Issues

Issues are an interesting thing.  When I say "issues" I am talking about the internal/psychological struggles that everyone seems to go through at some time in their life.  These can range from small, short term struggles to deep, even neurotic, debilitating psychoses.  The thoughts that are plaguing me in this regard are "how"?
When we do a wide, brief survey of modern man, we see a wide range of people.  Rich, poor, beautiful, ugly, talented, awkward, gifted, average, educated and ignorant.  But all of these have issues, some more, some less and most in people that one would not expect.  The great modern lie of America is that having lots of money, power, fame and external beauty will make one happy.  But it simply does not work that way. In all honesty, it seems that the wealthier or powerful one becomes, the more issues surface.
In my semi educated, semi informed opinion, the foundation for all of this is family.  I would argue that the more solid and loving a family in which one grows up, the higher quality of life one will have.  A loving family will provide for the basic needs of life, will instill a sense of value, will provide a healthy self esteem and will provide a sense of importance of loving others.
If one does not have a stable, loving childhood, these things will not have been instilled and the person will have to find these things later in life, which, without a solid foundation, is increasingly difficult and will possibly lead to wrong choices and later issues.

They call me.... Tim?

All humor aside (as well as references to Monty Python), the concept of naming is a powerful one.  Essentially, to name something is to show authority over it.  This is why God named Adam and Eve, why Adam named all of the animals and why Adam and Eve named their children. When God called Abram out of Ur, he renamed him Abraham.  When God called Jacob and sent him, he re-named him Israel.  From a biblical perspective, we can see what naming is doing.
But this leads me to another thought.  When we look at the world today, or at least the world of 150 years ago, civilized people had "Christian" names.  When someone of a non-European culture came into contact with Europeans and embraced the culture, they often took a "Christian" name, because having a name connects one to the foundation of that culture.
We are seeing the reverse taking place in our culture today.  As America and other European countries move away from Christian foundations, the names that are being embraced is following suit.  We are seeing an influx of non-Christian names, that is, names that do not come from a Christian culture.  The names that are taken or given are communicating a cultural foundation, or at least a deliberate move away from a Christian one.
This is not to argue that people with names from traditionally non-Christian cultures cannot be Christian. The Christian faith is not about any one particular culture or race.  Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for all men, not just white Europeans.
As a closing note, it is interesting that when someone is baptized into the Eastern Orthodox church, they are given a new name, the name of a saint, someone recognized as being particularly holy.  This is a great connection to have and to regularly bring to mind.

Translation and meaning

I am currently reading a text dedicated to Thomas Lambdin, a pioneer in translating ancient Semitic texts.  As I have been reading the various articles, dedicated to various aspects of translation, linguistics and philology, an interesting thought has come to mind. 
One of the main responsibilities of the translator is to communicate meaning to the reader.  The challenge is to take the words, from a different language, and find an equivalent meaning in the reader's language, that will communicate what the author intended.  One of the biggest areas of struggle is that of culture.  When the translator is attempting to communicate the author's original intent, the presumption is made that he actually understands the author.  But this is probably too great of an assumption.
Consider just how broad a field of understanding is included in the author of any age or of any culture.  There is the language itself, the culture in which the language has developed, the idioms, figures of speech, slang, etc. that the author, even unconsciously, intimately understands, which the translator does not, in fact, cannot.  Serious, long term work must be done, on the part of the translator, to get himself to a position in which he genuinely understands from where the author is coming.  This means massive work in history, language, culture, to name a few categories.
It was at this point that an interesting perspective came to mind.  One can see how massive an undertaking it is to adequately translate an ancient text, simply on the grounds of the multiple fields of knowledge.  But consider a different approach.  The level of work required for someone of the second century to translate something from the first century is actually quite minimal, especially if the author and the translator are from the same culture.
Now reproduce this work multiple times.  B translates A, and then C translates B, and then D translates C, etc, etc. 
My point is this.  The Protestant world has put huge time and effort to create fresh, new, academic translations of the Bible and then from these translations have sought to understand Jesus, the apostles, and the first century Church in new ways.
But this falls into the problems of the multi-generational translator.  What if instead, as the Orthodox church has done, we allow the natural progression of tradition, handed down A to B to C to D, to direct our understanding of apostolic faith? 
In short, I am suggesting that many have erred in trying to reach back too far and have over-extended human capabilities, in trying to create new, fresh understanding.  Instead, we should rely upon the tradition of the church, as it has held, protected, taught and passed down its beliefs and practices since the first century.

Sin

Every person, every community, every situation has its sins.  This somewhat falls into the “grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” category.  We can live in a particular context and seeing the sin therein be disgruntled and desire after something else.  Seeing the sin and being grieved by it, is a good response. But in doing so, we must realize that all situations and persons after afflicted by sin.  We cannot escape it.  While it is true that some sins are more or less grievous than others (on both a personal level and a corporate level), the sin is still there and is still problematic.

Wisdom requires that we respond rightly to the sin that is in us and surrounds us.  There is something very right about fleeing from the potential influence of sin.  But we should never use the sin of others (either individuals or community) to justify our own sin.

Again, it’s about love for God and love for neighbor.  Our response to sin must be motivated by love.

Run away?

In the fourth century, in the face of cultural depravity and religious mediocrity, many Christians fled to the desert, embracing monasticism as a way to draw closer to God. This was their response to a horribly sinful culture.  In addition to cultural sin, was the popularization of Christianity.  A good thing? Not necessarily.  With popularization, came a watering down and simplification of the faith. Quite quickly, it became quite easy and safe to be a Christian.
What is our response to essentially the same set of circumstances? I'm afraid that we have embraced the wave of ease, to the point of not even recognizing it.
Any thoughts?

Words, in English

I came to a rather disconcerting and disappointing realization this evening.  We were driving home and my nine year old son asked my wife why she cut her hair.  She replied that she didn't, but instead had the lady at the parlor cut it.
She misunderstood his question. 
It then occurred to me.  One sentence can be spoken, with an emphasis put upon different words, and the question contained therein can have multiple different meanings. 
One can say,  "Why did you cut your hair?" with an emphasis upon "you", asking why YOU did it. Or with an emphasis upon "cut", asking why you "cut" it. Or with an emphasis upon "did", asking for the motivation behind cutting it.
This realization really bothers me, for it reveals a serious inadequacy in the English language.  Our vocabulary and grammar are far too flexible in allowing this sort of ambiguity.  We cannot simply rely on words to communicate.  We must rely on inflection and tone to sufficiently pass our meaning.
Either that or we must genuinely master our vocabulary and grammar, perfectly choosing just the right words.
Unfortunately, our culture is going in exactly the wrong direction.  We are moving away from literary articulation, actually reverting back to an image based culture, like Egypt and hieroglyphs. If you disagree, stop and look at your computer desktop.  It contains a high majority of little pictures, called icons. Unfortunately not the religious kind.
I've been working toward verbal articulation, for years now.  And just now I've figured out a justification for doing so.