tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12861422828405404562024-03-12T18:04:33.874-06:00WAYFARING STRANGERWANDERER ON THE FACE OF THE EARTHWayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-37969598921117158352020-12-15T08:52:00.001-06:002020-12-15T08:52:05.809-06:00Advent <p> The boughs wait in emptiness</p><p>For their shame to be covered</p><p>Stillness broken by cold wind,</p><p>Distant crickets keeping time,</p><p>And the highway's din.</p><div><br /></div>Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-12496589774605955542020-11-04T14:57:00.004-06:002020-11-04T14:57:52.209-06:00I Lift Mine Eyes (adaptation of Psalm 121)<p>From my anxiety and darkness I look up to where the mountaintop touches the clouds, sailing across the face of the noonday sun.</p><p><br /></p><p>I look there and see His hands, from which comes my help.</p><p><br /></p><p>Oh, come soon, Yahweh. Make haste to help me. Maranatha, One who formed the dry land, the heavens, the water above the heavens, the elohim you have placed there, the lesser lights.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yahweh makes your steps firm on sure and steady ground.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is true, true. Yahweh keeps the child of his promise, even Israel. He is ever wakeful and watchful. No sleep shall overcome him.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yahweh is your protector, the one whose shadow shelters you in your presence at all times.</p><p><br /></p><p>During the day, you are safe in his shade, and in the night, you are safe in his hands.</p><p><br /></p><p>From the wicked one<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>, Yahweh guards you. Each moment of your life he watches over you.</p><p><br /></p><p>When you come in and go out, from now until forever more, Yahwaeh watches over you.</p>Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-31853955538860256982020-10-22T13:53:00.002-06:002020-10-22T13:53:34.506-06:00Cries of Lament<p> "Lament is the path that takes us to the place where we discover that there is no complete answer to pain and suffering, only Presence."- Michael Card, 'A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament'</p><p><br /></p><p>“Lament is the honest cry of a hurting heart wrestling with the paradox of pain and the promise of God’s goodness.” — Mark Vroegop, 'Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy'</p><p><br /></p><p>“I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving” - Henri Nouwen</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Late have I loved you,</p><p>Beauty so ancient and so new,</p><p>late have I loved you!</p><p>Lo, you were within,</p><p>but I outside, seeking there for you,</p><p>and upon the shapely things you have made</p><p>I rushed headlong –I, misshapen.</p><p>You were with me, but I was not with you.</p><p>They held me back far from you,</p><p>those things which would have no being,</p><p>were they not in you.</p><p><br /></p><p>You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;</p><p>you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;</p><p>you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;</p><p>I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;</p><p>you touched me, and I burned for your peace.</p><p><br /></p><p>When at last I cling to you with my whole being there will be no more anguish or labor for me, and my life will be alive indeed, alive because filled with you. But now it is very different. Anyone whom you fill you also uplift; but I am not full of you, and so I am a burden to myself. Joys over which I ought to weep do battle with sorrows that should be matter for joy, and I do not know which will be victorious. But I also see griefs that are evil at war in me with joys that are good, and I do not know which will win the day. This is agony, Lord, have pity on me! It is agony! See, I do not hide my wounds; you are the physician and I am sick; you are merciful, I in need of mercy.</p><p><br /></p><p>Is not human life on earth a time of testing? Who would choose troubles and hardships? You command us to endure them, but not to love them. No-one loves what he has to endure, even if he loves the endurance, for although he may rejoice in his power to endure, he would prefer to have nothing that demands endurance. In adverse circumstances I long for prosperity, and in times of prosperity I dread adversity. What middle ground is there, between these two, where human life might be free from trial? Woe betide worldly prosperity, and woe again, from fear of disaster and evanescent joy! But woe, woe, and woe again upon worldly adversity, from envy of better fortune, the hardship of adversity itself, and the fear that endurance may falter. Is not human life on earth a time of testing without respite?</p><p><br /></p><p>On your exceedingly great mercy, and on that alone, rests all my hope.</p><p><br /></p><p>- Augustine, Confessions Book 10</p>Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-11318047630986798492020-10-22T13:50:00.004-06:002020-10-22T13:50:29.923-06:00The Lesser Evil<p>Your sweet Amens rose up to the ether</p><p>When I heard the great doors slam shut</p><p>On the faces of souls yearning to breathe</p><p>And walk the streets of liberty.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Your burning incense wafts from high places,</p><p>Whence Moloch devours the innocents</p><p>And Asherah her carnal delight chases</p><p>'Mid the fallen ruins of time.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Did freedom ring from the once lofty heights,</p><p>When your soul was torn, cast lots for,</p><p>Mocked by darkness, as your fortunes you weighed</p><p>Between Scylla and Charybdis?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Or did you glance at the dim reflection,</p><p>Or hear the whisper of the voice,</p><p>In your youth ineffably seen and heard,</p><p>Now lost in the din of Babel?</p><div><br /></div>Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-76823445937741050172019-07-29T17:18:00.000-06:002019-07-31T11:49:43.699-06:00All That's Past- Poem by Walter de la Mare<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
Very old are the woods;<br />
And the buds that break<br />
Out of the brier's boughs,<br />
When March winds wake,<br />
So old with their beauty are—<br />
Oh, no man knows<br />
Through what wild centuries<br />
Roves back the rose.<br />
<br />
Very old are the brooks;<br />
And the rills that rise<br />
Where snow sleeps cold beneath<br />
The azure skies<br />
Sing such a history<br />
Of come and gone,<br />
Their every drop is as wise<br />
As Solomon.<br />
<br />
Very old are we men;<br />
Our dreams are tales<br />
Told in dim Eden<br />
By Eve's nightingales;<br />
We wake and whisper awhile,<br />
But, the day gone by,<br />
Silence and sleep like fields<br />
Of amaranth lie.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Walter de la Mare</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-39475880003652517882019-07-29T16:53:00.001-06:002019-07-29T16:53:40.434-06:00Ah! Sun-flower- Poem by William Blake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,<br />
Who countest the steps of the Sun:<br />
Seeking after that sweet golden clime<br />
Where the travellers journey is done.<br />
<br />
Where the Youth pined away with desire,<br />
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:<br />
Arise from their graves and aspire,<br />
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-84780091588797038862019-02-21T21:58:00.002-06:002019-02-21T21:58:43.536-06:00PRESENCE<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
I said: How can I escape?<br />
With the freed sighs to forget<br />
The dark and creeping heave?<br />
<br />
Where could he be, at this hour<br />
When such unwelcome wolves at the door,<br />
And breath waits on battered resignation?<br />
<br />
I heard someone say, of exiles at the Holocaust,<br />
how they heard he was with them there<br />
On his cross, sharing it with them.<br />
<br />
I sighed again, and went deeply inward<br />
Into where the sadness lurked,<br />
In the small curved fetal pose.<br />
<br />
In the trembling warmth and the tremor,<br />
The rhythmic sound of tensed nostrils,<br />
I sat with him, both of us alone in the darkness<br />
<br />
But for each other. Amen.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-10942833249317196102018-12-31T09:37:00.002-06:002018-12-31T09:37:30.579-06:00At the End of 2018<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Stephen Crane wrote:<br />
<br />
A man said to the universe:<br />
“Sir, I exist!”<br />
“However,” replied the universe,<br />
“The fact has not created in me<br />
A sense of obligation.”<br />
<br />
<br />
At the end of 2018, I think of this:<br />
<br />
God said to me:<br />
"Child, I Am!"<br />
"However", said I,<br />
"Am content to see, tinker and hold forth<br />
And not look learn, admire and be transformed."<br />
<br />
At the end of 2018, may I be content to know by seeing, with veiled face yet, but anticipating the indeterminate future manifestations of this great Other, the I AM, who introduces himself to me and invites me to know him.<br />
<br />
For Crane's 'man' to speak to the 'universe' implies personal knowledge, and for the universe to reply implies the need for a response.<br />
<br />
In reality, it is God who takes the initiative to invite the man and the man who must reply to receive it.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-14363389154853522022018-12-27T17:14:00.001-06:002018-12-27T17:14:46.429-06:00Notes on Loving to Know- Covenant Epistemology by Esther Lightcap Meek<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">NOTES ON LOVING TO
KNOW- ESTHER LIGHTCAP MEEK.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loving to Know-
Covenant Epistemology, by Esther Lightcap Meek<br />
Hardcover: 540 pages<br />
Publisher: Wipf and Stock (June 1, 2011)<br />
ISBN-10: 1498213243<br />
ISBN-13: 978-1498213240<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">NOTES:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments: </span></i></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">Esther Lightcap<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b>Meek points out that most of our
thinking around knowledge, how we know what we know, and the process of coming
to know, is based on a flawed and destructive premise set in motion by
Cartesian thinking. She points out how this has permeated our lives, adversely
affected relationships, communities, science, the arts and education. Her
extensive study of scholars, mystics, scientists, psychologists, theologians,
philosophers, classical writers, and not least the Bible, has led to the
development of Covenant Epistemology. The book is heavy with concepts, excerpts
and explanations, but is accessible and ultimately rewarding and personally
satisfying. At 540 pages it is a daunting read, and one can get lost in the
woods. My condensation of the book to 24 pages is an attempt to systematize the
narrative but has the distinct disadvantage of depriving the work of its grand
scale and progressively revealed, luminous clarity. But this is as much my way
of processing through the book, taking several months to read, in between
flights at airports, as it has to do with creating a framework to arrange her
concepts in a systemic manner.</span></i>] <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">INTRODUCTION<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Knowing
begins with longing”</i>- Esther Lightcap Meek.<br />
<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Truth is
revealed to the knower and the knower opens up to truth. It must take its time.
The knower cannot understand truth as if it were an object to uncover.”- </i>Annie
Dillard (my paraphrase)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Truth is
personal - it doesn't reject objectivity but rejects objectivism in knowing. It
doesn't reduce truth to knowing facts. Personal knowing, by contrast, is the
kind of knowing that is knowing by one person of another.”- </i>Lesslie
Newbiggin (my paraphrase)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "symbol"; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Truth is relational- to know something is
to have a living relationship with it influencing and being influenced by it.
Truth descends from Troth (Pledge). It is covenantal. To know is enter into a
troth with the other, and to be vulnerable (to be known as well as to know),
and therefore enter into a bond not of logic alone but of friendship. This
doesn't negate reasoned justification or data collection, but is an essential
to prevent their quasi-successful but damaging divorce from personal context.”-
</i>Parker Palmer (my paraphrase)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">COVENANT EPISTEMOLOGY,
POLANYIAN EPISTEMOLOGY AND CONTRASTING VIEWS<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Covenant Epistemology is based on Michael Polanyi's "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>subsidiary-focal</u></i>" paradigm.
It resolves many long-standing dilemmas in epistemology: between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>correspondence</u></i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>coherence</u></i> approaches to truth;
between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>realism</u></i> vs <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>antirealism</u></i> debates; between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>foundationalist</u></i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>non-foundationalist</u></i>
epistemologies. Polanyi is not a foundationalist, but is an unfliching realist-
an unheard of combination, because his work is not familiar to professional
practitioners.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Correspondence</u></i>
theory of truth says the truthfulness of a claim must correspond to reality. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Coherence</u></i> theory says we cannot
determine this correspondence, so the truthfulness of a claim must be
consistent with other truth claims we consider to be true.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Foundationalism</u></i>
is a proposal about the nature of knowledge- that we must have knowledge of 2
kinds- 1, of an all-important foundation of self-evidently certain claims; and
2, of other claims that can be derived from thus foundation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Generally, foundationalists are also correspondence
theorists. They also generally argue that one must both to be epistemic
realists. Epistemic realism says that knowledge is knowledge of objective
reality, rather than a mental or social construct or convention.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Subsidiary-Focal
Integration</u></i>: All knowing is the profoundly human struggle to rely on
clues to focus on a pattern that we then submit to as a token of reality.
Polanyi called this act of finding such clues to find a pattern to take as a
token of reality 'integration'. When we identify the pattern, it becomes focal:
we focus on it. The clues become subsidiary to the focal pattern.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All acts of coming to know are integrative and
transformative, rather than deductive and linear.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A key to understanding a person is knowing what he or she
longs for.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Foundationalism, by pointing to the false ideal of explicit
knowledge, privileges the focal, and blinds us to the ever-present, ever
palpable, ever unspecified subsidiary awareness which alone allows us to
sustain knowledge. This is why knowledge is not deductive or linear. If we have
connected the dots to form a pattern, any clues which come up later serve to
enhance the pattern, not overturn it completely unless there is a real reason
to believe that the pattern was entirely false- this is extremely unlikely. If
knowledge were merely linear, or explicit, one could argue for such dramatic
overturning, but if it forms a pattern then our process of subsidiary-focal
integration only serves to clarify the pattern.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: red;">Our very sense of the truth of a
claim draws both on unspecifiable clues and also on unspecifiable hints of
future possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">SUBSIDIARIES<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tracing the truth based on clues is not foolproof, but we
have the skill to navigate using them. Our lives are a tapestry of coming to
know. These once-disparate clues are of three sorts: (1) the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>world</u></i>; (2) the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>lived body</u></i>; and (3) the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>directions, or normative word</u></i>.
This is just the "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>perspectival
triad</u></i>" which was proposed by John Frame.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At Point A, the particulars of the body, world and word make
no sense. The Known seems exterior, alien and opaque to the Knower. But at
Point B, the opacity shifts to transparency, and exteriority shifts to a sense
of connection with me, like an internalized familiarity, like second nature.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>WORLD</u></i>:
World clues comprise our situation or circumstances that we need to make sense
of. The shift from Point A to Point B impact the world clues. I get a sense of
the world when I make that shift. I also find myself rooted deeply in the world
I come to understand. I also get a sense of future manifestations and new
directions in the world. I was reminded of Jesus' disciples in the boat during
the storm calling for Jesus to calm it. Jesus does, and their categories get
messed up, and they as 'Who can this be, that even the wind and the waves obey
him?" Changed circumstances could open up new lines of thought that lead
to knowledge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>LIVED BODY</u></i>:
These clues comprise our experiences is using our bodies in some task, like
typing on a keyboard. The body is not merely an object (as the Cartesian
approach of divorcing the mind from the body says), but we are aware of it is a
subject- we know of it subsidiarily than focally. The lived experience is
typically not known like a doctor examining it, but by coursding through myriad
bodily experiences. At Point A, we feel some extreriority to our bodies, like
when we start to learn how to ride a bike, or when we say "I'm all
thumbs" when attempting to play the guitar. At Point B, we don't focus on
the body- we are in our body knowingly, and our body is knowingly in the world.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>DIRECTIONS (THE
NORMATIVE WORD)</u></i>: Includes the words of people who guide us, or our
historically or societally shaped worldview, or coach who instructs us, or the
methodology which we apply to the task at hand, or ideals and goals which
inspire us. The novice only half understands directions when she hears them
first. Somehow she must indwell them- climb into them, and then having learned
the meaning, can use them knowingly, 'normatively', shapingly. Without the
normative, no knowing can occur. To "notice" means to apply our gaze
on some clues, but not others, such as on the foreground and not the
background, for instance. Authoritative guides don't fabricate what is real,
and don't teach us to fabricate what is real. They teach us to see what is
there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Normative clues form the dimension in which Covenantal
Epistemology is developed. Covenant is by nature interpersonal. Normativity
presupposes a context of two or more persons relating interpersonally. Therefore,
the Normative Dimension implies a fundamental context: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Interpersonhood</u></i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>TRIANGULATING</u></i>:
An act of coming to know can originate in any of the above 3 dimensions of
body, world or the normative. I could intuit that something is out of place
(body), or I may be forced to adapt to a new set of circumstances (world), or I
may be faced with unknown concepts (normative). I, as the vector, eventually
moves among these dimensions freely in the course of coming to know, in an
unfolding, recurring way. This is the act of "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>triangulating</u></i>". Our defective default mode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>'objectivism'</u></i> doesn't let us see
this interdimensional movement.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus ordinary acts of knowing display the dynamics of
subsidiary-focal integration, three interlocking sets of clues, and the
knower's unfolding triangulation among them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where does knowing start? Empiricists say you start with
sense perception. Rationalists say you start with reason. Theologians say you
start with God. Subjectivists say you start (and end) with the self. But in
reality, knowing could begin in any of the three dimensions, and the act of
coming to know requires their plurality and occurs at their intersection.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Western tradition, which is our defective default,
approaches knowing as if knowledge is wholly focal, and therefore restricted to
lucid, articulated statements, and as Marjorie Grene puts it, "<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pieces of information immediately present to
the mind, and impersonally transferable from one mind to another</i>". <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>VJ Comments</u></i>- Something
that comes to my own mind is from a recent presentation from Marvel Comics in
which the character Tony Stark uploads his entire consciousness into a
computer, so even after his body dies, his intellect, passions and pursuits
continue through this disembodied consciousness. Clearly a product of the
Western epistemic tradition, which believes that knowing is simply holding up a
mirror to an extant and fully comprehensible reality.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Polanyian epistemology understands that tacit clues- the
subsidiaries- are epistemically foundational. These may include values,
virtues, pre-theoretical commitments (often derided as preconceived notions),
traditions, communities, emotions, etc., which in the defective default, would
be considered as being detrimental to knowledge, but Polanyi shows us is
integral to knowledge. Therefore, to Polanyi, knowing is anticipative through
the subsidiaries, not just a still-life reflection of reality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>DICHOTOMIES</u></i>:
The Defective Default presumes that knowing has a dichotomy like a daisy, which
has pairs of petals around the center, with one of the pairs over the other.
