St. Paul’s rules for bloggers
August 10, 2012, 10:56 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
The latest scholarship indicates that St. Paul was concerned about the character of many of the so-called conversations in the blogosphere when he wrote these words, which serve as the second reading for this Sunday’s liturgy:
Brothers and sisters:
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,
with which you were sealed for the day of redemption.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
So be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love,
as Christ loved us and handed himself over for us
as a sacrificial offering to God for a fragrant aroma.
When I was young, there was a book lying around my parent’s house “The Imitation of Christ”. The passage me reminded me of it, so I just ordered a copy from Amazon.
No “fragrant aroma” in the French, which is just as well it’s one of many ambiguities in this short segment. The troublesome “in Christ” comes up again, of course, but even if it is part of the hearer’s prior knowledge, many problems still remain:
- who’s grieving, the brothers and sisters or the H.S.? (as in: “We grieved the death of our mother”, or as in: “The death of our mother grieved us”?)
- “as” as in “resembling” (“quiet as a mouse”) or as in “by virtue of being” (“my authority as the king”) or as in “because” (“as he was not sure of the strength of his cards, he decided to pass”)? Many occurrences of “as” in short succession guarantee, I think, that the meaning will be foggy for the unprepared listener.
- how is “for a fragrant aroma” attached to the rest of the sentence? As in “in exchange for a fragrant aroma”, or “an offering resulting in a fragrant aroma”, or what?
What a mess! I suppose that it shouldn’t be a big deal because the gist is clear, but how annoying, at least for me, when I have to jump through the hoops of those syntactic puzzles. Good thing there are other translations I can consult (and have consulted) to resolve those ambiguities. But it is silly to waste my time studying the text at that level.
For that reason, I dislike that reading of the lectionary.
There are other passages we could use that send a different message…Jesus himself was apparently not terribly fond of following this sort of tack when dealing with religious “powers.” Wonder what HIS blogging would have looked like?
Blind guides…whitewashed tombs…recalcitrant brats who never like the tune…hypocrites…who will save you from damnation???, etc.
I don’t think so Janet. Blogging is in a way addressed to the whole world. When Jesus spoke to crowds, he did not use his air time to vituperate against the hypocrisy of so-and-so. He had better things to talk about.
Claire: the whole world might read it, but it is clearly not addressed to all who do. And I find it hard to believe that Jesus’s followers—-who then went on to tell the world—were never privy to his rage against the powers that were harming the Judaism of his time.
There is a time for every purpose under heaven…being guilted into “niceness” is one of the reasons we are in the pickle we are. And it’s a hallmark of dysfunction when the dynamic in the relationship is persistenly that of domination/subordination. Sometimes justice requires charity to be “tough love.”
I think Jesus would have blogged the Sermon on the Mount
I hope Jesus saw this blog today and the picture of a bunch of old rings worn by his brides.
These worn out, humble rings signify a sister’s union to Christ as bride. The rings bear the inscription “IHS,” a Greek monogram for the name of Jesus Christ.
I still don’t think so Janet (I agree with Irene). It is the people who wanted popular Jesus to be their king and go into politics. Jesus himself had no interest in politics, nor in government, nor in the politics of religion. He was only interested in the people he met, and in teaching for all generations to come. He was not interested in arguing with the Pharisees if those tried to set traps for him: he wanted to convert people, not to win arguments, and usually fell silent when confronted with bad faith. The only time when he is recorded as having gotten enraged was in the presence of things preventing the people around him from getting into the temple. He was always in the here and now, fully engaged in interacting with his immediate environment, extraordinarily interested in one-on-one contact with random people, but never scheming, never strategizing, never preoccupied by the evil happening behind his back or in the office of the high priest. I bet he didn’t even talk about the mean Pharisees if he could avoid it. When he was not conversing with whoever happened to be there near him, his only other mode of being was retiring to pray the Father. So he was always busy either tending to people’s needs and trying to direct them towards God, or keeping in contact with God the Father. In his life there was no room for politics, not even ecclesiastical politics. That’s why it was so hard to condemn him after his arrest: they could find nothing wrong with him, because he was utterly uninterested in power, even power for the sake of justice.
At least that’s how I imagine him as a person. I think that he would refuse to give voting advice even if people asked him.
I hereby implore all men to keep out of this and let the women have the run of the conversation, as they have until this wish on my part.
Claire: The one occasion when Jesus was tested as to his political views, he declined to answer: “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” But I didn’t mean this thread to be about politics….
