Living Wittily

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  • Integration and integrity

    51vvka0g6jl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 In trying to explain what it means to be in right relationship, with God, with creation, with others and with ourselves, David Willis writes about integration and integrity. It is an important and faith expanding description of what God is about in our lives.

    This being in right relationship includes the integration of various things – ideas, emotions, economic condition, physical health, hunger for righteousness, delights, artistic drives and so on – which make us who we are intended to become.

    The word for the condition to which we are being delivered is…"integrity". Integrity is wholeness, unsplinteredness, unfragmentedness. We are invoking this imagery when we say so-and-so or such and such rings true. Wholeness in this sense is held-togetherness: as crystal or a forged bell is a ‘resounding’ holding together of things in tension. Tension is not incidental to integration, for the tensile strength of something is the way its component partsicles cohere, are congruent. The tensioned parts ‘fit’. They belong together to make up a whole, and are most themsleves in that tensioned belonging. Integrity is being integrated! Integrity in this sense is a progressing condition, not a fixed state. (page 54).

    The tensions between aspiration and frustration, devotion to Christ and the attractiveness of countless alternative calls, between our earthboundness and our spirituality, between emodiedness and inwardness. Jesus knew about those key moments, those urgent decisions, those tensile choices that we face once we’ve put our hand to the plough, left our nets, left the money at the tax table. And whether the source of tension and the test of integrity is faithfulness to our Lord, or to our covenanted life partner, committed love to our children or answering thedemands of our vocation, Willis is right. Integrity isn’t a fixed state, but a continuing process of refinement. Like the crystal vase and the forged bell, now and again God pings or strikes us, to hear the resounding holding togetherness that is discipleship as a way of life, a following after the One whose integrity integrates a fragmented creation.

  • Scotland, religion and education

    Two books came today. Expensive, hefty, sturdily bound by the Edinburgh academic publisher, John Donald. They are two volumes in a 14 volume set on Scottish Ethnology. They deal with Religion (vol. 12) and Education (11).

    41tzljoto1l__aa240_ The volume on religion covers the arrival of Christianity and brings the cultural story up to the 21st century. It is by far and away the most comprehensive and authoritative account of religion in Scotland, and it includes chapters dealing with the pluralistic and multicultural context of modern Scotland, and its inevitable and enriching consequence of religious diversity. This looks like one of the big books I’ll slowly work through as a course in culture, Christianity, religious diversity, folk theology, and the entwined relationship between social development, religious history and the contemporary cultural landscape. In a world fractured and fragile, where religion can be cause or cure of human suffering and conflict, it is a responsibility to understand our own religious heritage, context and peculiarities. Because in a diverse world, and in a pluralist Scottish society, for many, many people, Christians are ‘the other’; and more than ever we need the gift to see ourselves, as others see us, and to see the others, as part of who we are.

    41egvqb93gl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 The volume on Education is similarly comprehensive – tracing historical development, cultural influences and consequences on Scottish Education. Interesting chapters for me include the account of Special Education provision, Scottish Universities, ‘approved schools’ for troubled and troublesome children, Catholic education and women in education. Ever since I read and was converted by George Davie’s magnificent and wonderfully partisan account of the role and value of Scottish University education, in The Democratic Intellect, I have been passionate about education as more than preparing people for employability. As an expression of my own vocation in theological education, I am vocationally committed to education as formative, humanising and driven by aims significantly higher than market demands and other functional goals. These are arguably necessary to make education socially and economically viable; but the pursuit of learning and the search for knowledge have deeper goals in the human character, mind and will. Varieties of information when integrated bring knowledge; knowledge when assimilated into character and applied to life, brings wisdom – and we desperately need graduates in wisdom, and post-graduates in the science of living well.

  • Charlie Simpson – a quiet presence in my memory…..

    Charlie Simpson was one of the cheeriest human beings I’ve ever met. An old school Baptist minister, complete with deep dog collar, black stock, striped trousers and black jacket. He trained for the Baptist ministry just after the Second War and did much of it by correspondence with the London Bible College. Like many people going into ministry after the war when there was an acute shortage, he was fast-tracked in, and most of his life he felt the lack of a formal academic training. I met him when he was minister at Carluke Baptist, and he was the one who led me to faith in Christ. He guided my first hesitant enquiries about ministry, (less than a year after my conversion), he lent me several of his books (one of them Spurgeon’s "nae messin aboot’" approach to baptism, called Much Water and Believers Only!). He was also one of the first Christians who modelled a love for learning, a passion for books, and the importance of continuing personal development. Remember this was in 1967 he had no degree – no diploma – just a man in love with God, and determined to serve God with the best he could be.