This tradition holds that one is dominant over the other, such as reason being
dominant over emotion, in which emotion may be considered to be detrimental to
knowledge and reason being supportive of knowledge, or its practitioners think
they have to settle for a less than ideal compromise between these two. Polanyi
shows us that this is a false dichotomy. The realization that we indwell clues
subsidiarily creatively reconnects the pairs that the default divorced-
knowledge, fact, science, theory, etc. are contexted and rooted in and outrun
by what we took to be extraneous petals like adventure, passion, emotion, art
and religion. Responsible belief is the epistemic act.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>INTERPERSONAL
KNOWING</u></i>: Something about knowing a person, like a close family member,
seems to help us transcend the dichotomy. There is an indeterminacy in truly
knowing a person, but still such knowing is palpable. So knowing is not an
individualistic activity, rather it is relational. Covenantal Epistemology is
built on this idea as well as the Polanyian subsidiary-focal integration as its
two loci.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">CONFLICTS RESOLVED BY
COVENANT EPISTEMOLOGY: <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(a) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Epistemic
Naturalism</u></i>: This is the proposal that reduces all knowing to physical
behavior or brain activity. Cognitive science deals with the idea that 'mental
events' are simply brain activity. Pragmatic behaviorism is the idea that mind
and knowledge are determined from human behavior, and therefore knowledge can
be reduced to it. Both Cognitive Science and Pragmatic Behaviorism reject the
Cartesian dualism which dichotomizes mind and body. It does so by<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rejecting the mind and replacing it with the
body. The best brain studies only deal with the organ, and views it as an
object. Polanyi sidesteps the dichotomy by honoring 'personhood' (from the idea
of body knowledge as a subsidiary) while benefiting from scientific discoveries
about the brain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(b) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Modernism and
Postmodernism</u></i>: Modernism emphasizes reason, logic and objectivity. Postmodernism
emphasizes relativism, subjectivism or skepticism. In the metaphor of the
daisy, postmodernism rejects the center of the daisy as impossible.
Subsidiary-focal integration acknowledges the active contribution of the
knower, without rejecting the active contribution of the known. It understands
(like the postmodernist) that all knowledge is interpretation, but also that
the interpretation is subsidiary and knowledge is focal. Of course,
interpretation could be skewed or biased, but good interpretation engages the
world, it is an indwelt beachhead in the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(c) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Realism vs
Antirealism</u></i>: Is our cognitive effort the knowledge of an extramental
world or is it just our outlook? This is the summary of the realism vs
antirealism debate. Example: Are Copernicus' proposals merely a summary of
data, or are they real? In the Cartesian ideal of certainty, 19th century
thinkers concluded that it is just a summary of data- this position was called
Positivism. For Polanyi, the scientist, this was unacceptable, something which
reduced scientific discovery to convenient summaries of data. For Polanyi, even
partial knowedge, being a subsidiary, is justified by its transformative and
allusive qualities for a future focal to be discovered. It isn't confirmation,
says Marjorie Grene, but an intimation of confirmation that testifies to the
reality of our findings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(d) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Foundationalism
vs Coherentism</u></i>: Foundationalism posits certain truths as infallible and
self-evident, and any other truth claim must be derived from it. Its weakness
is identifying any truths which qualify universally as foundational. The
Coherentist view is that truth claims are understood to be true if they are
mutually consistent, not from any foundational infallibility. Its weakness is
being unable to tell if any set of internally coherent statements is inherently
true or false. For Polanyi, our beliefs are indeed foundational and rooted, but
the foundation itself is a subsidiary. The clue base of any act of knowing is
unspecifiable and tacit, not articulated or explicit. It is not certain, it is
lived. Polanyi’s alternative to certainty is neither skepticism nor
probability. It is lived confidence that roots us in a world and inspires us to
responsible risk and profession of truth. It exposes the weakness of
Coherentism in that while we do test the relative merit of truth claims by
consistency with other such claims, coherentism does not recognize the fact
that we do so working tacitly from subsidiary (foundational) awareness behind
the explicit claims we are considering.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
(e) Religion and Science: For Polanyi, commitment is "a
manner of disposing ourselves" toward the as-yet unknown reality. The
question of knowing God becomes an accessible question once we realize that
knowing anything, including science, becomes a matter of subsidiary-focal
integration, not of absolute certainty.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">INTERPERSONAL
RECIPROCITY:<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Knowing event seems to involve a reciprocity between the
Knower and the Known. Based on the Polanyian construal, Covenant Epistemology
sees the contours of a person in the Knower, the contours of a person in the
Known, and the contours of an interpersoned relationship in the Knowing:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Knower</u></i>:
While in general all animals possess sophisticated awareness, only humans
pursue and embrace truth responsibly with universal intent, in submission to
self-set accreditation and standards; and also encourages further inquiry into
the known, along with a "society of explorers" in community.
Polanyian epistemology reinstates the person into the process of knowing. But this
is because only a person (as opposed to an automaton) has a reality rich enough
to combine in a full blend all these aspects of knowing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Known</u></i>:
Polanyi said of reality as "that which may manifest itself indeterminately
in the future." When a person makes any discovery (or makes any kind of
focal integrations), the achievement possesses an "ontological
aspect," i.e. the knower possesses an an accompanying sense of the
possibility of 'Indeterminate Future Manifestations." (the IFM Effect, an
acronym coined by Meek). It points us to a sense of hidden dimensions that we
can sense, but not name. This confirms to us as knowers that we have made
contact with reality, connected with the real. It can feel as if the knower's
questions are exploded, not explained. The knower can feel as if he/she is the
one being known, that we are being drawn into a relationship we can't govern or
control, and we can feel the grace of the reality's self-disclosure, that it
was not my wizardry, but the entity's generous choice to grant insight. Along
with my questions, I too am changed. When we keep inquiring, we keep knowing-
there is reciprocity in knowing when there is somebody at both ends of the
exchange.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Knowing</u></i>:
Knowing is like a dance: overture, response, overture, response- a rhythmic
reciprocity of growing understanding and movement. Our participating in it
involves our subsidiarily sensing our own personhood and in some sense that of
the other, and comporting ourselves in such a way as to enhance these in
tandem.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE KNOWING EVENT AS
TRANSFORMATION<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meek draws on the work of James Loder, who wrote the book ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Transforming Moment</i>’ about
convictional knowing, existential experiences which the Christian has of God.
He builds on Polanyi’s subsidiary-focal integration, and says we have this
integrative dynamism because (1) it taps into our humanness, (2) it is rooted
in human development, and (3) human knowing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prototypes</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anticipates</i> and actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> an instance of being graciously
accepted by God. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Loder says knowing is a transformative event, and involves a
five-step sequence, which he attributes to all knowing, including scientific,
aesthetic and therapeutic knowing: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(1)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->It begins with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>conflict in context</u></i>, which is a rupture in our knowing
context. Before it happens we experienced an equilibrium of coherence and were
amiably making sense of things, but when it happens (through the body, world or
normative dimensions), we experience conflict, prompting us to urgently seek a
deeper coherence to restore equilibrium. We cannot know what we don’t care
about- as Meek said in the beginning, knowing begins with longing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(2)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The next step is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>interlude for scanning</u></i>, in which we start to indwell the
conflicted situation with empathy for the problem, to search methodically for
clues to resolve the problem. Polanyi described this as using creative
imagination with intuition which gives a sense of increasing proximity to the
solution (a longing for the face of the Other).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(3)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stage 3 is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>insight felt with intuitive force</u></i>, a constructive resolution
which reconstitutes the elements of incoherence (moving parts) and creates a
new, more comprehensive context of meaning.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(4)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stage 4 is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>release
of energy and repatterning</u></i>, an aha moment, which releases the energy
bound up in sustaining the conflict. This is the knower’s response of opening
up herself or himself to the resolution. The knower now contemplates, as
Polanyi would say, “indeterminate future manifestations.” Loder says the
generative human spirit is the “uninvited guest in every meaningful knowing
event” and the dynamic that shapes them all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l3 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(5)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Stage 5 is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>interpretation</u></i>,
in which the knower relates her/his new vision back to the original conflict
and to gain its acceptance with the general public. Because the knowing event
has been transformative, the knower is passionately compelled to do this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Loder argues that the “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>eikonic
eclipse</u></i>”, our defective default that exalts rationalism to the status
of a ‘focal’ rather than relegating it to a ‘subsidiary’, is counter-productive
to true knowing and humanness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>On Mutuality and Reciprocity</u>: Loder says that true
objectivity lies in mutual indwelling of both the subject and the object, not
being separate. The knowing event has a dyadic (an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> and a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You</i>) as well as a
cooperative aspect, in which the reciprocity is not heavy-handed or
controlling. The knower comes to know himself or herself in the fact of the
other. The prevailing paradigm of knowledge as being impersonal leads us to
overlook these personal and interpersonal dimensions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested that unlike the Greeks who learn
in order to comprehend, the Hebrews learn in order to be apprehended- because
what transforms us is not a what, but a who. Teachers don’t teach information,
they teach themselves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">JOHN FRAME’S TRIAD OF
KNOWING<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Covenant Epistemology builds from the above premises and is
based on the work of Reformed theologian, John Frame. His Calvinist antidote to
modernism serves to build its foundations. Three essential Christian tenets to
understand prior to delving into this:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Creator-creature
distinction and its implications</u></i>: God is ontologically independent,
needing no point of reference beyond himself, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transcendent</i> and is self-contained (in three persons, united,
co-eternal and equally ultimate); and the creation is ontologically dependent
on God. Because creation is dependent on him, every molecule or atom is his
creation, and speaks of him. This is termed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">general
revelation</i>. This tenant about act of creation is not referring to the
question of origins in the scientific sense. The latter is a question (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let there be</i>) is prescriptive, not
descriptive. It follows that every second of creation’s existence constitutes
God’s ongoing ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">let there be</i>’-ing, i.e.
by virtue of a covenant relationship with him. Created entities have
distinctive characters, the “way they are supposed to be”. This is what I
understand as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normative</i>, a rule
standard or pattern.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>God as
Covenant Lord</u></i>: From our understanding of ancient Near Eastern
covenants, the language of Scripture is covenant language, and the Covenant
head (the covenant partner who definitively shapes the covenant) is God
himself. God as Covenant Lord is both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transcendent</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immanent</i> -intimately present with
his creation in what Frame calls covenant solidarity. The heart of this is
knowing God as Lord and being in covenant with him. The goal of knowing God is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">friendship</i>. Because God as the covenant
head shapes the covenant, the creation’s very existence is its covenant
response, even unintentionally as when the creation doesn’t believe in him. All
human action and knowing is covenant response. The relationship of the creation
to God is unmediated and intimate. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sin</i>
is Scripture’s word for covenant rebellion. All of life is about knowing God.
Intimacy, praise, trust and obedience are intentional covenant responses to
him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Humans
as two-way representatives:</u></i> Humans represent God to creation as agents
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imago dei</i>) and also represent
creation to God. As <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imagebearers</i>, we
are stewards reflecting God in a derivative way by caring for and nurturing
creation (called the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cultural mandate</i>).
Human knowing is stewardly, covenant response. Therefore, all human knowing is
profession or confession, something that integrally requires a stance of
belief. This is because our knowing is derivative, and distinct from God’s
divine knowing. It is not appropriate to say that God has the truth, but that
God is truth. Our job as knowers is not to get it right, but to know God
intimately as the truth or ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in troth</i>’,
as Parker Palmer would say. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l4 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Frame frames knowing God as
covenant Lord a triad: (1) knowing his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">authority</i>,
expressed in his law (or in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meekian</i>
contrual, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normative word</i>), (2)
his control in his works (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">world</i>),
and (3) in his presence in ourselves as knowers (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">body</i>). This triad evocatively aligns with other triads in
Scripture- prophet (authority), priest (presence) and king (control); the
persons in the Trinity- the Father (as the Law giver, representing authority),
the Son (his incarnation bringing him into the world among us, representing
control) and the Holy Spirit (his ministry as God with us, representing
presence). God’s ongoing creative act involves him in all 3 ways: he words
interpretively the world into existence; he thus controls all of it; and he is
present with it in sustaining it. Our every epistemic act involves all three of
these dimensions, distinguishable but never separable.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
All this has 3 correlativities:
(1) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knowing the world is correlative with
knowing God</i> (since God is covenant Lord, there is nothing in the world we
cannot now without knowing God- the world reveals God as authoritatively as
Scripture does); (2) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knowing the world is
correlative with knowing the self, as well as with knowing a standard</i>
(since knowing involves indwelling the subject and the object according to
standard criterion, we covenantally interpret, whether using good or bad
interpretative frameworks); (3) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knowing
God is correlative to knowing oneself</i> (as ontologically dependent beings).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">MELDING FRAME AND POLANYI<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Polanyi’s proposals help us
understand religious terms like faith and commitment. Martin Luther said at the
Diet of Worms, “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise.” Polanyi cites this as
expressing the act of upholding a truth claim by exercising great personal
responsibility, yet being simultaneously compelled by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">submission</i> to reality. Commitment here is a “manner of disposing
ourselves”, our personal assimilation whereby we press an existing framework
into subsidiary service, indwelling it to extend ourselves in pursuit of the
yet-to-be-known. Commitment refers to the clues we indwell subsidiarily in
pursuit of a focal pattern. Faith is just what we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> in knowing, an epistemic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">act</i>
engendered by commitment.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Polanyi paints the picture of a
scientist in pursuit of an as-yet-undiscovered reality. He raises Plato’s
awkward <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Meno Dilemma</i>, which the
western tradition has not yet satisfactorily answered. How do you come to know?
We either know something or we don’t. if we do, we don’t need to move toward
knowing it. If we don’t, we cannot move toward knowing it. To Meek, the dilemma
only confirms that there is more to knowing than we are able to articulate-
there must be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anticipative knowledge</i>.”
