT to gay marriage, so that cannot be the way we draw a line if we want to be consistent. And if we are to be a nation governed by laws and not persons, then we need to try to be consistent.

There are currently polygamous marriages where there is consent, as far as we know. So that argues in favor of polygamous marriages, at least in the civil sphere. I think that the OT polygamy is not what God intended marriage to be, but he made provision for the hardness of human hearts, and a polygamous marriage was possibly better than the other available options which resulted from the free exercise of sinful human will.

The WaPo had an article to day that the ACLU will no longer defend the RFRA because of CakeGate and PizzaGate and HobbyLobbyGate. So, that lends some credence, ISTM, to those who say that civil gay marriage is not really about rights for individuals but is rather about forcing compliance to a thought regime.

As a practical matter, we need to figure out how to live together in a pluralistic society. I think that means that we respect each other’s consciences as a paramount right, possibly second only to protection of life itself. It also means not capitulating to those who wish to silence our voices and also not being unnecessarily provocative in the pursuit of our human rights.

In other words, I would like to see a solution for our civil society which embodies mutual respect and neighbor love rather than coercive acts against the consciences and religious convictions of our citizens. I think we need to find a way to triage civil rights, and we need to think about the best way to go about securing them.

I see a tremendous erosion in fruitful discussion in the public sphere. There is no room to hold positions other than polar opposite ones. For example, on campuses today there is hysteria over rape culture. Because of that, no one is allowed to bring up the necessity in our society of due process for the accused at the same time as they discuss attitudes toward sexuality and sexism. People are not allowed to say anything against the prevailing orthodoxy of “all males are rapists until they can prove otherwise and even then we will still say they are guilty because men are rapists.” If anyone goes against the prevailing orthodoxy, then they lose their jobs which is tied to funding which is tied to enforcement mechanisms in the federal government. I see this as another form of tyranny, and it is especially alarming that it is happening in our universities where ideas should be freely debated and expressed. We used to be able to do that. We used to have a lot more freedom in so many ways.

@ Josh, Doctor of Pulchritudinousness:
I believe the church has been wrong about the issue of sexual orientation and other related issues. I have been wrong, and I am very sorry that I did not understand because I did not need to understand. However, I’m older now, and I realize that we live in a world where things are not like God designed and intended them to be. Someday, I believe this world will be even better than the original creation. That is my speculation only. No exegesis for that at all. My body does not function the way that God intended bodies to function, so when I say something really stupid, then please assume I’m having a bad brain/body day.

That said, I think it is also a mistake to normalize the way we do not reflect God’s design and intention and his expressed will regarding the way we should conduct ourselves. Honestly, I think that too many on both sides of all things sexual make this about “how I am” which is equated to “what is good.” That can be used to justify all kinds of things such as, I believe you pointed out, serial marriages, abusive heterosexual marriages, sex outside of marriage, etc. The thing is, we will defend and excuse things which we should not defend and excuse. I think it is possible to acknowledge that many or probably most of us have not met God’s expectations and it is much easier to point at someone else’s issues and talk about those than to face our own.

So, Josh, I’m truly sorry about the way that you have been treated and thought of for nothing you did but rather the way things are. I confess that it was not my problem so I, in effect, said it is not a problem for anyone. I think that people who press on and do the right thing under all kinds of trying circumstances should be praised and not condemned. I also think that does not mean that we just say that everything is OK. Everyone is loved and valued and should not be blamed for what they have not done. But each of us, IMO, is responsible for what we choose to do.

And I think that the church should be a reflection of Jesus Christ, and in that way should be light to our society just as some Christians have been throughout history. I do not think that the institutional church and the state should be interfering with one another.

@ numo:
Sects. Stupid Android keyboard!

@ Gram3:
Canada has had same-sex marriage for nearly 10 years now – anniversary is next month.

Still nothing close to either social and moral collapse up there, let alone polygamy.

This is true in other countries where same-sex marriage is legal.

@ numo:
I haven’t made the social collapse argument since I don’t believe that America is God’s theocratic nation. At one time, no one would have questioned whether “marriage” referred to other than one man and one woman at one time. Even gay people. It was just assumed. That has now changed, and I am asking what governing principle will prevent polygamists from seeking affirmation of their choices as well. That seems to be essentially what Justice Kennedy’s opinion rested upon. The people making the “social collapse” argument say there is a slippery slope, and I’m asking where the off-ramp is and why.

