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.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Monday, April 16, 2018
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.
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.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
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.
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.
Monday, April 9, 2018
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:
But back to Anderson's article for a moment. She really got me with this:
* * *
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?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)