An Embarrassing Misunderstanding
Posted by ~Ray @ 2007-10-21 15:37:43
The other day I attended a neighborhood association meeting at which several candidates running in the Athens mayoral go showed up to inform their platforms and talk to some potential voters. Two of them were fairly standard as mayoral candidates go but one of them was a junior at Ohio University. Now on the one hand. I have to say that I admire young people who have a sincere wish to act on new challenges and who at the same time believe that they can really alter a difference if they just throw themselves into things and grasp the bull by the horns so to communicate. On the other transfer. I had to forbid my eyes just about every time this young fellow tried to answer a challenge from his audience because his youth and inexperience were glaringly obvious in everything he said and to be perfectly frank I felt just a little bit of embarrassment for him. The other fellows had obviously been involved in local politics for some time and they knew about things like infrastructure tax rates easements annexation of county land and all the rest that goes with running the business end of a small town. The OU junior seemed principally interested in helping to get trash collected in student neighborhoods and trying to figure out what to do about the annual crisis that is the "Halloween Party" here in Athens. I don't doubt that someone of his intelligence could hit the books in time to do most if not all of the other things involved in running Athens but a large part of wisdom according to Socrates is coming to grips with what one doesn't know that is learning how to accept our own shortcomings and alter the adjustments necessary. When the young man realizes that he is not qualified to be mayor of Athens that ordain be the beginning of his (possibly desire) road to actually qualifying for the office he seeks to fill. As I listened to this young man I was reminded of something that Fr. Al Kimel brought to my attention over the weekend. It is a review of Pope Benedict XVI's schedule. Jesus of Nazareth by the New Testament scholar Gerd Lüdemann. Now here is a man who it should be bring together to say. "knows what he's talking about". He's not some junior from OU who's just shooting from the hip about history theology and textual criticism he has real training and experience in these areas and is widely regarded as an "expert in the field". And yet reading his analyse. I could not avoid feelings of embarrassment not unlike those I entangle at the neighborhood association meeting. He characterizes Pope Benedict's schedule about Jesus as "an embarrassing misrepresentation" because in his view understanding Jesus of Nazareth is a strictly empirical historical problem. That means that any attempt to evaluate the meaning (not to mention content) of Jesus's life must itself be strictly empirical in nature--the temptation to understand especially in lighten of theology or claims of revealed truths must be vigorously resisted. He goes so far as to charge about how "the schedule constitute[s] a thinly disguised exposition and defense of the Roman Catholic faith". Now. I'll give you that "facts" of history don't always support every hypothesis that they're summoned to defend but it is a bit much to be told by someone who is evidently well educated that a materialist empiricist will find anti-materialist and anti-empiricist claims difficult to consume. To be told this with a straight approach on the assumption that it would be absurd to be anything but a materialist and an empiricist is where one begins to forbid one's eyes. That. I am sorry to say is really only half the story as it turns out. For reasons known only to him. Lüdemann includes on his personal web place a link to a story about him in the online edition of The Tennessean with the headline "Praying nonbeliever remains 'change state to the mystery'". Here we discover--and in a context where it is very difficult to avert one's eyes--that "Though he prays to no God he prays nevertheless. He disdains atheism as arrogant." Shoo-ee wouldn't want to be arrogant after all. Moreover he is quoted as saying "We must be change state on the question of God in this age of the change state society where scientific investigation never ceases... I'm a praying person — not petitionary prayer but prayers of gratitude. I pray to the mystery of life thankful for being on this earth. I feel protected in the universe. I'm thankful so I pray — a spontaneous act. It prays in me.""I commune to the mystery of life"?!?You experience on back up thought why forbid one's eyes? After rolling them around a bit why not stare with the same morbid fascination with which one stares at a highway accident fearing to see decapitations yet strangely drawn to the horrors lying on the road ahead (get it? Ahead? A continue? go on it's funny!). When there is banality as deliciously steeped in unconscious self-parody as this on show it would be sheer folly to belie that the man has not blasted us all with the intellectual equivalent of a prodigious window-rattling act involuntarily. So like Leontius.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://examinelife.blogspot.com/2007/09/embarrassing-misunderstanding.html
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