A secondary question is whether a desired end supersedes our usual procedure for legislating social goals, and if so, under what conditions?

numo wrote:

Canada has had same-sex marriage for nearly 10 years now – anniversary is next month.

I don’t know much about Canada’s political climate, but as a result of another issue I’m working on, I discovered that Ontario has enacted tyrannical requirements for wind turbines which obliterated the rights of local governments and citizens to decide what their lives will be like in their towns and farms. In addition, the electricity rates have nearly tripled (I have not verified this but it is reasonable) because of the mandatory economic arrangements between the wind operators and the utilities. This, as usual, falls hardest on the poorest for whom energy is a huge and necessary expense.

Meanwhile, people have had to leave their own land because the noise pollution has become unbearable. This was pushed through supposedly because Green is now necessary at all costs. The fact is that a very few well-connected people became obscenely rich while the middle class and poor suffer because…Green. That is how an idea–Green–can be used to sell policies which have huge unintended and enormously harmful consequences. The usual safeguards were totally circumvented by the elites in Toronto and imposed on the little people. That is an example of tyranny, IMO.

numo wrote:

@ Gram3:
That is unrelated to their Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage back in 2005.

That is not the point of what I wrote which is tyranny by government which infringes on liberties of people and which is covered by “good reasons.” The idea of marriage equality is the “good reason” which I believe may have unintended consequences that have not been explored because it is politically incorrect to discuss those unintended consequences. Just as it is politically incorrect to suggest in most conservative churches that being born with same-sex attraction is not the worst thing in the world.

I am trying to discern the principle here and why that same principle might not apply in other circumstances which we might not think are good.

Gram3 wrote:

I am trying to discern the principle here and why that same principle might not apply in other circumstances which we might not think are good.

A whole lot of folks are saying that the same principle will apply and that cases will be brought in other areas but that it remains to see what the judiciary will do. Both polygamy and incest laws have been mentioned as possible area of concern. IMO, there is less biblical reason to oppose polygamy that there is to oppose gay marriage for those going that route. And what we know now about genetics including the tests available could make some medical arguments against incestuous reproduction no longer as convincing as before. Again, the biblical arguments against incest, including the minority opinion that some NT comments about divorce are confined to discovery of consanguinity during the betrothal period are pretty slim arguments. Theoretically age of consent laws could be questioned. Around here folks just go to SC to get around some age of consent issues but this is not an area that would totally be immune from re-examining the laws.

(to be continued)

@ Okrapod:
This isssue, along with the woman issue highlights the weakness, IMO, of hierarchical polity. There isn’t any room for a local pewpeon, priest, or bishop to have a difference on any matter from the guy above. What you gain from connection you lose by connection. So much for polity/doctrine being the cure for humanity.

There was, IIRC, a big deal with some priests or bishops in the Anglican church over ordaining a female bishop, IIRC. So, what does a priest or pewpeon with sincere convictions on this do? The shoe was on the other foot several decades ago with people with sincere convictions in favor of female ordination. In both these cases, ISTM, the consciences of subordinates has been violated by their superiors with the only difference being the opinion of the superiors which has changed.

I guess my question is why secondary issues in the church cannot be secondary issues and why individual consciences in the civil sphere must always yield to the elites as well, with the possibility of any discussion of the implications taken off the table because it is politically incorrect to have a different viewpoint.

In our greater civil sphere, it is now impossible to have a discussion about any controversy without being labeled as someone who hates XYZ Sacred Cow or is against XYZ Sacred Policy. I’m not just talking about the gay marriage issue. For example, lately the panic has been to erase the Confederate Battle flag. I, for one, think it was wise to remove the flag flying over governmental buildings due to one important aspect of its symbolism, but is it wise to erase history? ISTM that we should be able to have a discussion about what it means, what it meant, where we were, where we are now, and where we want to be. I think there are places to land between the poles, but those seem to have been taken off the table. For the record, my people came from both sides of that conflict, particularly the ones from Tennessee where it was a very divisive issue.

