Corporal Punishment

I just finished listening to Mayim Bialik's YouTube video on Hitting Kids. She is pretty clear at the beginning that she doesn't believe in hitting children. She wisely follows this up by addressing how she feels about what the bible says, which is basically that based on other questionable practices, like stoning disobedient children, she feels the bible should not be used as a parenting guide in the modern era.

The thing that frustrates me is that she goes back and forth between two types of statements:

• Spanking is wrong and should never done
• There are alternative methods to disciplining children besides spanking

I agree wholeheartedly with the second. And I understand the objections. I would even go so far as to say that I would discourage spanking in many households. But I wouldn't take it off the table completely. I was going to go a different direction here, but I just thought of this: the type of parents who use the tool of corporal punishment wrongly, to where it would constitute abuse, aren't going to do a better job simply because that tool is off the table.

Someone in the comments mentioned the APA, so I decided to check to see if they had a statement on this matter. They do. They oppose the use of corporal punishment in all institutions. Here's the part that stuck out to me the most:

Whereas research has shown that the effective use of punishment in eliminating undesirable behavior requires precision in timing, duration, intensity, and specificity, as well as considerable sophistication in controlling a variety of relevant environmental and cognitive factors, such that punishment administered in institutional settings, without attention to all these factors, is likely to instill hostility, rage, and a sense of powerlessness without reducing the undesirable behavior;

 I noticed that most of the comments on Bialik's article were speaking from their own negative experiences with spanking. I wonder if Bialik had negative experiences with it too. I did not. I experienced the precision in how corporal punishment was administered that the APA mentions above. Because my parents loved me and put a lot of thought into how to correct me so that I would grow up into a responsible adult. Punishment was never a knee jerk reaction, or a point of frustration for them. If they were frustrated with me, THEY took a time out, and THEN administered the spanking.

I realize that my experience may well be the exception, rather than the norm. Nevertheless, it is enough for me to emphatically state that corporal punishment is not categorically wrong and can be done in a loving manner. I am living proof of that. I also take note that the bible speaks of the rod and reproof hand in hand when disciplining a child.  Parents need to be thoughtful when it comes to correction, otherwise whether they use corporal punishment or not, abuse can still occur.

All About Love: Page Two

bell hooks is a woman after my own heart. Right away in her book, All About Love: New Visions, she starts off with definitions. Having a shared vocabulary is very important, so I am glad to see her starting with this first thing. She quotes M. Scott Peck from The Road Less Traveled:

[Love is] the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth...Love is as love does. Love is an act of will--namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

hooks goes on to poo-poo those who cite affection as being the primary component of love. hooks includes "care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication" as all being integral components of love.

Jesus was wrong?

I was looking for something about my marriage and I came across this article, The Best Christian Argument for Marriage Equality is that the Bible Got It Wrong. That title is pretty provocative, but I'm used to that now, so it wasn't a big deal. The tagline got me though: Christians need to accept that Jesus was sometimes wrong—in fact, he might even want us to. Say what?

I don't have time to go through the argument right now, but at some point, Pete Enns was invoked. His writings, and his podcast with Jared Byas, have had a pretty profound impact on me recently. But then as I was skimming the article, I am across a scripture reference: Matthew 24:34. I froze. I think I had blocked it out. Could this be THAT reference? Could it be anything but?

The article had a link to Bible Gateway, and a KJV reference at that. Here it is:

Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.

I can't remember if it was in Korea or Maryland, I think Korea, that I wrestled with this verse. And now I can't remember what conclusion I came to. But whatever I thought then, when I look at it now, there's only one thing that comes to mind: Jesus was wrong. Damn.

Spanish I learned today

So there are a couple of words that I'd already picked up that I want to capture. Babas means drool. I had already understood escupa to mean spit and escupir to mean to spit. Caricatura means cartoon or caricature. Not sure why it came to mind, but looked up the word historieta, which I had seen before. So apparently this also means cartoon, or more closely storiette.

From En El Minuto again:
Entretenimiento means entertainment. That's what I guessed first, but then thought it might mean something different.