Sorry, Claire, but I find your picture of Jesus a bit flat and not quite reflective of what we actually see him do in the Gospels. And I think NT Wright is entirely RIGHT (and in synch with many other scholars of the NT): in the time of Jesus, all religion was political and vice versa. This is not to say that Jesus would fit any of our political categories or that he would give voting advice (!), but he was no mealy-mouth and he most certainly did/said more than a few things about the abuse of power vs what you suggest. Any imaginations about Jesus have to start with what’s already there. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t take ME to task for being fresh or sarcastic, etc., but I do not necessarily think he would, in every circumstance, simply say, “Now let’s all just get along…” And as other NT scholars have pointed out, it was expressly characteristic of first-century Judaism that fights among different factions could be very fierce indeed, without necessarily being unloving. I think it’s a mistake to equate anger and criticism with lack of charity per se. And keeping at persistent injustice with expressions of sadness, outrage or whatever, should not necessarily be equated with scheming or being preoccupied with evil or wrongdoing. Maybe try imagining that the shenanigans of the Church Institutional are actually quite similar to what you say enraged Jesus: the hierarchs are, indeed, preventing people from finding their way to God or are driving away those who are seeking, as was the case with the religio-politicians of Jesus’ time. If this is not true for you, I am glad. But it is true for countless others, and a little bit of the Lord’s own fiery hatred of this could be an act of charity on their behalf.
On a slightly different note: I recommend highly “The Gospel of John,” a film I absolutely expected to hate but ended up being very moved by. It is a word-for-word presentation of John, and the central performance by Henry Ian Cusick is breathtaking. I was amazed to see such a grounded, passionate Jesus—not at all the lovey-dovey dreamer who had little or nothing critical to say to the religious authorities of his time. It really is quite good for what it is. I will never read/hear John the same way again. And there’s nothing added as far as text or action, so it’s about as “pure” an interpretation you are likely to find.
Joe: Jimmy Mac said you have to stay out!!!
Just kidding…I didn’t think your intitiation of this thread was about politics, either. I thought it was a chastening so we would be nicer.
Claire, one more thing: I am not sure it was “so hard” to condemn Jesus; as a matter of fact, what seemed to be a purely “religious” charge (even though there was actually no such thing) was easily tweaked into a full-blown charge of sedition within a matter of hours, and Pilate caved easily enough when threatened with losing his standing with Tiberias, his utterly “political” boss (though he was the stepson of the “divine Augustus”). You simply cannot disentangle the political and the religious in the story of Jesus, regardless of what his own goals were as far as his own kingship, etc. He didn’t sidestep politics because he couldn’t. The cross, in fact, is at the very least a sign of that, whether we like it or not (and of course for us believers it is so much more..)
Another film—-also highly recommended but very different from “The Gospel of John” is the BBC TV production of “The Passion.” Also highly moving and especially interesting in the nsight it lends to the religio-political situation Jesus found himself in—the tense relationship between Rome and the Temple crowd (who were largely Sadducees, not Pharisees), the mutual suspicion and the uneasy “respect” that allowed some semblance of stability in the potentially volatile pressure cooker of first-century Judaea. The only Jesus film I have seen hat apparently gets this very right.
All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling
must be removed from you, along with all malice.
And be kind to one another, compassionate,
forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.
This is great advice. Paul was speaking about life in the Spirit, which goes quite a bit beyond “being nice”; in fact, I believe that in order to actually live this way, one has to rely upon the indwelling Spirit of God, because our own resources aren’t equal to it.
As far as blogging goes, the number of people who give it up for Lent suggests that not a few find it to be an occasion of sin! ;) But there are other ways to blog, and not every blog has to be a debating society much less a food fight or an exercise in one-upsmanship.
Still, it’s worth noting that one can practice civility and yet not be compassionate or forgiving, only polite. I hear St. Paul calling us to a higher standard, and for this I am grateful.
Rita ==
And then there are those “smiling, damned’ villains”.
Except on the Cross, did Jesus ever shout?
“Except on the Cross, did Jesus ever shout?”
When He chased out the moneychangers, I imagine He raised his voice a little.
He did make that problematic comment about it not being right to give the children’s food to the dog. (but even God can have a Very Bad Day, which makes it a little less daunting to try and imitate him).
did jesus ever shout? are we kidding?
the context of paul in these “advice to bloggers” (???!) passages surely count for something. how mad do you think he was when he called the galatians stupid and bewitched?
and when jesus called the clerics of his day “the children of the devil,” do you think the accompanying gesture was a hug?
so much goes into why and how people express themselves, too. ethnicity, personality, intelligence, age, upbringing, etc. these passages are not one size fits all.
proof texting has always been the bane of catholic scripture reading…
Ann,
Why do you ask if Jesus ever shouted?
The two occasions recorded in scripture that spring to mind for me are Matthew 27:46, on the cross as you said, and in the raising of Lazarus, John 11:43.
Irene, I looked at the passage on the cleansing of the temple, and surprisingly it doesn’t seem to suggest he was shouting, so I’m with you. “Raised his voice a little” is a reasonable construction but it’s not made explicit. When I read the “woes” passages in Matthew and Luke, I also can’t imagine them delivered in a soft voice.
Another type of passage is a bit more puzzling. I am not sure what to make of John 12:44ff, in which the evangelist says “Jesus cried out and said…” and then he delivers something of a lecture, the whole style of which seems completely unlike anything one would “cry out.” In a similar way, John says Jesus “cried out as he was teaching” (John 7:28-29). Does John mean Jesus raised his voice for emphasis, as a teacher or preacher might do? Is this different from shouting? There is such a thing as a parade ground voice, projecting loudly so as to be heard outdoors or to a large assembly, which is actually different from shouting. “Cried out” may be a stylistic convention in the text?
Where is Alan Mitchell when you need him?
