Muddying the Waters

eejosephLeave a comment

The version of the Christian Bible one chooses is a legitimate option, but everyone should consider the difference between translations, versions, and paraphrases.

“Version” is the simple and generic term for all types. This includes the King James, New King James, New American Standard, New International, Darby, Young’s, Revised Standard, and so on.

Translations are of two types. First, there are those done by groups of scholars, with the intent of bringing the original languages to the contemporary reader. These are by far the most reliable because they have the consensus of scholarly expertise.

Second, there are translations done by a single scholar with the same intent. Examples of these are Darby’s, Young’s Literal, and Moffatt’s New Testament. These contain cutting-edge interpretations of the original languages, but they do not have the benefit of peer-evaluation.

Paraphrases are usually wordy attempts to bring the reader several shades of meaning. The reader is handicapped by these versions if a personal word study is not undertaken by the reader.

Paraphrases are not translations. Translations are, like the original languages, everyday expressions of concepts. Literal and amplified works give the reader the sense that all possible interpretations have been presented. Authoritative interpretation depends on much more than the meaning of the Greek or Hebrew words. Of equal importance are (1) the grammatical structure of the sentence (2) the kinds of action contained in the verbs, and (3) the context (placement in the text and placement in history).
How can the reader arrive at confidence in interpreting and applying the Sacred Texts?

First the reader can avoid simply following commentaries. Centuries of error have been perpetuated by Christians accepting the reflections of commentators.

Secondly, the reader must prayerfully approach the study of the Bible. This means having confidence in the One who inspired the texts in the first place, the Holy Spirit

Finally, the reader must use the tools that are available. These include Grammars and Lexicons of Biblical Hebrew and Greek. Study of the text itself is vital.

    Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. 2Ti 2:15

Teamwork: what Indecency

eejoseph, Leave a comment

Handling the tension between team and personal interests must be one of the most difficult passages in life.  It would be simple if all that’s required was personal performance, but personal performance, when successful does not end in team recognition.  Teams are not stars.  Isn’t that why winning teams get a cup and the team members get rings or medals?  The indecency in teamwork shows up when a teams gets challenged or put under the microscope.  Then it seeks the cooperation of  the members, or does it?

Some people seem unable to understand the strength and benefits of the collective.  They seem to have the idea that teamwork is doing as little as they can, and looking for opportunities to gain advantage over their teammates.  Simple things elude them.  Replacing the empty toilet-paper roll, using a santi-spatter screen in the microwave , cleaning up after you’ve made a mess, and actually doing their assigned tasks.

The work in teamwork will always remain undone as long as humans have holidays, illness, inordinate bathroom breaks, casual chats, and unprioritized personal interests.

People who do not report for duty or fulfil their obligations have a right to declare themselves as failed, but that kind of decency is hard to find.  The next time you have an assignment take a good look at yourself and avoid the indecency of being silent about what you have not done and by all means refrain from accusing and badmouthing your teammates.  Do your job, consult (not the same as dictating), and give your teammates and the team a fighting chance.

EE

Hogtown’s Animal Sensibilities

eejoseph, , Leave a comment

I have not seen our beloved police chief so angry and disturbed.  I imagined I saw a tear well up in his eye as he expressed one of the very deep emotions that Torontonians felt over the shooting spree.   Chief Bill Blair captured it well when he called the party-turned-into-shooting-spree a “very shocking incident”.  We know that a popular thought that follows many of these hurtful incidents has been either “NIMBY” or “WIMBY” (not in my backyard or why in my backyard), and the violence has touched every corner of Toronto.

A fragmented and failing approach to tackling crime has its roots in an hodge-podge picture of society, the so-called mosaic of Canadian society.  The budgets that are designed to be tough on crime have only resulted in increasing numbers of younger individuals involved in undisciplined and criminal behaviour.  In my circles we usually say that when you take God of out of the school and the home you take your life in your own hand: the result is inevitable disaster.  There has been no human government of note since Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon, and all succeeding attempts at civilization have resulted in more physical trash and unpreccedented philosophical garbage.  It is at times like this where we begin to see what people’s real agendas are.

