On Asking in Prayer

There are some theology questions that I don’t like to get involved in. It’s not that I don’t have answers, it’s that I don’t share the intuition about the problem. One of the things that I’ve learned over the ye)ars is that without fully appreciating the problem, a person is less likely to have a helpful answer. When I was providing technical support over the telephone, I once had three customers back-to-back that asked the same question with the same words but meant three different things. The question was, “Why do the printer drivers lock up my modem?”

One person wanted to know the mechanics of it all: this printer had originally been designed for a serial rather than parallel ports, and when the drivers would detect a device on the serial port, they tried to make contact. Since it was a modem and not a printer, it caused problems. There was a patch to fix it.

The second person just wanted the fix. Actually answering the “why” didn’t interest them.

The third person was rather on the technical side and had already solved the problem. They wanted to know how our engineers had let such an obvious oversight get past us. To which, the only answer I ever had was that people make mistakes and we fixed it as soon as we realized it was causing problems.

I know that I fully satisfied the first two. I understand their position. I share their intuition. When something strange happens, I want to know how it works behind the scenes that breaks and I want to know how to fix it. Sometimes, I don’t have the time and I just want it fixed, though. I understand all that. Been there, done that. I had to call to get things fixed so often that eventually they started letting me take calls to fix other people.

The third one I couldn’t answer because I didn’t really understand what they wanted. I never imagine that the first version of any driver or software is going to be problem free. The variety of computers out there is just too wide to fully test every possible configuration before letting it out the door. We’re human. We don’t make perfect software. That’s the way of things.

It’s possible that there was something deeper behind the question than an expectation of perfection. If so, I didn’t get it. It was definitely clear that they had very high expectations of the driver team. I’ve written a few apps in my days, and I know better than to think that software might be the best it can be when it’s first released. There are more variables in software and hardware than any developer could ever hope to account for. The appropriate reply, the reply based on a knowledge of the difficulties in software development, is “Oh, good, you’ve fixed it.” It seems to me that any other response is spoken in ignorance unless sufficiently explained.

I run into the same kind of problem when talking about theology. There’s a certain kind of teaching out there that claims that whatever a Christian wants will be granted as long as it meets some kind of minimum criteria. I don’t get that teaching. Even though I don’t get it, there are people that are abandoning Christianity because of it. They have earnestly prayed for things that they needed and they didn’t get them, so they are leaving the faith.

Sometimes God does answer prayer. I used to end my Kung Fu classes with prayer. One day, a student was complaining that it was raining and he had a mile to walk home. So I added in a request that the rain would stop, and it did. Students were talking about that for a month. Particularly, the topic was that I normally just ended with The Lord’s Prayer without additional petitions, and the one time I added one it “worked.” When they would ask me about it, I would say, “It never hurts to ask. The worst that can happen is that God says no.”

One thing that I want to start with today is that I understand the hurt of asking for a thing and not getting it. I held my dying child in my arms begging that he will be healed. I don’t claim any special insight into which prayers will be answered and which will not. One thing is clear to me: it’s not the desperation of the one praying. The casual request to stop rain was honored, the desperate begging to heal my son was not.

I didn’t lose my faith when my son died. It didn’t shake my faith. I didn’t question God. I had a robust understanding of prayer at that point. While I firmly hold that it didn’t hurt to ask and I held the door open for hope right up until my son was buried. I never expected anything, though. As such, while it did hurt and I don’t think I’ve ever really recovered emotionally from the loss, my faith and my emotions are not strongly connected, so the impact on my faith was negligible.

Over the years, I’ve had people raised in churches that push this kind of agenda try to convince me that this is the real thing that must be believed. I’ve always pushed back against this kind of teaching. Sadly, it comes in such a variety of forms that I can’t address all of them here. I’m going to address some of them, though, and hopefully someone can use this as a framework to address these thoughts within themselves.

The first problem that people present is the idea that if God loves us, he would do what we want. This is the first place where I run into problems with those that have this view. Love is not simply doing everything that someone wants. Past that, love isn’t something that God does, it’s what God is.

When my daughter was little, I was accused of being too free and relaxed with my daughter. When she would ask for candy, I never said no. One friend was concerned about this, and said that this would lead to selfishness. “Candy, then cash, then cars,” they warned. This has not turned out to be the case.

I had tricks to not have to say no, though. I didn’t keep a lot of candy on hand. Even when I did have candy around, I didn’t tell her about it. Often, the answer wasn’t, “You can’t have candy,” but, “We can get a little candy tomorrow.”

As my daughter has grown up, there have been times that I’ve put her into uncomfortable places to expand her mentally and emotionally. After coming out of COVID, she was quite shy, and I enrolled her in a gaming league at a local game store to help get her out of her shell. She was not a fan at first, but now she loves it. I home school her, and require her to do an arithmetic refresher almost every day. She only pulled the, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t make me do my math today,” on me once.

So right off the bat, those that measure the love someone has for them in terms of what they’re willing to do for them already starts from a place that I fundamentally disagree with on two points. They’re measuring love wrongly, and they’re giving God the wrong nature. To be clear, both “love” and “God” are just words and anyone can pour any meaning into either of them that they want. All they’ve proven with this definition of love and God is that the God of giving them whatever it is they were asking for isn’t real, though. Since that’s not the God of the Bible, the God that most serious theologians teach, or the God of historic Christianity, all those of us in those circles can say is, “I don’t believe in that God either. Now that you’ve rejected this false God, let me introduce you to the God I believe in.”

There are other ways to approach this, though. There are Bible verses that can be made to sound like this when you take them out of context and embroider them on a pillow. Before I attempt to address any of these, it’s important to remember that whatever you think about God answering prayer has to be consistent with what happened to Jesus in the garden before he went to the cross.

And he took with him Cephas and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto his disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Cephas, What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed [is] willing, but the flesh [is] weak. He went away again the second time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done. And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy. And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me. And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of his twelve disciples, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.

Matthew 26:37-47 Corrected King James Version

Then, when the Apostles tried to fight the Roman guard, Jesus said, “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” (Matthew 26:53-54 Corrected King James Version) So the idea that Jesus thought the Father was unable to rescue him is inconsistent with the image scripture gives us. Whatever else you read, wherever else you read it, it must be considered in light of these passages.

With that said, I’m going to look at a couple of passages that I’ve seen people go to when they try to show that God answers prayer. The first is easy enough to deal with: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend [it] in your pleasures.” (James 4:3 Corrected King James Version) For some people, this implies that the only reason God doesn’t answer the prayers of a person is because they’re evil. This leads into a complicated and destructive cycle of trying to be good enough to get their prayers answered, then testing their own righteousness by the degree to which they get what they want. For too many, the exit ramp of that cycle is atheism.

There is one thing that I would like to make clear at the onset: I would actually rather this person were an atheist than stay in that destructive cycle. As odd as it may sound, I’ve met many atheists for whom I feel the need to say, “Thou art not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34 Corrected King James Version) only after they abandoned the kind of thinking entailed in this destructive circle. If we Christians were once called atheists, it should not be surprising to learn that there are still some atheists closer to God than some of the modern pagans attending services in our Christian churches every Sunday morning.

Let’s start by analyzing this in terms of Jesus in the garden: there was never anyone more righteous and worthy of acquittal than Jesus. No one was ever closer to the Father. Jesus’s very being was God. He was without sin. There is no sense in which Jesus failed to get what he requested simply because he asked amiss, so that he could spend it on his pleasures.

The next thing is to notice what is really happening here. The verse doesn’t say, “If you do good, then God will always answer your prayers.” So, who is the “ye” in this case?

A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text. This is particularly true when there’s a second person pronoun. Then it’s worth taking a look around the verse to get a sense of what it’s saying. Something that some people do is take the verse being examined out of the text, and read before and after. The verse will be adding to the discussion it’s a part of. So let’s do that with James.

Whence [come] wars and fightings among you? [come they] not hence, [even] of your pleasures that war in your members? Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and covet, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war; ye have not, because ye ask not… Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God.

James 4:1, 3-4 Corrected King James Version

Without the text under consideration, the passage very clearly is not a discussion of prayer, it’s criticizing people for doing poorly.

That gives us a framework to approach another text that gets used this way. “Again I say unto you, [That] if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.” (Matthew 18:19 Corrected King James Version)

Once again, thinking about this in terms of the surrounding text helps.

Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, [then] take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell [it] unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven… For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Matthew 18:15-18, 20 Corrected King James Version

Once again, when you look at the context, this is talking about church discipline, not about prayer. Let me make an analogy: if I were directing a crew building a house, and I turned to a worker and said, “You didn’t get much done yesterday,” and they complained that they had been sabotaged by another employee and showed video to back up their claim, then I said, “I will do whatever you want. Just ask,” it would not be within the spirit of the conversation for them to request a steak dinner. They might ask that the other employee be fired. They might ask that they be reprimanded. They might just ask that I be more patient with them. Those would be within the spirit of the conversation.

Similarly, Jesus is describing what to do when you have a problem with a fellow believer here, and saying that the decision of the church regarding the unrepentant will be supported by God. Asking for a winning lottery ticket is outside the scope of that. Even asking for a good place to sleep is outside the scope of that.

That brings us to the most difficult to deal with regarding this issue. “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21:22 Corrected King James Version) The thing that makes this more difficult is that this one really is talking about prayer, even in context.

Now in the morning as he returned into the city, he hungered. And [when] he saw a [fig] tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw [it], they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away! Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this [which is done to the fig tree], but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done. And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive. And when he was come to the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one thing, which if ye tell me, I in like wise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?

Matthew 21:18-25

I included a little more after the immediate context partly so that it’s clear I’m not cutting things short. Here, Jesus is clearly talking about prayer and faith. As part of talking about prayer, it says that if you ask in confidence, you’ll get it. I again point the reader to the episode in the garden. If this really meant that Jesus could ask to remove the crucifixion, then it failed. It must mean something else, then. There might be a hint in the section that follows, though. When Jesus confronted the Pharisees about John the Baptist, they could not answer Jesus in confidence. They fell into their own trap that they had tried to set for Jesus.

I think that Jesus is speaking hyperbolically here. I think he’s saying that we need to act honestly and in confidence rather than deceptively and sketchy. But rather than expand on that, I’m going to admit that I might be wrong. I’m open to other examinations of this section. The one thing that I’m not open to is an interpretation that runs counter to other things we see in scripture. However a person looks at this, it needs to work with the rest of scripture rather than against the rest of scripture. Any claim that this is impossible is blatantly false, since I’ve just provided an interpretation that incorporates the surrounding context and works with the rest of scripture.

If you or someone you love has been trapped by the kind of theology that insists God needs to give you whatever you want or measures your righteousness by their perception of how well God treats you, I want to say that I’m sorry. This is not true theology. There are better churches and theologians out there. Even if you’re not in a place to access one of those churches, I would rather see you leave the church entirely than remain in that kind of system. If you think there’s something about this theology that I don’t understand, please leave a comment on my blog and we can discuss it.

Amateur Experts Against Professional Academics

One of the YouTube channels that I follow is called Journey to the Microcosmos. On that channel, a narrator (either Hank Green or Deboki Chakravarti) give a mini lecture about some microscopic organism in a hushed voice set to soothing music while video captured from their Master of Microscopes James Weiss displays footage of either the organism in question or an organism that is close enough to be used for comparison. It’s one of the more relaxing entries in my Subscriptions tab on YouTube.

Mr. Weiss has written a book called The Hidden Beauty of the Microscopic World, and has an Instagram channel called Jam’s Germs. On a recent episode of Journey to the Microcosmos, Hank explained the misadventures of Mr. Weiss after finding an unusual looking microbe in his sample. It had a tail, which is apparently not something you see very often on a ciliate. I’ll have to take their word for it. While I’m happy to admit that I haven’t seen very many ciliates with tails, my sample size is considerably smaller than theirs. Indeed, the sample size of ciliates I’ve seen is small enough that I personally would hesitate to draw any general conclusions about what to expect regarding the available body plans for ciliate life based primarily on what I have and have not seen.

Mr. Weiss has discovered a new species of microscopic organism before. Back in 2022, he was able to consult with  Genoveva Esteban of Bournemouth University when he saw something unusual in his slides, and together they confirmed that what he saw were previously undescribed species. As best as I’m able to piece together, it was about the same time that he was making these discoveries that he came across this specimen.

As Mr. Weiss searched for information on this unusual organism, he was told that he must have damaged the slide, that he must have photographed it wrong, or that some other mistake on his end must be the explanation for the bizarre appearance. As a credit to his humility, Mr. Weiss dutifully checked each of these possibilities. When he verified that they weren’t what was wrong, he was back with more questions. From the sound of it, finding a professional expert that was willing to field the questions of this amateur expert was quite difficult.

I’m sympathetic to the academics that get these kinds of requests. I’m a nobody from nowhere, and I still get people that ask me things after reading my blog or reading one of my books. Most often, they’re adversarial, incoherent, and arrogant. I can easily see how a professor or researcher would get many more of those, and it’s got to be hard to strain the kooks from the feral geniuses. But sometimes it’s worth following these strays to see if they’re kooks or not. Just recently, I was contacted by someone looking into Hebrew Matthew. At first I was tempted to dismiss him, but I’m glad I didn’t. He turned out to be very friendly, interesting, and intelligent. In the case of Professor Esteban, she was able to publish a paper describing new species and someone else had already done a lot of the work for her.

My plans for 2024 are not going well. In September of last year, my oldest son turned eighteen. Due to a genetic condition, he’s unable to care for himself. So my plan was to finish up 2023 getting him set up with the support he needs, then start trying to find people to help me improve my thinking about Hebrew Matthew. I had an interview with Brave New History so that I could get used to how these things are scheduled. I’m now two months into 2024 and can’t seem to get calls back from the government and private agencies I need to complete the process for my son. It’s frustrating. Even more frustrating is that it interferes with the other plans I had.

I’ve tried reaching out to academics about what I’ve found in Hebrew Matthew. I try to be patient, understanding, and humble. I understand that they’re busy and they get a bunch of people demanding their time, not listening to their concerns, and sure that they know more than the academics. I don’t want to be like that.

In a Facebook group I lurk in, I’ve been watching James Snapp reach the end of his frustration regarding his research on the ending of Mark. It’s been vicariously satisfying to watch him call out the academic establishment for ignoring him and his findings. His recent book (or at least the title, I haven’t gotten around to reading the book) A Word to John MacArthur Regarding His False Claims About Mark 16:9-20 is a clear expression of the frustration he feels. His book Authentic: The Case for Mark 16:9-20 is the most nuanced examination of the subject of the ending of Mark I’ve ever read. I watch Mr. Snapp as he calls out those who simply dismiss him and I can’t help but wish I had his courage.

One of the things I had hoped to be doing by now was looking for people willing to have a public or semi-public dialogue or debate on the subject of Matthew’s original language. I think I’m right. People who are wrong generally think they’re right, though. Back in 2020, when I first started pulling together my data, I had a few academics that agreed to discuss the question in private. None of them ever replied to my first message with my initial evidence. My case has only grown stronger since then. I can never know for sure why they would ghost me. It always feels like they were not prepared for such a robust case for Matthew being written in Hebrew. It could be bad luck and each of them simply had a personal emergency come up and they didn’t feel the need to discuss it with me. It’s left me nonplussed at the idea of further attempts at private debates or discussions, though. I don’t want to have to harass someone, but I want them to continue even if it’s not going the way they hoped. If they feel the urge to suddenly drop out of the conversation, I want them to feel the pressure of the public eye watching them. Hopefully that will encourage them to justify that decision publicly. I get it if life comes up, but if they just aren’t ready for a robust minority position and they ghost me that’s kinda rude. But it’s hard to put someone in that position when I also know that my home life is hanging on potential phone calls that could upend my schedule at a moment’s notice. I want to try to publish what I’ve found, but I want to “pressure test” my findings first. If there’s an error in my thinking, I want to know what it is.

With all that said, I’m opening up my search for a discussion or debate partner a little more. I’m still only passively looking for such a partner, but if you are or know someone that avidly believes that Matthew was written in Greek, I would love to get in touch with you and discuss the question in an open, public format. If you have a YouTube channel, I would love to come onto it with you and discuss the reasons why we each come to our opposite conclusions. I’d like to say I’m throwing the gauntlet down in challenge, but actually it’s more like I’m placing it gently on the floor for your consideration. I don’t have any real debate experience, so if you are trying to rack up debate wins on your religion channel or blog or whatever, I’m a great place to get one. All I need is someone that understands that my “day job” is a stay at home father with a special needs son, and working with that schedule is my highest priority. At any rate, I would love to see what weaknesses and strengths in my position someone could help me find.

On the Academic Study of Theology

Last year, I wrote a post about why I believe in God. I’ve shared these reasons with others at various times. Of all the reasons I listed there, two have been by far the most controversial.

One is the historical reliability of the resurrection. I plan to do another post to address that.