I’m not for tyranny of the majority (the power of the mob) or for tyranny of the minority (like an oligarchy.)

@ Okrapod:
Yes, those are definitely weaknesses of the congregational/independent polity. That was pretty much my point. People will decide what to do, and thankfully we all have that option nowadays! What if a bishop is ordered to do something that violates his/her conscience? Is the answer for that bishop to form another church thereby violating the connectional aspect of their denomination, or is it to silence his/her conscience? That is a question, and not a rhetorical statement, because I can see people going both ways. Is it possible for a denomination to allow individual churches/pastors/priests to differ on secondary issues? Obviously, an ostensibly big tent like the SBC has made it impossible to disagree on secondary issues. 🙂

@ Gram3:

The Anglican Communion is much larger than just The Episcopal Church. There are various options already in existence for people including here in the US to be part of some other group already functioning as part of the Anglican Communion but not TEC. I an not up to date as to how many there are, but I know there are some out there, including one in my town just down the road. I am thinking that a bishop or priest would have options just like the laity have options but I don’t know what that would entail to get it done.

Lydia wrote:

Did he continue as a pilot when he got out? I am often amazed to read how many trained as pilots for the war but then did something totally different when they got out. Anyway, God bless him for what a tyrant forced so many to do.

More men were lost in the air war over Germany than the combined losses of Sailors & Marines in the Pacific. My Dad was glad to have beaten the odds. He returned home, mustered out, and had no more desire to fly.

Muff Potter wrote:

More men were lost in the air war over Germany than the combined losses of Sailors & Marines in the Pacific. My Dad was glad to have beaten the odds. He returned home, mustered out, and had no more desire to fly.

I did not know that about the losses in the air war. He sounds like many of them that made it— they had their fill. My uncle was in the Bulge sharing a foxhole with two other guys who were shot at the same time. He told God (did not ask!) that if he got out alive he would buy his parents farm and not leave. And he did.

Okrapod wrote:

The orthopedic surgeon does not argue with the ophthalmologist as to what to do about the patient’s eyes, for example. This is a hierarchy of knowledge and I am really comfortable with that. I would not be comfortable with a committee vote with the members of the committee being representative of everybody who had anything to do with the patient all the way down to the housekeeping supervisor.

I think that we all draw our models from our experience, so I think I understand what you mean. My knowledge of the workings of the Anglican Communion is next to zero. At least the Anglicans/Episcopalians are out front about their hierarchy and so forth. Unlike the SBC where there is an oligarchy as a practical matter while mouthing allegiance to the priesthood of the believer.

I guess I was born a questioning knothead and was raised by parents who were both strong-willed and independent in different (dare I say “complementary) ways.

@ numo:
OK, *never mind*! I am wrong about my own synod. (Not as up on things as I should be, although this is relatively recent for us.)

However, the meaning of “apostolic succession” is dependent on who is using the phrase – in Catholicism, it is one thing, but in the Anglican Communion, and in many Lutheran churches, it is not the same thing/things.

I think I typed myself into a corner on this one! Sorry for any confusion, Gram and everyone else.

@ Okrapod:
Thank you, Nancy. These are difficult questions, and I think you are right that individuals and organizations are going to go through the fire. I know that some PCUSA churches have had to fight with headquarters to retain their church property when they wished to depart. On the one hand, I think it is just and good for the departing church to reimburse or return the investment that the denomination made, if any, in their property. On the other hand, unjust demands should not be used to hold a congregation hostage. Some of the PCUSA churches are going to middle-way but largely conservative ECO or EPC. I need to look into the Anglican Communion structure to see if I can understand how that works. Thanks for looking into that.

@ Albuquerque Blue:

That is incredible!

So an update for those who are interested. I had a long conversation with both of my pastors yesterday. We talked about comp/egal, my pastor’s sermon, the beliefs of the church, and my issues with the marriage Bible study my small group is doing. The comp/egal discussion went about as expected, in that it was mostly the same arguments you’ve seen re-iterated. We talked about ESS some, and it pretty much went right down the line of the standard logic, etc. Well, except without the amped rhetoric.