Polanyi concludes that the paradigmatic case of the scientific knowledge is the
knowledge of an approaching discovery, where a discoverer is filled with a
compelling sense of responsibility for the pursuit of a hidden truth, which
demands his services for revealing it- in other words, it demands his
commitment to a half-understood, but already revealing reality. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
This makes
sense of how one can look back on how she may have known God even before coming
to know God. When she does come to now God, she may experience surprising
recognition and find herself the one having been known. Catholic mystic Simone
Weil said in her essay, ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forms of the
Implicit Love of God</i>’, that there must be some kind of love of God going on
in people before they come to realize they are loving God, including in their
love of beauty, true friendship and care of neighbor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Polanyi said all knowing is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">perspectival</i>. In the Framean triad, one
may view truth from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normative</i>
(directions), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">situational</i> (world) or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">existential</i> (body) perspectives. We may
position ourselves at the situational and view the normative from there, or
view the existential from the situational. If we retain a sense of what we are
viewing from where, we can hold the two together in subsidiary-focal
integration. We can speak of revelation of God from nature, of nature from God,
of God from man, of man from nature, etc. Orienting ourselves in the from-to
delineation is the main thing. Christians often hold to the doctrine of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">antithesis</i>, which says that humans can’t
be indifferent to God, but are either in submission to or in rebellion against
God, so an unbeliever’s stance is antithetical to a believer’s, and therefore
each side considers the other’s opinion as biased. Another, more optimistic
principle held by Christians is that of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Common
Grace</i>, the implication of which is that because God is Lord of all, it is
impossible for any human in rebellion to fully succeed at rebelling, lest we should
cease to exist (assuming God sustains every atom of reality)! To bring these
two together, God is like a magnetic true north. A compass pointing northward
may get pulled in wrong directions, in rebellion. Part of us points to God (common
grace), and part of us doesn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">COVENANT<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Theologian Mike Williams offers
believers a coherent grasp of Scripture in his idea of the covenant as
unfolding relationship, such as the covenant of friendship or marriage (not a
mere economic contract). The Scriptures use this word (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">berith</i> = covenant) 286 times, where the context is one of
friendship and God’s self-disclosure. These are the components of God’s
covenant:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Mutuality: Initiative and Purpose</u></i>: God initiates it- this
initiative is sovereign and gracious (not earned), and we respond to it. This
interplay is the mutuality present in the covenant.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Historical</u></i>: Yahweh works covenantally through history- the
covenant is historical but the past is retained as the relationship develops.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Promises and Obligations</u></i>: Promises of loyalty and love, and
fulfilment of mutual obligations. God binds himself in covenant. In the
Biblical covenant, love and loyalty precede law and obligation. The obligatory
serves the relational. Covenant relationship is not conditional on the
obligation. Obligation proceeds from and in response to God’s sovereign initiative
(grace). The Law doesn’t create, but nourishes the relationship. A father’s
love for a son may be unconditional, but a son’s flagrant disobedience damages,
not nurtures, that relationship. The term Torah means fatherly instruction, in
compliance with which is found security and blessing and shalom. Relationship
is the context of the normative, not vice versa. What motivates God is not
desire for law-keeping, but desire for relationship. The law nurtures this
relationship.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Covenant Parties and Mediator</u></i>: Why should the covenant characterize
our dealings with God? Because, God as triune is already 3 persons in
relationship. God’s character is relational. He created humans uniquely for
relationship and to image him in relationship. But he also created all creation
to be bound covenantally to him- the creation account in Genesis (‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Let there be</i>’) shows they are covenanted
into existence. But a feature of covenants is that there is a mediator,
responsible to embody and bring covenantal promises and obligations to
fruition. Humans are designated as agents of God (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imagebearers</i>) to care for his creation and to reveal God to
creation, to cultivate and voice its praise of him. As humans rebelled, God
himself provided a perfect mediator in Jesus, fully God, fully in perfect
submission to him, not in rebellion, but fully human, the “second Adam”. Since
creation and culture, including human knowing, have been radically bent by
rebellion (sin), Jesus’ atonement therefore is central to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">renewal of all things</i> (Jesus’ term for
it). A human caring for a rose bush is also responding covenantally to God, and
mediating his covenant of creation in preserving and developing it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Not Ascent but Descent</u></i>: The motion or trajectory of Biblical
covenant (unlike what most religions say and many Christians think) is not the
first motion of the knower/worshipper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ascending
to God</i>. It is God descending to us. He descends to covenant creation into
existence, to sustain every atom in every moment, to dwell among his people, in
the Incarnation, and in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eschaton</i>,
the last state- the renewal of all things. The pattern of redemption and the
initiative of covenantal relationship is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">descent of God</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Tacit but Palpable</u></i>: Covenantal bonds are often tacit, but
palpable. If something looks amiss at my neighbor’s house when she is out of
town, I check it out. We trade services, care for each other’s kids. We bind
ourselves to faithfulness of a different sort or level, not mediated by law.
Friendship is one of the richest covenants, and rare. Deep friendship is
intimate covenant love. Intimacy is a mutual self-disclosing, resembling the
reciprocity of a dance. It is most palpable when a covenant is broken. Unlike a
contract it is difficult to tell when this happens, and can be disputed by one
of the partners. The violation may be subtle but is palpably felt. The
relationship, not prescriptive actions, makes it covenantal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Covenant Blessing and Covenant Curse</u></i>: Scripture indicates
that construing human-divine dealings covenantally leads us to expect that
keeping the covenant brings shalom, and violating it brings curse as a
consequence. Similarly, human knowing could either bless or curse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing responsibly brings blessing. Knowing
irresponsibly brings a curse. In our interactions with the world too, we can
bless or curse according to how we know.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">INTERPERSONHOOD<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
This section delves into the
concept of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>interpersonhood</u></i>, a
term coined by Meek, based on John MacMurray’s works. What makes a person? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Substantivalism</u></i> reduces the
description of any reality, including humans, into a substance-attribute
statement, like ‘a human is a rational animal’. This is an impoverished
perspective of persons. Just as all knowing is interpersonal, personhood itself
is interpersonal. Even knowledge understood under an impersonal paradigm
requires communication so to be verbally articulated, needing more than one
person. To transfer the task of logic from the analysis of thought to the
analysis of language requires recognizing the mutuality of the personal and its
implication, the primacy of action. If language is fundamental to human
existence, then the personal cannot be understood in simply organic categories,
i.e. that human is an organism. Rather, the self is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agent</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Macmurray wrote that we cannot
have an egocentric starting point, construing the Self as the ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Self-as-Thinker</u></i>’, of which
Descartes’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cogito</i> is typical. From
this, no account of the personal is possible. He argues we should be construing
the Self as ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Self-as-Agent</u></i>’,
or replace ‘I think, therefore I am’, with ‘I do, therefore I am’- in other
words, move the center of gravity from thought to action. Action by definition
is modifying the world with the rational intent to do so. Action is relational
and needs an agent to perform. The agent is necessarily in relation with the
Other. The Other in this relation must be personal. Therefore persons are
constituted by their mutual relations to each other. ‘I’ is only one component
of this relationship of mutual interpersonal ‘You and I’.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Interpersonal communication
precedes language, as in the case of a newborn needing care and attention, and
is comforted by the presence of a caregiver. The child’s first knowledge is the
recognition of the Other as “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the person
or agent of the Person in whom we live and move and have our being.</i>” We are
born not fundamentally to an organic existence, but a humanly personal one, as
in the case of a mother and child relationship. We never grow out of being
persons in relation. We don’t go off to live among trees when we grow up, but
we join churches, we have families and friends. The human experience is shared
experience, human life is a common life, human behavior is always in reference
to a personal Other. The knowledge of the personal Other is the starting point
of all knowledge, presupposed at every stage of subsequent development, and the
absolute presupposition of all knowledge.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
The human child’s first cognition
of the Other, not of herself or himself, which comes secondarily, as
foundationally connected to the Other, correlated in mutuality, both
subordinated to and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">constitutive</i> of
the Other. Macmurray links action (both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thinking</i> are part of this) to the
baby’s knowledge of the personal Other. To <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">move</i>
is to modify the Other, and to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know/think</i>
is to apprehend the Other. But he says the thinking is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">constitutive</i> and subordinated to the doing. The theoretical
standpoint is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">constitutive</i> of the
practical. In other words, what we think of as knowledge relates as a negative
and constitutive aspect to a larger, positive, personal and interpersoned
reality. The reason why he considers thinking to be negative is that in
thinking we retreat from the apprehension of the Other. This is not negative in
the sense that it is bad- but that even though it is needed and vital, because it
constitutes a withdrawal to our own thoughts, it is less real. What is real is
activity in contact with the Other- touch over imagined vision. In other words,
to move from the personal to the impersonal is depreciative, negative, not
positive, it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de-personalization</i>.
We should not start with the impersonal, and then personalizing or
personifying. The impersonal presupposes the personal, and never the other way
around. Even so, in thinking, the ‘I’ can never depersonalize itself. The
science itself cannot account for the scientist. Therefore, the theoretical
standpoint should never be taken to be the original, it should be understood as
being constituted within the personal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments: My own question at this point: Is thinking truly one-dimensional in a
Christian view? Isn’t the Other an active participant? I think I understand
what Macmurray is driving at here, but will keep this thought warm until it is
answered.</span></i>]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Macmurray says whether God exists
is not the question we should be asking, rather it is ‘Is what exists
personal?’ The answer is yes, based on 3 axioms: (1) We live in and belong in
the world, and we ourselves are personal, and the world that contains us must
be construed to be personal. An impersonal world cannot contain the personal.
(2) In an impersonal conception of the world, everything “happens”, they are
never “done”. There is no meaning to action in such a world- a scientific place
has no place for the scientist, and would be an unreal imaginary world, in
which we ourselves would cease to exist. A world without persons is not the
real world. (3) “I” and “You” are correlative. In action the existence of the
self and the Other in practical relation are given. The rule governing the
process with which I seek to determine the character of the Other is this: I
must see to determine myself and the Other reciprocally by means of the same
categories. Thus, the Other is agent as well, and so personal. The world is one
action, and its impersonal aspect is the negative, subordinated aspect. To
conceive the world in this way is to conceive it as the act of God, and
ourselves as created agents.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments:</span></i><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">These axioms seem to me to be the
same- we ascribe meaning to actions. A geologist looking at a piece of rock is
not just recording data. The recording is subordinated to a meaningful act,
that of creative and anticipative discovery which has meaning only in a
personal world</i></span>]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Polanyi (a scientist), says Meek,
may agree with Macmurray on all but one point- that scientific practice- even
the theoretical exercise- involves the personal as much as the baby’s awareness
of the Other. For Macmurray, action cannot be fact because action involves
intention, and what is intended is always future. Polanyi says that which
confirms we have made contact with reality is the intimation of unspecifiable
future prospects. This means that knowing on the Polanyian account has the same
open-endedness to the future as action does for Murray.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Overlaying Polanyi and Macmurray with
the Framean triad, one may say that what humans do is only what servants
(creatures, imagebearers, stewards) “do”. In other words, “knowing”, as
stewardship, doesn’t simply “happen”, but is “done” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">coram Deo</i> (in God’s presence). Knowing intimates the presence of
God. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">MARTIN BUBER’S “I AND THOU” AND “THE PRESENT”<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Meek introduces early 20<sup>th</sup>
Century intellectual, Martin Buber, whose influential book, “I and Thou”
discussed similar concepts to Macmurray. He said a human orients to the world
in 1 of 2 ways at a time, “I-It” and “I-You”. In the “I-It” way, we relate to
the world objectively, as to “something”. In “I-It”, the subject “I” is the
ego, which “experiences” the world. An <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">experience</i>
is something that the subject “I” has internally, subjectively. It distances
the object “It” from “I”. In the “I-You” mode of existence, “I” don’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">experience</i> “You”, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encounter</i> it. In the encounter, I
behold, confront and commune with it. In the encounter, “You” and “I” are
present to one another <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in an enduring
present</i>; and each acts on the other. The action is self-giving. Each says
“You” to the other. All actual life, says Buber, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encounter</i>. In “I-It”, “I” says “this is how I am”. In “I-You”, “I”
says, “I am”. For Jewish (as Buber was) or Christian believers, the resonance
of “I-You” with God’s name “Yahweh” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am</i>)
cannot be missed. Mike Williams says when God reveals his name to his people he
was not making a dispassionate metaphysical statement, but is saying, “I am the
One who is present to you, and there for you.” Buber’s translator and student,
Walter Kauffman, said, “The only possible relationship with God is to address
him and be addressed by him, here and now (or Buber says, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the present</i>). For [Buber], the Hebrew name of God… means he is
present… he is there… he is here.” Buber asserts that in calling God Father,
Jesus teaches his disciples to do the same, evoking “I-You”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Buber links the experience of the present,
and of being present, together in the “I-You” encounter. He says the actual and
fulfilled present exists only in encounter. Only as You becomes present,
presence comes into being. By contrast, “I-It” only has a past. Buber says in
the “I-You”, “You” fills not only time, but also space. He fills the firmament.
There is a timelessness and a transcendence. So the “I-You” involves, being
there, or being “at home”. Also, he says, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
You encounters me by grace- it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the
basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, it is my essential deed</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
In addition to this, Buber
concludes like Macmurray does, that to be human is to stand in relation to a
You. This suggests that we are both persons and also in need of full-fledged
personhood. It takes a You to bring us into full personhood. Buber says this
occurs over time through relationships. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Buber says that the I-You
encounter can occur in any involvement with the world, such as with nature.
There is nothing I “must not see” in order to see. I do not turn away from the
ordinary to see the extraordinary. How mistaken to think we must turn away from
the world to encounter God, he says. But he says it is not that the world
merely is God, only that we encounter the You where and when we are, in this
space and time. It is just a different manner of relating to what is there, and
is neither mystical nor beyond our reach.in fact it centers our being, the
orientation closes to where we are. The I-You encounter brings existential
change, transformation. In this the “I” has come to a maturity of
self-awareness, at home with itself, and can confront the world, stand its
ground in the encounter, while consenting to the being of the Other.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Meek emphasizes that this
framework for covenant epistemology, combining insights from Polanyi, Frame,
Macmurray, Williams and Buber so far, is not meant to uphold a pantheistic
view. She says one cannot espouse a pantheism to affirm the creative richness
and mystery of reality created by an infinitely rich God, a reality so rich
that its richness reveals God.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Buber adds a helpful insight- The
I-You encounter is not expected to last, rather it advances a developing
relationship of overture and response (I-It, I-You, I-It, I-You…). But we are
expected to bring the I of I-You into all our I-Its, so when we encounter the
You, we say with the newness of anticipation, “So it’s You”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments:</span></i><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This section reminds me of Annie
Dillard’s comments on Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s book on Dr.
