Shame in the Community of Faith

  Early in the pandemic season, I mentioned that I had been reading Honor, Patronage, Kinship, and Purity by David deSilva, and it came up again in my 2020 Reading List.  Well, I'm still working my way through it, and after nearly every reading I want to tell someone how much I like it and get someone else to read it. 

  The book starts with a valuable discussion of how to engage meaningfully with honor-shame language in Scripture, particularly if you are from a 'Western' culture. It ranges across the New Testament and would make an excellent reference tool on the title subjects. Below I want to share some quotes from the book.

Regarding Jesus

No member of the Jewish community or the Greco-Roman society would have come to faith or joined the Christian movement without first accepting that God’s perspective on what kind of behavior merits honor differs exceedingly from the perspective of human beings, since the message about Jesus is that both the Jewish and Gentile leaders of Jerusalem evaluated Jesus, his convictions and his deeds as meriting a shameful death, but God overturned their evaluation of Jesus by raising him from the dead and seating him at God’s own right hand as Lord. (p. 51). 

Regarding community

One’s fellow believers will be the most visible and, in many senses, the most available reflection of God’s estimation of the individual, and so the New Testament authors are deeply concerned with building up a strong community of faith that will reinforce individual commitment to the group. [...]

They were to be family, a call that was all the more essential given the networks of relationships that a believer could potentially lose in the ancient world. This kinship was to extend beyond the local group to the provision of hospitality to traveling sisters and brothers. Hospitality in the early church served to create strong bonds between local churches, [...] The love of sisters and brothers of Christ is most needed where the censure of society is most keenly felt. (p. 59-60)

Regarding being shamed

Because the unbelievers will use the power of shaming to impose their values on the believers, and to call them back to a way of life that supports and perpetuates the values of the non-Christian culture, it is imperative that the believers’ sense of worth be detached from the opinion of unbelievers. (p. 61) 

To be shamed by the shameless is ultimately no shame at all. (p. 63)

[Referring to the beatitude regarding being reviled and persecuted...] The fact that Jews had for centuries revered the names of Jeremiah and Isaiah overturns any shame that their kings might have tried to impose upon them. The followers of Jesus can have the same confidence when they encounter impositions of dishonor from outside. (p. 68). 

Regarding responding to shaming 

The honorable person subjected to insult or to some other challenge to honor is culturally conditioned to retaliate, to offer a riposte (see discussion in chapter one) that will counter the challenge and preserve honor in the public eye intact. Christians confronted with such attacks on their honor as verbal challenges, reproachful speech and even physical affronts would be sorely tempted to respond in kind, playing out the challenge-riposte game before the onlookers. Beginning with Jesus, however, Christian leaders sought to cultivate a specifically Christian riposte— the believer is allowed to respond to the challenges made against his or her honor, but directed to do so in such a way as reflects to the outside world the virtues and values of the Christian group. You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. (Mt 5:38-41; see also Mt 5:44; Lk 6:28, 35)

[...]

Followers of Jesus overcome challenges to honor not through using the same currency of insult or violence that the outside world throws at them, but rather they meet hostility with generosity, violence with courageous refusal to use violence, curse with blessing from God’s inexhaustible resources of goodness and kindness. Paul expands on the teaching of Jesus by urging the Christian to “take thought for what is noble in the sight of all” (Rom 12:17) rather than repaying “evil for evil.” One finds in Paul and 1 Peter a deep concern to demonstrate to outsiders that being Christian is in fact honorable. (p. 70-71)

 This book has easily joined my favorites on the topic of honor, shame, and their surrounding topics, along with Roland Muller's Honor and Shame and Jackson Wu's One Gospel for All Nations. It is somewhat more academic but not in an unreadable way at all. Overall, it is continuing to add significantly to my collection of thoughts on this topic, many of which have been gathered here over the years.

Anticipation, summarized by Wodehouse

"Few things are so pleasant as the anticipation of them."

~ P. G. Wodehouse, The Adventures of Sally

Teaching Academic Reading: a method including the Academic Word List

  It was frustration and some level of despair with teaching Academic Reading that pushed me to do an MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) several years ago. Now, two years after completing that degree, my academic reading classes are still the ones most likely to frustrate me, but I've learned a lot over the last 6 years. I am now completing my thirteenth one-semester, EAP class focused on Academic Reading and Writing for first-year students. (EAP stands for English for Academic Purposes.)

 When I started, I was given a variety of material and a lot of freedom to design the classes however I wanted. These classes are specific to the students' department/field of study, and that first class was with the History department. I love studying history, so it was an ideal match! 

  The problem was my lack of experience and knowledge: 

How do you teach someone who already knows how to read, how to read better? 

  I mean, I know how to read, and so do they. Also, I know how to read academic material quite well, but that's a really personal skill, or at least it feels like it. So, there was a lot of trial and error, and I began accumulating experience, often of things that didn't work well.