And yeah, what I have to say is, after all of that, even though we disagree and I think it’s an important topic, I still respect my pastors very much. They engaged, were willing to listen, and the head pastor is even going to take my charge to him and run with it: to seek out women in healthy, complementarian marriages, and dig to find out if they really believe their value and worth. I charged him with this, because hurt women from abusive relationships can be logiced away as complementarianism misused, but my believe is that complementarianism hurts women even in the best of relationships, even if they don’t realize it. He said he would take that challenge.

Another interesting part of the discussion was at first his instance that we discuss issues with “submission”, as that is the sticking point, rather than “hierarchy”, which is MY sticking point. It took some time, but I finally got through that I don’t have a problem with submission. I think submission works just fine, and is good. I submit to my wife and she submits to me, though not always in the same areas. But at first he could not understand how “hierarchy” could be a problem, as for him it was the application of the idea, submission, that was the problem. When I explained that the power differential, whether utilized or not, causes women to view themselves as less valuable, it did seem to be a novel concept to him.

Anyway, there were some good points, but I don’t plan on changing the mind of a PCA pastor in a single conversation over coffee. What was atypical was that both pastors expressed a sincere desire for me to bring my views and discussion into the church. That is, we discussed the Bible study I’d mentioned and trying to figure out to do with week 3 on gender roles. That I didn’t want to be divisive, but I also wanted to be honest. They both said that it would be wrong for us to skip that week and not to bring our beliefs to the table. That the body would only grow through wrestling with scripture and different ideas about it.

I’ll be honest, in my experience of church throughout my life, I don’t recall being in an environment where I can sit with two pastors over coffee and wrestle with scripture like we did and feel respected. That means a lot to me. In fact, I don’t recall ever being at a church before where I didn’t have some fear about not believing exactly the right things, but yesterday I felt encouraged to be as honest as possible. I wish that they could see the harm in their teaching, but that may come, but at the end of the day I was very happy with the discussion and the respect shown. And what’s more, even though he disagreed with me, I believe my pastor will be influenced by my concerns the next time he speaks on the topic of gender roles.

So I think we’re sticking with this church a while longer, and I feel pretty good about that at the moment, as does my wife.

@ Jeff S:

I’m happy for you and your wife, Jeff. Praying that you can share your belief about comp in your small group wi wisdom and peace. Just curious, was your wife with you when you talked with the pastors? If your wife had been the one approaching the pastors with the same concerns, with no husband with her, would she have had the same experience as you? Actually, that would be a serious question for your pastors to ask themselves.

Jeff S wrote:

Another reason is that, ironically, the issue of female equality tends to be something that concerns me more than it does my wife (in fact, her standing joke is that she submits to me on the topic of male headship). Not that it is unimportant to her, but I think my ears are more sensitive to the topic and I am more aware of the subtle harm the teachings can cause.

Don’t forget to be careful here. Don’t forget in your enthusiasm for this topic that you are not a woman. Something which may be distasteful to you, seeing it through a man’s eyes, may not be distasteful to some other man’s wife in her relationship with her husband. Think long and hard before you try to convince people who may be having success with a ‘soft comp’ approach that indeed the woman in that situation is being hurt-I believe you said whether she knows it or not.

I used to hear sermons on ‘what God has joined together let no man put asunder’ and these sermons included not just divorce but also the negative interference of some mother-in-law or some BFF from childhood or such. I am thinking that some sowing of dissatisfaction could easily happen in small groups if one were not careful. Then if a situation falls apart guess who gets caught in some of the fall out as in -why did I ever listen to you in the first place; now look what you have done. Presenting an idea is one thing; telling people how they ought to feel, whether they know it or not, is a tad different.

Jeff S wrote:

That the body would only grow through wrestling with scripture and different ideas about it.

So true.

Okrapod wrote:

Don’t forget to be careful here. Don’t forget in your enthusiasm for this topic that you are not a woman. Something which may be distasteful to you, seeing it through a man’s eyes, may not be distasteful to some other man’s wife in her relationship with her husband. Think long and hard before you try to convince people who may be having success with a ‘soft comp’ approach that indeed the woman in that situation is being hurt-I believe you said whether she knows it or not.
I used to hear sermons on ‘what God has joined together let no man put asunder’ and these sermons included not just divorce but also the negative interference of some mother-in-law or some BFF from childhood or such. I am thinking that some sowing of dissatisfaction could easily happen in small groups if one were not careful. Then if a situation falls apart guess who gets caught in some of the fall out as in -why did I ever listen to you in the first place; now look what you have done. Presenting an idea is one thing; telling people how they ought to feel, whether they know it or not, is a tad different.