    Two further early memories of Charlie Simpson the lover of God who happened also to be a book-lover, which have influenced me subtly but permanently. The year I was converted (1967 – forty years ago), he persuaded me to go to Filey Christian Holiday Camp. I still remember the embarrassment, the strange world of big gatherings and having to drink bucketsful of Christian devotional cordial concentrate. BUT – I also remember Charlie took me into the humungous Book Tent and I stood there like Moses gazing at the promised land – except in my case I’ve been allowed to go in and possess it. I wandered around, picked up what I think was the first commentary I’d ever handled, and Charlie bought it for me. It was John Stott’s Tyndale Commentary on John’s Epistles, hardback. I still have it. He told me that he always had a commentary on his desk that he was slowly working through, and he encouraged me to read my bible using a well informed guide. And so, from then till now, I have been a commentary reader.

    And then there was the time, near the end of my ministry training, I went into Charlie and Nettie’s house in Knightswood, Glasgow, and Charlie came to gloat over his new purchase. It was the Baker Dictionary of Christian Ethics. It was 500 pages of double column text covering loadsa stuff. I was impressed and, by now as bad (or as good) as he was, decided I needed to get one as soon as I could afford the £6 – which by the way was expensive in 1975. Then Charlie said something which ever since, I’ve refused to forget, and which probably contributes to my ongoing love for learning and desire for God. This wonderfully cheerful, spiritually serious man of curious intellect, hefted the book in both hands and said, ‘I’m going to read this. I’m going to start at A and work my way through to Z’. It turned out that Charlie read reference books. Oh, he knew they were for consulting. That they were the quick route to the essential information. But he also knew, that if you want an overview of a subject, if you want to know where your gaps are, if you want to have a mind stored with the salient issues, the varied perspectives, and the relevant arguments, then there was nothing to beat a systematic browse through a recognised reference book. The New Bible Dictionary, and the New Bible Commentary, and the Baker’s Dictionary of Practical Theology, and the New International Dictionary of the Christian Church were amongst the goodly land he traversed from Ararat to Zion, from Agape to Zeal, from Abelard to Zwingli.

    Charlie Simpson raised my intellectual awareness and nurtured my love for books. But more than that; the gleam in the eye and the heft of a heavy book, and the anticipated hour or two at the desk with a book it would take a long time to finish, but which would feed his faith and increase his mind’s capacity for the truth of God, showed a 17 year old retro ned, that study is a way of loving God. From that first Spurgeon book on baptism, and Stott’s Tyndale Commentary, and Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Charlie, that self-taught, well read, disciplined scholar (he would have laughed at the word scholar predicated of himself, but I reckon I’m now qualified enough to recognise one when I see one), who was my pastor and friend, has been a quiet presence in my memory. He is in the front row of that section of the great crowd of witnesses nearest where I am on the track. And if the communion of saints means anything at all, then he is likely to be cheering cheerfully and wanting to know what commentary I’m reading.

    51qz4afx6xl__aa240_ I tell you all this for two reasons. First, people like Charlie Simpson shouldn’t be forgotten. Through an honest ministry conducted with a total absence of self-advertisement, who knows how many souls were touched, lives turned and minds made up for following Jesus? He is a central loved presence in my testimony. Second, in the 40th year since Charlie led and guided me to Jesus, and just under 30 years since he died, I am going to do something in his memory. I’m going to read a reference book, from A to Z, Abelard to Zwingli. The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought is a mega-book – 808 pages, 27.7 x 22.6 x 5.8 cm (that’s big!). Now and again, I’ll use one of the articles to blog – just to map my progress from relative ignorance to the promised land of knowing some stuff! Hope my wanderings won’t take forty years.

  • Held in the nexus of a sane trust

    On Sunday I offered some initial reflections on pastoral and theological responses to those who suffer from Alzheimer’s, dementia or other conditions which impair their sense of self, and frustrate their capacity to relate to others and to God.