Paul Farmer: “[It] unfolds with the force of gathering revelation”. Something
about truth, revealed in fiction or a life narrative has this sense.</i></span>]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Meek adds that all this has
implications for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> we learn. We
learn in community, so serious study should not be an insular, solitary
practice, but instead like that of the Rabbinic tradition. “Make thee a master,
get thee a companion and a judge,” says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pirke
Aboth</i>, the sayings of the fathers. Both a master guide as well as companion
learners are needed- these are our ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">covenant
friends</i>’.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">RETURN TO LODER<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Meek returns to James Loder. She
had previously discussed several of his insights, including the 5 stages of
knowing (Conflict in Context; Scanning; Insight Felt with Intuitive Force; Release;
Interpretation). Loder adds another (higher level) layer of 4 items which he
designates as existential experiences that a person has of the Holy Spirit: the
Knowing Event, Four Dimensions of Humanness; Convictional Knowing; and Human
Development. The first 5 categories (stages of knowing) detailed the Knowing
Event, the first item of this higher layer. The other 3 items are below:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Four Dimensions of Humanness</u></i>: These exist prototypically in
us from birth, but full-fledged four-dimensionality is something to be
developed, therefore it is possible to be human and not-yet-fully-human. Also,
remarkably, Loder says to be fully human, one needs both an experience of the
void, as well as an experience of the Holy. Dimension 1 is embodiment in a
composed environment (Loder calls this the world, but it includes our
situatedness in it- the lived world). Dimension 2 is the Self. Loder says it is
common for humans to live in these first 2 dimensions. This two-dimensionality
reflects our common everyday activities, school, job, family, fun, career
success and so. These are weak in comparison to the third dimension. Dimension
3 is the possibility of annihilation, the potential and inevitable absence of
one’s being- “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the void</i>”, the threat
of non-being, the implicit aim of conflict, absence, loneliness, death,
near-death experiences, crises of faith, mid-life crises and many other factors
beyond our control. The void is implicit the moment the lived world is ruptured
and the process of transformational knowing begins. It initiates the struggle
to know, and not necessarily evil in itself, but that which evil, in our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bentness</i>, is sometimes the only possible
way to bring us to understand. Dimension 4 is the Holy. The earlier 5 stages of
the Knowing Event can be juxtaposed against these 4 dimensions (‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Conflict in Context</i>’ takes place in the
lived <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">world</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">self</i>-as-ego; ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scanning</i>’
in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">void</i>; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Insight</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Release</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interpretation</i> in the Holy). The Holy is
the reason why we don’t give up living in the face of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">void</i>. On the verge of the chasm of the void, we experience the
gracious reversal of its undertow. The Holy is the manifest Presence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being-itself</i> transformed and restoring
human being as it recomposes the world in the course of transformational
knowing, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the self, anchored on the
Rock</i>. This includes the conversion experience but is not limited to it- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>every act of coming to know is a grappling
with the void and embracing the Holy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Convictional Knowing</u></i>: The Holy Spirit, in gracious
complementarity with the human spirit, often takes knowing events (they are his
medium) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transforms the transforming</i>
into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">convictional knowing events</i>.
This is only possible through the redeeming knowledge of Christ, but other
transforming events are proximate forms and participate sacramentally insofar
as they are visible forms of that invisible and infinite truth. Loder says that
at the central of a knowing event is a nonrational intrusion of a convincing
insight. The knowing event is a prototype of knowing God. This transformative
knowledge of Christ is experienced repeated in the Eucharist, which may take
the following corresponding steps to the stages of knowing: (1) I am in the
world (conflict in context), (2) I need rescue from sin and death (scanning),
(3) Jesus plunges in and undoes the Void with his fullness (insight), and (4) I
respond and enjoy communion with him (release and interpretation). Loder adds
that this convictional knowing is not what is envisioned in Eastern religions-
for one, the end result is the communion of two persons, not one- the
consummate Christian experience is God <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with</i>
us, not God <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> us. Second, Loder
shows how Jesus’ walk with his unnamed disciples on the Emmaus Road and
breaking the bread illustrates the convictional knowing event on all four
dimensions of humanness, and centers it firmly on the Eucharist.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Human Development (or, The Face of the Other)</u></i>: Loder
challenges typical accounts of human development, in which only the first two dimensions
of humanness (the lived world and the self) are considered, which he says is
damagingly false, and needs to consider the void and the Holy. Without these,
it suffers from a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">loss of Face</i>, and
hence its denial of person-centeredness. Loder’s account showcases the face of
the Other. He typifies this in the example of a child, in which (1) the infant
responds to the presence of a Face with a smile (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">context</i>), then senses the absence of the Face (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conflict</i>), throughout life, experiences the primal longing for the
Face that will not go away (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scanning</i>),
recenters the personality in the Face of the Other (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">insight and release</i>), and the ego is miraculously transformed into
a self that gives love (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interpretation</i>).
Loder also says that in the process of human development, there is danger on
every side- on one side, abandonment, or a lecherous or some other sort of gaze
that induces shame, and on the other side, development into idolatry, in which
the person tries to make the other person into the missing face of God. In our
bentness, anything can go wrong and it takes time to recover and heal. Some may
become unbelievers. But when healing comes, it takes the form that Loder
describes. The Aaronic benediction reflects this: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make his face to shine upon
you and give you peace; The Lord lift his countenance upon and be gracious to
you</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE TRANSFORMATIONAL LOGIC OF THE COVENANT DRAMA OF REDEMPTION<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Loder says that he would like to
see someone explore transformational logic as the key to Biblical narrative,
not just in the cases of individual or communal transformation, as with the men
on Emmaus Road, or Paul on his<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>way to
Damascus, or Thomas, but the way we tell the whole story as Yahweh’s redemptive
relationship with his people. In Reformed circles, this takes the narrative of
Creation (context), Fall (conflict and scanning), Redemption (insight and
release), Restoration or consummation (interpretation) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">and
Mission (my addition- this may be part of interpretation)</span></i>. This
pattern is evident throughout the Bible, typified in the Exodus narrative as
the Israelites<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>cross the Red Sea and the
Egyptians face the void in terror, and Yahweh frees his people in such a way
that they actually have a choice to respond to him in love- giving a prototype
of what central redemptive act in Christ would look like. Again, Christians
speak of the time between Christ’s first and second as the “already and not
yet”, that is, the void, longing, and beginning of transformation. People have
said in jest, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s turtles all the way
down</i>” of cosmogony. What Meeks says here is, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s relationship all the way down- and all the way along</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A SENSE OF PERSONAL BEAUTY AND THE I-YOU ENCOUNTER<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
A <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sense</i> of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">personal beauty</i>
is a kind of self-knowledge, arising from a successful knowing event, available
to all human beings- both as humans in relationship and especially for those
who have been redemptively known by God. It comes in the generous, self-giving
gaze of another person. Loder explicitly links beauty with the experience of
convictional knowing. This is God’s gift, a quality of completeness, a sense of
no lack. Knowing brings beauty out of chaos. Also, as the person is constituted
in the gaze of the other, the person takes on “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the character of being</i>”. This must be what the woman at well in
Samaria experienced, in the face of Jesus. It was the noticing regard, not the
naming of her sins, which caught her attention. [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments: And, I think, for Martha’s sister, Mary, the tax collector Levi,
Zacchaeus, Peter and others who were called by Jesus.</span></i>]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
John and Staci Eldredge argue that
every little girl asks a haunting question, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Am I lovely?</i>”. From her father in particular, for the sake of her
lifetime wholeness, she needs an affirmative response. But this sense of
personal beauty is needed by all humans, and it is never too late to re-center
a life through an I-You encounter. Simone Weil asserts that in our human acts
of creative attention we image God the Creator.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">SCHNARCH’S DIFFERENTIATION AND RIESMAN’S AUTONOMOUS PERSON<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Psychologist David Schnarch talks
about ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">differentiation</i>’, a process of
maintaining ourselves in close interpersonal relationship. It involves grinding
off our rough edges through the normal abrasions of long-term intimate
relationships. The well-differentiated person has the ability to stay in
connection without being consumed by the other person, allowing each to
function more independently and interdependently. It means going forward with
one’s own self-development while being concerned about the other’s well-being.
It moves forward through holding on to one’s self of self in intense, emotional
relationships. Schnarch alludes to a mysterious spiritual element in this,
asking, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What is this trial by fire is
the integrity-building path of differentiation?</i>” People whose identity is
inappropriately dependent upon their relationship don’t facilitate the
development of those they love.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Sociologist David Riesman
described the distinguishable social characters he termed “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inner-directed</i>“ and “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other-directed</i>”.
Inner-directed societies tend to acquire early in life an internalized set of
goals, to which they conform. This happens in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">transitional</i> (not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">traditional</i>)
societies. In Other-directed societies, people tend to be sensitized to the
expectations and preferences of others, to which they conform (typically in
societies of incipient population decline). Riesman says that though
Other-directed personalities may seem less desirable than Inner-directed ones,
they are both flawed. The former may have internalized something as much as the
latter, who may really be other-directed. Independence is really
“in-dependence”. In place of these categories, Riesman advocates the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">autonomous person</i>, for whom <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">autonomy</i> is a heightened
self-consciousness which enables her/him to orient with respect to the
connectedness while transcending it (similar to Schnarch’s idea of
differentiation), or in other words, to operate in a social order without being
part of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">PERICHORESIS<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Paradoxes</u></i>: Trinitarian theologians, especially John
Zizioulas and Colin Gunton, link ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interpersonal
personhood</i>’ with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. They say that the
Trinity is best understood as persons on relation, and if we profess the
Trinity as the ultimate reality, then humans as beings-in-communion reflect
this original. Gunton aspires to bring cultural and societal healing with his
proposed cosmic dynamism of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">perichoresis</i>
(relationship of the three persons of the Trinity). To that end he attempts to
diagnose and address the paradoxes of modernity. He is concerned about how the
human and non-human worlds are alienated from each other, resulting in crises
like environmental damage. Other paradoxes involve how modernity can be
committed to freedom, but ends in totalitarianism, how we could have so much
leisure and yet live at a frantic pace, and how at the end of a tradition
committed to truth and meaning can come to lose both. In his book ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The One, The Three and The Many</i>’, he
asks, what is reality <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fundamentally</i>?
Ancient Greeks considered three alternatives. Is it fundamentally a monism (as
Parmenides said) - everything reduces to one immaterial, rational thing? Or is
it ultimately a pluralism (as Heraclitus said)- nothing reduces to anything, so
you have a plurality of ultimate things? Or is reality dual (Plato said), with
one part being one (immaterial and unchanging), and the other many (material
and changing)?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Platonic Thought</u></i>: Some (not all) early Christian theologians
(such as Augustine) allowed Plato to shape their Christianity, rather than the
other way around. As a result, the God of Scripture was aligned with Plato’s
one, and material creation was deemed to be the many (plural) and accorded
little intrinsic value. The problem of the one and the many is that if you
overdo one the other disappears. In the modern era, people rejected the one.
Because of the early (and defective) Christian alignment of the one with the transcendent
God, they rejected him as the one. Gunton says much modern social and political
thought can be understood as the revolt of the many against the one, or
humanity against divinity, leading to the Enlightenment ascendancy of human
reason as the uniter of all. But this meant the human mind was now the immanent
one, set against the materiality of many, both bodies and the world.
Post-modern thought then inevitably rejected all forms of the one, immanent and
transcendent, in order to recover the many, in the process presuming to
celebrate the individual but reducing all individuals to relatively valueless
similitude. The ideal of the human mind has both endured and self-destructed,
leading to paradoxes- the ideal of certainty in objective knowledge devolving
into suspicion, freedom disappearing into collectivism and bondage.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><br /></u></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Trinitarian Perichoresis</u></i>: Gunton makes a distinction between
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">individualism</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">particularity</i>. The former is non-relational,
self-centered and mistaken today for freedom. The latter calls for a
fundamental understanding of reality, in which particulars receive their
fullest expression only in a freeing space accorded in their relation to one
another. Without the relationship, there is no freeing space, and no
opportunity for the particulars to be expressed. Gunton contends that this dynamic
is what we have in the Trinity. In creation God the Father spoke creation into
existence, but creation is also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christological</i>
(involving Christ) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pneumatological</i>
(involving the Holy Spirit). The Trinity is characterized by relation without
absorption. Their uniqueness is a function of their relatedness. Since creation
comes about and is sustained by the Son and Spirit, with the Father, creation
can be expected to bear the mark of this relational being. The concept that
evocatively captures this mutually constitutive being and diverse working is
the Greek word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">perichoresis</i> (dancing
around). In this dance, Christ is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Logos</i>
(word) spoken into time from eternity, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immanent</i> dynamic of meaning holding time and space together. The
Spirit enables boundary-crossing, the openness of one to the other, to be
shaped by the other. The Spirit also works to maintain, strengthen and develop
particularity, giving freedom in community (not in a collective), as the source
of autonomy, not homogeneity. We live in a perichoretic universe, sustained by
gift-giving. The unity of this dance showcases the particularity of each partner
in the dance, distinct and unique yet each inseparably bound with other (and
ultimately all) particulars, whether they are human or non-human. If the notion
of particularity seems strange to us, it is likely due to the exigencies of the
translation of Green into Latin. The Greek Christian Fathers used the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hypostasis</i> to refer to particularity in
the Trinity. The Latin rendered this as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">substance</i>,
misleading us to favor homogeneity over particularity. Knowledge was taken to
be universal in its oneness. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">PERICHORETIC KNOWLEDGE<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Following Gunton, for knowing to
be healthy, it should display this perichoretic dynamism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Gunton associates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">foundationalism</i> with modern <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">monism</i>, which devalues the particular
and lauds a homogenous universal certainty. He associates <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non-foundationalism</i> with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">postmodern</i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pluralism</i>, which in seeking to honor
particular perspectives, often reduces knowledge to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fideism</i> (or that knowledge depends on faith or revelation only).
Both approaches share the same presupposition of the false dichotomy between
the one and the many, and ignoring the relationality between them. He says we
need an account of knowledge that is both universal and objective, while
acknowledged to be the work of fallible human minds. Gunton agrees with Polanyi
and confirms the Framean mission of construing human knowing as a creaturely
endeavor. To say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">p</i> is to say I
believe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">p</i>. A truth claim is a truth <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">claimed</i>. However, this does not mean
privatizing truth. Polanyi develops a helpful approach- he speaks of holding
our beliefs responsibly, with universal intent. We must accept responsibility
for our claims, while at the same time we are also committing ourselves to
their truth, and to the conviction that anyone else in our position would be
able to see that they are true. This is a perichoretic and healing dynamic,
allowing for errors to be held as shaping our position rather than overturning
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">CONTOURS OF COVENENTAL EPISTEMOLOGY<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Summing up our understanding so
far, Meek offers the following:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->We in the West have a defective epistemic
default that needs reorientation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Knowing is subsidiary-focal integration, and
transformative. As such it can be seen to be fraught with the personed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Knowing has a normative dimension, which is
covenantal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Covenant metonymously references an interpersonal
relationship, which unfolds dynamically and is profoundly akin to
subsidiary-focal integration.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->Interpersonhood involves persons as
beings-in-communion, I-You encounters, the void-Holy dynamic, the face of the
Other, and perichoresis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l2 level1 lfo4; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->The real is metonymously personal. As such it is
especially suited to being known by a knowing that is fraught with the
interpersoned.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
Meek proceeds to outline Covenant
Epistemology in the standard manner in which epistemological proposals are
presented- involving the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">objects</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">source</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nature</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">justification</i>
of knowledge, even as such terms betray the defective default in such
proposals.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE OBJECTS OF KNOWLEDGE: COVENANT REALISM, COVENANT ONTOLOGY<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Meek says one of the most
important questions regarding knowing is whether in our knowing we access the
real. If the answer is no, then what we are doing is not knowing, and not worth
the effort. Answering yes is epistemic realism, and answering no is epistemic
anti-realism. Covenent Epistemology (CE) is a fresh way to espouse realism.
Anti-realists say that our epistemic efforts do not access an independently
existing objective world because our epistemic efforts are always shaped by our
interpretation. Meek says this is a non-sequitur, as simply because our knowing
is an interpretive, embodied, situated, traditioned viewpoint does not mean it
does not engage the world, but that it is precisely due to our
view-point-beachhead that we do access the world. Some anti-realists go even
further, arguing for extreme <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">subjectivism</i>
(I know <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> my subjective
viewpoint), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">relativism</i> (What I take
to be true is only relative to my situation), or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">skepticism</i> (What I “know” isn’t really knowledge, just opinion).
