Going to Rhetoric Class with Elai

Yes, I voluntarily read  A History of Christian Thought in One Volume. (The “One Volume” part was a selling point) while I was with Elai in Chicago. It seemed appropriate, somehow, to be reading what looks like a textbook while she was off to her acting class, her Old Testament Survey class, her Rhetoric class (!) Actually I got to go to one of those. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, and the day I went, Dr. Chase was giving examples of ancient Chinese persuasion. He quoted Confucius saying: “To fail to speak to a man who is capable of benefiting is to let a man go to waste. To speak to a man who is incapable of benefiting is to let one's words go to waste. A wise man lets neither men nor words go to waste.” (Analect 15:8) Confucius was such  a master of word play. I wonder what he and G.K. Chesterton, the English master of paradox, would have sounded like in conversation. I hoped to go to the next Rhetoric class, which was to be about African rhetoric, but I couldn’t make it, so Elai is sending me the link. I’m such a student!

Which keeps me reading my history book. It’s good because it shows you why your church teaches certain things and not others. You think your set of beliefs came down from antiquity as a package deal. But it did not. Theologians over the ages added bits and pieces, some far longer ago, and some more recently, than you might think. And if you were to read about some of these theologians, you might be dismayed. They don’t match up with what you might describe as a model Christian today. What do you do with this mixed bag of thinkers and doers who are our spiritual ancestors?

Take the Roman Tertullian, a lawyer/ theologian (as most of the Roman theologians were) from the third century, who outlined the doctrine of original sin and first described the trinity as three persons with one substance.  He also gave us the Doctrine of Satisfaction, which tells the story of salvation as a legal business transaction, a payment of debt to free sinners from their master. These are all doctrines that many Christians hold today. But Tertullian also supported apostolic succession, condemned all fornicators to hell, repentant or not, and forbade widows from marriage. He was also not clear on whether the Son existed in the Godhead before creation. What a mixed bag.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, salvation was being described in completely different terms, as a drama of Ransom and Rescue. This was the predominant view among most of the church fathers for the first thousand years of church history until a shift came at the turn of the first millennium, under Anselm of Canterbury, who took up Tertullian’s Satisfaction Doctrine, which has prevailed as the primary story of salvation among both Catholics and Protestants ever since. A writer named Gustaf Aulen  brought back the ancient story in 1931. Truth be told, though both stories describe the exact same event, Christ redeeming us forever through his life, death, and resurrection, I like the Christus Victor account best. It resonates with me—this drama about Jesus coming as the ultimate hero to conquer the enemy and rescue his fallen bride. I am glad that the study of Christian thought has given us back this story. I am glad Justo Gonzalez reminds me that my theological ancestors where (what looks to me now) a mixed bag. It gives me hope.

Stitches out

I was so close to making it through the two weeks without an issue. Tomorrow the stitches were to come out. Yesterday they got infected. Oozing pus and all that.  In another hour I see the doctor. I’m quite placid about this right now because I don’t know any better. Perhaps when I finish writing this later in the day and have the rest of the process to look forward to, I might not be so sanguine. I’m very brave…just until the first needle goes in.

I think about this: how in ignorance I’m so sure I could tackle anything, but when it comes down to real pain, I can’t. My BSF group is finishing Revelation. We’re in the part where the beheaded martyrs come to life again and reign a thousand years with Jesus, and those who aren’t signed in to Life are thrown into a lake of fire. This scene is worrisome to me, because I don’t trust my courage. It’s easy for you to say, “Oh God will get you through it.” But history proves it’s not that simple.

I think of the martyrs who made it to death without betrayal and those that didn’t (I’ve been reading a book called The History of Christian Thought by Justo Gonzalez, which I highly recommend). There’s this story of the English archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who was imprisoned for holding Reformation beliefs. After three years he was released into sudden sumptuous living, and the unexpected kindness caught him off guard (ancient version of good cop/bad cop strategy). He recanted and signed away his newfound beliefs. Soon after, he repented of his repentance and was condemned to burn at the stake. He reached out his hand to the fire, the hand that had signed his betrayal, until it burnt to a crisp, saying, “This unworthy right hand; this unworthy right hand.” And I’m worried about stitches.

I think of Shusaku Endo’s missionary in Silence, who during the persecution of Catholic believers of Japan in the seventeenth century, was taken into a room where Christians were hung upside down over a pit with tiny cuts on their bodies draining their blood. They were beyond agony. He asked why the sufferers didn’t recant. “Oh, they recanted long ago,” said the missionary’s jailor. “They have already spit on the face of Christ. They are kept here now to make you recant to ease their suffering.” Read the book. We as safe, secure North Americans do not wrestle much with the silence of God in other parts of our world. We say we’re staunch believers, but we’re not even up for the risk and bother of being Good Samaritan to some Muslim refugees. How brave is that?