    51vvka0g6jl__bo2204203200_pisitbdp5 I was encouraged to think about this further while reading David Willis, Clues to the Nicene Creed, and his chapter on what believing means. This slim book is a gem of accessible theology – (see sidebar). Describing how hard it is at times to believe, and how life circumstances, inner changes, and yes, certain forms of affective disability and mental ill health, can make personal faith all but impossible, Willis argues something very close to the last two paragraphs of my post on Sunday. Here’s what he writes, knitted together from three pages:

    Faith is knowing by heart the one on whose heart all the members of his body rely. When we feel overwhelmed by doubt…we do not feel God to be in our hearts; but that does not mean that God ever ceases to have us in his heart. Our faith – as trusting knowledge of God’s benevolence is not faith in our faith, nor heartfelt experience of our experience…..

    In fact almost as often as not, believers get guided, comforted, compelled, and sustained from day to day by other members of Christ’s body. There are times when we are dependent on what I think we must recognise as the vicarious faith of the community. Often the community trusts on our behalf. We need to recognise – rejoice in, let ourselves be helped by – that vicarious trust of the community to which we belong, in season and out.

    All I am insisting on in recognising the comforting reality of the vicarious faith of the community is that since we are united to Christ in his body and since it is finally Christ’s own fidelity on which we rely and who is the author and finisher of our faith, even in our most forlorn and apparent unbelief, we do not fall out of the nexus of sane trust…..The good news includes the belief that ultimately, no matter how far away and with what unimagined twist, the only inevitable thing is sovereign love.  (pages 25-27).

    Saints Maybe our insistence on faith as personal responsive trust, as an individual, cognitive and volitional response to Christ, can be pushed so far that we overlook those who, for many reasons best known to God, cannot, or do not, believe and trust in such a self conscious, publicly acknowledged way. Yet they are still loved, held, incorporated within the purposes of God’s gracious and sovereign love – and it may be that an important priestly role of all those believers who insist on ‘the priesthood of all believers’, is to hold all those for whom faith comes hard if at all, within the vicarious faith of the community. And perhaps in such cases, the prayer ‘ Lord I believe, help Thou mine unbelief’, could become, less selfishly and more generously, ‘Lord we believe, help Thou their unbelief’. Because in that vicarious faith, those for whom faith and trust as experience of God is at present impossible, will be enfolded in love, and treasured in hope, within a community where no one’s life is hopeless, no person is unloved, and all are faithfully held and cannot fall out of the nexus of a sane trust.

  • The high cost of bottled water….

    Bottled11_2 In our environmentally challenged age we are learning to live with new ethically loaded terms such as carbon footprint. What about water footprint? And yet…major charity projects taking place in Africa and Asia are concerned with providing adequate, clean and safe drinking water. A major consumer market now exists for bottled uncarbonated water, which is drunk in the western world not by the litre but by the loch. Running, walking, working at the desk, driving, talking, in countless social situations people now carry a bottle in one hand and a mobile in the other.

    How long before a night at a classical concert includes as the norm, the soloist trumpeter having a quick swig of Highland Spring while awaiting the next cue for entry? Has anyone yet come across a preacher who preaches with a bottle in the hand – or at least at the lectern? By the way I remember a Glasgow church years ago in the 1970’s was famous for ensuring a bottle of fizzy Schweppes Tonic water was placed in the pulpit for the preacher’s refreshment!

    Byron has an interesting post on the current bottled water market, carbon footprints and a world where the water is ill divided. He is quoting from the Sydney daily newspaper acccount (see the link here). Amongst the environmentally relevant and justice issue comments Byron makes are:

    • higher levels of bacteria than quality tap water;
    • transfer of toxins from the plastic bottle to the water;
    • the production of a plastic bottle creates 100 times more carbon emissions than making a glass bottle;
    • 1.5 million tonnes of plastic water bottles are created each year, only a fraction of which are subsequently recycled;
    • bottled water costs about 10,000 times as much as tap water;
    • and perhaps worst of all, the privatisation of water amongst the rich removes the incentive for ensuring high quality tap water for all.

    So. What is a responsible Christian to do? The cup of cold water that Jesus recommended as an act of compassion, presupposed it was clean and a gift. At the very least perhaps we should opt to pay, as an act of discipleship, a personal tax on the bottled water we drink, by ensuring that we are financial supporters of those charities desperate for money to sink wells, buy purification plants, ensure clean safe water is supplied to those for whom bottled water, bought and drunk in a society with constant, clean, running water on tap, is unimaginable, inexplicable, and perhaps inexcusable. How big is my water footprint?