The other objection really surprised me, though. So many people have taken issue with the idea that scholarly consensus in theology is authoritative. Scholarly consensus is hard to quantify, yet it is also a guiding principle across fields. I had a friend that put it to me like this: “If you have an opinion about a field you haven’t studied, then you either agree with the consensus or for all intents and purposes you’re wrong. If you’ve studied a field and you don’t agree with the consensus, you’re wrong unless you can win a debate with others who have studied it at a higher level than you have. Even then, you might still be wrong. If you’ve published your opinion in an academic journal and it was rejected by the majority of your peers, you were wrong. Only when your journal article or monograph gets picked up and quoted by the experts studying the field do you get to think that you might be right. Then you’ve changed the consensus.” That’s why I’ve started kinda low-key looking for someone to debate on my theory that Matthew was written in Hebrew. I see that as a fist step towards being ready to submit my findings to an academic journal. It’s also why  my FAQ on the subject of accepting the Hebrew Matthew, I begin by saying, “If you’re not in a place to look at the evidence, I suggest that you follow the consensus. That means go with the current Nestle-Aland or United Bible Society Greek New Testament.” There is always a minority opinion person out there somewhere that is ahead of the curve, but most minority opinion people are not. If you blindly follow me on Hebrew Matthew, James Snapp on the long ending of Mark, and Chris Date on Annihilationism, chances are good that you’re following at least one of us into error. Only deeper study on all three of us would yield answers as to which. That’s also why serious students of a subject with minority opinions tend not to support each other: if James Snapp were to advocate for me on a quid-pro-quo basis and the perfect objection to my position came out, his position on the long ending of Mark would get caught in the crossfire.

That brings me to the first objection that I hear about the scholarly consensus in theology: that theology does not progress. This is false. I will admit that there are areas of theology that progress more slowly than others, but this is true in any broad area of academic study. For an easy example, the further you go back in history, the harder it is to find data, and the more recent something is the less likely it is to have been forgotten. So the study of the very distant past and the very recent past both progress fairly slowly. But there are always new discoveries, theories, and analysis that shape our way of looking at the middle ages and late antiquity.

There are theological debates that I don’t get into. While Eternal Conscious Torment has always been the dominant view, both Annihilationism and Universalism have had strong advocates since the beginning. Why am I in favor of ECT? Because it’s the majority position and I don’t think I’m going to be the one to make headway in that part of the field. I do follow debates in that area when I have time. I think Chris Date is a great place to start if you’re looking for an accessible academic with a minority position in that area. Similarly, I have not done a deep dive into whether the long ending of Mark was original. I think there’s enough evidence to accept it as inspired regardless of its status as original or later addition, but that’s an entirely separate question. James Snapp has the most detailed and nuanced examination of the subject I’ve ever seen. Detail and nuance often go together with correct opinions, but not always. I haven’t checked his facts, so I don’t know if he’s right.

There are areas of theology that are in near constant flux and improvement, though. Canon, textual research, and textual interpretation have had fits and starts since the invention of the printing press. The current CSNTM has been innovating the way people evaluate New Testament Manuscripts to find the original text. We’ve finally reached the place where the Roman Catholic and Protestant dialogue is cool enough to really open up whether the deuterocanonical books are inspired or not. Even though the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is less than a hundred years old, that attempt to establish inerrancy has also led to a lot more discussion about the limits of inerrancy. Outside those fields which have more active development, there’s been more interest in what omniscienc and omnipotence and omnipresence over the last hundred years or so. While there’s hardly anything approaching consensus on these points, we seem to at least be getting better at defining what they are not. Theology is no more dead than mathematics, history, or mechanics.

Another objection that I’ve gotten on this front has been that theologians “have to” believe in God. This comes in various forms, and I’m going to pick the low hanging fruit first. For some, this is tied to the idea that all theology degrees require the student to sign a statement of faith or otherwise practice Christianity. It’s not true. If you’re an atheist or Muslim or a Neo-Paganist and you want a theology degree from a prominent university, you can get one.

Yale School of Divinity does not require students to sign a statement of faith. They have been accepting students of other faiths since at least 2005, when they made changes to the food they offered for Muslim students. Harvard Divinity School has not had a religious requirement since 1909. Liberty University does not require students to sign a statement of faith. In fact, there is a review of Liberty University by a Muslim student. Regent University does not require students to adhere to their Christian Faith, according to page 4 of their student handbook. And the list could keep going. Many state universities will have a religious studies degree with Christian Theology (or Muslim Theology or whatever) as a specialty. So no, you can become a degree holding theologian without believing in God just as easily as you can become a flat-Earth geologist or a vaccine denying doctor. Similarly, there’s no statement of faith to sign before publishing to many theology or philosophy of religion journals. So if you really think there’s an atheist that has a knock down case for atheism, suggest that they start submitting it to a journal. See how the experts in the field handle their argument.

The other way that the people seem to intend the sentiment that theologians have to believe in God is more along the lines that only those who believe in God would go into theology. More like if you didn’t believe in it, you would just not study it. This attitude has two major flaws. The first is that people study things they believe to be fiction all the time. People still study alchemy and the texts associated with it. They don’t think it works, but they find the mind of the people who did fascinating. People study folklore from various places around the world. They don’t believe in it, but they find the people who did believe compelling. Lots more examples could be given, but I think the point is made.

Past that, theologians “lose their faith” but continue to publish in the field. Bart Ehrman is a prime example of this. (He’s a whole topic all his own, but I’m painting with a very broad brush so as not to get too watered down in the details.) We find similar things in the history of other fields of deep study. Antoine Lavoisier was upset that oxygen sometimes reacted in a ratio of 1:1 and other times reacted in a ratio of 2:1. August Kekulé was upset that he was having difficulty finding the structure of benzene. There are always going to be those who are scandalized by the conflicts they find in the system they study. Breakthroughs come when people push through those conflicts to find solutions. That’s one reason why I like to listen to atheist theologians: I suspect that some of our breakthroughs will come in the areas that they are most troubled. Since so many of them struggle with the Problem of Evil, I do put a bit of my thought there. (Although I don’t share their intuitions regarding the problem so I don’t expect to find the solution.)

The other problem with saying that theology will be studied primarily by theists is that, in areas of deep study, when a basic understanding is wrong it is usually the top of that field that find it and change the course of beliefs in the field. It was physicists that discovered that Newtonian Gravity had flaws and fixed it. It was a group of alchemists that broke away and started chemistry.

The objection that comes in then is that if theologians and pastors admitted that they don’t believe in God any longer, then they would be out of a job. The median wage for pastors in America is $55,500, as of May 2022. Becoming a serious theologian isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme and it is an area of deep thought and consideration. Most pastors are giving up opportunities for higher paying jobs to be pastors, not the other way around. While I would love to see breakthroughs in the areas that bother burned out clergy, I find it compelling that even after decades of study so many stay in the field, and even those who leave for a while often return once they’ve had some rest.

That’s not what we see when the foundation of a field of study is fiction. In that case, we see people enter the field thinking it’s true, then converting to the notion that it’s not quickly and often. Practicing modern pagans that enter the academic study of the classics tend to stop believing in pagan deities.

I’m a big believer in trusting expertise. I love listening to experts in all kinds of fields, but there are fields that interest me more than others. I enjoy physics, even though I don’t have the math chops to contribute to that field. Recently, CERN completed a study about how antimatter responds to gravity. My prediction beforehand was that it would respond just like matter. However, I knew what the theories being tested were. Preliminary results are consistent with it falling exactly like matter, but it’s definitely to one side of normal. While I still suspect that further research will result in observations more consistent with matter and antimatter responding exactly the same to gravity, I was surprised that the measurements were as far off the mark as they were. While I am pretty sure of this, if things keep being to one side then the reality lead to advancements in physics. Rather than throwing the field out when it doesn’t work as expected, consensus will change, and people will trust that new consensus. People should treat their theological opinions the same way. If you really do have a thought about theology that’s not part of the scholarly consensus, then sharpen it until you can publish. Challenge the consensus, then publish, then try to change the consensus. That’s what I’m doing. That’s what Chris Date is doing. That’s what James Snapp is doing. If you aren’t doing that, then for all intents and purposes you’re just wrong.

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1997)

One of the ways that we can be sure that a teacher in fiction is giving good advice is that those who follow it have things work out in the end, and those that do not follow it have things fall apart in the end. It’s not the only way that a storyteller has to tell us that a teacher was right, but it is one valuable tool in the story teller’s tool belt. There’s also a valuable discussion to be had about how realistic that is. Even if it’s not realistic, it’s how we interpret stories anyway.

