Subjective Truth in the Classroom…

I’m studying for my teaching exams. Sorta…

In my study guide for the subject “Teaching Natural Science – Professional Studies”, the distinguished Prof makes some interesting comments about whether or not we should teach evolutionary theory at primary school level:

“An example of a speculative theory is the theory of evolution, which is a hypothetical extrapolation from variations within a species…The theory of evolutionis speculative for, among others, the following reasons:
1) All breeding experimentation has produced only changes within a species…
2) No fossil of any intermediate species (Darwin’s missing link) has ever been found.
3) Mathematicians have calculated the number of selections and/or mutations required for species change… [and found them untenable]…
4) When amino acids combine, to form polypeptides the chemical reactions are reversable… [blah blah blah]… primeval ocean… [blah blah blah]… peptide synthesis will not take place.
5) Evolutionary change would always require an increase in genetic information, but genetic information can only be lost. It can never be gained.”

This entry is not about evolution. It’s about subjectivity in the classroom. You see, in spite of the good prof’s insistence that teaching evolution in the classroom is tantamount to “teaching [children] to accept, passively and unquestioningly, other people’s blind spots”, he does not hesitate to comment later,

“Teach children to appreciate the intricate, orderly and magnificent design in nature and how everything in nature… was created by God as an interrelated, interconnected, and independent whole”.

Now, as an evangelical Christian, I might agree with the Prof’s views, but I have to ask how I might feel if the author of the study guide was an atheist and I would be expected to give exam answers including his double-standard of what should be taught.

The question is not “who is right?”

The question is “Should teachers teach what they believe; or what we believe; or what we can all agree on?”

What do you think?

Should We Desire a More Authentic Range of Emotions in Evangelical Worship?

“O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us-
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”
– Psalm 137:8,9

The author of this poetic verse didn’t hold anything back. There are many imprecations in Scripture. The ancient Israelites held a sense of entitlement when they prayed. The Abrahamic covenant’s, “I will curse those who curse you” was always in view in “us-them” relationships. Combine this “God is my big brother” mentality with the lex talionis (“an eye for an eye”) as the backbone for Hebrew law and you get a background which makes this desire for baby-bashing of the people who had sacked Jerusalem completely authentic emotion. The fact that it was included in the Hebrew canon supports this picture. Most scholars agree that the book of Psalms was used in the second temple cult (worship). Which I suppose means that the people we encouraged to sing these words… as worship. I wonder if this authentic expression of emotion was authentic worship from God’s viewpoint?

But that’s old testament. Read the last few chapters of Judges and you will find yourself shaking your head in wonder that “In those days Israel had no king”:

” 1 Now a man named Micah from the hill country of Ephraim
2 said to his mother, “The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you and about which I heard you utter a curse—I have that silver with me; I took it.”
Then his mother said, “The LORD bless you, my son!”
3 When he returned the eleven hundred shekels of silver to his mother, she said, “I solemnly consecrate my silver to the LORD for my son to make a carved image and a cast idol. I will give it back to you.”
4 So he returned the silver to his mother, and she took two hundred shekels of silver and gave them to a silversmith, who made them into the image and the idol. And they were put in Micah’s house.
5 Now this man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and some idols and installed one of his sons as his priest.
6 In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”
– Judges 17:1-6

People of the Old Covenant often made a complete mess in trying to discern God’s will. I wonder if we aren’t arrogant in assuming in our post-modern mentality that we are immune to misrepresenting God’s will ourselves.

We want to be authentic in our worship, but how will we protect ourselves from just doing (and singing) as we see fit? There is a strong drive in emerging worship trends towards ‘recovering authentic emotion’ (this is a desire that I hold dear myself). Earlier this year, I heard Brian Doerkson speak on this subject. He said that worship leaders “need to make room for people’s pain in worship”. Many people equate authentic emotion with authentic worship, but authentic worship is more than honest. Authentic worship fears God. Authentic worship doesn’t laugh when it’s asked “Isn’t this ’strange fire’?” (Leviticus 10:1).

No matter how real and honest it feels.

Books.

On our last birthday my dear brother and I were out to dinner with our parents. Simon is a fan of controversy. He is a non-conformer. As often happens at our family gatherings we ended up discussing something deep and philosophical and just edgy enough to make my long-suffering mother roll her secretly conservative eyes. The topic of the conversation was: “If you could pick only one book for your child to read in her whole life, what would it be”. Typically, my brother announced that he wouldn’t choose the Bible. Shock! Horror! Fun stuff all ’round.

It’s an interesting question because it’s really a variation of the “which books have been the most influential on your life?” Often people subconsciously resort to name dropping when they are asked this question. We want people to be impressed by us. I think the new framing of the question might help us to avoid that.

So now I’m asking you! I’ll rephrase it to make it more interesting:

“If you had to choose the only three books that your child would read in their lifetimes, which would they be?” To avoid frustrating controversy, we will assume that your child is allowed to read the Torah or Bible or whatever in addition if she so chose.

