So I got contacts today, for the first time in my life. I gotta say, whoever invented these things was the smartest and DUMBEST person in the world. Smartest because I have great vision all around, don’t have to worry about glasses, etc. Dumbest because I have to jab my freakin’ eyeball to do it! Don’t worry, this is a great idea, but you won’t be able to enjoy them for the first month because I have to pour a bag of sand in your eyes with it. Doctor says I can’t get ‘em in easily cause I got strong eyelids. I know, I lift anvils with them every night (and occasionally after lunch, when I can’t stay awake in class). Maybe I’ll get use to it, but something tells me training my eyelids to not close when a large object is coming at them may not be a great plan. I guess I’ll have to decide. See the world with eyes, or keep the world out of my eyes? Fight for vision? Or, fight against evolution? Ahh, to hell with Darwin. Jab my eyeball again, Contacts, thy soft, gewey, impossible-to-keep-from-flipping-inside-out surface has nothing on my cornea. The world’s not such an ugly face to look at, and eventually I’ll even forget you’re in my eye. Thank God for sensory adaptation and tear ducts…except for when a flying soccer ball nails you in your face and you cry like a girl in front of a bunch of girls cause the bloody contact gets shoved up in the eye cavity… Anyway, I do like to see the world clearly, but more on the metaphorical level
I’m a quarter century old, and as I hear the news about Pakistan, here’s all I can think. I find that most of us like reality to remain in packages we can easily digest. We want to cast out demons, the real and metaphysical ones, but we do it like we’re pulling out a porcupine barb. We see it and pull, missing the fact that there are shards that grip in until the barb is snapped at the roots. Shards of wickedness and evil have settled into all areas of these lands. And they aren’t as blatant or easily recognizable as a barb sticking in the flesh. Evil is much more complex than we give it credit for – not always as black and white, us and them. And it builds up under the surface. It’s always been this way. Some people throughout history have broken evil at its core. But most of us just pull at its obvious manifestations, not realizing that we still build a society and culture that fosters more wickedness. We say evil is tyrants, but tyrants only come like volcanoes, when the evil is too much to keep under the surface any longer. War, terrorists, bad government, corrupt leaders, all of these things are wicked, but they are not the core of evil. There are deeper roots that have settled into all of our hearts and our communities. May we find the subtlest of evils, the deepest of splinters, in our own lives. And may we not just remove them, but counter them with the greatest actions of faith and goodness.
I’m thinking that atheists make a good argument.
We, Christians, tend to argue that everything is so precisely in place for life to exist. Whether it be distance from the sun, the earth’s tilt, the salt percentage in the ocean, etc, many feel that the universe was made for life. But saying the universe was made FOR life based on all the pieces that fit is like saying the human nose was made for glasses (thanks Voltaire). If my nose were any slimmer, my glasses would slip off my face. If it were any fatter, they wouldn’t fit. Then I must conclude that my nose is perfectly suited for these glasses. But my nose wasn’t made for glasses. Rather, glasses were made for my nose (and I have to constantly readjust them to make them fit). The “universe FOR us” argument begins to look ridiculous when applied elsewhere.
Maybe the wonder in the details of the universe is not that it all came together FOR us, but that as I write it doesn’t just spontaneously roll over on itself and snuff out life. The universe is chaotic and unpredictable, so maybe we are actually just moments away from implosion. Maybe a million years is a short period of time for the universe, and in the grand scheme of things our universe is actually falling apart at a rapid rate. Maybe there are species of life somewhere in the universe that have evolved, destroyed their planet, and died in less than one of our minutes.
But even if existence is actually on the verge of collapse, I’m thinking that the universe - in this moment that I have been given to look at it - is perfectly suited for the wonder of God. Maybe the universe is the way it is so that in this moment - even if it is the instant before everything suddenly falls out of place - in this moment, I can look at it all and gasp, “Wow…”
It’s a very open future for me. Some days that stirs me to action. Others it overwhelms me to laziness. Some days it all makes sense. And others, it feels like a cosmic joke where I’m not even the punchline. But I think God gave us the Wisdom literature for this reason…and damn anybody who tries to candy-coat that stuff or ignore the tension of hope and abandonment. Life is an unpredictable blend of struggle and freedom. And it’s a beautiful thing when shared.
I know I’m suppose to respond to other people, but David’s perspective is unique to this article.
Coming from the American majority, my tendency to reconcile the sins of our nation is to act like I’m colorblind. But I like the quote that David used, “God is colorful and cognizant of the beauty of each color” (300). To take it further, even within each color, there are unique tones and hues (I’m not an artist, so I don’t know). There are colors within colors, and we lose the unique qualities of people the more we act colorblind or try to categorize everyone into clear groups. At some point, because someone is not of my same ethnicity, they bring great value to the group.