That’s one of the clues that Yoda gave Luke good advice when he advised him not to pursue his friends to the Cloud City when they were in danger. Even though he does manage to rescue Leia, Han Solo is frozen in Carbonite and Luke loses his duel with Vader and narrowly escapes with his faith barely intact and his body badly injured.

In the story, Yoda gives good advice because he is connected to the Living Force. He is able to see which course will lead to prosperity and peace for all, and which will lead to ruin and pain. When Yoda speaks, he speaks for the Force. Those who know Yoda know that this is true about him as well. No one questions Yoda’s advice because they know that he is deeply rooted in the Living Force. It’s exactly that attribute that means the Empire wants him dead. The Emperor doesn’t want someone that can tell people the path to prosperity and peace if that path will interfere with his own pursuit of power.

What if they have it backwards, though? What if the writing process at Lucasfilm is to have Yoda’s opinion settled by some random process, but then the storytellers will manipulate the story such that whatever advice Yoda gave was right? If the roll of the dice that day had resulted in Yoda telling Luke to go rescue his friends, then it would have been Vader that was running scared and confused at the end of the movie instead of the rebellious youth. To put it another way, within the Star Wars universe, what if instead of Yoda saying it because it’s right, it’s right because Yoda said it?

There is an ancient paradox about God called the Euthyphro dilemma that gets to exactly this question about God. To summarize the question briefly, is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it’s good? There are a lot of really good answers to this. My favorite answer is that it’s like a magnet. Does the magnet attract metal because it’s magnetic, or is it magnetic because it attracts metal? Both: being magnetic is attracting metal. Ultimately I don’t think it matters, though.

Some people have a vision of God that makes the answer that God simply orders what is good. For these, God is the most powerful agent and it’s a good thing he turned out to be just. For others, God decided what’s good and bad, and rewards and punishes according to his whim. Still others like myself see God as something more akin to the magnetic field, and goodness and evil are just strong and weak points in that field. On an entirely practical level, how you respond to good commands is still the same: you obey them.

How I Use AI

2007

Supervisor: “You look miserable.”

Me: “I am. My son is in the hospital again.”

Supervisor: “I thought you liked working with computers?”

Me: “I do. Kind of. I just wish I could be at the hospital with my son today.”

Supervisor: “You know, there are people who would love to have your job right now. Your son is in the hospital a lot. If you can’t start slapping a smile on and being happy to be here even when he’s in the hospital, maybe we should find someone else to work here.”

Me: “I’m one of your best agents. I’m coming and I’m getting the job done. I do enjoy my work sometimes, but life is really difficult right now and there’s a reason y’all give me a paycheck on the way out the door instead of charging admission on the way in. You get to ask a lot, but if you’re going to ask me to pretend to be happy even when my son is in the hospital then we need to renegotiate my pay rate and time off. That wasn’t part of my initial employment agreement.”

---

Artificial Intelligence really hit a new stride last year. Chat-GTP and Stable Diffusion are new technologies that create text and images for people based on input from a user. This has led to strikes among writers, lawsuits from artists, and general confusion among the population. I heard a story about a lawyer that started taking advice from an AI, and ended up in contempt of court for lies and bad behavior.

I’ve used a chat-bot a few times to help me research things, but I don’t trust it. The chat-bot I’ve used is based on Chat-GTP. The thing that I dislike most about it is that it will lie to me. The professionals like to say that it’s “hallucinating,” but it will backtrack and try to justify itself. If it doesn’t know, it makes up an answer, and keeps doubling down and pushing that answer until it can’t any longer.

This isn’t much of a surprise. Chat-GTP and the technologies related to it are basically the most advanced auto-complete on the planet trained to complete the conversation by the Internet. I don’t know if you’ve been on the Internet, but it’s not full of people who admit it when they don’t know what they’re talking about. The power of the words “I don’t know” has not reached most of them. There are times that I’ve asked a chatbot about something I’m trying to research, and it will send me down a rabbit hole that leads to a wild goose chase and dead ends in a verification that nothing it said was true. Other times, it gives me just the hint I was looking for to find the source I was looking for.

On the creative side, I don’t use AI to write my blog or to check my blog or participate in any of the writing, though. I just have too many experiences with AI “hallucinating” in a way that’s unhelpful. If I’m ever going to write a blog post based on hallucinations, I want it to be my hallucinations.

However, about a year ago I answered a questionnaire by Braxton Hunter about why YouTubers do what they do. I’m not primarily a YouTuber, but I like the culture of religious discussion on some corners of YouTube. I’m not very good at reading text aloud. So I got some text-to-speech software to do that. After trying a few different things, I primarily use the voice Roger on MicMonster. I use other voices on that service as well.

There are people who will hate that I do this. They feel like I’m stealing jobs by not hiring a person to do it. I’m not. The closest I might come to that is if I were to read it myself. If I had the money to pay someone, I would rather a person than an AI to read my blog for my YouTube channel. If using a computer to generate voice wasn’t an option, I would be forced to record my own voice. The only job I’m stealing is my own, and I don’t want it. I’m not very good at reading aloud and I have hearing damage that makes mixing the audio file later difficult for me. Getting a consistent audio output that’s better than I could make on my own is very helpful to me.

There has been a lot of talk about how AI tools of this sort are changing things. They are, that’s for sure. There is a rush by some to protect their jobs that they now see as endangered. That’s only natural. But there’s a lot of speaking out of both sides of the mouth as well. It’s long been said that art shouldn’t be done for the money, but now that this source of income is such that they will have to compete on a different footing they’re scared. These tools are coming, and the sooner we start to integrate them into our society the better. There are a bunch of us that can do more now than we could have five years ago with these new tools. Putting those skills behind a paywall made it so that they were only accessible to those with that disposable income regularly available. Now they’re available even without the disposable income.

As human beings, there’s a reality to the fact that we like to see what other human beings are capable of. I don’t think that the market for voice actors will ever disappear. Even if Roger got to a place where it was better than any voice actor, I would still want to hear the skill of a voice actor playing a part. There’s definitely a reason that voice actors would charge more to read my blog posts than a play or a novel, though. In the same way that power saws have reduced the number of carpenter hours it takes to build a house or the printing press reduced the need for scribes, things are changing. There are questions of rights and ownership that need to be resolved, and those are way beyond the scope of this blog. Those questions will be resolved, though. A version of Stable Diffusion trained on art that a company owns rights to is coming. A version of Chat-GTP that can write custom novels based on text the company has rights to is coming. We aren’t ready, but we’ve never been ready for technology when it arrived before. I think the best thing to do is to start figuring out how we are going to work with it now, while it’s still kinda clunky, rather than wait for it to be fully operational and lose out completely.

What Is the Best Apologetic Method?

We live in a time when there are a bunch of theologians that identify as apologists. There is a lot to that. For one, it’s just fashionable right now. For another, the life of a missionary isn’t for everyone, yet we live in a Christian subculture that puts a lot of emphasis on how many people we have converted. For another, we live in a time when the church is going through decline, and there’s a natural desire to stop the people that are leaving. Beyond these, every person is a unique individual and I’m sure there will be plenty of apologists that don’t feel described by any of these.

I don’t identify as an apologist. I don’t have a problem with people that do, that’s just not my primary approach to theology. I find that for for the things that really speak to me, trying to turn it into an apologetic lesson often gets in the way. A few years ago I saw a post in a Facebook group asking how the Church Fathers could be wrong about Matthew in Hebrew, so I started discussing my reasons for thinking that Matthew was written in Hebrew. A third-party added their question: “Since it’s all fairy tales, who cares what language it was written in?” My answer was simple: “I do. Apparently the OP does too.” They tried to keep the fight going, repeating that it’s all fairy-tales, to which I simply answered, “I disagree. But you’re welcome to your opinion.” I didn’t have time to argue with them and continue the other conversation, which was the one I was more interested in.

Here’s the thing: the person who started the post, who was also not a believer, was impressed by my “restraint.” (Is it really restraint to just not talk to someone about something you don’t want to talk to them about?) This led them to listen to me more deeply. I was able to give all my reasons (which was timely because I was just getting my notes together on the subject) and they softened on their anti-Christianity stance. I don’t know what became of them. A short bit later I started pulling together my notes and publishing them on my blog, which turned out to be a much larger project than I originally intended. I didn’t get to keep up with much while doing that.

Be that as it may, in that particular case the hard-line “I’ve got an answer for everything” apologist was actually a barrier to them coming to faith. They had heard all the answers, but they saw Christianity as a dead field of study. Seeing me digging into manuscripts, comparing linguistics, talking about the weak points in my argument and the strong points in my argument, etc showed them that this is still a living field of study.

