Somebody Else’s Mail (2)

I have a second introductory post coming next week, but I’m eager to get going, so let’s just jump in.

The author of Psalm 1 is unknown. Naturally, most scholars attribute these first six verses to David. For me, that’s a bit like the answers you get from ten-year-olds in Sunday School to questions about who did this or that in the Bible: they always guess either “God” or “Jesus”. Kids are not stupid. Those odds are usually better than 50/50; that’s just how Sunday Schools roll. Hopefully, they think, there’s something better at stake than yet another pencil. Maybe so do the scholars.

Exposition Without Expositing

Premastication or kiss feeding is the act of breaking down food by chewing it for those who can’t yet chew, then passing the pulped food mouth to mouth. Most mother apes do it for their offspring. Pigeons and parrots do something similar, but they regurgitate. Some human cultures do it too.

I have to confess some of what I’m hearing from church platforms these days puzzles me. It’s not that it’s wrong, exactly; most of the Bible teaching in the churches I frequent is quite orthodox in terms of its conclusions. Nobody is indulging in heretical craziness or flights of wild fancy. Nor are speakers subjecting their audiences to a barrage of sentimental anecdotes at the expense of biblical content, as I found was common in the late eighties.

It’s more like the art of expounding the text of scripture has suddenly gone AWOL, and I miss it. No small number of Bible teachers have never learned to chew their food before they pass it on.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The great mathematician Blaise Pascal claimed all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Modern people don’t sit in rooms alone very well. They find it boring. And, in fact, being bored is one thing almost all of us instinctively hate. Particularly in our present day of social media, cell phones, portable games and constant mental stimulation, it seems to us that solitude and silence are indicators of something being terribly wrong. On those occasions when we find ourselves momentarily bored we immediately fumble for our phones or look around for some new distraction.

I suspect we are probably less adept than any previous generation at just sitting still and thinking.

The Temptation to Trivia

More and more people in my small circle of acquaintances are recognizing the value of disconnecting from technology on a regular basis. I’m not sure that reflects any larger social trend, but it’s encouraging to me. My cousin (ironically, retired and living a relatively un-frantic existence) recently complained about the frequency with which his phone disturbs the peace, and one of my sons has actually started to take action to limit the number of interruptions in his day from texts and notifications.

For him it’s an existential issue. He’s a creative and gets thousands of texts, emails and even the occasional phone call every week, to the point where he finds he is hardly able to get anything productive done.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The great mathematician Blaise Pascal claimed all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Modern people don’t sit in rooms alone very well. They find it boring. And, in fact, being bored is one thing almost all of us instinctively hate. Particularly in our present day of social media, cell phones, portable games and constant mental stimulation, it seems to us that solitude and silence are indicators of something being terribly wrong. On those occasions when we find ourselves momentarily bored we immediately fumble for our phones or look around for some new distraction.

I suspect we are probably less adept than any previous generation at just sitting still and thinking.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Turn It Off

The other night I was out with Bernie and one of his neighbours, a man who works in the correctional system. Bernie has his own business to run. His neighbour had a co-worker in crisis. I had just come from work myself. We had a great time and some good, solid conversation, but in the course of a three hour dinner, every one of our cell phones was active between five and twenty times.

You have probably had similar experiences.

A new initiative in my department at work is migrating 90% of company communications to an intranet social media site patterned after Facebook. We are being discouraged from using email and encouraged to access the forum regularly from our phones when not on the job in order to keep abreast of developments and “share information more effectively”.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

A more current version of this post is available here.