 Eventually, I was transferred to teaching EAP classes for Political Science and International Relations (interesting!) and Economics (not so interesting!) departments. These classes (with my MA teachers' guidance) pointed me to a central principle for teaching EAP classes: 

I'm not the expert; the students are. 

  How can I teach economics students when I don't know economics? Well, the students get to be the experts, and I tell them so! Suddenly the class becomes more collaborative because this principles suggests certain corollaries. The students answer a survey in the first week of class each semester choosing which topics we will discuss that semester and also indicating which skill areas they feel the need to learn. That's the first step in the method.

   Of course, I also bring an expertise to the classroom: 

My job is to provide shortcuts and productive pathways that students can travel for streamlined learning.  

  What does this look like? Well, one key area of learning for university-level reading is field-specific vocabulary. Every field of study has its own specialized vocabulary; every student needs to learn these, but the stakes are raised for those who have spent fewer years using English regularly. 

  Years ago, the Academic Word List was researched and published; Oxford now has a similar list. However, these are somewhat blunt tools; they merely tell the reader what words they are likely to encounter throughout the ENTIRE university campus. While useful, these tools don't tell students what words to focus on and try using this week for this topic. However, they can!

  Before assigning each reading in class each week, I take the text from whatever article we are reading, and I pass it through this text analyzer. 

   Then, I copy and paste the list of words produced by that into Excel and copy just the list of single words. 

   Then, I paste that into this List Comparison tool. On the other side, I paste the AWL words (from the PDF at the above site.)

  This tells me, which AWL words are in the assigned text. I can then prioritize the ones that are most crucial to the reading, while I can also note which ones have cognates in the students' native languages. I keep a list of all these AWL words throughout the semester; and by again using the List Comparison tool, I know what AWL words have been shared before and which ones are new this week. In this way, we can avoid excessive repetition.

  One final benefit of this process is that by scanning the original text analysis, I can note any key collocations or expressions that may be important for this text as well. These may not be on the Academic Word List, but they can be really useful for the students. This is especially true for noun-preposition combinations.

 Where do I get my articles for the readings? Well, from a variety of sources. However, two of the best sources for appropriate-length, academic-level readings are JSTOR Daily and the Council on Foreign Relations. The particular example used above came from JSTOR Daily, "The Bold Future of the Outer Space Treaty." 

  Naturally, having learned the most relevant vocabulary for their (class-chosen) topic and having read an article on it, the students are prepared to share some of their own thoughts on the topic. Thus, there's usually a follow-up writing assignment. This process can help with one final principle that Dana Ferris mentions:

“Similarly, students should be encouraged to generate key vocabulary for a specific piece of writing.” Ferris (Supporting Multilingual Writers in EAP, 154)

Responsibility-Independence & Second Languages Entrapping Thirds

Responsibility was the inevitable price one had to pay for independence; irresponsibility was something which, in the very nature of things, could not co-exist with independence.

Commodore Hornblower (p. 230). Kindle Edition. 

[While trying to speak French...] But conversation did not proceed smoothly, with Hornblower having laboriously to build up his sentences beforehand and to avoid the easy descent into Spanish which was liable to entrap him whenever he began to think in a foreign tongue.

Flying Colours (p. 98). Kindle Edition. 

 One of the three epic series that I re-read regularly, probably every three-ish years, is the Hornblower saga by C. S. Forester. (The others being Tolkien's Middle Earth works and Herbert's Dune saga.) Anyways, I recently finished reading Hornblower again and pulled out these two lovely quotes. The first is a bit of sage wisdom [is there another type?!] which seems especially applicable to parents raising children... and everyone else. 

  The second quote is a rather sympathetic insight of the ambush laid for anyone who has dabbled in third or fourth languages. Whichever non-native language is strongest is always lingering just over the horizon to ensnare the speaker in their other languages, occasionally even twisting the native language itself! 

Photo by Martin Laprise on Unsplash

A White Stone, with a Secret Name

Photo by Who’s Denilo ?

  In my recent reading of Adorning the Dark, a passage from this old 'unspoken' sermon on 'The New Name' by George MacDonald was mentioned. I've included some excerpts below. While there are many places in the Scriptures where the communal or corporate identities of God's followers are emphasized, the particular verse in this sermon is strikingly focused on the individual. It is sourced in the promise of Jesus:

To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’ 

Revelation 2:17b

Photo by Edgar Soto

The true name is one which expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's own symbol,--his soul's picture, in a word,--the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own name? God alone.

...

God's name for a man must then be the expression in a mystical word--a word of that language which all who have overcome understand--of his own idea of the man, that being whom he had in his thought when he began to make the child, and whom he kept in his thought through the long process of creation that went to realize the idea. To tell the name is to seal the success--to say, "In thee also I am well pleased."
...