    I find all of this complexity, my unavoidable implication and participation in a society that now trades globally, creates an underlying uneasiness, a sense that no matter what I do, someone can show me connections and consequences I hadn’t foreseen, but can’t easily avoid. Fairness, justice, generosity, humanity, responsibility…these are virtues it’s hard to impose on a market – and one way or another I can’t live outside the market. But on the other hand, I am a follower of Jesus, and one way or another, that cup of cold water, whether it comes from a bottle or not, isn’t for my consumption but for the comfort of the other. HMMMM?

  • Books I often recommend

    Over at Faith and Theology Ben is encouraging one of those meme things. No-one has tagged me, and I don’t know how to tag people anyway (sounds like a web version of a playground game, which we used to call tig!). But it set me asking myself, so what books do I often recommend if people ask about this ‘n that. The list below shows some of the books I’ve recommended to people – though one person’s enthusiasm is another person’s ‘whit’s this a’ aboot’? Still for what it’s worth, each of the books below is one I’ve read a number of times, and still think they are worth anybody’s time.

    Books I Often recommend

    1. Pastoral Theology
    W H Vanstone, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense. This is quite simply the ideal of pastoral experience rendered into theology, earthed in the Incarnation and embedded in the love of God.

    2. Christian Doctrine

    D Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding. This is an elegant, accessible mid range theology, written with a convictional edge but generous in its scope and sympathies.

    3. The Cross

    D J Hall, The Cross in our Context. This theology of the cross, by a too often overlooked theologian, condenses his systematic theology into a more manageable and accessible form. The result is theology from the standpoint of the cross, a reflection on the contemporary scene from the perspective of Calvary. And not a hint of sentimental pietism – a robust exploration of crucified love as it encounters a broken creation.

    4. Poetry

    R. S. Thomas, Collected Poems. This Welsh clergyman poet stands no nonsense. This is undiluted human search, discontent, praise and lament, about how hard it is to find God – and how compellingly essential to persevere in the search.

    5. Novel.

    Anne Tyler, The Patchwork Planet. Not because this is her best (that’s probably either Saint Maybe, or Morgan’s Passing). But because this novel builds around small incidents and observations, and shows how accidental moments can change lives. I also think the central figure who works for a firm called rent-a-back, is an interesting study of what it might mean to ‘by love serve one another’!

    6. Biblical

    Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder. I happen to think that a lot of Peterson’s more recent writing is good but not brilliant, and rehearses stuff he has written better elsewhere and earlier. This collection of theological reflections on worship (published in 1988), with the subtitle, The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination, represents some of the finest biblically literate pastoral writing I know. This is way beyond the pastor’s quick dose of pick-me-up devotional exhortation. This is searching spiritual theology, written with literary skill and a poet’s deep trust in the power of words to generate in the mind, alternative realities.

    Anyway – these are some of my many times recommended books. I’ve bought Vanstone so often I think I keep it in print!! Another way into this would be to ask, which of your books have you lent most….and which ones did you get back!…or which ones wouldn’t you lend?……..MMHMM.

  • Forgetting whose we are….

    I met a friend yesterday who is doing research into Alzheimer’s and the nature of the person. We had an intriguing and all too brief discussion about the theological and psychological interface in exploring the nature of religious experience in those whose capacity to know, and remember, and relate self-consciously to others, have been impaired. In the finest book I know on Alzheimer’s and pastoral theology, David Keck (son of Leander Keck, the NT scholar), talks from the experience of his own mother’s struggle with the illness. The title itself describes the outcome – Forgetting Whose We Are. The issue isn’t only that the person forgets who they are; it is that they forget whose they are, that they belong to God. That is a spiritual bereavement that requires wise, compassionate and theologically responsible caring.

    For reasons personal and pastoral I have long been interested in the human and theological issues surrounding those various conditions that seem to affect a person’s ability to express and experience who they are. This arises largely from pastoral experience of conditions which seem to impair a person’s spiritual responsiveness and awareness of the meaning and presence of others, and of themselves. Does religious experience require  self consciousness, an awareness of what is happening to us? Are spiritual and social experiences of others, and of others in relation to ourselves, and yes of the Other in relation to ourselves, an essential component or dimension of what it means to be a person?