I would never, ever tell someone how he or she ought to feel. Nor try to convince women in comp marriages to be dissatisfied. What I *am* concerned with is conversing with the man delivering messages about the effect those messages have on others.

And if I have given the wrong impression given my own wife, she finds comp teaching to be very problematic. The reason she is not as sensitive about it as a subject is that she hasn’t lived it or been harmed by it the way many others that I’ve known have been. And we’ve actually discussed this very thing- she is very appreciative of my passion for the subject of equality for women. Finally, she is my ultimate “authority” (LOL- take that comps!) when it comes to how it really feels to be a woman in our culture and in our churches. If I think something may be problematic, rather than just assume, I go to her for insight, and she is more than happy to discuss and explore.

She is actually very passionate on the subject that there ARE differences between women and men, and there are roles that are better suited to women. For example, biology controls birth in a way that man simply cannot participate, and that has implications before and after the moment of physical birth. The key is, such roles are not hierarchical, which is really the point of contention.

Okrapod wrote:

Presenting an idea is one thing; telling people how they ought to feel, whether they know it or not, is a tad different.

I think the point is to tell people that other people should not tell them how to order their marriages. To speak against Comp/Patriarchy is to demolish the idea that other people know what God thinks is best for everyone’s marriage and situation. That, by the way, is why I reject the label of egalitarian. I do not advocate that a 50/50 split of everything is the best thing for everyone or that everyone is gifted in the same way, which is what the term implies to me. The point is to introduce freedom into relationships where love and respect is freely given, mutually, and not to tear down a relationship order that works *for that couple.* FWIW, I am much like Jeff’s wife. The idea of Comp/Patriarchy doesn’t really affect me because I have an excellent husband and had an excellent father. Not everyone is that privileged, and I know it. And people I care about have nearly been entrapped by this ideology. So, IMO, it is my responsibility not to avert my eyes from what is happening and what will happen to real people because of these doctrines.

Albuquerque Blue wrote:

They are so cool aren’t they? I love my laptops for almost everything but if I’m gaming or doing real writing I need a real keyboard.

Amen to that Albuquerque. Back in those days (of TSO terminals) they actually made durable goods here and not like the inferior trinket-like-crap-from-china. When I disassembled it for a thorough cleaning, I noticed that it had the old-fashioned slotted head electronics screws which were easily accessible with the old-style thin-shank electronics screw driver. Nowadays they use those gawd-awful phillips head fasteners which strip out at the drop of a hat.

Gram3 wrote:

The fact is that many emancipated slaves thought they were better off in Master’s household because their needs were met.

And also, to get really Biblical, the emancipated Hebrews wanted to return to their bondage because of leeks/onions. For me it would have been chocolate.

@ Gram3:

Recently, I was reading an article quoting leaders of the confederacy about their reasons for the war. Now I do NOT want to get into THAT discussion; however, they way they talked about slaves and how they were better of, lucky even, sounded eerily like something you’d read about women on the bayly blog . . .

@ Okrapod:

Oh, I will be. To be clear, my pastor’s charge to me was “If you can discuss it the way you’ve discussed it here” 🙂 That is, he felt like the dialog was respectful (as did I). I’m sure the response would have been different if I’ve walked in guns blazing.

(On that note, I am told that the only instance of “church discipline” that has occurred at my church was over a belligerent Calvinist who berated people for not being Reformed enough- I say this to make the point that respectful dialog is required of everyone at my church 🙂 )

Jeff S wrote:

the only instance of “church discipline” that has occurred at my church was over a belligerent Calvinist who berated people for not being Reformed enough

Well, you know what Doug Wilson says about Reformed Is Not Enough. Maybe the disciplined person was a born-again and re-branded Reconstructionist presenting himself/herself as a Federal Visionist who are the only ones who understand how crucial the Church is. And yes, I did mean crucial in the sense of eclipsing Christ and his cross. Oh, wait. The Baptists have our own Crucial Church people, too!