F compares the struggles of Filipino-Americans with Israel in Egypt with a unique conclusion. Rather than exodus out of Egypt (America), F proposes that Filipino-Americans exodus from under the dominant power and yet remain in America. I particularly like F’s point that the goal is not to blend all the colors (ethnicities) into one or become colorless. “A God who is not cognizant of color is a God who is not cognizant of the pain of those who suffer because of color.” (300)
I further agree with him that we easily look over how Israel, following the Exodus, colonizes the Canaanites. They mimic the Egyptian Pharaohs they were held under. It’s interesting that Palestinian theologians, according to Fernandez, associate with the Canaanites in the Exodus story. The oppressed took over and became the oppressor. This is part of one of the more difficult issues for me to handle in my Church in Mission class where we are discussing post-colonial thought. When there are hints (or even blatant examples) of colonialism, patriarchy, etc., what do we do about it?
King argues that Mary of Magdala had a much stronger presence in the Jesus movement as both a disciple and later teacher. She says a historical picture of Mary of Magdala must include non-canonical texts (i.e. the Gospel of Mary) because the canonical ones marginalize her role greatly. I want to support King’s interpretation (women were more prominent around Jesus than they are often accredited for), but I think she takes it too far into her feminist ideology. She reads too much out of the canonical texts. Furthermore, she favors later 2nd century texts to reconstruct what we know of the early 1st century figure. However, the closest to history that some of these texts can recreate is what we know about the 2nd century groups that followed these texts and the hints of 1st century communities we might hear. I support King only in so far as supporting women as followers of Jesus. She does help us reconsider the patriarchal history of the church’s hermeneutics. But, I can’t replace a patriarchal ideology with an overly feminist one.
Israel’s essay is a good follow up to Mbuwayesango’s essay. In Mb’s essay, the Shona were passive receivers of a colonial text. In Israel’s essay, the early 1800s Protestant Tamil’s played a much more active role in which biblical translation they will use. They did not so easily accept an updated translation offered by the missionaries. Israel gives a few interesting reasons for this. One was that the Protestant Tamils did not want to give up the heritage that they had built, which gave them a voice amidst other hegemonies and religions that had their own heritages. Two, the Protestants Tamils distrusted non-Protestant sources for translations (including Catholic Tamils) on the grounds that non-Protestants might be biased and incapable of giving an accurate translation of God’s word. The strength here, according to Israel, is that the Protestant Tamil’s have chosen the translation based on their own terms. I agree with Israel on that point but still have a difficult time accepting some of the arguments brought against the new translation. For example, one gets a sense that the Protestant Tamil community did not want to use a Tamil too closely associated with lower castes (which they found in the new translation). This may be part of their culture and tradition, but it still upholds in-out binarisms found in the larger hegemony.
Mb. presents the case when missionaries translated the English Bible into the Shona language, using the Shona god Mwari in place of the name Yahweh. She persuasively argues that the evangelizing missionaries, in their efforts to be relevant, undermined the Shona’s culture, religion, and practices. Her article forces many Christians to reconsider their “Mars Hill” evangelist strategies. When Paul was debating on Mars Hill, he complemented the people for their spirituality and drew on their statue to an unknown god as a starting place to speak of Jesus. We in missions have been trying to duplicate this approach, but the case of Mwari shows how we can push this too far. Instead of pointing out hints of God already present in the Shona, the missionaries usurped Mwari and (unintentionally?) taught that this gender-neutral god was actually Israel’s god (not the Shonas) and forced Yahweh characteristics on Mwari (such as gender).
I agree with Mb’s response that translations should as best as possible work directly from the Greek and Hebrew texts rather than the English translations. A copy of a copy doesn’t always turn out as well (think Michael Keaton in Multiplicity). Her sense that Mwari and Yahweh should be held as different gods is interesting, as well. It isn’t good to blend the two together and lose their distinct qualities (because in this case it colonized the Shona culture). But, I do think one can (and should) speak of the similar qualities when there are some.
In discussing Andrew Walls, our class said the best way to do missions is not to come in and bring new forms, but instead, take what’s going on and make it Godly. Maybe I misunderstood, but I think a better way of saying it is “point out what is Godly.” Mbuwayesango has an essay about how when missionaries translated the Bible into the language of the Shona, they used the Shona deity Mwari to replace Yahweh. But what they really did was usurp the gender-neutral god Mwari, making it the god of Israel, not the Shona. The missionaries may have been well intended, recognizing that Mwari was close to an understanding of Yahweh. But they butchered it. This is what it means to take pieces of a culture and MAKE it Godly. The Biblical Yahweh suffocates the real Yahweh. Mbu. makes a good argument that the goal of missions is not to corroborate another culture. Its more to the point to come alongside their story and be a part of it by offering all of one’s self in service to them.
