Imagine the Quaker
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archives | newquaker.comSaturday, April 17, 2004
Jesus was a carpenter. An ad now appearing on local television praises recent advances in secondary education in New York State and concludes with the claim that 4 out of 5 students in the state go on to college. In March, in its Explosion of Excellence white paper [.pdf], the New York State United Teachers report that 81 percent of high school graduates in the state now are enrolling in college, up from 63 percent twenty-five years ago and well above the national average of 66 percent.
Now this may indeed be a good thing, perhaps even a great thing, but I have a concern about the suggestion that college attendance is, or ought to be, any measure of success. This is not really about New York State, but a fact about public education in general in the US. We have a linear model of education in America that tends to cast a pernicious shadow on trades and vocational alternatives. Where is it written that everyone should go to college? Or that college is the best preparation for every career path?
We have for too long taken college to be a one-size-fits-all garment for sucess when, in fact, it can actually be an impediment to a person's success in life, especially if the person is built for a trade, not an academic pursuit. For the tradesman, college is a career-delayer and it can be like a carnival house of mirrors: it takes a while to get through it and in the experience they have to watch themselves in many unpleasant contortions; when they emerge on the other side, they are no more prepared for a career than when they went in. We make it seem as though the tradesman is somehow lower on the learning scale, at least when compared to college. What's worse, in our zeal to push everyone into college, accidentally shaming them if they don't go, we neglect the formation of comparable centers of excellence for learning in the trades.
Perhaps this is a symptom of a growing bias toward the large, publicly-held corporation as a model for commerce in our civilization, or perhaps we've forgotten that the real engine of commerce in our nation is actually small business. Or perhaps we just can't appreciate the fact that our Lord was a tradesman who never attended college.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:05 AM
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Trump's Apprentice is chosen. Now see who the Donald should fire next: [Hi-Res] [Lo-Res] .
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:56 PM
Christians know that paying taxes is actually a good thing, but we differ as to why this must be so. Jesus himself clarified the issue for us when, tested on the one side by Roman-loathing Pharisees and Herod-sympathizers on the other, he passed through their snare with the cool phrase: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" [Matt 22:21; Mark 12:19]. Still, too, we have Paul putting forth the general rule that we are obliged to "Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor" [Rom 13:7]. This doesn't mean that, as Americans, we can't work through our political process to change tax law—reducing taxes, determining how tax dollars are used, etc.—but it does mean that, once we have ascertained the amount of our tax obligation, we should pay it, as a Christian duty.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 11:42 PM
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Abraham and the crazy Texas mother (Part II). The recent Deanna Laney verdict darkens the boundary between God's holy requests and those that we are compelled to consider simply psychotic—but only if we surrender to the conviction that we have no means, no tools, no further aspirations for discerning God's voice in the din of the world and the cacophonous background noise of human minds in tumult.
Humans have a long folk history of ecstatic pronouncements and declarations of encounters with spirits, demons, and gods. Christians are grafted onto the authentic tradition that records our complex relationship with God, his beloved son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. In tandem with that tradition is an endless record of people encountering phony gods, demons of many flavors, and spirits that are no more real than gas vapors. Whole religions have been started after these experiences. The priests of Ba'al believed that they worshipped something as real as it was divine (in spite of total humiliating discredit at the hands of Elijah in 1 Kings 18:16-40). Islam began with a conversation between Mohammed and the angel Gabriel; Sikhism began after God told Guru Nanak to redeem the world through a new and practical social order; the Baha'i Faith followed upon prophetic declarations by the Bab and Baha'u'llah; within our own faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints traces its heritage to Prophet Joseph Smith's conversation with Moroni and the subsequent translation of the Book of Mormon. In our own time, we find Neale Donald Walsch bringing to humanity not unsimilar credentials in his now-ongoing Conversations with God. If we should happen to feel overwhelmed by history, then one has only to pick up a competent sociological study of ecstatic prophecies to see the rich diversity of what can't possibly be true. (I'm thinking here specifically of The Trumpet Shall Sound, Peter Worsley's outstanding 1968 study of the Melanesian "Cargo" Cults.)
The privilege of the Holy Spirit comes to many, although not to all, and we can often find only after the fact that our encounter with the Lord is an authentic experience, and then only within the testing waters of community. If there is a criminal in stories about crazy Texas mothers, it must be the community that fails to aid the friend who needs validation, who needs to know God from demons, and who needs love's light to guide their strange path. Whether we throw out a fleece, like Gideon in Judges 6:36-40, or throw lots with a Urim and Thummim (see Ex 28:15-30), we are using reason to determine the true from the false in moments of holy immediacy. What is missing from insane or deranged prophecy is the effort to test the communications within a community, to submit the cognitive element of the experience to our human, admittedly weak crucibles of validation.
Among these tests are the observed significance of history and the weavings of acknowledged truths into a fabric, a tableau of sorts, that captures and gives total sense to events in the past and the present. In this way Abraham and the crazy Texas mother bear no resemblance to each other, and it is wrong to cast their experiences in the same light. Between the two is our Lord Jesus Christ, about whom God said "This is my Son, whom I love" [Matt 3:17; Mark 9:7; 2 Peter 1:17; see Luke 3:22]. His death and resurrection brings full circle what is really a long story about love.
posted by Merle Harton, Jr. 6:43 PM
© Merle Harton, Jr. All rights reserved. Biblical references are NIV® unless otherwise noted.