I’m back from the doctor, queasy, but relieved, and with the stories of martyrs still in my head, our own version of Christian horror. If Dawnelle were listening to this post, she would be holding her hands over her ears, squeezing her eyes shut, muttering, “Puppies, puppies, puppies. I’m thinking of cute, cuddly puppies.” It’s too much to take in. No, it’s impossible to take in. I know brothers and sisters and children of martyrs. Do you? I’ve been at the graves of Mixtec martyrs shot down for their faith. How can I predict what I would do in their shoes? I can’t. My trust can’t be in my courage. I’ve seen enough pus and needles and embedded stitches to know that much. For me now it’s just one needle at a time. God has to figure out the rest somehow, whether I turn out to be courageous or not.

Teaching styles

I’m in a number of weekly Bible studies when I’m home. I enjoy them.  They make me study and think and wonder and have questions, After a year of observation, I’ve concluded that there are various kinds of questions I can bring to the studies and various ways that leaders can field these questions. The two main kinds of questions I’ve observed are questions of clarification (what did you mean by that? What does that mean/?) and questions of challenge (How did you get that from the reading? Couldn’t there be another interpretation for that passage?) I’ve found that some leaders are quite comfortable with the first kind of question because it allows them to teach further what they had already intended for us to understand. Clarification questions help them do their job. It takes more gifted teachers, however, to field the second kind of question because these questions don’t follow the teacher’s line of reasoning. They might take time away from her well thought out lesson plan. They might confuse the rest of the group. Or they might even go beyond what she can answer. To field these questions is risky.

And there are different kinds of study leaders. Some of them view their class as an opportunity to impart their wisdom, to transfer a certain body of knowledge from teacher to student.  The questions they use are intended to draw the student toward the answers that they have already formed before class began. The study is an opportunity for students to check their answers against what the teacher has already filled out in her notes. This kind of teacher sees truth as a closed set of answers that she, for the most part, has, already, painstakingly, assimilated, and the students’ job is to “fill in the blanks.” There is a place for this kind of efficiency, though perhaps not in a Bible study. Recently I saw a teacher illustrate this style of teaching with a set of boxes, carrying questions, overlaying a cross.  “Once you answer the questions correctly (with these answers), the cross will become clear to your listeners,” this teacher assured us (the boxes disappearing from the screen, leaving the cross in the center). Someone asked this teacher if there was any question that he couldn’t answer on this topic. Can you guess the teacher’s answer? 

Another kind of study leader sees the “class” as an opportunity to reach truth together. Sure, the teacher may have more knowledge about this particular passage because she has studied it more thoroughly, but who knows what knowledge and experience the rest of the group brings to the table? Perhaps they’ve seen the truth of this scripture applied in another culture. Perhaps they have discovered some fresh insight about life. Perhaps they have discovered that a certain pat answer to a particular standard question just isn’t right. Such things happen. Perhaps the group needs to arrive at truth through a process of interacting, thinking, and checking the evidence, like the noble Bereans—not through just being told. But anyone leading this type of group must risk the group ending up in some unexpected spot.

All the scientists in the world come to realize one thing: they will never reach the end of their research. Truth just keeps opening up more and more the longer they go.  I imagine we scientists of faith should experience the same thing: how can we exhaust the truth about God? It’s never all sewn up; it never fits comfortably in a set of boxes. There is so much more to know. After researching teaching styles this year, I’ve confirmed the kind of teacher I want to be when I grow up.  I want, like a favorite teacher of mine, to be the one beckoning, “Come further up! Come further in!”

Invisible visitors

I was just in Chicago for a few days with my daughter. To sit on the couch together and just catch up, catch the nuances, catch the details. These are moments I live for.  I always feel a pang when other moms talk about their grown kids just stopping by to visit. They have their kids (and eventually, grandkids) close by. Mine are far away. I take the visits when I can.

And when they need a home to return to, when they are released from their studies, I can't provide even that now. Philip talks about living in a dorm for the summer, or a trailer, or in an "extended stay hotel." A hotel! Not that he couldn't handle it. He can. He will. But still...

He reminds me of those Arkansas workers who came to Niagara years ago to scrub Smithville's PCB dump, a job Robert shared with them twenty-five years ago, when we were first married. He would describe for me how he wore a Tyvek suit and mask and stand for 15 minutes at a time in front of the fiery furnace that burned the PCBs and passed the job to the next guy before his body overheated. And he described how he had to scrub the roof of the structure clean, standing high up on a platform, cleaning off the cancer inch by inch. Who knows what risks he took, along with all those Arkansas migrant men, cleaning our ground water of poison. 

