The Questioning Christian

More Examples of Distortion (or Manufacture) of Stories

For my notes-to-self file:

• Billy Graham in New Orleans:  Here's yet another example how stories can get imaginatively distorted in the blink of an eye.  Apparently an Internet rumor was going around that Billy Graham, speaking at a crusade in New Orleans, suddenly led the crowd out of the building to Bourbon Street, where they ministered to revelers and made hundreds of converts.  It turns out that Billy's son, evangelist Franklin Graham, did indeed lead an event in New Orleans, and Billy did speak at the event, but the part about a mass repentance of Bourbon-Street revelers is a pious urban legend.  (Hat tip: TitusOneNine; I couldn't resist gently needling my traditionalist friends there just a bit about this one.) 

• Barack Obama's Indonesian schooling:   From yesterday's NY Times, here's an example of how stories of questionable origin and -motive can appear seemingly from out of nowhere, spread like wildfire, and sometimes take a long time — or forever — to die out, especially when people have agendas to advance or axes to grind.  To wit:  A Web site claimed that Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign was going to accuse Barack Obama of concealing his attendance at an Islamic religious school when he was 6 years old.  Other news organizations confirmed that the school was a secular public school, but the mere making of the claim "set off a wave of television commentary, talk-radio chatter, official denials, investigations by journalists around the globe and news media self-analysis that has lasted 11 days and counting."  (David D. Kirkpatrick, Feeding Frenzy for a Big Story, Even When It's False, NY Times, Jan. 29, 2007)   I'm sure there are people who will continue to believe this about Obama, because it's something they want to believe.

*  *  *

I imagine I'll have occasion to use these stories (with others cited just below) in conversations with traditionalists who think the Holy Spirit and the early church somehow made sure the New Testament stories were error-free.

Further reading:

• Other examples of story distortion
• Flat-out contradictions in the New Testament stories

Apollo 1's Fatal Errors Helped Put Us On the Moon

It was 40 years ago yesterday that astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1 fire during a plugs-out test on the launch pad.  I'll always remember when I first heard about the fire:  it was on the car radio as my dad was giving me a ride home from a Boy Scout meeting, a few hours after it happened.   Those brave men died because of avoidable human errors, as recounted by former launch-pad technician Stephen B. Clemmons in a recent interview. 

But that's not the end of the story.  It was NASA's identification and correction of those and other errors — the extensive learning derived from that awful experience — that enabled later astronauts to complete the mission instead of themselves dying on the pad or being lost in space.

If the Apollo 1 fire hadn't happened when it did and where it did — if those three astronauts had not died horrible deaths — humanity might still not have reached the moon.  Who knows how the course of history might have been changed.

This is a familiar pattern.  For tens of thousands of years, bad stuff, terrible stuff, has happened, all too often of our own doing.  But somehow, using our gifts of memory, reason, and skill, we manage to collectively learn from our mistakes.  Gradually, stumblingly, in fits and starts, we make things better than they were before.  On a regular basis, this melancholy mixture of evil and learning leads to progress. 

Thus we play our bit parts in the ongoing creation of the universe.

Requiescat in pacem, Grisson, White, and Chaffee.

*  *  *

Here's an excerpt from the Clemmons interview; emphasis is mine.

[Interviewer:]  In your opinion, would we have successfully reached the moon had Apollo 1 not occurred?

[Stephen Clemmons:]  No, because there were too many things wrong, both with the spacecraft and NASA operations, which were discovered during the investigation of the fire. There were fatal errors, most hidden from view that would have surfaced if we had continued. It's very possible that we would have had a catastrophe on the ground, possibly the destruction of the Saturn V with many deaths or we could have left men on the moon and in orbit.

 UPDATE:  Great minds think alike:  Jeff Nolan at Venture Chronicles did a similar post within minutes of this one.

Maybe we're giving the Gospel too much credit

Many Christians, not just traditionalists but liberals too, have testified to the power of the Gospel to transform individuals' and families' lives.  It's a wonderful thing when such a transformation happens. 

But traditionalists often claim that the fact of such transformations establishes the truth of their various add-on doctrines — the Incarnation, the Atonement, and so on. 

There are at least two things wrong with their thesis.

First:  All sorts of different religious beliefs and practices have positively transformed lives.  We don't understand how it happens.  We can say that such transformations are by no means unique to the Christian Gospel, let alone the traditionalist version of it.