    41fpv28vg7l__aa240_ Pastoral experiences over the years have led to deep and as yet unresolved questions about the connections between the love of God, the nature of personality and the value of the person, and the meaning of the image of God. Also, the difference, both practically and theologically, between someone being a person and their being valued, treated and cherished as a human being. Is the word ‘person’ a theological word at all? Or do we need to recover confidence in more theologically hospitable words such as human, created, image of God, in order to instill in the word ‘person’ the moral and spiritual values that mean we cherish and celebrate human beings in all our glory and brokenness?

    And what about the nature of God as Triune love, and the essential belonging and identity that exists in such a communion of love? I have a deep theological feeling (verging on conviction), that a Trinitarian theology of love in relation, holds important clues as to how we love, value, cherish, care for and protect, those whose condition affects their capacity for affective and relational responsiveness rooted in self-consciousness.

    Saints_2  In other words, a Trinitarian understanding of God as a communion of love, and a Christian anthropology that sees humanity as communal as well as individual, has to underlie much of our reflection on Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other conditions that impair many of the capacities that are often related to our understanding of the person and the human. And perhaps here, as much as anywhere, we can understand the Communion of Saints as that fellowship of supporting love within which, in prayer and loving care, we hold all those unable (so far as we can know), to fully know and respond to that Love which surely holds and cherishes them, and will restore to them who they are as children of God. I love the finger pointing saint (bottom right of the icon) and the figure held in the middle and surrounded by the communion of saints – it is an image of, in Julian of Norwich’s lovely phrase, being ‘enfolded in love’.

    I’m meeting my friend again soon – and we’ll continue the discussion. Meanwhile, I think of several people I know who are now embarked on such difficult journeys – both those who suffer from Alzheimer’s, and those who love them, for who they have been, who they are, and who they will be. And I pray for them…Lord in your mercy……

  • The strange strife of thy peace….

    My prayers, my God, flow from what I am not;

    I think thy answers make me what I am.

    Like weary waves thought follows upon thought,

    But the still depth beneath is all thine own,

    And there thou mov’st in paths to us unknown.

    Out of strange strife thy peace is strangely wrought;

    If the lion in us pray – thou answerest the lamb.

    George MacDonald, 1880.

    Macdonald George MacDonald is one of Scotland’s negelcted treasures. His Scottish novels are written in dialect, often rooted in rural village life. But he was also a Christian of refined and sensitive theological perception. It was his imaginative writings that captured the imagination of C S Lewis. Indeed he was one of several Scottish preacher theologians in process of rediscovering the imagination as an important route for the leading of the Spirit of God. (A B Bruce and Alexander Whyte for example). Macdonald’s Unspoken Sermons, his Diary of an Old Soul, and Collected Poems were important expressions of that growing uneasiness with Westminster Calvinism that seeped through the hardened walls of 19th century Scottish theology. Indeed his resistance to what he saw as hard edged Calvinism eventually led him to ‘the wider hope’, that generous understanding of the Gospel that is often dubbed ‘universalism’. That of course, got him into trouble with the deacons at the church he served in Arundel – they reduced his salary to persuade him to leave!

    The prayer quoted above is an important corrective to that self-confident blurting out of what we want God to do. Macdonald recognises the ambiguities of our asking, the mixed motivation in spiritual search, and the subterranean movements, even collisions, of self concern and divine grace.

  • abysses of purple…wild grey shrouds…and flaming windows

    20089aviewofthevalleyonthewaytoth_3  Writing postcards is a chore – and a gift if it’s done properly. Travel writing, done well, reads like a very long postcard. Here’s an extract from a letter, written to her mother, by a Victorian traveller in the Alps. She is describing the view down the mountain just as an alpine storm is passing. It is one of my favourite quotations from those Victorians who knew how to write – and in the absence of digital technology, captured in words, images which elude even the best photographs .