On the other end, I’ve known at least one person who has started to deconstruct their faith upon learning that there might be a Hebrew Matthew behind the Greek they were raised to believe in. That’s the story of every King James Only apologist: they knew someone that read the NIV and it was missing the doxology on the Lord’s Prayer (or something) and that caused them to deconstruct, so now that apologist is on a mission to make sure no one ever does that again!

For me, that’s the problem with many apologists. They’re so concerned with converting people or stopping people from deconstructing their faith that they don’t care what’s actually true. The King James Only apologist doesn’t care if the doxology belongs on the Lord’s Prayer, they only care that it lacking causes people to question.

I’m exactly the other way: I don’t care if it causes people to question, I only care if it belongs there. (And the evidence for or against it.) I have not done a deep dive on that section. One of the things that I found interesting when I was checking alternate readings for the Masoretic Matthew was that there’s variation in the doxology across the SDM family. I’m not at all confident that the doxology would survive the rigorous probes of a trained textual critic even once they confined themselves to the SDM Hebrew text. I included it because it met the standards I was using (and because I like it) but my standards were not rigorous. I can’t honestly say whether I think the doxology belongs there or not.

Some will deconstruct over that. This will cause some apologists to pull their hair out. But here’s the way I look at it: no matter your view of salvation by faith, that faith they had before being exposed to this new knowledge wasn’t the kind to save them anyway. They didn’t believe in Jesus, they believed in the doxology. They didn’t treat the Lord’s Prayer as a teaching from God, but as a magic spell to keep them out of Hell. I’m not worried about them deconstructing. Maybe after they finish their deconstruction, they’ll have actual faith in the actual Jesus. If they don’t, they won’t be any worse off.

That is the biggest difference between me and theologians that identify as apologists. The apologist just wants to see a conversion. I just want to see more people get deeper into the truth. If getting deeper into the truth causes them to stumble, I’m fine with that. If they are invested in something that isn’t real, then they aren’t invested in the Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life. To me, that would be the real tragedy: to convince someone to join the church or not to leave it who did decades of service in this life and then at the resurrection all they heard was, “I never knew you.”

Why Isn’t the Bible Inerrant?

Strict inerrantists are always a fun bunch for someone like me. When I was first introduced to the concept of inerrancy, it was a mild, nuanced, well reasoned version. Even at that, my views on inerrancy and the development of scripture have changed a lot over the years. There are still explanations of inerrancy that I could sign, but I don’t personally use the term “inerrancy” to describe my beliefs. “Inerrancy” has such a variety of applied meanings in casual communication that I just don’t find it a useful term most of the time. When someone else applies a definition to the term, I can decide if that definition describes something close to any part of how I interact with Scripture and proceed accordingly.

That makes answering the question “Why isn’t the Bible inerrant?” a little tricky on the general level. The Bible is inerrant, by some definitions of inerrancy. The reality of the history of the scriptures do not live up to the expectations of others that use the term “inerrant,” though. So to get a precise explanation why the Bible isn’t the kind of inerrant that a particular person believes in, I first need to get a fix on what that person means by “inerrant.”

There is a way to generalize and sidestep that problem, though. This is a little out of character for me. Usually, when I write a blog post, I’m just getting my own thoughts out of my head. In simplest possible terms, usually I’m my own target audience. But I’m already done talking to me. From here on, I’m talking to people who have recognized a disconnect between how they understand inerrancy and how they understand and apply scripture, and because of their social or professional circle or because of their past, using a definition of inerrancy more in line with what they have discovered would be impractical for some reason.

One example of understanding the word “inerrancy” that’s common is “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it.” This logic is used by flat-Earth and young-Earth believers as well as faith healers and health-and-wealth preachers. I’ve always found that particular slogan naive and impractical to the point of being dangerous. When a health-and-wealth preacher challenges me with John 16:23 saying that they are taking that verse more literally than I am, they win. I’m not going to try to redeem the trophy for the one that applies that verse the most literally. If they then say that this means they are holding closer to the idea of inerrancy, I’ll agree: they can have the title of “Better Inerrantist than Shaun.” But I’m holding onto the title of “Holds Closer to the Whole Truth.”

But why isn’t the Bible that particular kind of inerrant? In this example, I’m essentially asking why the Bible isn’t a spell book used to manifest our greatest desires, but the question can be asked for any of dozens of ways to understand “inerrancy” that a particular person may be committed to. They’ll need to substitute in parts of what they believe to the conversation, but trying to trace out every possible thread would take weeks and most of it would be copy and paste followed by a search and replace. The person that needs that can do that themselves for the beliefs they’re working with.

The logic behind thinking that the Bible does this is straightforward. In the particular case I’m exploring here, a possible way to come to this conclusion is to start with the idea that God wants us to be happy, and God can do anything for us. Therefore, God is our personal genie. It follows that God identifies who to grant wishes for by those that call on his son’s name correctly. That leads into a whole layer of theology about how to pronounce the various divine names correctly, with different sects condemning each other on nothing more than how they vocalize various words. One group says that the other has poor and sick people among them because they use the wrong pronunciation of a particular divine name, and the other group says the first has poor and sick people for the same reason. The serious student examines both claims and finds that the pronunciation of most of the divine names is a subject worthy of debate, and in fact both teams have poor and sick people among them. That means they can’t literally call on the name of Christ with a significant level of confidence, and no group has discovered the pronunciation of the divine names that will force God to act. For brevity, we’ll skip over the “crisis of faith” that so many seem to think is necessary at this point. (Mostly because I don’t get that. At any rate, we don’t have three years for them to deconstruct. We can skip ahead to the part where this person has returned to the faith.) Now they are trying to understand how come the scriptures aren’t infallibe in the way they expected them to be. A lot of the basic assumptions are still held to be true: God wants us to be happy, and he can do anything for us. If the basic premises that lead to seeing the Bible as an inerrant spell book are right, and the verses say the things that were taken to mean, how can the conclusion be so far off base?

The answer is simple: being happy in the way that God wants us to be happy doesn’t mean what the person thought it meant, and God being able to do anything he wants doesn’t mean what they thought it meant. Without getting too far into the particulars, there are a lot of ways to be happy that aren’t just having every wish granted. My children are happy children, but that doesn’t mean they get everything they ask for. The subject of omnipotence is similarly a deep subject that theologians and philosophers discuss, but they’ll mostly agree that it doesn’t mean that everything God wants God gets without effort.

Similar logic can be applied to other ways to understand inerrancy. If someone understands inerrancy to mean that the Bible is a collection of absolutely correct history and theology because they see it as God wanting us to know what we need to know in order to be saved, learning that the text is of the same type with the same kind of inaccuracies as other texts from the same period could be very confusing, until they realize that it’s not a collection of theological and historical facts that save us. If they see inerrancy as meaning that the text is a collection of instructions that tell us how to get saved then learning there’s a fair bit of ambiguity in the instruction list could be very confusing, until they realize that we aren’t saved by doing the right thing. And so on and so on for all the other ways to understand inerrancy. Starting from a place where they expect God to be a particular thing and then expect the text of scripture to reveal exactly that thing is what leads to this kind of confusion. 

It’s also why there are some kinds of inerrancy that I can get behind. The Scriptures are the culmination of God revealing himself to people through the course of their lifetime, delivering a message which can be heard through their writings for generations. So long as the message is delivered honestly, it is God revealing himself to us through people. If the message is delivered honestly, it can’t contain error, because it’s what God revealed of himself to that person. That doesn’t mean it’s factually correct, because God isn’t exactly a fact. That doesn’t mean it’s historically correct, because God isn’t exactly history. That doesn’t mean it’s a list of commands, because God isn’t exactly  a thing to do. It isn’t a spell book to get us whatever we want, because God isn’t a genie granting wishes.

God is love. In so far as it is a collection of facts, it’s facts about how to love each other and to avoid not loving each other. In so far as it’s history, it’s a list of examples of how people have loved each other and failed to love each other. In so far as it’s a list of things to do, it’s things that have helped or hurt the ability to love each other. In so far as it’s access to granting wishes, it tells us to be the ones who look to the needs and wants of those around us to demonstrate our love. I don’t have any problem calling that “inerrant.” In fact, that feels like the most natural word for it. While it may not be the first idea that comes to some people’s mind when they hear the word “inerrant,” for me at least I have difficulty imagining any other single word to capture the thought I’ve laid out than “inerrant.”

