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Don’t interrupt me. I’m thinking... |
Month: October 2011
Dollars and Deals
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This captured vulture was accused of spying for Mossad by the Saudi press, but was later exonerated by a Saudi prince. |
The AP published yesterday that a Saudi princeling has upped the offer of $100,000 for the capture of an Israeli soldier by a further $900,000 if used for the exchange of Palestinian prisoners currently in Israeli jails. H’m. The Arab presses either print the article in its entirety without comment or tweet ravenously about the Saudi predisposition to play Devil’s advocate dependent on who they perceive to be winning the propaganda war. Paying for jihad seems to some to be as repugnant as paying for indulgences, to others, a fair price to pay.
Theological blather
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You married, dearie? |
And, since an image is de rigueur otherwise absolutely nobody reads anything one might write, here’s the Pope celebrating the arrival of the seven millionth soul on the planet with the secular humanist and philosopher Julia Kristeva at the recent interfaith, er, encounter in Assisi. Peter and the wolf.
Divinity for Dummies
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Genesis 1 1-5 Samaritan Pentateuch |
Listened to a real live Cambridge DD yesterday, used to the lecture podium rather than the pulpit thus seemed slightly embarrassed at having to put on the old shepherd garb and wave his arms suitably. It was instructive to be reminded of Theology 101 – the almost painful dumbing down was well-concealed but palpable. Being stuck in the minor prophets is probably better than being stuck with a major liturgical catastrophe thus despite the fact that there’s a lot to be said for the use of a lectionary cycle but it tends to presuppose, rather than to foster, a broad understanding of the biblical story. Lectionaries were designed for use in societies that were already implicitly Christian – societies in which the rhythms of the liturgical year, and the broad sweep of the biblical narrative, could be more or less taken for granted – the theological subtlety with which the OT and NT readings are often connected – a subtlety that is quite lost on anybody without a good working knowledge of scripture and liturgical tradition, which, quite frankly, is most of us. And preachers only exacerbate the problem when they take these subtle liturgico-theological connections as the theme of their proclamation, instead of preaching from the textsthemselves. Preachers, do try to remember that the content of your proclamation is not the liturgical calendar or flashy exegesis, but the Word of God. Rhema. Plus Logos.
Stealing Heaven
Job’s Answer
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Supernova exploding: Large Magellanic Cloud. The Universe ‘s expansion is accelerating |
Most of my classes this year are pleasant enough, absorbing placidly any small pearlets of what passes for wisdom and attempting to transcribe them industriously with greater or lesser degrees of enthusiasm. As long as I don’t actually require them to think about what they are writing, all is serene and everybody thinks that they really are getting their money’s worth. Shovelling academic stodge is like coal mining, it’s dirty and unrewarding but somebody has to do it, production lines and rapacious exam factories being as they are implacably unforgiving when a B grade is awarded.
It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that although dutifully turning out academically well-scrubbed and quite knowledgeable school leavers ( I really cannot bring myself to describe them as ‘graduates’), ultimately, I and my kind have become for them an enemy of promise, a bulwark against whatever genuinely original initiatives they once might have possessed. Nowhere was this more noticeable than in the last few days when quite quick and able learners had, it appeared not the faintest notion that the subject they had undertaken as a University prerequisite was going to actually demand of them some reflection, consideration, weighing of alternatives and deductive reasoning and seemed quite put out when I mentioned to them that that was supposed to be the reason they had elected to pursue further study in the first place. Furthermore, any hint of non-comprehension has far less to do with the fact that most fifteen and sixteen year olds are intellectually lazy and much more to do with their teacher, who, after only thirty years has learned his craft so very poorly and is clearly incapable of explaining things properly.
The Nobel season is upon us again and once more, those whose religious loyalties lie with the Name scooped some spaghetti this year, in chemistry and also in physics. Recipients join an embarrassingly long line of Jews both home-grown and from the diaspora, who far outstrip every other people group on the face of the earth at collecting Swedish gongs. Asking a Jew to name the greatest period of Jewish learning is problematic and he might be hard put to it to give a singular answer. He could choose 1000 BC and the time of Solomon with the beginning of Israelite historiography and Jewish law. Perhaps during the Babylonian Exile with the completion of redaction of Torah. Or 1135CE and the work of Maimonides, a cornerstone of Jewish thought and study. Even today, it’s almost a rarity to look at the Nobels issued in any particular year and not find a Jewish name among them. By contrast, Arabs imported the concept of zero from the Hindus over a thousand years ago and have advanced human knowledge little further since.
There are a multitude of reasons bordering on excuses for this. Learning is the pursuit of a kind or type of perfection and one’s attitude to it is often a measure of success. If we only walk the treadmills carved by the luminaries of the past, the tracks get deeper, thought hardens into tunnel-visioned principle which solidifies into doctrine which must be defended. Debate, passion and counterintuitive thinking is the fuel for fresh understanding which Talmudic scholars and their modern secular counterparts were and are rather good at. Stephen Hawking at the end of ‘A Brief History of Time’ wrote: “…if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.” A soundbite with a grain of truth. God is, and his universe is there to be discovered, to be known about and known and we, stumbling around in the twilight, are freed from the legalism of being compelled to absorb merely facts, instead mine the data for fresh evidence of His love and work. We are not called to merely obey since blind obedience is driven by fear and the unappetising diet of man-pleasing; instead we are called to search out the mysteries of God in the here, in the now as well as in the hereafter. Job’s question has an answer after all.
Worship Zumba