To him who climbs on the stair of all his God-born efforts and God-given victories up to the height of his being--that of looking face to face upon his ideal self in the bosom of the Father--God's him, realized in him through the Father's love in the Elder Brother's devotion--to him God gives the new name written.
...

But I leave this, because that which follows embraces and intensifies this individuality of relation in a fuller development of the truth. For the name is one "which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Not only then has each man his individual relation to God, but each man has his peculiar relation to God. He is to God a peculiar being, made after his own fashion, and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. Hence he can worship God as no man else can worship him,-- can understand God as no man else can understand him. This or that man may understand God more, may understand God better than he, but no other man can understand God as he understands him. God give me grace to be humble before thee, my brother, that I drag not my simulacrum of thee before the judgment-seat of the unjust judge, but look up to thyself for what revelation of God thou and no one else canst give. As the fir-tree lifts up itself with a far different need from the need of the palm-tree, so does each man stand before God, and lift up a different humanity to the common Father. And for each God has a different response. With every man he has a secret--the secret of the new name. In every man there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of peculiar life into which God only can enter. I say not it is the innermost chamber--but a chamber into which no brother, nay, no sister can come.

From this it follows that there is a chamber also--(O God, humble and accept my speech)--a chamber in God himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the peculiar man,--out of which chamber that man has to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is that for which he was made--to reveal the secret things of the Father.
...

And what an end lies before us! To have a consciousness of our own ideal being flashed into us from the thought of God! Surely for this may well give way all our paltry self-consciousnesses, our self-admirations and self-worships! Surely to know what he thinks about us will pale out of our souls all our thoughts about ourselves! and we may well hold them loosely now, and be ready to let them go.
...

[Application:]
Ambition is the desire to be above one's neighbour; and here there is no possibility of comparison with one's neighbour: no one knows what the white stone contains except the man who receives it. Here is room for endless aspiration towards the unseen ideal; none for ambition. Ambition would only be higher than others; aspiration would be high. Relative worth is not only unknown--to the children of the kingdom it is unknowable.

(emphasis added)

Source: http://www.online-literature.com/george-macdonald/unspoken-sermons/5/

Photo by bantersnaps

Wasteful Wardens of the Planet

  This is a hard topic to write about. It's easier to express the ideas in speech, but then the details don't usually all get explored before the conversation wonders. So, in keeping with one of the purposes of this blog, I am going to try again to express the question of "Humans as Wasteful Wardens." I deleted my first attempt a couple years ago, but the idea keeps coming up. So, let me try to outline its key pieces.

1. I believe that humans were designed to be gardeners, stewards of the earth - or, maybe even of the galaxy! There is a care and compassion inherent to gardening that is so natural that it may not get much thought. Gardeners seek fruit or flowers, which requires healthy plants, which require healthy soil, which requires investment of time and work and attention and study. Shouldn't that be us all around the world - each in our own plot of land, seeking healthy provision and beauty and flourishing?
2. I believe that our Maker also designed us to multiply humans who would reflect the Maker's own image partially through elaborating on the designs built into the world. In other words, the world had been designed flawless but still had space for improvement, even in Eden! Shouldn't we be pursuing the development of what was given, whether physical or mental or spiritual or social?
3. I believe in entropy: the world is falling into disorder, and inevitably we are increasing that disorder. Since its goodness was shattered, this universe has been gradually deteriorating. Theologically, we might speak of 'sin'; scientifically, we might speak of 'the second law of thermodynamics'. Both concepts tell us that this world is not what it once was and is headed for destruction. What's worse is that we are involved, as a cause. Shouldn't we be fighting against the destruction?

  To summarize, while the world was designed to be good for humanity, humanity was also designed to be good for the world. However, our daily existence shows us that often the world is not good for us, and we are often not good for it. This should naturally lead to a bad end. Is there another way? 

Turkish kebab

 On the one hand, I'd really like to be 'green,' but I can't commit to greenness as an ideology. I can't get past its meaningless, vicious cycle. Which one? Well, imagine that I ate some kebab... at some point, I would need to wash the plate. Now, I could save it with lots of other dirty dishes and run it through the dishwasher, or I could just wash it by hand. They both consume resources though different amounts of different resources with different fall-out for the health of the earth, its systems, and my co-inhabitants. I also have the option of NOT washing the plate - so as to save water and to prevent chemical pollution. However, that may end up with me in the hospital consuming vastly more resources than I otherwise would have. In fact, no option removes me as a consumer and polluter. (Oh, and we didn't touch on the topic of the good kebab that God provided; that would be another place to consider how we are 'gardening our world'.) In every case, it feels like I am wasting or destroying part of the exact thing that I was to be enhancing, the world that I was made a steward of! I am not suggesting here that this is my only effect on the earth; I am simply suggesting that it seems inevitable that I will have some negative impact. 