A familiar theme in law and order work is that if you put a lot of operatives in the field you will have a restraining effect on crime.  Another is that if you can outspend and outshoot the bad guys society will be safer.  Two world wars and a lot of nation-building have proved both ideas wrong and the best legislation cannot change the animal in men.  Even the honourable ladies and gentlemen of your community and mine have no easy task of staying above the fray of beastly behaviour.

Try as we might we cannot sterilize the truth about humanity.  We will fail to find the keys to a safer society if we continue to be a law unto to ourselves – seeing no standard outside of ourselves, and dreaming of being pioneers in civic society without renouncing and fixing our beastly past.

Most nations are on the verge of great advances in every field including the potential for unparalelled nobility.

Will the empire-builders and magnates ever face the fact that we have sown the wind, and are reaping the whirlwind?  Will individuals given to sober thinking, like our Chief of Police, consider that we have, to quote the prophet Amos (5:19), escaped from a lion and met bear, or that or we have entered a house (supposedly a place of safety), and supported ourselves with our hand on the wall, and found ourselves bitten by a serpent?
The mantra about the right to self-defence and governments’ right to protect are ringing hollow because we have been there and done that. Isn’t that why we have not achieved a lasting peace?
The doctor is on call and every citizen, including Torontonians had better wake up and face up to reality of our beastly sensitivies.

Elbert Joseph

Tested and Found Wanting

eejosephLeave a comment

Just in?

The number of respectful and honest people ….Half of us.

TORONTO – If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you lost your phone in public, a study conducted by an Ottawa-based security researcher suggests there’s one thing you can almost surely count on: a complete violation of your privacy.  The number of people, with opportunity to be respectful with others’ property, who practice what they preach: 4 of 100. Phew!  That’s evil.  If you have a better name for that I’d like to hear it.

If we knew the ages and gender we could blame it on kids, blame it on males, or if we knew their life experience or their educational achievements we could blame it on the traumatized or uneducated.  That  would not  change the fact that human beings are prone to miss the mark, even, of common decency.  That is not news.  What really is “just in” are the number of people who read the excerpt below (from http://ca.news.yahoo.com/odds-having-lost-phone-returned-50-50-privacy-171259550.html) and come away from the shocking evidence with nothing more than “I wouldn’t have done that”.

Community is not as safe as we think.  We have tried to build our sense of community on recapturing some idyllic time period or  on our efforts to create a community where righteousness and justice do flow like a river.  No matter how much we dress up our performances we are in the same boat as our neighbour.  If you are not an ace you are second class, so get busy; try to get past “one strike you’re out”.  The fight against criminality is not all there is to safety where we live, and safety is where we live, together.

It is a good thing that our capital has a better showing than other places.  Gee, we’re covered by Ottawa’s umbrella.  Before we get too comfy under the shelter, just look around you.  Statistically there is a person within your view who would violate you.   Why would I want to know who that is or how many exactly there are in the hood?  I am satan, slanderous and bent on destroying  other people’s lives if I do not get my way.

Have you ever seen one of the boys in blue chatting away happily on his cellphone while driving?  There’s the answer to why I would not want to know who and how many are likely to violate my privacy.  That is the cops’ job.  Can you tell where the arrests and citations would begin?

We had better wake up and start looking in the mirror more closely: the dishonest never like what they see because they  know what they want; the freedom to cut their noses off to spite their faces.  The first test, failed, is to accept what we see in the mirror (does a poll like the “lost cellphone” qualify as a mirror?), to keep our noses clean, and to accept that everyone of us has an evil streak that wants to dominate our will to be clean.