Critical realism, on the other hand, names the active contributions of the
human mind to knowing (following Immanuel Kant’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Critiques</i>), the knower’s hermeneutic bent, social setting and other
qualifications concerning what we can’t really know of what reality in itself
is. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Covenant Realism</u></i>: CE offers a fresh way to be a realist,
having reoriented the dichotomous default that opposes mind and body, emotion
and reason, knowledge and belief, etc.- and therefore, it is possible to take a
stand which doesn’t share the negative outlook of anti-realists or critical
realists. Meek proposes the term ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Covenant
Realism</i>’ (CR), which has the following theses: In our knowing, we access
the real- in fact, the real has transformative primacy in our knowing. Our
knowing relationship with the real displays covenantal features, which by
definition pertain in interpersoned relationship. Thus good knowing practices
involve covenantally interpersonal excellence, and is about mutual
transformation than about exclusively information-collecting. The goal if human
exchange with the world is not exhaustive certainty, but dynamic, mutually
healing communion. And finally, reality itself responds favorably to
covenantally appropriate overtures (not to criticism, but to covenant
faithfulness). The real is metonymously personal. Meek adds here that great
lovers make great knowers, because CE and CR see the real as one seeks a person.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Covenant Ontology</u></i>: Everything that exists is covenantally
charactered- it has defining features that we must uncover and live
covenantally on the terms of in order to know it and bless it and us in the
process. This is the distinctive implication of a biblical vision of creation.
In this we are fundamentally engaged in love, care, friendship and fidelity.
Everything is thus covenantally constituted, in covenant relationship to its
Creator. Yet every real thing is itself and not another thing- it has its own
integral particularity, thanks to the asymmetric perichoresis that reflects the
Holy Trinity. The Real wants to be known, so we discover to our surprise that
far from being the ones coming to know, we are coming to be known. Someone Else
besides us is home in the universe. There is no corner where a recalcitrant
knower may hide from this possibility. [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ Comment: I
recently saw a quote from Bertrand Russell, himself an objectivist: “Mathematics,
rightly viewed, possess not only truth but supreme beauty”. The truth that we
may not hide from the possibility of an encounter with the interpersoned Real
is brought home quite clearly</span></i>]. Goethe’s hailing the rosebush – “So!
It’s You!”- indicates this penchant of the real to gracious self-disclosure. On
a biblical schema, that transcendent Other, the Somebody Else is Yahweh, the
triune God, who when we have sought him, we find he has been seeking us.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE NATURE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo5; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(a)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->All knowing is fraught with the interpersoned; (b)
Knowing is varyingly personal- it comes in 2 forms: one is explicitly
interpersonal (I-You), and the other is metonymously personal (I-It)- and by
calling knowing ‘varyingly personal’, Meek voices her creative synthesis of the
2 forms within an unfolding personal relationship studded with I-You
transformative moments over a knowing trajectory constituted by faithful
covenant over time; (c) All knowing is coming to know, a being on its way to
truth; and along the way, knowing may be anticipative and implicit, hinting
unspecifiably of more, surprising and deeper dimensions; (d) Knowing is
covenantally constituted, with active and shaping overtures that invite
reciprocally shaping self-disclosure of the real in response; (e) Knowing is
perichoretically rhythmical- more than one pair is perichoretically balanced:
relationality and particularity, love and covenant, knower and known, overture
and response; (f) Knowing is Subsidiary-Focal transformative integration; (g)
Knowing transforms both the knower and known.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l1 level1 lfo5; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(b)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->In addition to the above characteristics of
knowing, this understanding of knowledge has some corollaries: (a) Knowing is
knowing God, knowing the world and knowing the Self; (b) All knowing is
‘knowing with’; (c) Human knowing is creaturely knowing (not divine knowing)-
it involves no ultimate or absolute anchor of certainty, but nevertheless
(actually not nevertheless, but because of this) is capable of responsible
stewardship of the real.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">(c)<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]-->CE challenges the default epistemic challenges
raised in the beginning of the book which deals in false dichotomies between:
(a) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knowledge and Belief</i> (Belief just
is the epistemic act, the risky, responsible, inspired act of coming to know);
(b) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knowledge and Opinion</i> (To the
extend that a distinction between responsible and irresponsible knowing is
envisioned, we are called to stewardly, wholistically expert, knowing for
shalom; (c) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fact and Value</i> (Apart
from value, the responsible, interpretive commitments of the knower, and the
knower’s noticing which assigns value to certain clues, there are no facts; (d)
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fact and Interpretation</i>
(interpretation unlocks the real, and is the same as facts); (e) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason and Faith</i> (CE recasts reason to
involve integrally responsible submission to the not-yet-fully-known, i.e.
faith); (f) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reason and Emotion</i>: Not
all emotion is discussed, but implied emption like longing and desire
constitutively drive effort to know, and is intertwined in CE with reason; (g) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Science and Art</i> (Where the knowing event
is recognized to be transformative, scientific acts of discovery and artistic
acts of creativity are in substance the same). Meek similarly reconciles other
seeming opposites- such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Male and
Female</i> (while insisting on their particularity and complementing natures); <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Objective and Subjective</i>; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theory and Practice</i>; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Appearance and Reality</i>; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mind and Body</i>, and many others.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE
SOURCE OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Typical introductions to epistemology list
the sources to knowledge as being reason (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rationalism</i>),
sense perception (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">empiricism</i>), and
sometimes utility (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pragmatism</i>). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testimony</i> is often dismissed (following
Kant’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sapere Aude!- Dare to be wise</i>)
as being a source in childhood, meant to be superseded in adulthood. CE
redefines both the rational and the empirical in a manner profoundly consonant
with testimony.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Proximate
Sources</u></i>: CE acknowledges a rough correspondence among the 3 dimensions
of sources- the world, the lived body and the normative (also corresponding to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rationalism</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">empiricism</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">testimony</i>).
But CE integrates and transforms each of these to be a different sort of
collaborative enterprise. CE understands these dimensions to be not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ultimate</i> or surefire sources, but only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">proximate</i> sources, sources only as we
relate to them subsidiarily. They are not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sufficient
conditions</i> or efficient causes, for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">knowing
is never linear or guaranteed</i>. We steward what we have, humbly groping in
the direction of the longed-for integration. But when it comes, it comes from the
“outside”. Meek says this leads her to suggest there are 2 different sort of
sources, which she terms <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Candidacy</i>
and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Intrusion of the Other</i>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Candidacy</u></i>:
Knowledge is not to be derived from sources, so much as graciously disclosed in
response to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">covenantal candidacy</i>, the
effort to put ourselves “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the way of
knowing</i>”, by creatively indwelling clues. Meek says that we may “invite the
real” through covenantal behavior, which she expounds on later. The question is
not, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">where do I get knowledge</i>, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how do I comport myself to invite it</i>? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Source</i> is an ill-fitted word to express
transformative knowing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>The
Intrusion of the Other</u></i>: There is something in the dynamism of knowing
to which the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">source</i> applies
radically, but it isn’t the knower. The transformative aspect of knowing leaves
us with the palpable sense that the we did not instigate the knowing event
except in a stewardly way, and the source was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> Other. Loder says of this, ”<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
self is caught in the act of knowing.</i>” He further aphorizes, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the truth always exceeds the proof.</i>”
Meek says we need not despair that we cannot define a source the way we do for
other epistemological proposals. There is something we can do- it takes the
form of covenantal self-binding, i.e. we can invite the real. When we do, the
Real discloses itself lavishly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">THE
JUSTIFICATION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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Justification of knowledge concerns the
ways it is appropriate that we accredit a claim as knowledge. In the
contemporary analytic tradition, this area has been the all-encompassing
pursuit of epistemologists, and reflects the contexting of knowledge as
explanation (rather than as discovery), complete with statements and proofs,
and implies that personal allegiance to truth claims be withheld pending
thorough justification. CE challenges these assumptions by reconstruing what
knowledge is. Philosophers explore correspondence, coherence and pragmatic
responses. Respectively, justification requires evidential support, coherence
with other knowledge claims and workability. Other approaches also broach
factors such as internal conviction, virtue and social support. CE doesn’t
reject these, but qualifies them. CE, following Polanyian epistemology, and
consonant with the Christian profession that human knowers are creatures, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fallibilist</i>. Fallibilism affirms that
what we at one point consider true may be possibly false or in need of a
revision- for CE, this is nota shameful label, but courage enacted. This
doesn’t leave us in a void of skepticism either, but we are unleashed
responsibly to engage the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Allegiance
and Obligation are Prior to and Throughout Justification</u></i>: Rather than
knowing in order to love, we love in order to know. Obedience, especially in
the anticipative dark before the dawn, precedes understanding, not vice versa.
Allegiance is sacrosanct and incorrigible (even if it is to be revised
continually in our apprehension of the real). Where knowledge is credo prior to
commitment, there is no knowledge to be had. This makes CE not simply a viable
alternative, but the only alternative.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Discovery
is Prior to Justification</u></i>: The transformative moment of insight is the
thing without which prefatory clues not only do not make sense but cannot even
be designated as clues. Discovery must in some respect be prior to
justification. Justification is what Polanyi called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">destructive analysis</i>- a reflective return (from communion) to focus
on that which, only when we rely on it, prompts the integrative transformation.
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ Comments: Meek comments on this throughout the
book, but I brought it in only here- while Polanyi considers knowing to take
place along the 3 dimensions he mentioned, he talks about a temporary inward
focus to take stock, which justifies knowing after it has taken place.</span></i>]
Destructive Analysis, in bike riding, would me memorizing the physics formula
that describes how we keep balance on the bike.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Contact
with Reality</u></i>: With the onset of a transformative apprehension of a
pattern, there are 2 indicators that affirm we have made contact with reality:
(1) the first is retrospective- we sense the profundity of the pattern, and our
collection of clues are shown to be superseded in depth by this pattern, so the
insight reshapes our questions; (2) the second is anticipative or prospective-
discovery is accompanies by and attested to by the intimation of the
possibility of a wide range of as yet unspecifiable prospects. Both the above 2
criteria (retrospective and prospective) are informally gauged. At its root,
justification is informal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">INVITING
THE REAL (OR, AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL ETIQUETTE)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Meek savors this last chapter of the book
and says this is the one she has longed to write, and is at once a meditation
and a catechesis to form aspiring covenantal knowers. [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comment: I’m reminded of what the songwriter Sandra McCracken once said, “All
relationships begin with an invitation.” Whether it is the moment of conversion,
or the birth (and adoption by parents, whether biological or not) of a new
child, a covenant of marriage, or friendship, I think this is true. An
invitation seeks a response</span></i>]. Meek’s inference that drives inviting
the real is as follows: the real behaves as a person, treat it personally and
hospitably, it will respond personally. She arranges the practices of
invitation into five loci: <u>Desire</u>, <u>Composure</u>, <u>Comportment</u>,
<u>Strategy</u> and <u>Culmination</u>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Desire</u></i>:
This encompasses the practices of longing and love. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Longing</i> (the passive component of desire) calls for the other to
give. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love</i> (the active component) gives
oneself for the sake of the other. Christianity affirms that love is prior to
knowing, as Jesus showed the apostle Thomas. [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ
Comments: This has long been my interpretation of 1 Corinthians, from chapter 8
(knowledge puffs up, but love builds up) through chapter 13-14 (then we shall
know even as we are fully known).</span></i>] On longing, Simone Weil says, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">…the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know
whether anything real answers its love… The soul knows for certain only that it
is hungry. The most important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying…
The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but
lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.</i>” Passive
longing is nevertheless anticipative and invites the real. Weil goes on to
argue that the right use of studies is to develop the kind of attention that
invites God, as the psalmist says in Psalm 63, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O God, you are my God, earnestly I see you; my soul thirsts for you; my
body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water.</i>” This
is no mere longing for information, but for communion and transformation. On
loving, Meek says Love presumes that the real is lovely, or loveable or worth
loving. Love invites the real because the opposite, indifference, invites
falsehood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Composure</u></i>:
A key inviter of the real is ourselves- more specifically our selves having
become most fully ourselves, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">composed</i>
as ourselves [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ Comment: As CS Lewis talked about in
‘Till We Have Faces’</span></i>]. This takes the following forms: (a) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Before God</i>: to be fully ourselves we
must have been composed, re-centered radically in the loving gaze of the Other.
For those who have been known by God, we know the Other is in fact God. Many
church fathers have said this, but there are a few things that suggest that
knowing God invites the real- the first is obvious and important: to know God
is to invite him. Humbly, with the realization that I have gotten it wrong
about him, I yet receive his assurance that I may feel confident about his
continual advent- or in other words, repentance and forgiveness. Second, he
self-discloses. Mike Williams says we only have to get a few Christian doctrines
right, not very many to be a Christian. It is not about our ascent, but God’s
descent. Third, the biblical drama of redemption will inexorably lead to the
renewal of all things, for which we receive a down payment- the Holy Spirit
leads us to be better knowers as better lovers- love of neighbor and love of
God stand together. Meek also broaches other points which I have not included
here, partly as they are repeated elsewhere. (b) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being at Home (Presence)</i>: This is a kind of self-awareness or
self-knowledge, a subsidiary composure as when one sits at the feet of a
teacher, a embodied and lived. (c) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Differentiation</i>,
as Schnarch defined it; (d) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Personal
Beauty</i>: Also, as mentioned earlier, this is a kind of self-knowing which
forms in the loving gaze of the Other; (e) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Embodiment</i>,
as mentioned earlier; (f) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Openness</i> (a
willingness, in the knowing, to be known in turn); <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Embracing Pain</i>: Affliction is a given, especially for those who
desire to live authentically, and is closely linked to openness. Pain enables
us to better discover ourselves and can involve a shift from Cartesian
disembodiment to being in the body.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Comportment</u></i>:
Similar to virtue, comportment identifies qualities of relating to the yet to
be known. This locus of practices includes: (a) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pledge, Covenant</i>: Covenant includes keeping one’s promises, making
a pledge is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">covenanting</i>- an
illocutionary act. Both making and sustaining the pledge is comportment that is
central to love. (b) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trust</i>: We both
long for the Other and feel threatened by the Other. George Steiner describes
us as monads haunted by communion. Inviting the real requires a fundamental act
of trust, of risk and our openness to it- or as the medievals said, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Credo ut Intelligam- I believe in order to
understand</i>”; (c) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Obedience</i>: To
know the truth we must follow it with our lives; (d) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Humility</i>: David Dark links humility with genuine readiness to know,
and involves acknowledging our fears and weaknesses; (e) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Patience</i>: Where knowing is an unfolding trajectory, and our
epistemic task is construed as inviting the real, the knower must sustain the
pledge over a lengthy period of time; (f) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saying
“You” and Listening</i>: Meek talks at length about this- one of her
illustrations is about working at a mission in a small town, where she listened
as people told stories of their brokenness, and the Spirit opened their eyes to
find Christ.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Strategy</u></i>:
Includes: (a) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Being in the Way of Knowing</i>:
Meek talks about the fact that before she had read Parker Palmer’s ‘The Courage
to Teach’, she knew to expect great reward. Being in the way of knowing is
planting oneself where you expect something to show up and expect joyous
insight; (b) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Noticing Regard</i>: Meek
talked earlier about how Jesus had noticing regard for the woman at the well.
She says one of the most provocative sentences in Scripture is when Jesus asks
her, “Will you give me a drink?” By asking this he puts himself and her on the
same level, inviting her initiative in response to his own need. Simone Weil
calls this ‘creative attention’, that which gives our attention to what does
not exist, or what is invisible. Noticing regard confers dignity. (c) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Active Listening</i>: Listening well, and
asking well-placed and well-attuned questions; (d) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Listening beyond the categories</i>: [<span style="color: #595959; mso-themecolor: text1; mso-themetint: 166;">VJ Comment: I’m not sure I understand
this well, but it involves listening to what we are not seeing, to a world of
unrealized possibility</span>]. In David Dark’s words, “it serves to invest the
details of the everyday with cosmic significance while awakening its audience
to the presence of marginalizing forces otherwise unnamed and unchallenged.”;
(e) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Indwelling</i>: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The culminating strategy to invite the real,
it refers to the way the lived body extends itself through the skilled use of
tools- the tool user both indwells and interiorizes the tools. It also refers
to the inherent unspecifiability of tacit knowledge, such that apprentice or
student must indwell master or teacher to come away with knowledge that is more
than the teacher (or the student) is able to specify. Loder says, “Knowing
anything is to indwell it and reconstruct it in one’s own terms without losing
the essence of what is being indwelt.” (f) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Connected
Knowing</i>: Blythe Clinchy, a developmental psychologist, says separate
knowing is a doubting procedure, while connected knowing is a believing one,
which looks to understand, not challenge. It looks for what is “right” even in
positions that seem initially wrong. It uses the self to understand the other.