Tres oficiales resultaron heridos en una confrontación con un sospechoso en Atascocita

Three officers were injured in a confrontation with a suspect in Atascocita

Guessed that with no issues.

La Corte Suprema bloquea ley que hace más fácil la deportación de indocumentados que han cometido ciertos delitos.

The Supreme Court blocks a law that makes it easier to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed certain crimes.

I struggled a bit with the last couple of words, but then I got the next to last two and guessed the last one through context. I guessed offenses, which Google Translate offered as a possible translation, along with ofensa, crimen, transgresión, pecado, falta and malhecho.

And I thought I heard entretenimiento in the broadcast, but after listening a dozen times, and knowing it didn't fit the context, I finally realized the reporter was saying enfrentamiento, which means confrontation, conflict or clash.

Oh, and alcalde means mayor.

Progressive Evangelical churches in Houston

So in continuing to search for the middle way, I decided to do google searches for "liberal evangelical" Houston and "progressive evangelical" Houston. I found two articles that mention names and fellowships that bear further investigation. The first is from the Houston Chronicle: The evangelical left: 'We think everybody needs Jesus and we're not mad at the world'. I'm pretty sure I'd looked at this article before. The other is The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of The Evangelical Left.

It occurred to me that link gathering like this might be easier with Pinterest. Unfortunately, Pinterest isn't available at work.

In search of the middle way

I was looking for that middle road between conservative and liberal Christianity, and I turned to my old friend Google. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I did find two articles of note.The first is The Progressive Evangelical Package, an article posted to Mere Orthodoxy by Derek Rishmawy. It reads like a critique of progressive Christianity, and it mostly is, but he brings home the point that progressives fall into many of the same ditches as conservatives. I'm glad I am not the only person who sees that.  The second article is Five ways to reclaim liberal Christianity by Douglas Todd. It is also basically a critique on liberal Christianity, but it seems useful.

Is the bible true?

I am re-listening to a Podcast called The Bible For Normal People. The Podcast is a joint effort between Pete Enns and Jared Byas. I am currently listening to an episode where Jared Byas is speaking on the topic, Is the Bible True? This is basically a loose transcript of the podcast. I needed to relisten to it and capture what he said so I can digest it better.

When asking whether the bible is true, we first have to answer the question of what truth means. It can mean very different things. What follows are the different ways we use the word truth, and also commentary on whether the bible is true.

1. Truth as fact. Individual facts about physical reality. The what. Is the Bible trying to state facts about physical reality?

2. Truth as meaning. Truth as connected meanings about the human condition. The why. Sometimes we're talking about interpretation of the facts. What does it mean?

Sometimes the bible is trying to tell us some truth about what it means to be human. Sometimes you can tell a truth about meaning using things that are false about physical reality; historical fiction.

3. Truth as wisdom. The embodiment of how we live our lives. Truth becomes an adverb. [Jesus said, "I am the truth."--John 14:6] Are we living truthfully? Are we living out truth? This type of truth can't be found in books, or be talked about in sentences; it can only be lived out. That's why it is difficult to grasp.

The bible points is towards the idea of truth as embodied wisdom. The bible resists us trying to nail it down as a science book, or as a book of facts. Jared doesn't think that was the intended purpose.

When it comes to individual facts, the Bible is sometimes true, sometimes not true. Next question: Where is the bible actually trying to state facts, and where is it not? We understand that when Jesus taught in parables he wasn't stating facts about historical reality.

Sometimes the Bible is wrong about the facts it states about physical reality. This is because it written through the lens and understanding of an ancient people who didn't understand how the world functions or works in the same way we do. And in 150 years, probably a lot of our understanding of how the world works will be outdated, and people might think we were speaking a lot of falsehoods as well. So as our knowledge of reality grows, things become less and less truthful. But we are speaking our truth, we are speaking as we can understand it now. So the only way we could know if we are actually truthful about these facts is to have all the knowledge.