 Here's a fascinating case study: This BBC article on deep sea mining shows plainly how we humans struggle to balance exploring, appreciating, and using the resources that we find. So, I am left to wonder: Can we garden without greed? Can we explore without exploitation? Can we contribute while we consume? Can we enhance while we expand? Those who love the God revealed in the Bible should be at the forefront of seeking ways to do this; that was the original design! Of course, we can't "save the planet," but we should certainly care for it as well as we can. As in so many other areas, we must value what we have been given without worshipping it. At the same time, we must engage in brokenness without trying to become the Savior.  

  Graciously, there is a solution from outside the system. If the Designer of the world were to engage the world in healing by sending help from outside the system, healing would become possible at more than a temporary or partial level. The Bible's claim is that such help has and will come. So, while recognizing the temporal hopelessness of saving the environment, it is possible for a person to garden in the world as best as they know how and also to look for a Healer who will bring in the opposite of entropy! Isaiah describes The One who will bring an increase of peace without end (9:7). How will goodness increase forever? I don't know, but I am eager to be shown.

  For thought or comment: 

• How can we apply ourselves (individually or communally) to gardening whatever space we have?
• Where can we create beauty around us?
• What do I see that needs restoring near me?
• What would I do differently if I saw myself as steward of the earth and took responsibility for such a stewardship of land and co-inhabitants?

on Books and Reading - encountering Andrew Peterson's thoughts

  I have really been refreshed and gladdened by Andrew Peterson's book, Adorning the Dark (with the inexplicable exception of chapter 6). There is much to appreciate in this memoir-philosophy of life and art. For now though, I just want to comment on two statements he makes about reading and books.

“Too often we retreat into the pages of our longing only to return disconsolate to the kitchen or the classroom—we’re escaping from and not to.” (66)

  This first comment (and the chapter that precedes it) hints at my reality as a teenager; it describes when books were my refuge in a sense that was nearly ultimate. One of the most significant spiritual battles in my life was quitting a particular book - and series - because of the way it was dominating my time one summer. Books are a beautiful escape unless they become Ultimate; then they can become a prison so lovely that we may not even recognize our cage. 

“[These novels] strike me as a way to pass the time rather than to enrich it.” (66)

  When I was a child, we had a category of books called "Purple Door" books because of a particular book that my sister and I loved so much that we convinced my mom to read it in her rare and valuable reading time. She didn't love it so much. She explained to us that it would never be a classic even though it was a nice read. That categorization has stuck with me ever since. Here Peterson defines that category exactly: 

short words are harder

  A hundred plus years ago, G. K. Chesterton remarked upon the dangerous laziness of long words and the difficulty and effort required to put things into short words. An extract of his thought seem worth sharing. It is worth thinking about how we think (or not), and then how we speak (or not)! 

Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

   But these long comfortable words that save modern people the toil of reasoning have one particular aspect in which they are especially ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs when the same long word is used in different connections to mean quite different things. Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word "idealist" has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientific materialists have had just reason to complain of people mixing up "materialist" as a term of cosmology with "materialist" as a moral taunt. So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who hates "progressives" in London always calls himself a "progressive" in South Africa.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, ch. 8. (emphasis added)

A Handout on Linkers or Logical Connectors

  Below is a graphic organizer that I made a few years ago to serve as a guide for how to think about and teach 'linkers' or 'connectors' or whatever you prefer to call them. These devices that help stitch together a text seem to have a million names, confusing for students and confusing for teachers. I suppose this comes from their variety of roles they play and the diversity that is displayed in them. The complexity and richness of linking devices can add much to the power of our writing or speaking, so they are well worth getting to know intimately for any and all of us.

While realizing that it could be much more attractive, I am no longer able to edit the original, so I figured I'd just share it like this.

Is your boss only satisfied with your best work?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28–30). 

  Discussing Matthew 11:28-30, Tim Keller says the following in regard to working and resting as a follower of Jesus Christ.

[Jesus] is the only boss who will not drive you into the ground, the only audience that does not need your best performance in order to be satisfied with you. Why is this? Because his work for you is finished. 

In fact, the very definition of a Christian is someone who not only admires Jesus, emulates Jesus, and obeys Jesus, but who “rests in the finished work of Christ” instead of his or her own. Remember, God was able to rest in Genesis 2, verses 1–3 only because his creative work was finished. And a Christian is able to rest only because God’s redemptive work is likewise finished in Christ. When the work under the work has been satisfied by the Son, all that’s left for us to do is to serve the work we’ve been given by the Father.

Keller, Timothy. Every Good Endeavor (p. 238). Kindle Edition.  (emphasis added)

Earlier...

All of us are haunted by the work under the work—that need to prove and save ourselves, to gain a sense of worth and identity. (p. 234).