(g) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seeing vs Looking</i>: Looking is
disembodied and passive, across a space, non-interactive, objective scrutiny.
Seeing is active, interactive and interpretive. It is embodied, a phenomenon of
love, reveling. Meek asks, “Do you think that God looks at us, or sees us?
Would you rather be seen by him or looked at by him?” She suggests another line
of thought, about how humans mistreat each other, for instance the way in which
some men have treated women, or when Jesus described it as a “looking at a woman
to lust after her.” When we understand intimacy as seeing rather than looking,
this would mean some physical and sexual acts are the opposite of intimacy, the
perpetrators of alienation. To see is to delight and to co-delight with God.
David Bentley Hart writes, “Only in loving creation’s beauty- only in seeing
that creation is beauty- does one apprehend what creation is.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Consummation</u></i>:
Meeks asks how the consummation of knowledge could invite the real. She answers
this question by saying that it can, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">if</i>
knowing is cast as a relationship. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Friendship</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Communion</i> thus count as
strategies to invite the real. Friendship is the consummation of knowing; or we
may describe the culmination of relational knowing as communion. It is, we may
say, more than “the logic” of gift and reception- it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> the gift and reception, over an open-ended period of time. It is
the ongoing freshness of the Other. It is knowing and being known, the fully
actualized self-differentiated, perichoretic reflection of the Trinity. Meek gives
one last practice to invite the real: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
Eucharist</i>. Meek says it is both the concrete paradigm of knowing as
described by CE, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the most strategic
primer of the pump of human knowing</i>. For the Eucharist enacts a microcosm
of the creation-fall-redemption-restoration drama of biblical redemption, and
of Christ the Holy entering the void to deliver us to the gracious possibility
of new being, re-centering us to self-giving love. He invites us to the table
to eat what he provides, and he gives us himself. To partake, we must <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eat and drink</i> (embodied intimacy and
mutual indwelling). The appropriate posture is to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kneel</i> to eat and drink (signifying the honored role of the giver,
your need for his generosity, and your readiness for the gift). The celebratory
ritual forms us in the posture. It also shapes us for the communion of knowing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">KNOWING
FOR SHALOM<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
This section is Meek’s afterword. Among the
insights she notes here is the fact that her introduction to CE is simply a
beginning, and we should think of ourselves as being pilgrims on the way, or as
Newbiggin put it, we are in the middle of the story. To say that knowing is
‘being-on-the-way-to-knowing’ is to accredit the journey as itself epistemic.
In our journeying, we are already living life on terms of the yet-to-be-known.
Echoing with one of the cries of the Reformation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">semper reformanda</i>, Meek coins the maxim ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">semper transformanda’</i>- always transforming.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Meek says knowing should bring healing to
both the knower and the known. It should bless, bring shalom, rather than curse.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
There is something more important than
understanding CE and knowing well- it is to be known by God. She calls this the
descent of God- the real comes unbidden, with fecundity, unrequested,
unanticipated, unmerited, by grace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
Meek quotes from the Book of Common
Prayer’s Prayer of General Thanksgiving, to talk about being unfeignedly
thankful to God:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
“… give us that due sense of all thy
mercies, that our hearts may be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unfeignedly
thankful</i>, and that we shew forth thy praise, not only with our lips, but in
our lives; by giving up ourselves to thy service, and by walking before thee in
holiness and righteousness all our days…”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
Enacting thankfulness opens our eyes to see
what is going on under our nose. It is being in the way of knowing. This too is
the descent of God. The point of celebration of the Eucharist is that God
himself comes and gives himself. All worship is in response to this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-70452124945542514482017-12-28T19:42:00.004-06:002017-12-28T19:42:31.086-06:00Thoughts at the End of 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As the year draws to a close, I can’t escape the feeling that the pace of change in our lives has quickened, and we are ill-prepared for the denouement. Over the years, we have been told by wise ones that the gulf between personal piety and redemptive justice is a false one, that these are inseparable. One must feed the other, that they are aspects of truth- one personal and the other propositional.<br />
<br />
The dichotomy seems stronger than ever, and many are steadfast in their refusal to consider that they have been in error. For Christians, this error may not be foundational. The consciousness of sin and grace is deeply personal and convicting, but undergirded by propositional truth. It is in sanctification, the second stage of the ‘evangelical two-step’, that the dichotomy becomes stark and confusing. We have been saved by grace, through faith, and this is not of ourselves. How could we then try to be justified by works? Wasn’t this the error that the Galatian church was chastised for by Paul?<br />
<br />
The reality is, all of our life we are called to know God. When I pray for people’s sanctification, I usually pray for 4 ‘graces’, derived from Paul’s prayers for the Asian churches:<br />
<br />
1.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Abounding in HOPE<br />
2.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Know the length, breadth, height and depth of God’s LOVE<br />
3.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Know the riches of the glory of God’s INHERITANCE through GRACE<br />
4.<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Know the surpassing POWER of God with which he accomplishes resurrection<br />
<br />
But to know the above is to know God personally more and more, and for this it is important to do the works that God has commanded us to do. In other words, we cannot separate God’s person from God’s character. When we say we are saved through faith, we are saved from the darkness of alienation from God, from un-wholeness, from sin, into union with God, into wholeness (shalom) and holiness. I believe this is the entirety of one’s life. What we call ‘justification’ immerses us into the world of God, into assurance and a guide to explore God’s character and person to study the dim mirror more closely until we come to complete knowledge. Following a theme of knowledge explored earlier on this blog, our knowing is complete when we know as we have been known- in short when we love as we have been loved, because love is the highest form of knowledge. The Biblical language of knowing a person comes into focus here, as at that time, the dichotomy between the personal and propositional knowledge will not exist, because I believe they will merge. God’s character will be clear to us and formed in us. We will see Him as he is, and know him ‘continually’, ‘day and night’, ‘unceasingly’.<br />
<br />
But this year has been exhausting for people trying to know God more by exploring his truth and doing his will. The clamor surrounding us has been deafening, but the greater shock has been how the wise ones among us, the pastors, leaders, theologians and others, have compromised morals and truths to support a person or a single principle. Sometime ago, someone I follow on Twitter proposed that God is doing something very momentous in our day, drawing a clear line in the sand. I’m looking towards it with a sense of apprehension- not for whether it will be a just or good outcome, but whether God’s people will be on board with it or go into a self-imposed exile from knowing Him fully.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-60600840565321501792017-06-09T09:54:00.003-06:002017-06-09T09:54:59.664-06:00Airbus A320 at Kathmandu - from a friend's photograph<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xLpqxgBmvok/WTrExR7KevI/AAAAAAAAwc4/iKa6oLKzZB8l7h31oetN-DFwgHRVK7oogCLcB/s1600/plane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="872" data-original-width="1600" height="217" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xLpqxgBmvok/WTrExR7KevI/AAAAAAAAwc4/iKa6oLKzZB8l7h31oetN-DFwgHRVK7oogCLcB/s400/plane.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-19136178125936284222017-05-19T17:18:00.002-06:002017-05-19T17:18:27.424-06:00At Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite- October 2013 (May 16 2017)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I climbed up a ledge<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>and looked up when<br />
A drop of golden beam<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>stole silently<br />
Down a bough, perched like<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>a lone sentinel<br />
Upon a timeless rock<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>in the fall wind.<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh, could I stay here<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>as seasons die,<br />
Waiting for a dawn<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>when hope gives way<br />
And faith becomes sight<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As twinkling eyes<br />
Behold a glory<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Untold, unseen.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IJtZXNJrCn8/WR99IfueSnI/AAAAAAAAwco/PlvI2HyqGUEDXOisZXk5RS8dJJMNb8ssACLcB/s1600/Bridal%2BVeil%2BVJ%2BPicture.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IJtZXNJrCn8/WR99IfueSnI/AAAAAAAAwco/PlvI2HyqGUEDXOisZXk5RS8dJJMNb8ssACLcB/s400/Bridal%2BVeil%2BVJ%2BPicture.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite- October 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-49676210417612259292017-05-19T17:15:00.000-06:002017-05-19T17:15:03.325-06:00Porsche 911 in pencil, 1970s?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-88859203934124541272017-05-19T14:21:00.000-06:002017-05-19T14:21:22.748-06:002015 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 drawn with a stylus on Microsoft Surface 3, in Powerpoint<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-60065452591677754202017-04-04T18:27:00.003-06:002017-04-04T18:27:48.815-06:00The Worst Bank in the World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When my dad worked at the erstwhile IDBI before it became IDBI Bank, their rival ICICI was always looked up on with awe and grudging admiration. They cut through the bureaucratic red tape so prevalent back in the day and seemed to have the moxie to make commercial banking work. Then they morphed into a retail bank and so did IDBI. ICICI Bank managed the transitioned well, much better than IDBI- and it came as no surprise. IDBI, once the giant among development banks had to learn humbly how to begin anew in the new world of competitive retail banking.<br />
<br />
Early in the noughts my dad urged me to get an account with the new IDBI Bank. I got one with ICICI Bank instead simply due to its proximity to where I was in India at the time. I had just come to India for a short visit, and though I could not go wrong with my choice.<br />
<br />
Suffice it to say, that was the last time I had any respect for ICICI Bank. Forget the rumors (which may have a ring of truth to them) about burly collection agents arm twisting people to pay their dues.<br />
<br />
I've had people lie to me about investment products, and deny me pay-out, which I needed to escalate to their CEO to get it resolved.<br />
<br />
Their most annoying problem for Non-Resident Indians is the fact that they let you do 'internet banking' only if your ATM Card 'grid number' on its back is used for authentication. The ATM Card is invalid if it is not used in 3 months which most non-residents will not use in countries where they live.<br />
<br />
And now, no service that should be transacted online is open to me. Given that the Indian government has decreed that PAN numbers should be updated (or Form 60s in lieu of them) before one could use banking services, people are scrambling to update these. And sure enough ICICI will not let you do this without the authentication 'Grid Card' number, which in my case is useless. To top it off, they have frozen my account which can only be opened if I update the Form 60! Classic Catch 22.<br />
<br />
By far, the worst banking experience I have come across, even counting the nationalized banks of my youth.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-28543451872234559902017-01-04T15:21:00.001-06:002017-01-04T15:21:28.841-06:00My Own Font<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-75688852004525722412017-01-04T15:18:00.003-06:002017-01-04T15:18:58.612-06:00CS Lewis in My Handwriting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-68868954195826952072016-12-14T10:37:00.002-06:002016-12-14T10:50:19.572-06:00Overseas Missions in India<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">BACKGROUND</span></h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The family was desperate. They texted me to ask if they could stay at our home for a few days as they had been deported from India, after 12 years of living and working in the country in a successful pastor-training ministry that seemed to be stable in every way. Among other things, they had trusted local partners to arrange rental accommodation without a proper rental agreement signed by them and paid for in cash, took extreme precaution to cover their internet footprint- having a secure VPN access into a US server, from which they accessed the internet, ‘secure’, encrypted hosted POP email (which was eventually hacked and their PII stolen), corresponding with ministry partners and others in defense of a Christian prisoner held by the ISIS terror organization, hosting evangelistic meetings at home (openly flouting India’s policy on ensuring that they do not preach or proselytize when on a work visa or tourist visa). Under normal circumstances, in Western countries, such activities may be understood to be normal, if somewhat unnecessarily cagey about online activity. In a country with a background like India’s, all this is a surefire recipe for deportation at a minimum. While the opposition to evangelism in India is known to most churches, missionaries and mission agencies, its extent and nuance are lost on many.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The family possessions had to be left behind. They traveled out of India at short notice, carrying 6 suitcases filled with essentials, with no assets to their name besides these. They stayed with us for a couple of weeks, during which they had several embarrassing meetings with missions pastors at their sending churches. They were questioned as to the wisdom of their actions, many being questioned by people who may not have understood the prevalent atmosphere in India or about the several similar deportations that have taken place in the last few years. The emotional toll this took on them was painful to watch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Eventually as many do, they found a Christian school for the kids, which had funds set aside for missionaries, and a discounted apartment set aside for missionaries by a church. They were allowed to continue with their mission remotely, as in this case, it was possible to teach via live online video.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The more I thought about this, the more I was compelled to put pen to paper and write about the several ideas that have been playing in my mind over the past many years- about our current missions strategy, India’s politically charged, agenda-driven landscape and our own tendency to bury our heads in the sand when it comes to real challenges facing real people who have staked their very lives on the Great Commission.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Entry and Exit Requirements</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Among the greatest challenges to travel into countries around the world, especially those above a certain size in population or land area, is the complicated visa regulation in place in those countries. India ranks 52<sup>nd</sup> in the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index Ranking of 2015, in a group of 141 countries. This is based on several factors, including international openness (which includes visa restrictions), in which it ranks 69, above countries like China (96) and Russia (99), but well below all Western countries and many APAC countries like the Philippines (29) and Malaysia (46).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In its Executive Summary, the report states that India is now relaxing many visa restrictions which have not been reflected in the document, but it is clear that this pertains to short term travel for tourism.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It is important to understand the country’s motivations in institutionalizing such restrictions. A historical background will help clarify these.</span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">India in Context- Colonial Legacy</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Like many emerging economies, India views the history of its modern economy from a pre- and post-colonial perspective. In addition, it further divides its post-colonial experience into a period prior to 1991 when the economy was predominantly socialistic and after 1991, following a series of reforms, during which the economy has gradually transitioned itself into a market-driven one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Recent academicians have pieced together India’s economic strength prior to the period of colonization, which coincided with the Industrial Revolution. In this narrative, India and China accounted for over half the world’s wealth. Individually both these countries had assets and income equivalent to the whole of Europe. GDP figures from the late economist Angus Maddison’s publication, <i>The World Economy, Volumes 1–2. OECD Publishing. p. 638.</i>, show that annual income in India was 24.3% of the world economy, slightly more than the current US share (22%).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The colonial period is interpreted differently in India than in the West. While many liberal Indians view this period as one in which the main colonizer, the UK, helped bring Western law and order, democracy, abolition of many social evils, a modern Western education system, some industrialization and the English language as one of the official languages in India, several others consider the British legacy to be one of systematic and long-term impoverishment of India’s native political power, industries and culture through a series of manipulative power grabs, monopolistic and restrictive trade practices and a divide-and-rule policy that culminated in a painful partition of India into smaller parts, the adverse effects of which are still being experienced in the daily lives of Indians today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">For our purposes, it is what they mean by the impoverishment of culture that is most relevant. In the past 2 decades, this negative view of the colonial period has gained strength. In this view, the British sought to transform India’s culture to an approximation of the West. Several real and manufactured quotes attributed to British lawmakers during the period are frequently shared in India to deepen the feelings of anger and mistrust against all that it represented. Among the changes the British introduced were Western style education (which served to advance their interests) and most importantly, the ‘state religion’, Christianity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">British and other European missionaries traveled frequently to India during this period. Using first the British East India Company and the later the British Indian Government’s good offices, they were given safe passage, unrestricted right of entry and often good arrangements for lodging and boarding. Missionaries were often employed in schools and high positions. Unfortunately, these missions, with some notable exceptions, did not make much headway in India, not least because they were perceived as exploitative and unwilling or unable to be relational to Indians. Understandably, many missionaries took an apolitical approach to the colonial government and Indians’ troubles with it, seeking instead to focus on the Bible and its teaching on human conduct. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Unlike Hudson Taylor in China and some others, most missionaries were essentially living a Western life as in a Western country in India. Very few bothered to learn the local languages. In 1919, the massacre in cold blood under the command of Col. Reginald Dyer of 381 men, women and children who had gathered for a nonviolent protest in a public park, reportedly to defend the honor of a missionary, Marcella Sherwood, who had been manhandled by an unruly mob two days before, was representative of how Indians saw Western Christians- eager to force a foreign religion down the throats of those who did not want it, and showing none of the graces they claimed were hallmarks of this religion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Several missionary undertakings during this period have borne fruit- notably educational and healthcare enterprises like the Christian Medical College at Vellore, created by an American missionary from the Reformed Church in America, which is today the largest teaching hospital in Asia. These are notable because they are exceptions, mainly because they involved and encouraged local leadership to take complete responsibility. Today it is local believers who effectively teach, heal and spread the Gospel in such institutions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">After Independence</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">India’s independence in 1947 brought several changes to the country. Economically, the country gradually strengthened its industries through a combination of socialistic policies and limited free enterprise, creating a mixed economy, which invited private capital in certain industry sectors and focused government spending on finance, infrastructure and some heavy industries through Soviet-style five-year plans.