11 11 and The Guns Fell Silent

eejosephLeave a comment

On the celebrated day, November 11, when violence should be the last thing on our mind the guns are blazing. On the streets we see daily all kinds of violence. Didn’t they say the day the guns fell silent was also the end of the war? The headlines from the Occupy sites in Canada and the US, from Syria, and from Gaza tell a different story. Real peace is nowhere to be found. and those who say they have it know it is fleeting.
It would be great if we could find a single entity who is at perfect peace and faces no threats or challenges. The guns are not silent, because men are still intent on being the lords of this earth without regard to the common debt of love.
Two days after the grand recognition of our fallen soldiers our neighbors are still falling and there seems to be no way out. Nuclear weapons, threats to civil aviation, and the groundswell of popular rebellion and revolution are the main ingredients of earth’s seething pot.. If only the gunmen would realize that the silencers on their guns are not functioning. We can still hear the reports of the weapons of war all around us.
Guns come in various guises. When Jerusalem silences the crime of Ahab in East Jerusalem we will see peace breaking out in the hot-spots. When the plight of workers and the poor come off the back-burner in western capitals we will breathe equality’s fresh air and when women and children are granted their full human rights all across the planet then we can say the guns are silent.
Somewhere a bullet is screaming towards one of us!
Stop! Silence, you guns of the sons of Adam.

Blue Lady! Always Jovial

eejosephLeave a comment

After jumping over the withering form of her sibling there is not much left for the blue lady to traverse. She’s not afraid jinxes will end her reign, not when she seen so much of victory and phoenixes rising.

Great sheroes are not made in palaces: they arise just in time from ditches of disaster to be someone’s sister. The search for absolute justice ends with the Blue Lady. Lives soaked in pain are often blue, and seem best to speak for us because they have been where the flames actually strengthen, giving cause for appropriate jubilation.
So when the dust clears, eyes twinkle, awareness joined, nothing prevents the blue from being actively joyous, always jovial.

That Girl Grace

eejosephLeave a comment

Most of us know someone named “Grace”.  That would include all the Hannahs, Caras, Charitas, and so on.  Fur Christians, grace is God’s expression of His goodness to us – everyone on the planet.  The story of divine grace comes to us in the Biblical saga of the Mesopotamian Abraham and his descendants.

Grace for Christians and Jews are different beasts even though the need and the source are identical. My girl “Grace” is reason for gratitude, not pride in achievement or acquisition. The notion of grace is scorned by people who consider themselves self-sufficient aces. Grace is for cripples and beggars, but no individual or nation has yet shown mastery of this place we call home. We are all, somehow, missing the mark of master. We are at the mercy of upheavals of nature and people in motion.

Grace is definitely not a statue; she is motion personified, moving those who are willing to new vistas of peaace, contentment and joy. So why do so many people despise Grace? Why are so many people content to live in the shadow of their own achievements, no matter how fleeting or minuscule?

Standing in need of assistance is very human, from birth to death, and people either stand afar off aand claim to know Grace when in reality Grace is accessed only by intimacy. So are we really gods or humans? The answer is too obvious: ingratitude and inhospitable attitudes are the favourite halos of the present generation. When a new set of eyes begin to peer into the secret chambers of productive life Grace will no longer be an orphan or find herself neglected.

Look at What They’re Doing to My Child

eejosephLeave a comment

You are not kidding!  A child bearing the brunt of insensitive and ignorant peers is not new.  Racist environments foster violence and we live in one now, and we have ourselves – in some way – been shaped by societies that could not see the future and care little about the past.

Feigning ignorance is an old racist ploy, but what if people really do not see the problem with certain discriminatory expressions and behaviours? What if the newspapers and watchdogs are equally biased against people of another race?
Someone needs to advocate for the child. Take the case to the primary perpetrators. Waiting is not an option. Things only get worse and the likelihood of permanent effect of this kind of pressure on a young child is too great to ignore.

Parents are the best judge of the actions that should be followed, with, of course, due consideration to the advice of professionals in the field of psychology and spirituality.  The school system can be cruelly apathetic to the needs of children and in this day and age they can be easily called to account, publicly or privately.

You will know that your struggle for decency and justice is having the desired effect when the perpetrators and their supporters are heard saying “Look at what they’re doing to my school!”