White South African Christian… Paying for the Sins of the Fathers?

What does it mean to be a white South African Christian living in the year 2009? For many people I know it means being tired of shame. Implied shame. Only gentlemen like Mr. Malema (ANC Youth-League leader) and his friends seem politically incorrect enough now to actually shove it in our faces, but the shame is pervasive. It lies behind every third newspaper headline. It sits in the eyes of the car-guard at the shopping center. It even pollutes our hearts while we worship in our multi-cultural churches. Shame – irrational and unfair and denied and stubborn as a wine stain on our whitewashed hearts.

I’m 27. Apartheid is an academic misadventure to me. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my fault! Sometimes I shake my fist at God for this shame. As if it was His fault.

Remember Daniel?

I used to wonder if Daniel felt this shame as he worked the endless ours in the service of the king who had destroyed his people? Who kept him as a highly educated slave? Who had castrated him? And I wondered if he fought the shame as he walked around the city feeling the eyes of the locals on him? Jew. Eunuch. Slave. I wondered if he shook his fist at God as he knelt down to pray. God had judged his people and delivered them into the hands of the enemy. Their sins had found them out. And Daniel was paying for the sins of the fathers with his very life.

No he didn’t. Daniel poured out his life in service, not to the king of Babylon, but to the King of Heaven. He sacrificed his royal bloodline and his right to marry and have children, and his right to be angry with God on the altar of worship.

Being a white South African Christian (or any Christian for that matter) means learning to lay down the injustices of the present and the past and the future and to fix our eyes on Him. In that gaze, there is no more shame.

(NOTE: The parallel is not to be taken out of context – I am NOT comparing the ANC or black South Africans to the Babylonians or white South Africans with the people of Israel. The parallel exists only in the way I wish to respond like Daniel to the feelings of unjust shaming that I inherit as a white South African living in 2009)

Identity as an Experience

Have you ever had one of those annoying conversations where someone asks you to try to define yourself without mentioning your job, your relationships, your abilities, your interests, or your appearance? It’s hard. We tend to always identify ourselves in terms of the other – “I am a husband” (in relation to my wife), or “I am a musician” (in relation to tone-deaf people, but not so much in relation to real musicians), or “I am a Child of God” (in relation more often to those who are ‘not a child of God’ than in relation to God Himself). This desire to distinguish ourselves is virtually unavoidable, but I believe it’s damaging on many levels.

For one thing, defining identity as in relation to the other almost always leads to some form of pride and/or persecution. We need not even go into the history of slavery, colonialism, apartheid or any such tragic realities. The insidious draw of nasty national pride is something every internet-using Springbok rugby supporter understands first hand. Who has not gone into a chat room or an online poker game and said, “Hey all you wallabies, kiss my green and gold butt! Tri-nations champions 2009, woohoo!!!”?…. Well maybe that’s just me. It’s worth noting though that virtually every nation has at some stage publicly voiced that secret “truth” that ‘we’ are just better than ‘them’. Consider:

Cecil Rhodes on the British: “The British race is sound to the core and… dry rot and dust are strangers to it”

Thomas Babington Macaulay on the English: “[we are] the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw”

The United States Journal 1845 on the US: “We, the American people, are the most independent, intellegent, moral, and happy people on the face of the Earth”

Strabo on Europeans: “I must begin with Europe because it is both varied in form and admirably adapted by nature for the development of excellence in men and governments”

South Africans at any large sporting event: “Ole, ole, ole, ole, We are the Champions, We are the Champions!”

Of course, as an English-speaking South African, I can laugh at this national sentiment a bit easier than most, feeling always a pilgrim, lost somewhere between the Isle of Wight and the Johannesburg Zoo. I can agree more easily than most with Dean W.R. Inge that “A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours”.

Who are we really?

Christians are citizens of another Kingdom too. And the lure of national (religious) pride there is as strong as in any other ‘nation’. We feel the same sort of ridiculous pride at Angus Buchan open-airs as we do at the Springbok rugby games. As if we had had something to do with being born South African… or being born again by His grace. In truth we have about as much right to be proud of being tall or having blue eyes. I reject this kind of identity in terms of the other. I will not sing with the Smalltown Poets: “Call me Christian”. I will not nod my head stupidly at the speakers at youth camps when they tell me “Your identity is that you are a child of God – nothing else matters”.

It’s not that I don’t value that adoption. It’s just that it can be a substitute. I spent years in the church nodding stupidly at altruisms that I didn’t understand and at the same time desperately trying to suppress the sinking feeling that I didn’t have a clue who I was. Identity is not an objective expression of relations between individuals. Identity is a subjective experience. I had just such an experience one day as I lay sobbing my eyes out and shaking my fist at God for abondoning me to my depression. I can hardly describe it in words, but I want you to understand that in one moment I was very aware of God’s nearness and love and in the next moment I was thoroughly aware of how mistaken I had been about everything in my life. I had a peace and a clarity that has never left me. I knew who I was.

And that is why I say that identity is an experience.