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">India stopped issuing missionary visas very soon after independence, though several visas that were granted prior to this period were grandfathered and not revoked. Though the category still exists, any information on a visa request that smacks of missionary activity like ‘volunteering’ are more than likely to get rejected.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are several reasons besides the hangover from colonial days. Modern India is troubled by movements seeking to secede a religious or ethnic group from the union. Often these are violent and influenced by state actors. Among them are several movements in the North-Eastern part of the country, with people who are ethnically like Nepalese and Tibetan peoples and funded variously by communist sympathizers and countries like China. Some of these states have a sizeable Christian population, especially the state of Nagaland, which has 88% Christians. Originally followers of a tribal animistic religion, they were converted to the Baptist faith by American missionaries over a century ago. The Indian government alleges that the local Baptist church, aided by American supporters, have frequently engaged in violent acts against the union.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In addition, during the Cold War, Indians have been wary of American spies, some of whom have been imprisoned or deported due to their activities. Many Indians view Christian missionaries as having an anti-state agenda and using their country’s diplomatic mission as a conduit to execute this with impunity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Still others view the often-loud deprecation of the Hindu religion and Indian culture by missionaries and the native-born Christians as derogatory and anti-Indian in spirit. Many Christians in India have poured scorn on Hindu practices of idolatry and rituals that many hold as meaningful. There are allegations of ‘forced conversions’ to Christianity by missionaries who offer food, medicine and other material provisions in exchange for such conversion. Though such ‘conversions’ are understood to be of no true consequence (in that they are not truly spiritual conversions), they are still viewed as methods to buy allegiance, as several corrupt politicians are wont to buy votes during elections. In recent years, the Hindu nationalistic government under the Bharatiya Janata Party has sought to convert adherents of other faiths into Hinduism, claiming that they were either induced to convert through material collateral offerings or that several generations ago their ancestors were Hindu, so a conversion to Hinduism is simply considered a return to Indian-ness. In this view, a spiritual conviction is held to be nothing more than a stance either for or against an Indian idea, the idea of being Indian. Under this narrative, a person who has made an informed decision to follow Jesus is either ignorant of India’s spiritual tradition so as to prefer Christianity over what many believe is a ‘superior’ tradition, or someone who has sold her or his soul for something crass or material. A Christian, especially recent converts, are derogatorily referred to as ‘Rice Christians’ by many Hindu nationalists, implying that they changed their religion for a bag of rice!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Christianity Misrepresented</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Indeed, Christianity in general is seen as intellectually lightweight and morally deceptive, never mind the long list of scandals that have plagued the Hindu religious leaders in India or the many contradictions in Hindu ritual and practice, such as the veneration of the cow to the extent that even its fluid waste is considered good for human consumption in some quarters. This is a drastic change from when Indian intellectuals in the late 19<sup>th</sup> century engaged with Christian teaching. Influential scholars like Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Keshub Chandra Se have published admiring writings on Christianity and sought to adapt its teaching to their own worldviews. Today, the landscape is bereft of genuine Christian engagement with society, except through the high-voltage theatrics of rich televangelists who often take advantage of the people with promises of prosperity and healing; and miserable power-hungry pastors who force their un-scriptural ideas on their congregation, tolerating no challenge to their authority and are wont to invoke eternal judgment on those who dare.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Isn’t a sound theological education a good solution to this? Yes; and many missions programs are geared up towards just this- imparting the rigor and discipline of modern theological studies to Christian leaders in India and other such countries, where the Gospel is finding many willing converts but few who are trained in hermeneutics, rhetoric or other tools which are now considered vital resources for a leader. But I have seen several leaders who have been trained but with no real application in the Indian context. In India, as in many other countries where the Gospel has not had widespread historical engagement, this context is significant. Often this context takes the form of economics, politics, religious practices and beliefs, social customs, relationships and family dynamics. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">We often say that human beings are not primarily rational, but relational creatures. We think we are rational, but our reason is often informed by our relationships in our community. Even in the West, our shared meanings give context to our theological understanding. In India this is highly significant, as community relations and familial ties give meaning to a person’s identity, far more than it does in Western societies. I have seen the Gospel flourishing in Indian communities which emphasize such relational engagement, coupled with an insistence of the truth of the Bible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">However, a lot of the training that leaders receive in India are geared to the Western context. Pastors talk about LGBTQ issues and decry legislation in the US promoting same-sex marriages, while they routinely ignore real problems even within Christian families, like wife-beating, or dowry, or caste or class issues, or tax evasion in real estate deals. If our Christianity does not provoke us in these areas to repentance and faith in Christ, then should we expect it to bear fruit in our lives? So, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of missions, but we must ask how we could truly help people in these countries reach out to their people and present the Gospel as compelling in their contexts.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">CURRENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE </span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Indians in the West today have become a political force influencing policies in India with their global goodwill as members of an affluent upper-middle class in the West, and of course their financial power to support their favored leaders in India. No leader has benefitted more from this group than the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, whose rhetoric fanning the flames of anti-Muslim sentiment in the early to mid-2000s, and opportunistic jibes at the corrupt Congress Party, combined with his image of a decisive leader, have firmly positioned him as a champion for the aspirations of modern India. His party, the nationalistic BJP, has consolidated their hold after routing the erstwhile ruling Congress Party in the 2013 elections. There is today no real opposition party that can moderate the ambitions of the BJP today. The endemic corruption and megalomania of the leaders in other parties have all but ensured that India, barring divine intervention, is on a path toward hardline Hinduism, unwilling to tolerate any alternate opinion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This has led to a suppression of minority civil rights. Though many policies, such as the implementation of a Uniform Civil Code (instead of having separate laws for different religions, on matters such as inheritance, alimony and divorce), a unique identifier program called Aadhar (initiated by the earlier Congress government) and many others are only foundational aspects of good governance, several others, such as suppression on individuals and organizations who have criticized Mr. Modi and not addressing some of his supporters who have committed barbaric acts on people suspected of transporting or consuming beef, are only confirming the image critics have long had of the administration.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The administration has worked hard to win the support of the media. As in the Russian Federation, the media largely reflects the views of the BJP, with some notable exceptions. Many journalists are accused of being bought by special interests, either for (mostly) or against Mr. Modi. In addition, the administration has engaged in a systematic policy of undermining institutions they claim are demeaning India’s image. Nonprofits such as a Greenpeace have suffered from this, and have had their assets frozen. Employers have remained unpaid for months. Though Christian social justice organizations like Compassion International and International Justice Mission still operate, largely due to the good work they have done over the past decade, their CEOs have been denied permission to enter the country, despite having had valid visas and turned away at the airport, with no explanation given. There has been a strategic effort to now allow many foreigners in India, especially if they are connected to any form of social work. Many interns and fellows at IJM who were allowed to visit in the past are not allowed any longer.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">To add to this chaos, the genuine fears resulting from terror attacks on India, especially after the brutal siege on locations in Mumbai in 2008, have prompted the government to engage in unprecedented intrusive actions. The government has clashed with many smartphone makers like Research in Motion in attempts to force it to allow monitoring emails and text messages. India is one of the few countries which do not allow satellite phones to be used. In 2013, the government created a Central Monitoring System (CMS) which allows the government to snoop into any electronic communication on any server worldwide that is accessed from India for a particular communication, without any privacy law or resource for people to protect themselves against abuse. </span><br />
<h3>
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">PROPAGANDA</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The current administration in India recognized about 14 years ago that the media is a powerful force. Prime Minister Modi, then the Chief Minister of Gujarat state was widely criticized for not having done enough to prevent (and from several reports, aided) the slaughter of 2000 people in his state, mostly Muslims in a convoluted trail of events that added another milestone to the tensions between Hindus and Muslims (with many other minority groups) that have been escalating since 1992.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In an interview by the BBC he was asked if he had any regrets about how he handled the incident, and he replied that the one thing he regretted was not handling the media well. In the years since then, he seems to have mastered the art of manipulating the media to win hearts. In addition, he has turned several major news corporations into allies, steadily airing his propagandist views on history, minority groups, Christian missions, NGOs, the opposition parties and others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In our world today, overseas missions of any kind- religious, humanitarian, social justice and others- are frequently held in suspicion. In the US, many feel that such missions are a waste of money and time. Others feel that it is a story of cultural domination, one that has been played out several times in the past, with disastrous consequences. Financial misappropriation, political leverage or questionable practices by many nonprofits, such as the Clinton Foundation, the American Red Cross and others have raised this suspicion. In India, the BJP and its allies have over time turned the legacies of selfless missionaries, such as Mother Teresa, into a story of exploitation. Supported by articles that have played up the challenges faced by such missions when ministering with few resources to those whom the government and more fortunate countrymen have long ignored, this propaganda has painted a picture that is painfully inaccurate and slanderous.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Indians today believe that foreign NGOs are involved in human trafficking, such as buying and selling Muslim refugees to send to Europe. Some believe they are involved in drug-trafficking. Whenever a scandal breaks out about an unfortunate (and rare) incident, such as a Christian orphanage trying to profit from international adoptions, several Indians now conclude negatively about all Christian missions, especially those which are funded from overseas. But for all the accusations thrown at Indians, the one fear that sticks in the hearts of the most vociferous detractors is the possibility of conversion into the Christian faith. A Western mind may wonder why this could be so bad, and one could try to understand the logic, but it would be a waste of time. To soften the appearance of this harsh stance, such people allege that these are ‘forced conversions’. I have worked with several churches over the past 20 years in India and other countries, but I have not yet found a forced conversion in the sense the term is being used in India. Detractors frequently question NGOs as to why they could possibly want to do what they do in India, and why they couldn’t instead focus on solving their own country’s problems, never mind the halfway homes, prison ministries, rehabs, schools and hospitals Christians have successfully set up in the West. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Modi’s propaganda has effectively turned judge, jury and executioner with no due process, and the media and several of India’s citizens are complicit in allowing this to happen.</span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">CURRENT PRACTICES FOLLOWED BY MISSIONARIES</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Many missionaries travel to India out of real compassion and a heart to reach people whose lives they know are dissipating into both temporal and eternal destruction. Many are inspired by stories of faith and sacrifice, and several who travel on short-term trips come away feeling called to mission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">After an extensive mission preparation program, they feel equipped to begin a long-term mission in countries like India. It often comes as an unpleasant shock to realize that the trip involves some deceit in the form of applying for a visa that is for the wrong purpose. Most missionaries travel to India on anything besides missionary visas. Practically, this is the only way to enter India. Some missionaries enroll themselves in courses, others start businesses, some teach in schools, but their desire to reach out to a person to share the love of Jesus is often unfulfilled due to the intense scrutiny by the government.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">To add to this, the missionaries often must resort to practices that make them feel trapped in their predicament, such as taking extreme steps to hide their electronic communications. This could take the form of using specialized email servers that use end-to-end encryption to and from their recipients in the West, or using secure VPNs to dial into proxy servers in the West, through which they are able to use the Internet. However, such practices only serve to raise red flags. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Besides their efforts to hide their digital footprint, many missionaries also try to hide their long-term ties to the country, by paying rent in cash (thereby also unfortunately enabling a landlord to evade tax) and having no signed rental agreement. Long-term foreign residents in India are also required to register with the Foreign Regional Registration Office, which automatically brings the registrant in the radar. Most long-term residents get around this by traveling outside the country before hitting the six-month mark, and return after a few weeks. Though a pragmatic method and technically sound in terms of the law, the government has been investigating long-term residents whenever a complaint is raised against them, and this has often resulted in a revocation of their stay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">What does one do in such a situation? Missionaries feel perplexed that their conviction, that is such a shining, redeeming factor in their lives, could be held in such suspicion and contempt. They often feel that this is simply a matter of the fear that the forces of darkness have for the Gospel. While this is true in spiritual terms, there is real doubt in the minds of many Indians about the intentions of Christians, both foreign and native. In other words, it is not so much the truth of Christianity that is driving many Indians to such extreme measures to oppose it, but their belief that Christians are intentionally spreading discord and hatred. </span><br />
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<h3>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">CHANGE THE MODEL</span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There is no surefire way to avoid electronic snooping, but here are some suggestions to live as a missionary in India; and for churches and mission partners to engage effectively in the mission:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">1. Pray without ceasing. We must understand that behind the labyrinthine regulations, there is a spirit that is opposed to God’s Spirit and will use every resource to attack His people and stop the spread of the Good News.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">2. Don’t do overkill- A lot of the precautions that missionaries take in countries like India need to be thought through. Try to live as simply as possible. Even if it means communicating less frequently with ministry partners, keep secure electronic communication to a minimum when talking about ministry. However, by all means, use such communication extensively to display your fun experiences and love for the country.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">3. Be cautious, but draw your line in the sand. All this does not mean that you will not be tracked. After the terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008, government surveillance has become the norm, especially for visitors. You must assume that you are being tracked, so be careful to not overstep boundaries. When you are making online payments, for instance, remember that the internet is not secure. Do not give any PII (Personal Identifiable Information) away.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">4. Abide by the law. Your local ministry partners may sign you up for an apartment without a rental agreement- this may even be the norm for them as India has been a largely cash-based economy. The government’s recent attempt to make India a largely cashless society must be observed over the next few years to evaluate, so this may be the situation in the near and medium term. However, for visitors, not having a rental agreement is a red flag. Insist of abiding by the rule of law. Indian society, including Christians, have learned over time to sidestep some laws, and unfortunately, this has had serious implications for the church’s moral compass. Such transactions, without an audit trail, enable tax evasion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">5. Engage in teaching leaders, but do not assume a primary preaching position. Many churches have come around to the idea that their efforts are best directed towards training national leaders, so many missionaries who travel to India are highly qualified to teach and train pastors. However, even this doesn’t work very well without national partners- equals- who must assume most of the responsibility. The missionary must work as a facilitator and evaluator. Why should it be this way? Again, it is the context of the culture that is the key. While our common frailties and aspirations bring us together, a Western missionary may not be able to bridge the cultural gap completely. Very few in the West comprehend the struggles of Indian believers, especially those of converts from other religions, such as the loss of a loved community which gave meaning to them in a highly relational culture. Missionaries can, however, serve as sounding boards for theological ‘true north’ and as channels of inspiration from the rich environment of ideas which flourish in Western seminaries.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">6. Engage in business or much-needed social care that is encouraged by the government. As much as Indians do not trust the government, they have learned to live with the powers that be; and often they understand that such powers could be a blessing. Simply because Christians are typically opposed to the BJP does not mean that they will not support some of their policies, especially those having to do with employment, healthcare or food provisioning. The successive governments have encouraged certain businesses in India over the years- in technology, healthcare and services. A good way to become a valuable resource in the country is to engage in such businesses and work to create or strengthen the ecosystem of such businesses. I have seen several such successful models.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">7. Be respectful of local customs- your criticism must be squarely focused on ideas, and even then, do it gently.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">8. Be prepared for changes. Do not hinge your career on a long-term stay.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">9. Truly partner with local leaders. Help them succeed, make them more visible, let them shine, treat them as equals. How many stories have you heard that highlight local leaders rather than foreign missionaries? Is this a coincidence? Institutionalize the mission.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">10. Churches- care for the people (missionaries), not just the mission- they don’t enjoy deception. Build a support group. We must care for missionaries as though they were (because they are) a very special category of people- or rather, they should be. If churches have done their homework and ensured that the missionaries are carefully vetted and sent, it is their privilege to serve them in mission, and if they are in need, to give to them, more than to others with needs. It is a sign of a dying church when its members begin to see missionaries as being busybodies depending on the church for a living, rather than as people who have intentionally set out to share the Gospel with people in often dangerous situations.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">11. Mission agencies need to redefine themselves- not just as financial intermediaries or program managers. Many offer programs (always for cash) to help Third Culture Kids adapt to new cultures, some taxation help, insurance and so on. Many offer ‘discipleship’ (again for a percentage of the funds raised by missionaries) which is often rigid in structure and sometimes creates issues with authority and subordination, which is the bane of such programs. The ‘system’ makes many want to drop out. Supporters of missionaries, and missionaries themselves regularly receive communication imploring them to contribute funds towards their expenses, such as a new office building or more general mission initiatives in other countries. Often such agencies do not understand the very personal nature of missions. We trust people who we know closely, and want to be a part of the mission, so that we can know how lives are changing and eyes are opening to God. Mission agencies often invite sending church pastors to annual retreats and treat them with hospitality, which in less charitable circles would be called schmoozing. Many missions pastors think highly of these agencies, when in reality their real work is far less significant in comparison to the relationships the missionaries develop with supporters. What does it take for a church or an agency to stop thinking like bean counters and start participating in the mission?</span></div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-64275373273121622252016-10-04T08:06:00.002-06:002016-10-04T08:06:33.150-06:00A few minutes to lift up Haiti<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I hate to advertise misery, but what do you do when your news feed is filled with posts like these coming from those who are in the eye of the storm or those whose hearts ache for them?<br />
