Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 September 2008 20:23:00
As my regular readers will know I am a great lover of history, especially military history. My O level & A level history courses covered history from 1919 to 1970 and from 1815 to 1939 respectively. We were about the last generation to be taught about the Victorian style of history - empire and the benefits that an imperial Britain brought to the world.
However that teaching was never really jingoistic. Our teachers were down to earth people who covered history as it should be and made us aware that the triumphalist history of the past was not necessarily correct but that the revisionist history that was beginning to gain ground was also not the full picture either. As always the truth lies within the extremes.
I've also found that my religious beliefs follow the same sort of trends. I do not accept the extremes of the religious right or the more liberal elements of modern teaching. I do not believe that you should interpret Christian teaching in a way that only fits in with your particular view. Religious thought is there to be taken in within the wider context of the Word and not as bitesized chunks.
As I've studied the beginning of my theological course I've noticed that we are encouraged to read the bible in context. Therefore we should not read the books in small pieces but try to read them as a whole and interpret from there. In addition we are encouraged to read several translations from differing points of the spectrum. I have found this useful as I can see the difference in emphasis and style between the various translations. This allows you to make (hopefully) informed interpretations of the passages being studied.
This also helps you in fnding passages for preaching into the wider context of the writer's message. One of the things I've always found annoying is the way that some preachers have taken a passage and built an sermon around it, provided scriptural context for their message and sounded logical in their message. Upon reflection you find that what they have said has been totally out of keeping with the original message that the passage provided.
One of the things that religion, like politics teaches, is that context is everything. Yes, you can bend scripture to mean whatever you want and find texts to support your view. You can also isolate passages to support any thesis that you may wish to make. Therefore we can support calls for the condemnation of homosexuality and others can find passages to offer support of an alternative lifestyle. It doesn't seem to matter that they are misusing passages of scripture to support at=rguments to which they have no relevance.
This studying has shown me, more than ever, that preaching is not to be taken lightly and that we need to be careful, and prayerful, when using scripture in support of our moral stance.
History Today:
1504: Painter, poet and sculptor Michelangelo unveils his 'Statue of David' in Florence. David must have cold when posing for that.
1565: St Augustine, in Florida, is founded as the first Catholic settlement in America by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles. There was no sign of a 6 foot tall rat in residence at this time.
1664: The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam is surrendered to the British. Anyone know what is was renamed 5 years later?
1855: British and French troops capture Sevastopol from the Russians and effectively end the Crimean War. Let that be a warning too you Messers Medvedev & Putin.
1888: The first British serial killer is suspected after the disembowelled body of Annie Chapman is found in Whitechapel. Victim no. 2 of Jack the Ripper.
1944: The first V2 rocket lands on London. It lands in Chiswick and kills 3 people. There is still a gap in the road and a memorial to those who died.
1960: The publishers Penguin are charged with public obsenity for publishing D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover. What would people back then think of some of the things published today?
1966: The first broadcast of the Geeks Greatest Love - Star Trek.
1966: Queen Elizabeth II opens the Severn Bridge linking South Wales with Southwest England. We've been paying the damn thing off ever since.
1974: President Gerald Ford grants former President Tricky Dicky Nixon a pardon for crimes he may have committed while in office, including the attempt to cover-up the Watergate break-in which eventually ended his presidency. American voters didn't forgive him for this at the next election.