What we say, what we mean
Submitted by Forgiven on December 10 2000 05:31:28
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A quote from Ender's Game - which if you haven't read, you've missed a real treat; it's about boys :-) but not problematically, it's mainstream Science Fiction - though in fact that is almost incidental; it's about growing up different and isolated and gets to me emotionally every time I read it. But anyway: He believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made Ender listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise p. 121 We often don't mean what we say. A simple example is the auto response to the question 'how are you' - it is seldom appropriate to say anything significant. Similarly the reality suggested by the phrase 'We must do lunch sometime' is less than meets the eye. Indeed the church is renowned for its unreality; so often the phrases that we use when chatting to people after the service are full of sanctimonious platitude that mean nothing. However this should hardly be a surprise when so much of what is said in services is equally a function of tradition and not actually believed by those speaking it (have you read the Creed recently; if that is not a challenge try the Anthanasian creed, linked below, still supposedly believed by mainstream churches) Yet we live in a culture where what we say is crucial in the law courts; litigation lawyers make their living by extending the meaning of words to what they may logically mean, but which were not intended by the person. As is so often the case we as BLs often live outside this pattern and can offer a critique. In our interactions with boys we have the joy of seeing people who are less constrained by the conventions of saying the 'right' thing; they are far more 'honest' than adults (a feature of childlikeness that Jesus might have been including, but not one that often gets mentioned). As BLs we test the degree of real forgiveness and acceptance to be found in churches..... But it is in our relationship with God and our understanding of that that the issue really emerges, and colours our whole approach to theology. When the Bible promises in the same passage good things for believers and 'eternal' punishment for the evil, we desperately want to separate the two and say it doesn't really mean that about the future suffering - but I'll take the nice bit please....... I hope the above witterings help someone else - or at least someone goes and reads Ender's Game as a result |
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