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Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-51111405413316876652016-10-03T15:05:00.001-06:002016-10-03T15:05:09.727-06:00Trump's 1995 Tax Returns<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
If I exploit tax loopholes legally to avoid paying any tax, and have a large business exposure going on, should I be setting fiscal policy? Even if (due to Anti-Money Laundering regulation) I move my assets into a trust entity entrusted to my family, while I'm holding public office, should I be given the keys to the kingdom which could release or bind tax revenue? In other words, is it fair to expect a fox to guard the chicken coop? That this is our choice and some of us may not have made up our minds is significant. It holds up a mirror to ourselves.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-30028654018285570672016-09-30T16:36:00.002-06:002016-09-30T16:36:28.509-06:00Myths on Identity and Humanity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This well-written article in The Slate talks about white America's disillusionment with Obama which, the author says, began with the Beer Summit in 2010. I don't know for sure, but it seems to have a ring of truth about it, though Obama's subsequent actions with respect to the PPACA and others may have played a part. The article carries the view that many people thought Obama was beyond race, but his comments preceding the Beer Summit focused on historical injustices faced by the African American community, and consequently this idea gave way to disillusionment.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_next_20/2016/09/the_henry_louis_gates_beer_summit_and_racial_division_in_america.html?xid=next20kw&kwp_0=240027&kwp_4=912240&kwp_1=442875">http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_next_20/2016/09/the_henry_louis_gates_beer_summit_and_racial_division_in_america.html?xid=next20kw&kwp_0=240027&kwp_4=912240&kwp_1=442875</a><br />
<br />
I don't think we could ever be 'beyond' race, faith, color, ethnicity or class. These are not impediments to humanity. We will always have the weight of context, in terms of history, of the kind of collateral in society which places us in positions different from others. This is just humanity. By denying one is Indian or white or black or Christian, and claiming we are simply human doesn't make us somehow better humans. Rather, I think it makes us lose the multi-dimensional wonder that true humanity exhibits. Our humanity doesn't preclude these dimensions. I've written here in the past about how being Christian doesn't preclude me from my pride in my heritage as an Indian. Sadly, many Indians seem to not understand this. These are our buoys and channel markers to navigate the labyrinth of the human experience- we explore and search for meaning. It makes us human. Wishing them away would make us less so.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-3265347010642446932016-07-06T14:39:00.001-06:002016-07-06T14:40:35.846-06:00What I've been Saying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just what I've been saying all along about population growth and resouces. This article captures it really well. I would just add that I have more confidence in the power of God to redeem human beings just when it seems all is lost. We attribute a lot of things to human ingenuity, but God gives the dirt and we just create using it. Never <i>ex nihilo</i>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://anthropoceneblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/have-we-reached-the-limits-to-growth/">https://anthropoceneblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/have-we-reached-the-limits-to-growth/</a></div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-15678142385000833702016-06-16T09:32:00.000-06:002016-06-16T09:37:21.731-06:00Popular Attitudes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I love Pew surveys, and over time it becomes clear to see the secular world's opinions of Christians. There are legitimate criticisms, there are good things Christians do, then there are criticisms of those good things, and finally secular alternatives which typically escape such criticism. I made a small table with these learnings over time.<br />
<br />
<br /><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse; width: 556px;">
<colgroup><col style="mso-width-alt: 3025; mso-width-source: userset; width: 65pt;" width="87"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 4142; mso-width-source: userset; width: 89pt;" width="119"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 3909; mso-width-source: userset; width: 84pt;" width="112"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 4072; mso-width-source: userset; width: 88pt;" width="117"></col>
<col style="mso-width-alt: 4235; mso-width-source: userset; width: 91pt;" width="121"></col>
</colgroup><tbody>
<tr height="74" style="height: 55.5pt;">
<td class="xl65" height="74" style="height: 55.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87"></td>
<td class="xl68" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">LEGITIMATE <br />
CRITICISM</td>
<td class="xl68" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">GOOD <br />
THINGS</td>
<td class="xl68" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">CRITICISM OF <br />
GOOD THINGS</td>
<td class="xl68" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">SECULAR <br />
ALTERNATIVES</td>
</tr>
<tr height="116" style="height: 87.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="116" style="height: 87.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Adoption</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Harmful to relationships when a
parent is present but cannot care for a child due to financial or other
difficulty</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Presents a stable home with
loving parents</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117"></td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />There are several secular people
adopting kids, especially rich celebrities who receive little criticism and
much adulation<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="19" style="height: 14.5pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="19" style="height: 14.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Soup
kitchens</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">None noted</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Generally admired</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">None noted</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Few secular alternatives<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="155" style="height: 116.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="155" style="height: 116.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Schools</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Narrow curriculum</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">The good schools foster learning
outside their worldview but students must subscribe to the statement of faith</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117"><br />Prayer, teaching of faith matters
considered an intrusion into the student's private matters; other aspects
such as respect for life considered out of bounds for educational
institutions<br /></td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">Secular schools, especially
higher ed, are rife with active atheistic and agnostic teaching. There is
also open mockery of faith and discrimnation among faculty and students.</td>
</tr>
<tr height="193" style="height: 145.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="193" style="height: 145.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Hospitals</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Not enough alternatives for those
who cannot pay or are undocumented immigrants or visitors who cannot afford
care; money-minded</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Christian hospitals are understood to be dominant in this area, so
there is no particular praise though it is acknowledged</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Again, politicized agenda topics
such as abortion, contraceptives, euthanasia, etc. are hot buttons; federal
funding is another.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Though not dominant, there are
many hospitals funded bysecular
universities, which attract none of the criticism- though the same
issues of funding, money and denying care to the outliers also apply.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="116" style="height: 87.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="116" style="height: 87.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Short
term <br />missions</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Increases dependency and
corruption</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Not admired</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Criticized as being culturally
hegemonistic, and for religious proselytization</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Some secular alternatives, like
Peace Corp and Habitat for Humanity (though founded by people of faith)<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="58" style="height: 43.5pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="58" style="height: 43.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Long term
missions</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Cultural hegemony</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112"><br />Admired sometimes for great
sacrifice like those working to treat Ebola<br /></td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Typically criticized for their
faith-based efforts</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">None noted</td>
</tr>
<tr height="251" style="height: 188.5pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="251" style="height: 188.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Conversion</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Cultural hegemony</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Not admired</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117"><br />Nearly everything about
conversion is misunderstood and vehemently criticized: (1) the idea that
conversion means a denigration of deeply held beliefs and traditions; (2) a
foreign idea that encourages violence between existing faiths; (3) a
subscription into a dominant institution; (4) the idea that missionaries
"buy" allegience with material offers, and many others</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">None noted; although activist
secular people routinely market ideas and attitudes through the media and
other interaction. This is not as visible or organized but intentional and
effective.</td>
</tr>
<tr height="155" style="height: 116.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="155" style="height: 116.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Political
engagement</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Infringment into the rights of
others; winning battles suited to a moral code at the expense of others'</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">"Social gospel"</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">The social gospel is criticized
when it is associated with a church that affirms the exclusivity of the
Christian faith. Otherwise, as many of the issues align with the world's
priorities, it is not criticized.<br /></td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">Several secular movements, most
taking root from Christian efforts such as in civil rights, are active.</td>
</tr>
<tr height="97" style="height: 72.5pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="97" style="height: 72.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Preaching</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Bringing in money, exclusion of
others and such matters into the content</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Not admired</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Preaching is typically seen as
hypocritical and brainwashing.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Just as in the matter fo
conversions, secular preaching is not as visible but intentional and
effective.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="232" style="height: 174.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="232" style="height: 174.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Cultural
hegemony</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Bringing cultural prerogatives
into native traditions</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Sometimes, when culture and
righteousness conflict, such as in the matter of female genital mutilation,
culture must be laid aside</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Everything Christians do is
viewed through the prism of winning souls, so there is gernerally not
acknowledgment of the good things</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Secular movements are typically
not international with some exceptions. However, just as in the matter of
conversions and preaching, secular cultural hegemony is not as visible but
intentional and effective. Social liberalism is actively proselytizing.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="116" style="height: 87.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="116" style="height: 87.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Political
leaders</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Christians are seen as useful
idiots for manipulative political leaders, with very dalid precedents</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Some genuine leaders such as
Carter have led the country with Christian principles.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117"><br />By and large Christian leaders
like Carter are not criticized, mainly because the truly hot button aspects
of their faith have not been exercised during their leadership<br /></td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121">The US (and in indeed the world)
is very gullible in following a leader of any stripe. This applies to secular
people as well.</td>
</tr>
<tr height="232" style="height: 174.0pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="232" style="height: 174.0pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Money</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">There is real corruption in many
churches which have forgotten that money is the root of all evil. After all,
money is simply the currency for power. Power is the antithesis of grace.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Christians give the most. The
overwhleming majoroity of charitable giving comes from them; and out of this,
most comes from evangelicals.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">Everything Christians do is
viewed through the prism of winning souls, so there is gernerally not
acknowledgment of the good things</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />Secular giving exists, but the
causes are mainly the celebrated ones- breast cancer, heart disease, saving
endangered animals. The worst issues in the world- ebola, earthquake relief,
long-term community building- are mostly addressed by Christians.<br /></td>
</tr>
<tr height="135" style="height: 101.5pt;">
<td class="xl67" height="135" style="height: 101.5pt; width: 65pt;" width="87">Adultery</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 89pt;" width="119">Not just adultery but the problem
of lust is real and present in the church, not just among leaders.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 84pt;" width="112">Despite all the problems,
Christians affirm that they may be wrong in their actions, but the Bible is
right on secual practice.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 88pt;" width="117">There is secular criticism of
lust in the church, and then there is secular criticism of the Bible decrying
both lust and the world's sexual practices.</td>
<td class="xl66" style="width: 91pt;" width="121"><br />By and large, the secular
understanding of sexual desire if not based on any written code or
philosophical understanding, rather on feeling and pragmatism.</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-17167561562748888142016-04-16T19:25:00.000-06:002016-04-16T19:25:07.006-06:00Make it real, make it holy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
First solo trip to Port au Prince tomorrow. At home, we finished packing pencils, stickers and candy for the students at the PEF school. The kids opened up their piggy banks so I can have change. David was emotional but denied it was because I was leaving. He gave one of his small toy cars ('machine' as they call it in Haiti) for any one small boy there. Emma was distracted and irritated. Alma got all this stuff from the dollar store. My own mind is very distracted and anxious, filled with unknown fears. I can't put my finger on it. Is it the news of recent shootings in Port au Prince, in which one person I have met- Mario- was shot in the face? Is it the news of the Zika virus? Is it the travel advisory at the US Department of State website? Is it that I feel powerless that should something happen to me my family would need to continue without me? Surely they will do well enough. So what am I so worried about? What happened to my intrepid self, the one that in 1993 with my friend Ta would travel nearly penniless on trains and buses through Tamil Nadu and Kerala, surviving on rations of peanuts and good humor? Am I that old?<br />
<br />
Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.- Psalm 43:5<br />
<br />
Will my trip be fruitful? Will I be able to relate to the kids at the school? Will the staff and administrators view me seriously? Can I go there with humility, and not as a 'benefactor' but a servant? Why is this happening, Lord?<br />
<br />
In the past, on my trips with HART, I was almost a tourist-missionary, getting my feet wet. Now I'm on my own.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, this is an opportunity to face my fears and see the face of God. So, make it real. Make it holy, Lord.</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1286142282840540456.post-76551350784527022602015-12-04T15:53:00.000-06:002015-12-06T11:34:37.853-06:00So this is Christmas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
So this is Christmas. What a year it has been and what a way
to end it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s beauty my eyes have seen and when or where I’d least
expect it. In Haiti where physicians, nurses and volunteers debated their way into treating life-threatening illnesses with incredible generosity, in an
Indian megacity with a population of nearly 9 million people that went
underwater for a week and saw its government twiddle its thumbs while people
went about heroically rescuing, opening homes to strangers, dispensing food,
medicines and other aid, displaying an incredible ability to get to emergencies
on time and coordinate their actions effectively, in Chicago where hundreds of
people came together to support a beloved cancer patient. I’ve seen real grime
and ugliness and heard even more in the news- beheading, airline bombings,
mass shootings, religious zealots murdering people over trivial matters,
intolerant and strident political voices rousing the rabble against minority
groups, President-aspirants pushing to keep refugees out, build walls, and
profile people on religious and ethnic lines, and many even grossly
misinterpreting the message of a refugee-Savior born in a feeding trough for
dirty livestock in a dung infested cow-stall, among lambs marked for slaughter,
so as to opine that a glass of water given in his name should go to only those
who believe in him.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
In Josh Moody's first sermon this December, he talked about how in the wake of the Paris shootings, a pianist towed his piano out to the middle of a square where people had gathered to demonstrate their solidarity, and began playing Lennon's 'Imagine', a perennial favorite played during such times, urging people to shed their faith in God, in heaven, hell or religion, and place their faith in humanity instead, so everyone can live in peace and unity. Josh pointed out the irony of placing faith in humanity, the same humanity that had just murdered so many in cold blood. How often we point to ideologies as being at fault and human beings simply driven by them, as if they themselves in their purest form, were not to blame at all. Despite so many instances to the contrary, we tend to believe in humanity's fundamental nobility- because to believe that we are evil and wicked would be to turn our attention to our own hearts' wickedness. Ultimately, it is not any ideology (regardless of its rightness or wrongness), but we who are the ones holding the gun, the ones to blame. Even our best manifestations, like the heroes of Chennai, are echoes of another land, not this fallen one- and not surprisingly, overwhelmingly informed by eternal, not temporal, hope.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I have seen beauty it is in the midst of this, just like
the sweet pondering of a mothers heart in the midst of violence against
newborns in a Middle Eastern village over 2000 years ago. And so, "in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So this is Christmas. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Wayfaring Strangerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06516056910969268062noreply@blogger.com0