Is the bible true in regards to the why factor? More often than not it is. What truth is it trying to tell? For example, the Deuteronomist wrote history about kings, but then the Chronicler writes different stories about that same history. It isn't true as historical fact, but it is true in that is trying to give us some meaning about the human condition. Why does the Chronicler change the facts?  To help the Israelites that are coming out of exile understand their story in a new way. Starting with genealogies, then modifying stories to make the Israelites still feel connected to God. Also Proverbs 26:5-6--back to back contradictory proverbs. Do not answer a fool in his folly...then answer a fool in his folly.

When you ask about the facts, you ask which one is true? But it is about the human condition, which is a lot of gray area, a lot of it depends. Proverbs 26 resists the question of is the question true in terms of facts about reality, and asks the deeper question about the human condition. Can those both be true? Absolutely! Why? Because it depends on the context as to what the wise way is.

There are so many truths we get from reading fiction, because it is connecting with us something about what it means to us an human, and it resonates true to us emotionally and aesthetically, and that is just as true as individual facts.

The last is the hardest to talk about: truth as embodied wisdom. We can only live it out, we can't even talk about it. It's not a proposition, it's an embodiment. It is truths that we have gained and garnered through understanding the facts about  physical reality, and the truths that we have amassed as we have tried to connect different meanings about the human condition. So it's taking those first two senses of truth, and it's embodying them in the world. This is what Jesus was talking about in John 14:6--the truth as a person.

It resists making a dogma or a belief statement out of the truth; it just asks for you to live it. It can't be found in textbooks, but some people can just live truthfully without knowing the facts or having the brainpower to understand what it all means. Some people just live truth without understanding the philosophical categories or having degrees in theology. Some people can understand true facts and complex systems and know what it all means but still not live truthfully.

In the 21st century, we privilege so much in our heads in thinking right thoughts. Asking the question, "Is the Bible true?" is the litmus test in Jared's tradition. But Jared asks the question, "Are you living truthfully?" That is a more primary question. Read Sorren Kirkkengard, the Father of Existentialism. He was adamant about Christians embodying the teachings of Jesus. He said being alone with God's word is a dangerous matter. You can defend yourself against it easily enough.

Getting those nuggets of truth can soothe our soul, but its just as important that we live that truth out and bring good and beauty into the world in a practical and tangible sense. It is important in this day of social media activism, where we can deceive ourselves that having opinions or knowing the facts is a substitute for embodying this life of truth. So when we talk about whether the bible is true, a better question is whether my life is true.

A few takeaways: When I'm asked is the bible true, I see the bible as often but not always true in the first sense. Despite this, I am always looking to find meaning in the bible in the second sense. The bible is only a tool for that third sense. The end result is that I live a life of truth.

The bible can be a tool for that. But it can also be a weapon against it. Or a drug that keeps me from being clear about how to do it. It can be a thing that I can use to escape having to live that. In a lot of traditions, we have made reading the bible the end goal, while not embodying the wisdom that it's pushing us to pursue.

(1) The bible is a tool, a means to an end, which is living a life of embodied wisdom. It is important that we don't idolize the bible and make it an end unto itself.

(2) When we're talking to one another about whether the bible is true, try to be clear with people. Let's not oversimplify it, and let's not demonize each other.

(3) Be aware of how we've privileged that first sense and try to see the bible as a tool for the third sense.

Spanish phrases of the day

From Univision Houston:
Resumen noticioso de los hechos más relevantes en el ámbito local, estatal y nacional.
News summary of the most relevant facts at the local, state and national level.

I thought resumen was resume, which of course didn't fit. And I thought hechos were deeds. And they are. Hechos are acts, so los hechos can be translated as the acts or the facts. Huh. And I didn't know the word ámbito. Google translate translated it as ambit, which I was also unfamiliar with. Merriam-Webster says that word means bounds, limit, or scope. So I learned an English word today too. And I guessed estatal meant state from estado, but I had never seen that exact word before.

En Un Minuto Houston: Una persona murió en la escena de un choque entre un autobús y un auto
In A Minute Houston: A person died at the scene of a crash between a bus and a car

I was able to guess this one. The only words I didn't know were escena which sounds a lot like scene, and choque which from the context I guessed wreck. I did look up choque (shock) which was interesting. Synonyms include: sacudida (shake), tumbo (tumble), jarra (jar), enfrentamiento (confrontation), estrépito (loud crash), colisión (duh), hit (really?), pugna (conflict), rotura (break), and toque (touch).