Of course, there will always be people who see God as something other than what I’ve laid out here, and their concept of the inerrant scriptures will be at odds with this reality. That’s a problem with their definitions, though. What they should do when they see that there’s a conflict is adjust their expectations of God and his scripture to more closely align with reality.

What’s the Difference Between Theology, Religion, and Spiritually?

If you spend a lot of time reading my blog, you will probably be surprised to learn that I don’t tend to get along with religious people very well. There’s a saying out there that I sympathize with, but I hate: “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” Unfortunately, I’m not “spiritual” either. Religion and spirituality get caught up in all kinds of things that just don’t speak to me. I have hearing damage, so I may not even hear some of the tones associated with spiritual music. I didn’t grow up in the church, so I don’t have a bunch of traditions that are important to me. I had an emotional breakdown a few years ago and ended up in a program that emphasized meditation, and after a few months it was clear that meditation always leads me to very dark places emotionally I don’t want to go and I should never do that. I’ve often joked that if the day of the week or the month or the year were really all that important they wouldn’t change them all the time, because I have a hard time keeping track of time. I rarely have a firm grasp of what season we’re in without visual clues, let alone which liturgical colors someone is supposed to use at any given time. I was once asked (before we all had smartphones) why I don’t celebrate Lent, and I answered honestly that it doesn’t get a cartoon character holiday special so I don’t even know it’s coming until it’s gone.

It seems strange to others that I’m so interested in theology with such ambivalence towards religion. I kinda get that. I don’t pretend that the two subjects are unrelated. I’m just not good at the religion part of it. I’m not wired that way. It seems to me that there are a lot of people that are wired for religion but not wired for theology, and no one ever seems to blink twice at that. I wonder why my configuration is considered so strange. (Actually, I have a theory on that, but it’s not very nice and I’m actively trying to be nice because I know how hard that group works at being offended.)

It’s worth noting that religious studies has a particularly hard time defining religion. In part, this is because missionaries going to distant lands have tried to use the term “religion” to encompass all of those that are seen as rivals for the hearts and minds of the people. This is a point that I’ll come back to later, but as Christian missionaries expanded from the Roman world to the Western and Eastern worlds, they didn’t just bring Christianity, they also brought Europeanism and Platonism and Aristotelianism. Often, it was not always clear where one of these components ended and the others began. Even today that happens, with democratic ideals and the Christian message mixed up in a stew and served up together as though they are the same thing.

This leads to a whole series of questions about religion: if religion is the music and the governmental style, then the religion we practice here in America can’t be more than a few hundred years old. That doesn’t make sense if our religion’s founder was crucified almost two thousand years ago. Conversely, if our religion was founded almost two thousand years ago, a lot of the customs we’re used to were added to our religion later.

There are some very sincere, earnest religious questions that I don’t care one way or the other about. Believer’s baptism vs. pedobaptism doesn’t strike me as all that big of a deal. If y’all can’t decide, I’ll flip a coin. Then it’s decided and we can move on. This doesn’t mean that I am unsympathetic to the arguments. It means that I recognize that neither side is gaining ground on the other, and we need to decide. Once the decision is made, no matter how it’s made, go with that decision until the consensus is changed.

This is why every generation there’s a new movement to “really connect” with God. They’ll criticize the activity of the previous generation as being empty, repetitive, and meaningless. A set of thirty-somethings will create all new practices that fill in the gaps. Then, when they get to their eighties, they’re amazed to discover that those activities they created to break the mold are again being broken by a new set of thirty-somethings that have only ever seen those previous practices as empty, repetitive, and meaningless.

There are a few people that see through that fog, though. Not perfectly. I know that I don’t see through it perfectly, and those that seem to see through it more clearly than I do still complain that the religious practices (both the old familiar ones and the new innovative ones) muddy their view. When we are looking through those mists or muddy waters or whatever analogy works best for you, we are looking at God.

For me, there are a lot of analogies that would work to help explain what I’m talking about. For one, I could make the analogy to a physicist trying to see past the limits of a microscope to the fundamental nature of matter. Another would be an economist trying to see through the list of numbers explaining transactions to see the forces that drive an economy. Another could be a psychiatrist trying to see through a series of survey results to what really motivates people. The physicist seeking the nature of matter doesn’t actually care about the sand any more than the water, except that the sand gets them closer to understanding matter in some particular way. The economist doesn’t actually care about receipts more than invoices, except that the receipts get them closer to understanding what moves value better. The psychiatrist doesn’t actually care about surveys more than interviews, except that the survey gets them closer to understanding the mind better. In the same way, the theologian doesn’t actually care about the healing done after a prayer any more than the healing done without prayer, except those that are done after prayer get them closer to understanding God.

When a person tries to circumvent the traditions that they grew up with and get to God without them mostly on their own, this is spirituality. There are some benefits to this. When making progress, they don’t need to wait for others. It also has disadvantages. A person can make decades worth of “progress” in the wrong direction.

Going the spiritual direction is popular for a lot of reasons. For one, it’s the most sure way to shake off the traditions that don’t help the spiritualist. There’s always the danger that they’ll shake off too much, that one of the things they think wasn’t helping actually was. That leads naturally into the second reason: we all want to think that we have some kind of insight that no one else has ever had, and spiritualism allows us to indulge that feeling. One last reason that I will mention is that it gives a feeling that the spiritualist doesn’t answer to anyone. That feeling is a false comfort, but it’s there anyway. There are more reasons for sure, but that’s enough for my purposes.

When a person tries to stand on the shoulders of giants that have already made great leaps forward in understanding God, connects to others who are also seeking to understand God, and accepts correction to their errors from contemporaries and elders alike, that is theology. Theology in itself is less popular than either religion or spirituality as a way to seek God. Religion allows a person to just follow previous generations in pursuing God, and that way not extra thought or care is necessary. Both spirituality and theology require thought and care. Spirituality allows someone to escape the confines of authority, but both religion and theology seek to work within the existing structures. Religion and spirituality are both primarily feeling driven, with religion seeking a way to connect to the feelings of as many people as possible, and spirituality being driven primarily by what helps the person feel closer to God. Theology tries to remove feelings from the equation to whatever degree is prudent, by comparing the feelings of multiple people and seeking a consensus. Even if it were a goal, removing feelings entirely would be impossible, but seeking a consensus among those that are pursuing feeling-independent truth is a good way to minimize the damage feelings can do.

That’s why I personally am more drawn to theology, even to the point of being turned off by the things that seem to me to be “overly spiritual” in religion. Things like singing and holiday celebrations feel good, but I’m skeptical if there’s any more substance to them than a feeling. I make the attempt to get behind those things to what’s real, by following in the footsteps and standing on the shoulders of those that have been able to see beyond them before me. That’s why I’m an amateur theologian, and not an amateur religious leader or amateur spiritualist.

What Are My Pronouns?

Secretary: “Let me look this over and see if you’ve filled everything in. Oh, here’s one! What are your preferred pronouns?”

Me: “My philosophy of language is incompatible with that question.”

Secretary: “Umm… okay… does that mean you need to add one that’s not on the list? Because there’s a place for that.”

Me: “Sure, go ahead. Just let me know what it is.”

Secretary: “No, I mean, you need to do it. You can enter an option if your pronouns aren’t on the list. Not me. You.”

Me: “Oh, okay. What should I put there, then?”

Secretary: “You get to choose.”

Me: “I’m sorry, my philosophy of language is incompatible with that. It’s not my place to tell others what pronouns to use.”

Secretary: “But they’ll be talking to and about you!”

Me: “Okay.”

Secretary: “Do you just want them to use they/them?”

Me: “I’m really trying to be patient with you, but I’ve got to say that you’re being very insensitive. I’ve told you already, my philosophy of language is incompatible with that question. It’s not my place to tell them what pronouns to use. I really don’t know how I could be clearer without sacrificing being concise.”

Secretary: “You may just have to give up being ‘concise,’ then. Because they told me to make sure to get everyone’s pronouns and I don’t know what to put for you.”

Me: “In the interest of one last attempt at being concise and getting on to the main event, put ‘whatever you want.'”

Secretary: “But I don’t have anything I want to put!”

Me: “I’m sorry, that was on me. Don’t put what you want, put the words ‘Whatever you want.'”

Secretary: “I’m confused. What if they misgender you?”

Me: “In what sense?”

Secretary: “What if they call you ‘she?'”

Me: “Okay, I’ll bite. What if they do?”

Secretary: “So you identify as female?”

Me: “That’s a really crummy punch line. You may want to workshop that one before you try it on someone else. Not everyone shares my philosophy of language, and they might get offended.”

Secretary: “You keep saying that. What does ‘philosophy of language’ mean?”