And when they were done, my husband came home to me in our basement apartment, and the Arkansas men went home to their hotel rooms and their fast food and their southern accents. My son will be like them, taking his Oaxacan-Ontarian-Texan culture with him wherever he goes. Will someone invite him home for lunch? Will someone notice a stranger? Did we notice those men from Arkansas? There was one of those men who had a family of seven with him. We met them at church and invited them home to dinner. They were surprised. They didn't often get invitations for such a big family. Later we visited them in Arkansas in their new-to-them southern fix-up home, with its deep, covered wrap-around porch, complete with porch swing, To Kill a Mockingbird style. 

How hidden, often, are the strangers in our land. My son joins their ranks sometimes. I'd house him in his own home for the summer, if I could. He's competent but, still, he's just nineteen. May someone else befriend him wherever he goes this summer--him and all those just like him, all those mothers' sons caught in life's migrations.

Sore, bandaged hands

I am home with sore and bandaged hand wondering if it was worth it because I can’t tell yet (any more than I can tell after all my herceptin sessions if I’m cured. I had my next to last on Tuesday. Almost finished. Yay!) The procedure was over in five minutes. That was the easy part. The hard part was six needles straight into the nerve and the angry reawakening of those disturbed nerves later in the morning. But the worst is over. I’m already typing with both hands. I won’t think about the next surgery in June. Except to wonder if the surgeon will find a more attentive nurse. I was awake through everything to hear him quietly call her on her mistakes, “I said no springer. I have no use for that.” I have til June to research what a springer does. Maybe I don’t want to know.

Instead, I think about how much our culture trains us toward faith. I walk willingly into a room with medical paraphernalia and wait patiently for some stranger I’ve just met to poke me painfully with needles, snip away at my bones, and tell me to come back for more in six weeks’ time. I think in those waiting moments that I could just get up and walk away. But I don’t. I trust this system that packs the little waiting room “against the green wall,” as the receptionist put it—unfortunate terms. There are no free chairs, and Robert and I go back down to the first floor for coffee. Back in the waiting room, where family members, including Robert, give up their chairs for the patients waiting to be called, two sets of friends find each other unexpectedly, “Hey, what are you doing here? I didn’t know you were coming!” I greet my cousin in law. We notice the young girl, there alone, her face pale with fear. She has just enough faith to sit and wait her turn.

God gives us all these ways to teach us trust. The sun keeps coming up, and gravity always keeps our feet on the ground. Our mothers always love us (this is his plan; it can be thwarted), food always tastes good, and doctors always make things better. We know these things should always happen. And when they don’t, we know there’s something wrong; the system fails. We sense it should not be this way.

We learn of trust, and trust being broken. Life is a school to teach such things. And hopefully, if God has his way, there will also be lessons of trust rekindled, of sacrifices made, of the innocent defended and the guilty forgiven, of evil overturned and redeemed, so that we can know such things are possible. So that we would wonder if there’s not something to trust beyond ourselves and the limits of our universe.

Because the universe does not forgive. There’s never grace in Nature. A lion always eats the helpless lamb unless it’s trained and taught to trust a man. Or woman.

But doctors and mothers and gravity point to God. And since that was not enough, Jesus came and put into words the silent yearning of God’s heart, “For God so loved…” And now we know that in all things we can trust and give thanks. In death, certainly, but also in life, in the small things, like needles into nerves and sore, bandaged hands.

Mountain roads

Did any of you go see that movie Inside Out? My daughter dragged me to it, but I’m glad I saw it. The images of those palaces crashing down into the abyss as the girl’s world was rocked struck me. I know what that feels like, having your neat plans and cheery expectations…dismantled.  You know, it’s images you need when all the facts are in, but you are still wrestling with your emotions, because words don’t say enough. It’s why we need music and art and literature—all those symbols and metaphors to picture pain and joy, sometimes together.

It’s like those alarming rides in the back of a truck to the mountain Mixtec village where we lived in Guerrero. Up. Down. Around and around. Shaken, banged, jolted. But surrounded by beauty.