    Prod_8030 Imagine yourself midway between heaven and earth, the sharp point of rock on which we stood hardly seeming more of earth than if we had been in a balloon, the whole space around, above, and below filled with wild, weird, spectral clouds, driving and whirling in incessant change and with tremendous rapidity; horizon none, but every part of where horizon should be, crowded with unimaginable shapes of unimgined colours, with rifts of every shade of blue, from indigo to pearl, and burning with every tint of fire, from gold to intensest red; shafts of keen light shot down into the abysses of purple, thousands of feet below, enormous surging masses of grey hurled up from beneath, and changing in an instant to glorified brightness of fire as they seemed on the point of swallowing up the shining masses above them; then, all in an instant, a wild grey shroud flung over us, as swiftly passing and leaving us in a blaze of sunshine; then a bursting open of the very heavens, and a vision of what might be celestial heights, pure and still and shining, high above it all; then an instantaneous cleft in another wild cloud, and a revelation of a perfect paradise of golden and rosy slopes and summits; then, quick gleams of white peaks through veilings and unveilings of flying semi-transparent clouds; then, as quickly as the eye could follow, a rim of dazzling light running round the edges of a black castle of cloud, and flaming windows suddenly pierced in it; oh mother dear, I might go on for sheets, for it was never twice the same, nor any single minute the same, in any direction……..

    The writer was Frances Ridley Havergal, a contemporary of another Christian poet who likewise revelled in nature as the theatre of God’s glory:

    The world is charged with the grandeur of God

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;….

  • WHICH BIBLE? We need a WHICH report.

    Browsing innocently in an online bookstore, looking for a copy of the TNIV Bible, I came across two remarkable and disconcerting editions – neither of which appeals!

    TNIV STRIVE.THE BIBLE FOR MEN.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION. European Leather / Mahogany / Acorn

    51rervzmzyl__aa240__2  Strive is designed to help you live out your unique calling as God’s man amid everyday affairs–family, work, friendships, church, personal interests, and finances. These are the things God uses to shape Christ’s character in you, and to demonstrate it through you. This Bible speaks frankly and honestly about what it means to walk with valor in a culture that works against God’s will and ways. Made for real-world use, Strive is down-to-earth and packed with spiritual insights. Features include: 100 "Myths" articles, 50 "Things You Should Know About" profiles, 200 "Downshift" notes, 200 "Knowing God" callouts, 300 "At Issue" notes, Book Introductions, Topical Index and Articles.

    TNIV TRUE IDENTITY BIBLE FOR WOMEN

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

    51byju2bt1tl__aa240_ TNIV – Help for women living in today’s world. Whether you’re starting a new job or a new relationship, whether you’re going back to school, thinking about moving, or facing your first – or fifth pregnancy, TRUE IDENTITY helps you find strength, reassurance and guidance through your relationship with God and His Word. The special features in this Bible are designed to help you nurture a passionate, deeply rooted faith and express that dynamic faith in this world.

    Applying God’s Word to the different and sometimes difficult circumstances of your life, TRUE IDENTITY will help you not only get to know God for who He really is, but yourself as well — who you are and whose you are.

    • 100 Myths – articles describe a commonly believed myth that the world tell you is true, then refutes the lie with the truth of God’s Word
    • 30 "ask me anything" profiles are like one-on-one conversations with the women of the Bible. In an interview format, you’ll discover how each woman dealt with the issues in her life and what advise she’d offer you.
    • 200 "conversations" notes offer questions to reflect on as you read the Bible or talk it over with a friend or mentor.
    • 200 "He is" call outs help you get to know God as He has revealed Himself in the Bible and show how who He is affects who you are.
    • 300 "at issue" notes offer short, relevant teachings on a variety of life topics such as money, sex or pride
    • Book introductions furnish essential background information for each book of the bible, including scannable facts, a central theme to keep in mind and thought provoking questions to consider as you read.
    • Topical index unifies all the features of this Bible so you can find exactly what you’re looking for in an instant.
    • Articles give practical insights on mentoring relationships and how to develop a consistent quiet time.
    • Today’s New International Version: Timeless truths in today’s language.

    .

    The women’s one comes in a softcover version with pink and cream tulips; the men’s in a robust leather combination of mahogany and oak. So what does that tell you about stereotypes? Wish they’d got the covers mixed up! There was also a FAITHGIRLZ version, but I resisted the urge to post it.

    Question: When does a special edition Bible, complete with notes, directions how to read, pre-programmed menus of texts, imported social roles and values, etc,  ——– when does such a Bible cease to be a Bible and become at best an interpretive grid, at worst a propaganda tool, that gets in the way of encountering the biblical text itself?