Second:  The Gospel transforms the lives of only some of those who hear it. We don’t understand why that is, either.  It’s reminiscent of how doctors used to treat common peptic ulcers with diet changes.  Sometimes that worked, but no one knew why. Now we do know that common peptic ulcers are caused by bacteria, and sometimes diet changes can alter the stomach environment enough to inhibit bacterial growth.  (Of course, we also know now that it's usually more effective to just administer an inexpensive antibiotic.)

These two things make it hard to accept the traditionalists' claim:  that the Gospel's transformation of some lives is evidence of the truth of their particular spin on it.

Meme tag: Three questions about 'false teaching'

In a discussion yesterday over at TitusOneNine, a commenter made a remark about so-called false teaching in the Episcopal Church.  I responded that it'd be a useful exercise for all of us to answer the following questions, as though we were answering an essay question in an exam.  My own tentative answers are interpolated.

QUESTION 1-A. Please explain what truth criteria you personally use to determine whether a particular teaching is ‘false.’

DCT response:  My principal truth criterion dates back to Deuteronomy 18.18-22:  "If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken."   

In other words, what matters most is what actually happens in the real world that God wrought, as best as we can discern it, not merely what we mortals conceive has happened or will happen.

That's not to say that a given idea is necessarily false just because it can't be proved to be immutably true.   

But the Deuteronomy truth criterion does mean that our assertions about 'truth' can never be more than provisional.  They must always be subject to reexamination as more evidence is revealed to us. 

For thousands of years, humans thought the sun traveled around the earth.  Back then, that 'mental model' fit the available observations just fine.  As more astronomical evidence was revealed to us, it was no shame for us to reexamine and adjust the mental model accordingly.

QUESTION 1-B. Please ‘drill down’ as necessary — for example, if you regard a particular authority as one of your stated truth criteria, please explain why that authority is entitled to such status. 

DCT response:  I like the Deuteronomy truth criterion because historically it seems to have produced more reliable results than any other.  We see that truth criterion at work in 'critical realism,' manifested most visibly in the scientific method and the evidentiary rules of the law.   

The Deuteronomy truth criterion enjoins on us a core discipline of facing the facts — that is, adjusting our mental models to fit our observations of the real world, instead of the other way around.

QUESTION 2. Please explain whether you think the title of ‘catholic Christian’ is reserved for those who adopt the criteria you set out, and if so, why.

DCT response:  No, I don't think that.  The title 'Christian' is available to all who practice the Great Commandment and Summary of the Law, no matter what religious beliefs they happen to hold.  An observant Jew, a devout Hindu, a charitable Muslim — all could claim the title if they wished.  As far as the 'catholic' part goes, I don't ascribe a lot of value to catholicity.

Maybe this should be a meme tag (which I've never tried playing before)?  Father Gawain, Topmost Apple, Preludium, Father Jake, Mad Priest, Kendall Harmon — what say you?

Where to read about Anglican Communion goings-on

I'm not posting a lot these days, for a couple of reasons.  One, I'm busy working on a business start-up.  (Stay tuned.)  Two, I decided some time ago that I wasn't going to focus here on the factional fighting in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion, because I don't want this blog to evolve, one post at a time, into an attack blog with a negative 'feel' to it.

There are plenty of places to get news and commentary about the Anglican Communion kerfuffle, for example:

• TitusOneNine, a traditionalist blog with intense, often muddle-headed, but generally-civilized comments.  Its host, the Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon, must not have a day job, either that or he doesn't sleep, because his blog is THE place to go to find out what's going on (I'm fairly sure his 'elves' help him out on that).  UPDATE:  Kendall explains here how he manages to be such a prolific poster;
• Father Jake's Place, a 'reexaminer' blog where the liberal commenters are sometimes as intense as the traditionalist ones at T19;
• Preludium, where the Rev. Mark Harris does insightful, well-written analysis from a reexaminer perspective;
• The Mad Priest, for a bizzarely-English and often wickedly-funny perspective.

A Congregation Dies, Generously

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via TitusOneNine):

Midfield First Baptist Church, which had dwindled to about 40 mostly elderly, white worshippers, recently held its last service in the church building it had called home for nearly 50 years.