Me: “Umm… so… I’m really trying to get past this to the main event… can I give the very short, imprecise version? You have to promise you’re not going to try to poke holes in it. I’m not giving a philosophy lecture.”

Secretary: “Can I ask honest follow up questions?”

Me: “Sure. Of course.”

Secretary: “Then go ahead.”

Me: “Philosophy of language is basically the study of how speakers and words interact to convey meaning. A personal philosophy of language is how a person thinks that words and speakers interact to convey meaning.”

Secretary: “I’m still confused. What about your philosophy of language prevents you from choosing your pronouns?”

Me: “There are several angles to approach that. In an effort to pick the approach that I think will be the shortest, why do you think I should pick pronouns?”

Secretary: “Because my boss told me to make sure everyone’s preferred pronouns are marked on their entrance form.”

Me: “Well that’s not particularly helpful, actually. I wish I knew your boss better. Okay. Let’s try this. Anything that’s language dependent isn’t real. It’s just imaginary. Pronouns are language dependent. Therefore, asking me what my pronouns are has as much meaning as asking me what color my imaginary friend is.”

Secretary: “So are you saying that gender is just imaginary?”

Me: “There are a lot of ways to interpret that question, but in the interest of trying to get out of this conversation I’ll just say, Yes.”

Secretary: “So you think there’s no such thing as male or female?”

Me: “I… ugh… is all this really necessary?”

Secretary: “Not if you put down your pronouns.”

Me: “I just want you to know that I think you’re being difficult just to be difficult. I find it very frustrating.”

Secretary: “Believe me, I feel your pain.”

Me: “No, male and female aren’t imaginary.”

Secretary: “But don’t ‘he’ and ‘she’ just refer to male and female?”

Me: “You know, if we were in the cultural moment of twenty years ago, I would agree that in English that is true. Currently that’s not always true in English. Beyond that, it’s not universal. For example, I read a little Greek. In Greek, the words for ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ (as in, children) are ‘agori’ and ‘koritsi’ respectively. They’re both neuter. So in English terms, you would refer to a boy or a girl as ‘it.'”

Secretary: “Oh. I see. Do you want people to call you ‘it?'”

Me: “I don’t care.”

Secretary: “But wouldn’t that be kind of insulting? Kind of dehumanizing?”

Me: “It would be insulting if they meant it to be dehumanizing. I don’t want them to call me anything intending it to be an insult.”

Secretary: “I can see how that might be a problem you have to deal with.”

Me: “We all do, really. But that’s just life.”

Secretary: “So you only want people to use complementary pronouns.”

Me: “I mean… that might be reaching a little high…”

Secretary: “After knowing you for just a few minutes, yes it is.”

Me: “But I don’t really care what they call me as long as they don’t intend it as an insult.”

Secretary: “You said that pronouns aren’t always attached to gender, though.”

Me: “Did I?”

Secretary: “Yes, I distinctly remember asking if ‘he’ and ‘she’ just refer to male and female.”

Me: “Oh, I think I see where I was unclear. I’m sorry, I’m just trying to get through this door and you’re being incredibly difficult. I’m taking a few shortcuts in the conversation. Male and female refer to sex, not gender.”

Secretary: “What’s the difference?”

Me: “I… you look very young… I’m not sure I’m the one you should be having this conversation with, but when a male and a female love each other very much…”

Secretary: “I’m twenty-five and I know all about the birds and the bees.”

Me: “Oh, okay. Sorry. I took a shortcut a couple minutes ago and lost you. It’s hard to tell where you’re at exactly. So you know what male and female are. Masculine and feminine are just grammatical expressions. Like the children example above, there’s not necessarily a correspondence between sex and gender.”

Secretary: “But doesn’t ‘he’ normally line up with male and ‘she’ normally line up with female?”

Me: “Again, my philosophy of language doesn’t really recognize a ‘normally’ for something like this. At least, not in a prescriptive kind of way.”

Secretary: “So if male and female aren’t imaginary, what are they?”

Me: “Oh, that’s easy. A male is the one that supplies the sperm in reproduction, and a female is the one that provides the egg.”

Secretary: “And which do you provide. And please don’t tell me that you don’t have children.”

Me: “I do have children. Two of them. They are…”

Secretary: “I don’t care. Do you supply the sperm or the egg?”

Me: “Neither, any more. I’ve had a vasectomy.”

Secretary: “Good. The fact that there are two more of you is nightmare fuel enough.”

Me: “I’m sorry, I don’t think I quite caught that.”

Secretary: “What I mean to say is, does that mean that you were male and you’re not now?”

Me: “Kinda.”

Secretary: “Okay. Now it’s my turn to ‘bite.’ What do you mean by ‘kinda?'”

Me: “So now we’re back to my philosophy of language. The primary use of the word ‘male’ is to refer to the one that provides the sperm in reproduction. But almost every word can be extended and used by analogy. So, for example, facial hair is associated with human males. Sometimes in a particular conversation or setting, using facial hair as a proxy for sperm production will mean that anyone with facial hair is male for the purposes of that conversation.”

Secretary: “And if they shave they become female?”

Me: “Well, it depends on the parameters of the conversation. But I’m sure I could come up with a context where that fits. So let’s just run with a yes.”

Secretary: “And how the person being referred to feels about that doesn’t matter?”

Me: “It matters if they’re part of the conversation.”

Secretary: “So if their innermost being is still male, they could say not to call them ‘she?'”

Me: “I don’t really follow the relevance of an ‘innermost being,’ whatever that is. But if they’re a part of the conversation and they prefer a different use of ‘she,’ they can voice that and the group can decide if the use they propose has utility to them.”

Secretary: “What if the group and they can’t come to a conclusion together? I can tell you right now, I would have a lot of sympathy for them not coming to a conclusion on the matter.”

Me: “They can, they’re all intelligent people. It just takes someone being willing to listen. For example, I could be in there already if you would just listen to me.”

Secretary: “So you and I are discussing your pronouns. I’m listening. What do you want your pronouns to be?”

Me: “I don’t care.”

Secretary: “Let’s go back to your hypothetical. Let’s say that they’re calling our clean-shaven person ‘she,’ and he doesn’t like it. What can he do?”

Me: “You mean she doesn’t like it. Remember, we’ve already decided that for the purposes of the conversation they’re having, ‘she’ is how you refer to anyone without facial hair. But if she doesn’t like it, she can simply suggest that they change it for the rest of the conversation. Tell them what she wants ‘female’ to mean going forward, and if they agree then it changes. Simple as that.”

Secretary: “What if they don’t agree?”

Me: “Then they’re just speaking different languages.”

Secretary: “Like, Spanish or French?”

Me: “Essentially.”

Secretary: “Can you do that with any word? Can we just decide that a cat is a dog?”

Me: “Essentially. I mean, let’s step up the formality a tiny bit for clarity, but not so much as to be pedantic. Right now, if you look up ‘dog’ in the dictionary you’ll see the one with a long nose and short whiskers. If you look up cat, you’ll see the one with a short nose and long whiskers. But the dictionary is just a poll of what most people agree with. You and I could privately agree to refer to the one with a long nose and short whiskers as a ‘cat’ and the other as a ‘dog.’ Then we are still communicating just fine. In fact, this is what some old military codes used to do.”

Secretary: “So it’s all just a free-for-all and if you decide to switch the name of ‘cat’ to ‘dog,’ I should just roll with it?”

Me: “Maybe. If that’s prudent.”

Secretary: “Why wouldn’t it be prudent?”

Me: “There are a lot of possible reasons why it might not be prudent. For one, I could be doing it dishonestly. I could flop back and forth between names in an effort to confuse you for some nefarious reason. Or even if that weren’t my intention, it could still be the result, that you’re feeling like you can’t keep up. Past that if I change one and not the other, you still need some way to refer to the one with the short nose and the long whiskers. If both terms refer to the one with the long nose and short whiskers, then we need some new term to refer to the other, plus it might need to be explored whether both terms are synonyms or if they have some subtle distinction relevant to the conversation, and to keep that conversation short it’s totally valid to point to a current, contemporary dictionary of English and say that we will agree to let that decide these terms for us.”

Secretary: “That’s just an appeal to authority, though.”

Me: “It is. If two people can’t agree, an authority may be needed as an arbitrator. That’s why we have general dictionaries and then dictionaries for specific fields, though. Different fields might have specific terms, or a term might have different meanings in different fields, and so on. Basically, each field has its own language, with just enough overlap in the middle to communicate about things that aren’t specific to either field.”

Secretary: “Is it really a language or is it a dialect, then?”