Janet, I don’t see any proof texting going on in this thread, so I am not sure who you are scolding or warning off here.
I think taking a passage out of context and applying it wholesale to something like blogging could be a form of proof-texting…
seems to me that there is a lot of pretzelly stuff going on here to avoid saying that Jesus ever got angry. seriously: he used a whip to cleanse the temple; i doubt the scene was very graceful or gentle. Seems to me that jesus experienced every human emotion and was spot-on (sinless) in each and every expression. he wasn’t crucified for being a nice, unoffensive mealy-mouth, but instead was perceived as a real threat to the status quo and so was executed for that very reason. that doesn’t apply to us sinners, but it also doesn’t imply that the espression of some emotions are off-limits to us and/or are inherently sinful.
correction: “…that the expression of some emotions IS off-limits…”
:)
Really: check out “The Gospel of John” to get a sense of how Jesus MIGHT have behaved in his angrier moments. Nothing added—it’s John only, word-for-word. So you’ll get the cleansing of the Temple in one of the first parts since it comes quite early in John. Excerpts on You Tube…
Try this link…cleansing scene starts @ 6:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgutdgkD6tc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Good advice to bloggers, indeed, this passage. And to the rest of us, of course. But perhaps especially to those in charge of the dark side of presidential campaigning, particularly those who deal with super-pacs. And yes, I mean both of our major parties.
Here’s another: a triple-play! you get the heart-rending tenderness toward the woman caught in adultery, a fierce one-on-one with the clergy, and then a wild confrontation with a whole bunch of folks, led by the clerics, who resist the message…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uSCRKe4RX8&feature=youtube_gdata_player
OK, two more and then I’ll stop…the very end of the first link below, with the scene continued at the very beginning of the second link..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT_kBqB0zRc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL81RmPUNUQ&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Enjoy! The film certainly has its flaws, but Cusick is amazing. Such a joyful, passionate Jesus who likes who he is and enjoys his mission. From this portrayal it is very easy to understand why people either loved or hated him.
Also helpful would be a sense of humor, appartently necessary to be able to tell when someone is writing with tongue in cheek. Or does Floribunda have to return?
And often the humor doesn’t come across so well…bloggers are under the same burden as emailers: sometimes things read/sound exactly opposite of the way they are intended. That’s probably where Paul could legitimately encourage a little forebearance…
CORRECTION: FORBERANCE!!!
:)
UGH (I hate the iPad): FORBEARANCE!!!!
Rita –
I ask about His possible “shouting” because my image of Him is of someone who is supremely patient. He obviously got angry at times, but I have no image of Him yelling at people in anger, though maybe He did in the Temple. In other words, He never seems to “lose it”, except maybe on the Cross. Or was that a terrible lamentation? Or. . . or. . .
Would Jesus’ yelling at people in anger constitute sin?
He is like us in ALL things but sin…can one be angry, express anger and not sin? Can we match that up with the Jesus of the Gospels?
I don’t get why this human emotion in Jesus, including its expression, is so problematic. It isn’t for me at all.
and what about God’s wrath? can we allow that Jesus sometimes embodied this in a human way when necessary?
the Jesus who never gets angry or expresses anger sounds more like Confucius or Buddha. Good psychological techniques and lots of spiritual wisdom there, but not quite the whole picture. certainly not the Incarnate one.
There is such a thing as righteous anger, so there shouldn’t be a problem.
But how did this thread move from exhortations to us to reflection on Jesus? So we don’t have to face difficult challenges, maybe?
It became a reflection on Jesus for me because I see his behavior as slightly different from the passage quoted that started the thread…I just don’t think we can take stuff out of context and then use it as an exhortation that covers, for example, what we do here when we blog. That doesn’t mean it’s not OK to exhort each other, but I also think it’s completely legit to be angry and to express that anger when it comes to some of the stuff that’s happening in our church today. I look to Jesus, not Paul, as the possible model for this. So I started it and then others took it up. I wasn’t intentionally trying to redirect the thread, but there you are.
Then again, how can an extended reflection on Jesus be a bad thing? :)
If I had thought about it at the time, my post of yesterday at 1:39 PM would have been where I wanted the discussion to go—is there room for tough love and how do we express it without feeling guilty, or should we feel guilty because there is no such thing as virtutous tough love? Not that I felt I was directing the conversation or should be directing it, but that’s where my mind was at the time…i had no idea we would be delving into christology (though as i said before, that can never be harmful in my view).
and if there is such a thing as righteous anger, why can’t it be welcome in the blogosphere, Paul’s exhortation notwithstanding?
anyway, that’s where i am coming from.
Janet –
I agree that righteous anger can be a problem and for a number of reasons. We should have a thread or two on it.
Hi, Ann…I don’t necessarily think that righteous anger IS a problem. Doesn’t mean one cannot go wrong with it, but I see it in Jesus so I know that it is not inherently sinful. Really depends on the context, the intention, etc. And I think that sometimes lack of anger can be a sign of deep repression or cowardice and is not necessarily virtuous at all.
But as I have been chastised for (unintentionally) turning this thread into a reflection on Jesus, I am not the one to start any new ones!! :)