Gram3 wrote:

I think the point is to tell people that other people should not tell them how to order their marriages.

I do not remember this sort of focus on marriage at church growing up. I think my parents would have been offended with the heavy handedness of it. Especially as my dad left the “spiritual stuff” to my mom. He simply modeled industrious, responsibility and virtue by his life. Your marriage was private, how you voted was private, etc, etc. We did debate politics all the time, though, but it was still a serious breech to inquire how one voted.

I think privacy was much more valued back then. And that can be both a positive or negative if a person is being taught their value as a human being…not as in gendered value. The main idea was to grow in Christ and that affects all relationships positively.

Gram3 wrote:

The fact is that many emancipated slaves thought they were better off in Master’s household because their needs were met. Somehow that overrode their realization of the value of their freedom and also made freedom rather scary.

Many abused women feel the same way. How will they make it alone, financially, etc.

Jeff S wrote:

Gram3 wrote:
However, it is equally true that a humble and respectful attitude will not guarantee a humble and respectful dialog when the other party feels threatened even by a humble and respectful question.
Definitely.

Another interesting exegetical question for them is how they know when the word which can be translated either as wife/woman or husband/man means what the translators have decided. Is the instruction to a/the woman in Ephesus an instruction to all women or all wives or merely one woman and one wife in one place and why? Is Eve representative of all women, all wives, or all deceived persons (keeping in mind Paul’s argument in 2 Corinthians regarding his fear that the men and women there would be collectively deceived as Eve was.)

I suspect that they will not be able to present interpretations based on a consistent application of their hermeneutic. But you could ask! Not that it got me anywhere, but there is always the chance.

Here is where I think the fallback position will be from Complementarianism: the list of qualifications for elders assumes male leadership. The problem is that the list of qualifications for deacons also assumes males, but we know from the Bible that Phoebe was a deaconess. If she delivered the epistle to the Romans, I doubt seriously that she was merely a courier. So there is some apparent inconsistency in Paul if we assume what the Complementarians want us to assume.

@ Gram3:

The comp position has all kinds of inconsistencies. If you take the prohibition on teaching literally as stated, then Paul contradicts himself by allowing Priscilla to teach. So this gets changed to “in an authoritative manner”, and then you talk about Deborah being an authority. But Deborah was only filling in because men refused to do their job (oh, so “I do not permit” actually means “It’s fine as long as a dude isn’t around to do the work). Pheobe is clearly not a deaconess, she’s a servant. Or if she’s a deaconess, then, deacons don’t teach, they serve (never mind Stephen taught).

But the “one woman man” argument is the worst of the lot. If you are going to assume only males are allowed to lead because of this verse, then women are allowed to covet their neighbor’s husbands. Doesn’t that sound silly?

Now, I think the egalitarian position has some stretching of scripture too. In my mind, it isn’t hermeneutically clear based on “knockout” verses. Which is where I fall back to the overall message of scripture and the view of humans as valued beings, women and men alike.

Gram3 wrote:

If your pastors ever produce the verse where God ordains a hierarchy of males and changes his mind about Genesis 1:26-28, will you let me know? Somebody is hiding it somewhere. Along with the one about clergy hierarchy.

I don’t remember if I ever posted this before, but Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian has presented 10 challenges to the comp claims of male hierarchy followed by the “facts”. It’s been around for years, but it’s excellent imo!

http://godswordtowomen.org/bilezikian.htm

@ Bill M:
Bill M, I have another horror fortnight of work/home life, then I should be able to help to get stuck into adding to this list for you ! Thanks for being patient.

Muff Potter wrote:

he recounts on how it even cracked him up that the constellation of Orion appeared upside down when viewed looking north from down under.

I drove behind a car last night with the Southern Cross stickers on the back windshield (it’s a bit like the Confederacy flag I think in Australia). Anyhoo the stickers were all in the wrong position. Really badly placed. I don’t know if dyslexia extends to star positioning, but these guys took the cake…

@ Victorious:
I scanned the first bit of it, but I thought this part was pretty funny:

There is not a hint, not even a whisper about anything like a hierarchical order existing between man and woman in the creation account of Genesis, chapters 1 and 2.

