The Burden of Storytelling

Lately I have noticed an unfortunate recurrence of bad exegesis. It seems that no one takes the time to understand the orinigal meaning of biblical terminology and ideas, which is a shame, because after a couple thousand years of dutiful scholarship, it should be pretty easy. It is irritating to me when someone takes a biblical term, gives it a modern definition without looking into the original understanding and context in which the term/idea was written, and applies it to modern circumstances, whether it be cultural, political, or spiritual that may have not been circumstances remotely connected to the point the original author was trying to make at the time of writing.

L. Micheal White makes the point more elogquently than I ever

People tell stories and write them down in books [which] makes them
accessible to readers. In that sense they are a medium of communication to a
braoder audience. Communication is easier when author and audience come from a
shared cultural background and time; then it is much like hearing the story told
orally. Here the burden is on the storyteller to commmunicate in words
and ideas that the audience will find meaningful.

But books
also preserve stories and thus make it possible for later generations of readers
to encounter not only a story of a bygone era but also the people who once told
and heard it. Here the medium of commmunication is more complex. Now,
the reader--not the storyteller--bears the burden.

If, after buying a car from a used car lot, I said to a friend, "Oh my God! It was a hip looking car, but it turned out to be a lemon," and my freind recorded my statement in his journal. Two thousand years later, my words are found in an excavation in my friends old basement. The discoverers, no matter what language they speak in 4008, might deduce that vehicles were used in worship (Oh my God), that my car physically resembled a body part (hip), and that it was all natural (lemon).

All this to say, as a protestant I have lived by Sola Scriptura and come to LOVE scripture. I hate seeing it taken lightly and used to communicate ideas it never intended to communicate. So from this day forward, every wednesday will be exegesis day for My Friend Ivan. I will start posting my translations, starting with the book of James with my footnotes every Wednesday. Hopefully some will interact with my thoughts, and hopefully I will brush up my out-of-practice Greek skills.

A Transparent Blog Post

After nine years of private Christian schooling, I entered the doors of a public high school, sheltered, naïve, and nervous. The last class of a long but exciting day was physical science. The instructor was Shehrever Masters—a fastidious wealth of knowledge, who demanded perfection from his students. So high were his standards, they cost him his job. By the end of the year only a third of the original students remained, I was one of them, and I had achieved a perfect score. In fact, Masters had requested that I take the stand in court as his advocate as he battled Toledo Public Schools over legitimacy of his firing.

That first day was one of the most memorable days of my life; not because of the situation, the change, the thousands of new faces, but because of one statement that Mr. Masters made. His rich, distinctly middle eastern voice, cut through the room, and my heart as he said, “The first thing I must teach you all in this class, is that there is no God.”

What conviction! What unassuming assuredness bolstered the power of his statement! This moment will never leave my memory, for this was the first time (of many to come) in fourteen years I had ever doubted my faith, my salvation…my life.

As I recollect, I could almost feel sad. My sweet bubble had been burst. But I respect Shrehver Masters, for he taught me to love knowledge, and even more importantly, not to blindly believe anything.

The older I get, the more knowledge I accumulate. I read more books, attend more lectures, and meet more people who challenge what and why I believe. Even in the past few months I have felt as if a few bricks in the foundation of my world view have crumbled, and in those moments I doubt. It is not that I doubt goodness, God’s existence, or the validity of Jesus Christ as son of God; rather, bits and pieces entwined in the story of those things come into question and set my mind and emotions spinning. I feel like such a failure: weak, fickle, ignorant, unsure, and quite temporary.

Then I read an article in Time on the struggle of faith experienced by the world’s most beloved humanitarian, child of God, and modern day Saint, Mother Theresa, and I am comforted. I am not masochistically pleased that the Albanian nun suffered anguish as she doubted the nearness of God, but I am assured that I am not alone, and that even in my doubt, I can be used mightily by God.