The actual video had a headline that said Dos Heridos de Bala. I didn't know the word bala, but I correctly guessed bullet. I was thinking something like two gunshot wounds. Google translated it as two wounded by bullet, which makes it seem like two people were wounded, but from what I could tell from the broadcast, that wasn't the case. The last video headline was amenaza de ataque, which translates to attack threat.

What we have in common

In my last post, I mentioned Rachel Held Evans blog post Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between. I hadn't read the complete post, but I took the time to read it just now. This really resonated with me:

 For example, I will continue to speak out passionately against the patriarchy advocated by folks like John Piper because I feel strongly that the Church is better served when men and women are treated as functional equals. But if John and I had the chance to share communion together—to partake together of the body and blood of Christ—I would do it in heartbeat. I disagree with him, but he is my brother. We have more commonalities than differences.  I think we just forget sometimes that we argue because of what we have in common. 

I am so glad to see this. I have seen her speaking out passionately, but I don't know if I had heard her call him a brother. It is so easy to begin to demonize those who don't agree with you and begin to think of them as "the other." Now I see that this is NOT what Evans is doing. Most of what I have seen of her has been on Twitter, and I could have easily conflated something she said with follow-on comments that she may not have agreed with.

Surfing through the gap between Liberal and Conservative Christianity

Last Sunday was frustrating. I was trying to find a church to go to. I ended up at Hyde Park United Methodist Church. I looked at some more Progressive fellowships, but after looking at them on the web, I realized I wasn't ready for that yet. The Methodist service was okay, but the problem is that I'm looking for people more like myself, caught in the middle between Liberal and Conservative Christianity, and I don't know where to find them.

So this afternoon I took to the web. Not surprisingly, Google led me to Rachel Held Evans, and a blog post of hers titled Liberal Christianity, Conservative Christianity, and the Caught-In-Between. The post documents responses to her followers on Facebook that expressed a similar exasperation at not being able to find a place of worship where they weren't met with accusations of heresy or smug superiority.

But then Rachel mentioned that she tried to roll her own, so to speak, and that the experiment resulted in failure. I was intrigued, so I went out in search of more information. I found it in Christianity Today in an article entitled Rachel Held Evans Returns to Church. The article spoke of a fellowship called The Mission that was started in 2010, and appears to have lasted around four years, but apparently was plagued by financial issues and fell apart. And again I'm reminded of Leticia's maddening, crazy proposition that we start a church.

But then I got tripped up by almost a peripheral comment. I say almost, because I'm not sure how it fit in to the story about Evans yet, but it definitely resonated with me. And this was actually a reference from yet another article. So then I went to find that one. I found it at christandpopculture.com. Hannah Anderson posited that Evans and other post-evangelicals like her "are perpetuating the very things about evangelicalism that they profess to deplore." Though in truth I liked the way it was stated in Christianity Today better:

Evans and other young, progressive Christians sometimes react to culture-war flashpoints with as much declarative verve and binary categories as the leaders they're countering. The de facto response to one fundamentalism isn’t always nuance; often it’s just another fundamentalism.

Anderson's article points out that using politics as an evangelical tool to dispense morality is a relatively new phenomenon, and immediately my mind went to Jerry Falwell. The very name would cause most liberals to recoil, but I actually remember when Falwell was just a preacher. Our family listened to the Old Time Gospel Hour.

But back to Anderson's article for a moment. She really got me with this:

* * *

 In Religion in America, historians Winthrop S. Hudson and John Corrigan describe evangelicalism as:

a mood and an emphasis [more] than a theological system. Its stress was upon the importance of personal religious experience… it was a revolt against the notion that the Christian life involved little more than observing the outward formalities of religion.” (99)

Central to this identity is a strong emphasis on personal conversion in order to effect societal change.

* * *

This definition of evangelicalism is so good! And this explains how evangelicalism is trying to change society for the better! Such good intentions! How did we go so wrong?