The reason it struck me as funny is because Ray Ortlund is reduced to talking about “hints” and “whispers” of male headship in Genesis 1-2 in his essay which is Chapter 3 of RBMW. After I threw the book across the room in frustration at the way he intentionally distorted what God’s word actually says, I thought it was actually pretty pathetic and transparently a desperate attempt at making a convincing argument when one has no good evidence. Which is pretty much what the rest of that book is.

Thanks for that link.

@ Jeff S:

Thanks for the reply, Jeff. It seems reasonable to me. I would be interested in your pastors’ responses to that last question. Your wife sounds like someone I could have a few laughs with over some of the comp silliness.

Gram3 wrote:

The reason it struck me as funny is because Ray Ortlund is reduced to talking about “hints” and “whispers” of male headship in Genesis 1-2 in his essay which is Chapter 3 of RBMW. After I threw the book across the room in frustration at the way he intentionally distorted what God’s word actually says, I thought it was actually pretty pathetic and transparently a desperate attempt at making a convincing argument when one has no good evidence. Which is pretty much what the rest of that book is.

Gram3, then you’d probably loooove Wayne Grudem’s Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth enough to throw it too. In it he is supposedly able to deconstruct 100 or so arguments in the Bible for egalitarianism.
If memory serves me correctly, I think he also used flowery allusion to ‘hints’ and ‘whispers’ also. When you actually start digging in to his tome it becomes apparent that his arguments are based on tautology, circular reasoning, special pleading, and false equivalence.

@ Muff Potter:
Now that I think about it, I think someone gave me a copy of an abridged book that sounds something like the one you mentioned.

@ Victorious:

Incredible!

Victorious wrote:

I could relate to a Jesus in blue jeans.

Well, there was a time when “jeans” were “dungarees” or just “levis” and they were work clothes rather than fashion statements. Jesus was a laborer with his hands, either a carpenter or a stonemason, so he probably wore the first-century equivalent of jeans. I really think that Jeffrey Hunter forever ruined our conception of Jesus of Nazareth which is basically an anemic northern European. The men from Galilee were not known for being particularly effete or delicate, unlike the boys we talk about here so much. Perhaps that is why they have so much trouble looking like him!

@ Lydia:

Pretty much so Lyds. It’s largely a book refuting egalitarianism by saying that the Bible doesn’t say what egalitarians say it means, it can only mean what Herr Doktor Grudem says it means.
Remember Susanne McCarthy? The classical Greek scholar?
(May God rest her and grant her a goodly inheritance one day!)
Some years back she got banned from Denny Burk’s site for pointing out Grudem’s fallacies with Greek grammar and classical Greek ephemera.

On a slightly lighter note, there was a wonderful yer-couldnt-make-it-up headline from Wimbledon today:

Alexandr Dolgopolov hits own face with ball

There’s a wee clip of the incident, which may never have happened before, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/tennis.

Dolgopolov went on to win.

Sopwith wrote:

hmmm…
God answers prayer?
blink, blink
…bet your life!

Amen, Sopy! Ask…seek…knock…find! 🙂

Victorious wrote:

I could relate to a Jesus in blue jeans.

Victorious wrote:

lol! I think he even had blue eyes, didn’t he?

Gram3 wrote:

Jesus was a laborer with his hands, either a carpenter or a stonemason, so he probably wore the first-century equivalent of jeans. I really think that Jeffrey Hunter forever ruined our conception of Jesus of Nazareth which is basically an anemic northern European. The men from Galilee were not known for being particularly effete or delicate, unlike the boys we talk about here so much. Perhaps that is why they have so much trouble looking like him!

I have a recommendation. Have you seen the film of the gospel of matthew in the visual bible series? It was produced and directed in South Africa about 20 years ago. The actor is an american of mediterranean and near eastern descent whose mother was from syria. He looks the part. There is nothing about the movie that remotely gives the impression that Jesus was other than a jew of his day and a man of the people, an intensely ‘alive’ person and not some anorexic mystic trapped in a northern european body. I have watched the movie a couple of times and I come away with the feeling that this Jesus was somebody that I too would have stood out in the hot sun just to hear what he had to say, even if I had forgotten to take my lunch with me.