Me: “If someone wants to be pedantic, they can raise that question. Where the line is between a language and a dialect is not well defined, though. I am comfortable with either term. I just think it makes my point better to say ‘language.'”

Secretary: “That’s fair. So now we just need to agree which language people will be referring to you in. It’s English. What are your pronouns in English?”

Me: “I’m starting to think that you’re being deliberately difficult. I’ve already told you, my philosophy of language is incompatible with that question.”

Secretary: “I’m being deliberately difficult? I’m being deliberately difficult? I’m being deliberately difficult? I’m being deliberately difficult?”

Me: “Yes. Why did you repeat that same sentence four times changing which word you emphasize each time?”

Secretary: “Because every word in that sentence confuses me!”

Me: “I’m sorry. You know, we could just end this if you would just mark down my pronouns, let me know what they are, and then let me go.”

Secretary: “My boss specifically told me never to assume a person’s pronouns.”

Me: “Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

Secretary: “Let’s try this. Do you identify as a man?”

Me: “I’m sorry, but…”

Secretary: “Yes, I know, your philosophy of language is incompatible with this event.”

Me: “What? No!”

Secretary: “You’ve got to get past me to get to the event. To get past me, you need to give your pronouns. Therefore, your philosophy of language is incompatible with this event.”

Me: “I don’t see why this is a big deal. No one is going to talk about me. Just put down ‘I don’t care’ and we can move on with our lives.”

Secretary: “No. Now back to the question. Why aren’t you a man?”

Me: “Well that depends on how a person defines ‘man,’ doesn’t it?”

Secretary: “How do you define ‘man?'”

Me: “I really haven’t had the need to do so. I usually let the person I’m talking to define it and follow their lead. Depending on the context, it can refer to any human, only adult humans with secondary sex-characteristics associated with males, or gun owners. Under the first, you and I would both be men. Under the second, I would be but not you. Under the third, I know I wouldn’t, but I don’t know you well enough to know whether you are or not.”

Secretary: “Gun owners? Can you give an example?”

Me: “Sure. A friend of mine used to belong to a rifle shooting club. He introduced me to a friend of his from the club, and the guy asked what kind of gun I shoot. I told him that I don’t own a gun. He told me that he thought I was a man, and men own guns. I told him that in that case I’m not a man. When he asked what I am, I told him that I’m someone that takes care of my family, I’m honest, forthright, and a hard worker. I treat others with respect. Whatever you call that, that’s what I am.”

Secretary: “That’s an interesting point, and I do happen to own a gun. So that makes me a man?”

Me: “In some contexts, yes.”

Secretary: “Even though I self-identify as a woman?”

Me: “Self-identification doesn’t mean anything unless I can know what you mean by that self-identity. I can make up words with no meaning. You’re a jabberwocky. Unless you can know what a jabberwocky is, that’s not helpful.”

Secretary: “What is a jabberwocky?”

Me: “It’s from an old poem specifically made up to sound like a real word to demonstrate that you can just make up words and put them in a sentence.”

Secretary: “So before you can decide whether or not you’re a man, I would need to tell you what a man is.”

Me: “More specifically, before I could decide if I’m a man in this context. Words are always context dependent.”

Secretary: “Let me text my boss.” *texting* “Well that’s not helpful. She said, ‘A man is anyone that identifies as a man.'”

Me: “Oh. Well since I don’t engage in self-identification, that means I’m not a man. That was easy.”

Secretary: “Wait! You give your name, right?”

Me: “I give the name that was given to me. I didn’t self-identify as ‘Shaun.’ I was called that by those that first found me. I pass that along.”

Secretary: “What about people that change their names?”

Me: “What about them?”

Secretary: “Are you saying there’s something wrong with that?”

Me: “No. Again, all words – including names – are made up. It’s like deciding your imaginary friend is red now instead of black like you’ve been telling everyone. It’s meaningless, unless it specifically has meaning given to it. For the imaginary friend, if it’s an ape and then you clarify that it’s an orangutan. For a name, if there’s some trauma associated with the previous name and the new name connects to something more peaceful. Just as random examples.”

Secretary: “And to pronouns, if the previous pronouns hurt, picking new ones is as meaningless to you as changing an imaginary friend from a chimp to an orangutan after a real chimp attacked: it’s therapeutic, perhaps even healing, probably important, but it’s all in their head.”

Me: “See, you’re getting it.”

Secretary: “I think I am. But that doesn’t make my job any easier.”

Me: “I’m sorry.”

Secretary: “I’m just going to put ‘it.'”

Me: “Didn’t you say that was kind of insulting? I don’t care what pronouns people use, as long as they don’t intend it as an insult.”

Secretary: “They may not intend it as an insult. I do. But they might not. Now, let’s see if there’s anything else you forgot to fill in. Oh, here: you didn’t enter your race. I’ll just mark ‘white’ for you.”

Me: “What are the options?”

Secretary: “I don’t care. You’re white, and I am not talking about anything else with you ever again. Have a good time at the event, Sir. Here is your name tag with your pronouns.”

On Fire Hydrant Parking

Have you ever thought about what it would be like if people were allowed to park in front of fire hydrants? Think of all the places in your life this would open up a few more parking spaces: the mall, the grocery store, the school, maybe even in your neighborhood. One more space right up close, where the action is.

On the downside, fire crews would need to move the vehicles that were parked inconveniently for their purposes, and they wouldn’t have time to be gentle about it. Parking in front of a hydrant would be taking your car’s life into your hands. How often does that happen, though? On a per-hydrant scale,  it would probably average less than one problem per decade. I know of hydrants that haven’t been accessed other than routine maintenance for my entire working memory of more than thirty years. So why are we restricting parking around them?

In some situations it gets even worse. At my son’s school, when I’m dropping him off in the morning or picking him up in the afternoon, there’s a hydrant right near the doorway he comes out. If I park there, I have every intention of getting my car out of the way if I see a firetruck coming. I’m almost never out of my car for more than six minutes. So why is it such a big deal and worthy of a fine if I park there while I wait for my son?

Well, for one thing, my battery could go out. I could drop off my son, jump back in my car, turn the key, and hear the distinctive clicking that indicates the battery just doesn’t have enough juice to turn over the engine. If that happens, all my intentions about scurrying out of the way when I see a firetruck don’t really mean anything. That’s the biggest reason we have these rules. No one plans on their battery running out. No one wants to be blocking the way when the firetruck could be coming. But it happens anyway.

The funny thing is, if we didn’t have a rule about it, then we wouldn’t ever think about it. It’s so rare that a building actually catches on fire that we would all just park there and be really upset when the fire crew smashed our car or when our building burned down because the fire crew was smashing someone’s car. That’s one of the things that rules like this are supposed to do for us. (Leaving to one side how good at it we are and aren’t.) We have one central planning committee that sees what kind of problems have been or could be and then make rules to stay out of those problems. There are periodically fires at buildings, and so we have hydrants installed and set up parameters pertaining to the parking parallel to these particular plumbing pieces. We don’t have to look too hard to find instances where this has gone off the rails, but in general this seems to work out for us. Putting the responsibility on every person to think of everything that could possibly go wrong and in particular every worst case scenario doesn’t work out.

This does lead to a conundrum, though. As long as there are rules, we will need rule-breakers. That’s why Heaven needs to be a place without rules. It needs to be filled with people that follow the rules. It needs to be led by people who make fair and reasonable expectations and understand when exceptions are important. But here’s the thing: there will be some sort of analog in Heaven for the fire hydrant that needs to keep the parking clear. Except there, it won’t be a rule. There won’t be a ticket for parking there. But if you’re the kind of person that will park there knowing that it could lead to problems, you won’t be allowed into Heaven. Those that put their short-term gain above the community’s long term good are not the kind of people that God is looking for.

We can see this in a lot of ways. My favorite example is the parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46. Those people that go out of their way to help the vulnerable are elevated. But there are other ways, too. When you recognize this concern, you see it in the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1-11 and the man stoned for gathering sticks on the Sabbath in Numbers 15:32-36. These are people who tried to join God’s congregation with the goal of personal gain, then tried to push the rules just to get ahead of those in the church. It makes sense of Jesus criticizing the Pharisees for failing to uphold the more important laws while requiring others to keep the minutiae of the laws in Matthew 23:4. Knowing the reason for a rule is important to deciding which rules can be suspended and when. And parking in front of a fire hydrant just to be a few steps closer to the door isn’t a good reason to suspend that rule.

What about you? What are some of those little rules that you are still willing to break just to gain a short term benefit? Upon reflection, do you see it as selfish? Are you going to work to improve on that?