Similarly, I feel a mix of emotions. I now have stuffed on my calendar every medical and traveling event that is planned for the next few months. Don't know how much writing will get done. Sunday, Robert and I head to Oaxaca City, and from the airport, we drive to an Indian market town where we will spend the week training new Mexican missionaries. This is a highlight of my year. Because of our involvement with this program, there are now trained Mexican missionaries living in Guerrero, reaching out to Mixtecs. One of these missionaries is on our team now and expecting! J

A few days after coming back to Canada, I will have surgery on my right hand. L A few days later, Robert leaves for a week in Guadalajara where he will be training more missionary candidates. J L So Janey will be looking after me until my hand works again. Then I have my final chemo (Herceptin) treatment, and I get to ring the gong J (please come join me if you are free noon, April 15^th)

The next day we drive to North Carolina to visit supporting churches and my friend Caroline, a missionary going through the same thing I am. We’ll be comparing war stories and scars. J But I will miss the women’s retreat here. L

The week we come home, we immediately repack our bags, and finally take that 25^th anniversary trip cancelled by chemo last year. Ireland! Yay! And thanks to the anonymous friends that helped make it possible! On the way home, we will be seeing three good friends in England we knew in Honduras before we got married (one was in my wedding). Yay! J

Then, the week we get home, I have surgery on the left hand. L And wait for the stitches to come out after a flurry of doctor’s follow up visits. And then we leave for Mexico. J And leave Manal and Rashad and Bayan and Hammudi and all my friends and family here, L especially my sisters, who have made this year good. J

What a ride! What does God intend to do with this mountainous road of emotions, all those twists and unexpected turns, the ups and downs, and around and arounds of shifted feelings? All of the life he gives us is purposeful, profitable, preparatory. What does he intend, after I’m finished up here, with all this?

Come find out with me.

Where else would we go?

Today I was stacking piles of books that need rides to Mexico with us next week. The piles are high, and still the bookshelf is full. On top I laid three books I got for Christmas, including one called Bad Arguments. It’s an illustrated book that explains logical fallacies, and I plan to show the cartoon examples to my students next year when we are evaluating arguments. As I flipped through the book, of course, the fallacies that caught my attention were the ones I’ve run into most recently. One of them, called the Slippery Slope, goes like this: “If you let Muslim refugees into your country, next thing you know, they’ll all radicalize and shoot and rape your kids.” They will not all radicalize and shoot and rape your kids.

Another similar fallacy that caught my eye was the Appeal to Fear. This one I heard in this form: “If you don’t teach your kids a particular interpretation of a certain passage of the Bible, and if you don’t answer all their questions on this topic correctly and immediately, then they will walk away from the church.” They will not walk away from the church simply because you didn’t answer some of their questions about a passage of the Bible. In fact, my guess is that the facts point in quite another direction: that it’s this kind of dogmatism (definition: the tendency to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true, without consideration of evidence or the opinions of others) that will turn kids away from the church. In this day and age, I bet what they want to hear from us is that we might not know everything after all; we might have doubts, too. When will we learn this?

The harshest fallacy thrown at me recently was the False Dilemma. This is when you are falsely presented with only two possible positions on an issue. If you reject one position, you are assumed to hold the other. It’s also called Either/Or and, also, Unwarranted Assumption. This is the form that it took at first: “You have a gospel with no teeth because you don’t share my interpretation of Genesis 1 (the painful part of this accusation was that it was shelled out by a friend before I’d even said anything. It was based on hear-say.) Now I finally understand where my friend’s assumption lay because I just heard this False Dilemma fallacy again more recently. The assumption about me is that if I believe a certain way about Genesis 1, then I cannot believe in the fall. Hence the weak gospel. Wow. False. I have told the gospel story, beginning with creation, to hundreds of people, and the fall of man weighed heavily in that story every time. There are not just two positions on how Genesis 1 relates to Jesus.

John, when he first set pen to paper, called Jesus the Logos. The Reason.  The Logic. The living Word spoken by God. God is the source of all clear thinking, all reasoning, and all logic. Satan hates reasoning and logic, so he constantly lies and twists things, and logical fallacies and dogmatism are strictly his domain. (C. S. Lewis, who shares my interpretation of Genesis 1 and does not hold a weak gospel, showed a demon-possessed man in one of his novels using reason as a tool to tempt someone. But once he was finished, he dropped it and returned to his true nature, repeating and repeating and repeating inanities.)  One of the reasons I teach English is to train myself and my students to catch the enemy’s fallacies. I miss dozens of them all the time. Just ask my husband. But I want to be like Jesus, my Logic, my Reason.

Here’s the most excusable of the fallacies: the Argument from Consequences (Example: Nuclear holocaust is unthinkable; therefore no one will go there). Jesus had given people some hard words, and many abandoned him. Jesus asks his friends, “Do you want to leave me, too?” Peter protests, “Where else would we go?” The thought of leaving Jesus was appalling, the consequences of losing him unthinkable, even with the hard things Peter didn’t get. So he just holds on, drowning, begging for help. This was the love cry of a desperado, so Jesus let the fallacy slide. I like this guy. I’ve said those words, too, drowning.