Okrapod wrote:

an intensely ‘alive’ person and not some anorexic mystic trapped in a northern european body.

Ahem, excuse me (and I reckon I can speak for Nick Bulbeck as well) … 🙂

Ken wrote:

Ahem, excuse me (and I reckon I can speak for Nick Bulbeck as well)

Take a look at the portrayal of Jesus in the movie and tell me what you think.

Okrapod wrote:

Gram3 wrote:
FWIW, I’m trapped in an Scottish/English and distinctly non-anorexic body.
My body derives from Irish, English, French and German, and many the time I have prayed for the spiritual gift of anorexia to no avail.

I, personally, have received the somatic gift of a body which is a very effective conservator of calories. I am certain that vegetables aggravate this due to reading it somewhere on the internet, and so have restricted my diet accordingly. I substitute certain fruit for vegetables, especially cacao fruit and its derivatives. There are more anti-oxidants in cacao fruit than in brussels (sp) sprouts, and I am pro-science.

@ Okrapod:

Just to add to this thinking…..as I think so much has been missed by not bringing in the historical context. The forerunner as he has been called was very much the desert guy, rough and totally outside the sacral system of Jerusalem and the temple set. He was barely a “synagogue set” and practiced what was called Judaism in a totally different way. Ironically, he is chosen to intro Jesus, the trained laborer, to the first crowds. They looked more like the crowds they were speaking to, if you think about it. In fact, John is totally dissing the temple “system” in Matthew 3. So what if you claim to be Abrahams children? You show no fruit of repentance!

Now that I have thought about it for so long, I am amazed at how far Jesus stayed away from the Temple thinking in ways that were the norm for that day and time.

@ Nick Bulbeck:

All I get is a Rolex commercial.

@ Lydia:

Isaiah53:2

Oh my goodness, We just got a call that 4 foot sharks have been spotted (and photographed) in shin deep water at Myrtle Beach.

Bridget wrote:

All I get is a Rolex commercial [instead of a clip from Wimbledon].

Hmm… The link is still working here, so I’m guessing it’s only available in the UK. Sorry about that!

@ Ken wrote a number of interesting things which I shall tackle in order:

Now Nick as I understand it lives in Scotland, which is definitely northern Europe.

Scotland is indeed northern Europe – indeed, for just these couple of weeks each year (i.e. late June / early July) we have almost 24-hour daylight, albeit no midnight sun. However, I’m an expatriate Englishman. I was actually born in London (though I escaped after only 6 weeks) and emigrated to Scotland around 25 years ago.

Background information: Scotland is not in England. I hope this is helpful.

Indeed, there are rumours circulating…

Well, they ******* are now, aren’t they?!?!

… that Nick has a henge in his back garden to boot.

No, that’s a typo. I have a hedge in my back garden.

Oh, yes. I do have good success with beds and pots. Only, mine are not brick and not remotely decorative. I just have a designated veggie grow area and cluster some old plastic tubs and such. Soil quality can be maintained, and water usage is way back from the old days of turn on the hose. Lots of utilitarian advantage for some things.

I am thinking about trying something I read in a magazine about growing non-invasive bamboo in large pots and using it for a portable screen, rearranging the pots as needed. Three to five pots out to do for what I want to do.

Lydia wrote:

Does anyone remember that passage in Isaiah that describes the coming One? I cannot remember it exactly but something about Him being “comely” or something like that. Am I remembering it in KJ? :o)

Open theism does have its advantages. I like to think that our Lord was the most beautiful specimen of man to have ever be born of a young virgin despite the absolute claim made by some that He was nothing to look at. When I read the Hebrew Bible interlinear passage of Isaiah 53:2 for a better rendering of the original tongue into English, I’m encouraged.
Why wouldn’t the Almighty ensure that His Only Begotten Son was perfect in every way? I would.

Muff Potter wrote:

Why wouldn’t the Almighty ensure that His Only Begotten Son was perfect in every way? I would.

I think it likely that God would ensure His OBS was perfect in every way that matters to Him.

Perfect love is one thing. Perfect teeth? Not so sure.

@ Muff Potter:

Well, perfect in every way could mean looking like a laborer from the Nazareth Outpost. :o)

@ Muff Potter:

gotcha. beauty in the eye of the beholder?