A week later, it handed over the keys — and its $1.8 million property — to a predominantly black Baptist church called New Beginnings in a property giveaway that gives new meaning to the church's name.

"Somebody came up with the idea: Why don't we just give them the building?" said the Rev. Eugene Nail, 78, pastor of Midfield First Baptist since 2000. "It was built with tithes and offerings, and it's the Lord's building anyway."

As one church dies away and another is born, Nail called it an "old ending and a new beginning."

"We're going to turn it over to them —- the church and everything in it," Nail said.

A T19 commenter remarked, " 'Somebody' stayed pretty anonymous and let the Lord have the glory."

Houston Grand Opera has no hold music

It's one of life's little ironies, I suppose.  I'm on hold trying to order tickets for Aïda at the Houston Grand Opera.  (Their on-line ordering site doesn't seem to work.) They have no hold music, just silence punctuated by an occasional 'please continue to hold' announcement.

Tuskeegee airmen's legend mutated in the retelling

I'm catching up on paperwork and found a note from December to add an item to the Stories-Can-Mutate collection.  From the Washington Post:  "A bomber pilot from World War II says he was shot down while being escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, an account that supports a recent report by two historians that the famed black fighter group, contrary to legend, did lose at least a few bombers to fire from enemy aircraft."    Bob Johnson, Ex-Pilot Confirms Bomber Loss — Flier Shot Down in 1944 Was Escorted by Tuskegee Airmen, Washington Post, Sun., Dec. 17, 2006, p. A18 (emphasis added).

The report drew almost immediate criticism for 'revisionism' of the legend that the Tuskeegee Airmen never lost a bomber that they were escorting.  It takes nothing away from the airmen's heroism, however, to acknowledge that stories do indeed mutate. 

(And the controversy itself illustrates how people can be wedded to what they want to be the truth, which is not always the same as what the truth really is.)

Act Now: Get Your Inflatable Lawn Ornament for Every Month of the Year! (Not)

My wife M. and I just got back from the dog's early-morning walk.  We noticed one house that still had its Christmas wreaths up.  Another still had its outdoor lights lit. 

"At least the Santa and Frosty and Hannukah Bear inflatable lawn ornaments are gone," I said.  We'd been seeing those scars on the landscape since Halloween.

"Next thing you know, there'll be one for every month of the year," M. said.  We laughed about some of the possibilities that came to mind, such as a thermometer for August (our fellow Texans will know what we're talking about).

"Gee, then you could permanently install the equipment on the lawn, like a sprinkler system," I said, tongue deeply in cheek.

Sin: We've Got a Long Way to Go in Understanding It, Let Alone in 'Treating' It

This morning I got into a discussion about sin with a commenter at TitusOneNine.  Here's an edited version of what I said.

As to 'sin,' certainly we're all sinners in that we all make 'bad choices.'  But we understand very little about why and how we make any choices at all, bad or good.  

Traditional Christian models of 'sin' don't offer us much insight here.  And when it comes to the acid test, that of combating sin (let alone all but wiping it out as we have, say, polio), traditionalist sin models have an uneven track record, to put it politely.

Combating sin with prescriptions derived from traditionalist models is analogous to the way doctors used to treat peptic ulcers with diet changes and stress reduction. In the case of peptic ulcers, sometimes the treatment worked, sometimes it didn't.  The trouble was, doctors could never reliably predict which it would be for a given patient.  When the treatment did work, they didn't understand why, because they didn't understand how and why people got peptic ulcers in the first place. 

It's much the same with the traditionalist 'treatment' for sin.  By this I mean the usual prescription of accepting Jesus into your heart, believing that he was God incarnate who died for our sins, and so on.  Sometimes the treatment works, but very often it doesn't.  We can't reliably predict which it will be for a given sinner.  And when the treatment does work, we don't understand why, because we don't understand how and why people make the choices they do.

In the case of peptic ulcers, doctors eventually figured out that most common peptic ulcers are caused by a particular type of bacteria, Helicobacter pylori.  The standard treatment is now an inexpensive course of antibiotics. 

In the analogous case of sin, we've got a lot of work to do to reach that level of understanding.   I would venture that many nonbelievers and doubters instinctively understand this, and for that reason (among others), exclusivist claims about Jesus strike them as foolish nonsense.  This certainly doesn't help our efforts to bring such people to God.