I get Falwell's motivation to start the Moral Majority. I'm starting to understand how Liberals see the government as the way to represent not only their interests but their values as well, and it makes sense that Falwell would see things the same way. Use the government to further your beliefs and agenda. It actually makes sense. How did we go so wrong?

Critical thinking

Do I think critically? I think I do. I've looked at several different web resources this morning that talk about critical thinking, and several of them stated that nobody thinks critically 100% of the time.  The last one that I looked at that was useful was this one. And when I looked at this one, it seemed like I met most of the criteria.

How does that relate to Christianity though? I didn't question it. I mean I did, but there were some things that I didn't question until now. Well, that was part of the culture. I mean, there were times when my mind butted up against those boundaries, but I always shied away from them again, because that was just wrong. So, it was made into a moral issue. It was wrong, or a sin, to question certain things. Or it showed a lack of faith. Or it would lead to destruction, death, and hell.

Introverts and speaking

Came across this article. Not even sure how that happened. I apparently clicked on a bunch of links yesterday and am reviewing them this morning. I don't remember the context and don't feel like backtracking. But I think it explains a lot and I want to come back, read it again, and share it with others. But not right now.

Pagan Christianity

A couple of years ago, my father was experiencing some disillusionment with the local church. I was living in Maryland at the time, while he was in his native Port Arthur, TX. We had tried virtual studies before, with varying degrees of success. I wasn't sure what to do. I decided to look for books about why church is the way it is, and alternative models. The two books I ended up with were Simply Church by Tony and Felicity Dale, and Pagan Christianity, by Frank Viola and George Barna. The latter book was pretty provocative. It talked of how Christianity was altered by the its "legitimatization" from the Roman Empire to become something completely different, and not necessarily better.

At the time I was really pro small group, and had been feeling particularly critical of the fact that the generic modern church model is so different from what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 14. I was thinking home church was the way to go. I don't know if my father mentioned it at the time, but one of the problems with the model is the potential lack of accountability and training, which can lead to serious abuse. My friend Leticia has told me that she has heard so many horror stories during her time as a counselor about small churches that twist the scriptures to impose their will on well-meaning but gullible parishioners. Home churches would probably be worse.  How do you find that happy medium between large institutions and small bodies of believers?

Open Letter to those who knew me at Radiant Church

I imagine that at least a few people are wondering why I am leaving. The decision may seem sudden, and in a way it was. But part of me never wanted to settle at Radiant anyway. We had narrowed our search down to three churches: Covenant Life, Radiant, and Relevant. I liked Covenant Life, but my wife voted for Radiant. I'm not sure that she liked Radiant herself, but she felt our daughters liked it. Our younger two daughters are not saved, and my wife felt that any place they liked would be that much better because there was more of a chance they would be saved through that ministry. I didn't agree. I felt we would play a greater role in their salvation than a church, and so we needed to go where we, the parents, would be growing the most. When I started doing production, the girls stopped coming. But that's not the real reason.

I was looking for fellowship. I was looking to connect. We've been moving around for the past 19 years, and the worst part of moving is having to find a church each time. And we've had the worst time here in Tampa. After being here for 9 months, there is not a single person in Tampa that I would call a friend. I can't blame Radiant for that, but Radiant really didn't help either. I joined the production team because I figured that would help. It did, but not as much as I was hoping.

But there's another reason beyond that. I've been a Christian my whole life. I was raised by strong Christian parents, steeped in the Campus Crusade for Christ movement. I feel like there's never been a time when I didn't know the Four Spiritual Laws. I was baptized when I was 7; I am 45 now. I am more than halfway through a Masters in Biblical Interpretation. But lately I have begun questioning the bible, my faith, and the church in a way that I never have before. And the answers that I'm coming up with aren't in keeping with the way I was raised, which was Baptist, followed by Pentecostalism as an adult. Some of the answers line up more with Progressive Christianity. Some of them don't line up anywhere. But my spiritual journey is leading me off the beaten path, and I'm not sure where I'll end up, but I doubt it will be Radiant Church.