Pilgrim Notes

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Thoughts on Interpreting the Text (Modernism)

A friend of mine recently asked me the following question:

If so, I’d like to discuss modern vs. postmodern readings of scripture. And more to the point, I’d like for you to unpack your approach–can I say interpretive paradigm–for reading scripture. Here, I’d like to understand more clearly a) your handling of exegetical (original meaning) and existential (current meaning) horizons to a given text and b) what resources you might direct me toward that you feel best articulate and or model your preferred approach.

I like questions like this because it gives me a chance to put my ignorance to work. Instead of limiting it to one conversation, I thought I’d spread my ignorance around on a few other brave souls and glory in the half-articulations of thought.

Attempting to discuss any interpretive paradigm is fraught with risks much like boldly proclaiming the decision “not to vote” in a culture of passionate partisans. Since I like to fall flat on my face, I’ll take the risk and hopefully avoid wrecking anyone’s faith along the way. Now I might be clear that articulating an interpretive paradigm and using an interpretive paradigm are two different things. I will attempt to write about my understanding and approach to reading the text, but odds are I may clean up a much messier mind that responds to the text in ways that I have yet to grasp.

As I look over the modern landscape, I can help but noticing a rows and rows of identical houses, identical shopping centers, and lots of ipod-clad people shouting about their “individuality!” Modernism boldly steps into the void of metaphysical meanderings and declares a “clear plan” to solve the world’s problems through scientific discipline, clear thinking, and a battery of lawyers.

I’m grateful for this modern arrogance as I sit in the coffee shop, typing on my laptop and enjoying music piped in from somewhere over the rainbow. Way to go moderns! I love my luxuries!

Off the top of my head (and certainly not from the depths of research), I’ll a venture a few thoughts on modern approaches to the text. Moderns forced us to think seriously about the historical claims of the text. Of course, their own lack of deep historical resources resulted a many wrong-headed claims about the fool hardiness of the text that are finally beginning to subside. Modernism inflicted a critical distrust upon the text (and upon everything else). While criticism can be helpful, distrust can lead to the inability to believe anything (sounds a bit like post-modernism to me).

Moderns were on a plan to save the world from ignorance (and faith and hope and love). Taking their cue from the warring medieval lords, moderns exchanged guns for ideas and set about on a conquest (or dare I say crusade) to relieve the infidels of their blinding ignorance. Thus in addition to a critical distrust of any metaphysical idea, moderns also brought an imperialistic fervency that rejected disagreement with fierce ideological torment. Unlike their cruel medieval counterparts, moderns did not torture a few heretics in the courts of inquisition, rather they tried an entire class of people in the halls of academia, determining that ignorant people were heretical and a danger to the future of the world.

The poor common man who actually still believed the text and considered the supernatural an integral part of his natural life was consigned to the galleys of mental slaves with virtually no hope for his redemption.

Over time, the modern “enlightenment project” tended to flatten the text (insert Bible) from a robust, multi-layered and multi-voiced story to a series of principles extracted from a dangerous mix of contradictions and limitations. Thankfully, these few principles could be extracted and put in a course on “Morals for a better world” and in hundreds of congressional regulations.

Don’t let my comments betray me. I do believe the modernist project brought some good. It continued and refined the project that the medievals began of getting the text into the hands of the people, helping increase literacy in every culture where it appeared. Of course, once the people finally got the text, the moderns reminded them to quit reading it because they couldn’t really trust it.

Modernism has enriched us with a critical eye that helps us in some ways think more clearly about historical problems and historical contexts. This along with the improving of translations, the ready availability of texts in many languages, the practical/applied approach to Scripture all have a place and have enriched us, and for that I am grateful.

Okay, I’ll stop here and take up some more mis-informed thoughts on post-modernism before I finally lay out my own ideas on reading and responding to the text.

Bob Dylan – Series of Dreams

October 11, 2008 / dougfloyd / 2 Comments

While my wife delivers a late night training session, I sit here in the hospital lobby listening to Bob Dylan’s recent release Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol 8. After listening to most of the album, I get stuck on the song Series of Dreams.

I can’t move on but listen over and over and over. When songs like this impact me, I am always asking myself, “Why?” Not sure I can explain, but here are thoughts echoing through my head. The rhythm is relentless forcefully driving the melody forward. The lyrics and the melody are repetitive, interacting with the dramatic tension of the drums to arrest my attention–much like some of the surf songs in the mid-60s. With minor variations in the melody at the end, Dylan brings a limited resolve to the tension, but it is incomplete.

For me, this tension highlights the spoken/sung lyrics that paint a series of pictures about unresolved tension within dreams. In these dreams, “time and tempo fly” as the dreamer is left running, climbing, and witnessing troubled scenes.

“And there’s no exit in any direction, ‘cept the one you can’t see with you eyes.”

In the middle of the song, Dylan offers this one line of transcendent hope. And I am reminded that in the middle of this life of struggle and doubt and fear and pain, hope may be the one real thing penetrating the illusions that so often pervade my thoughts. Oddly enough, as I’ve been listening to this tune over and over, I’ve also been reading St. Paul’s discussion of Abraham’s hope beyond hope.

The future was hopeless. Yet Abraham persisted in trusting the promise of God’s goodness. In this hope that endures the dark nightmares of failure, the future shines out with the surprise of love.

iPhone – the Mini Movie Theatre

October 6, 2008 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

Jeremy shows an easy way to turn your place ride into a mini-movie theatre, using an iPhone and a magazine.

Practical Ideas for Social Computing

October 6, 2008 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

Last spring I made a presentation at the Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Summit about practical ideas for retailers in the social space. Looks like a quick summary of the presentation made it to their blog today. Thanks!

By naming the presentation “practical” I hoped to convey the idea of learning by practice. The best way to enter the social commerce space is not by reading books, blogs, and the latest banter online. It is simply to do it. We learn much more by doing than by thinking about doing.

G.K. Chesterton once said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” What?

His inverted aphorism was written to turn conventional expectation on its head by pointing out the value of acting and not simply watching others act. We jump into the middle of fray. We make mistakes. We learn. We perfect. We get better.

Einstein follows a similar appeal by suggesting, “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.” While I am a great believer in market testing, I think we may sometimes drown in data while we could actually be throwing a lifeline to a drowning person. Knowledge and charts and graphs and profiles and ideas are not enough.

So enjoy the Bazaarvoice summary, but hopefully you also be willing to step out and trying some things. Who knows? You might even discover something the gurus haven’t stumbled on yet, and you might just create the future.

Electing Not To Vote

October 1, 2008 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

My friend Charles Strohmer respond to a recent Chuck Colson editorial by suggesting that some Christians may see it as their sacred duty “not” to vote.

Does Voting Really Matter Anyway?

September 6, 2008 / dougfloyd / 4 Comments

Here are a few more thoughts about voting as conversation.

Some thinkers like Jacques Ellul posited that voting may actually be harmful because it is a political illusion that helps reinforce the existing power structures. While I appreciate many of the thoughts of Christian anarchists, I still believe voting plays an important role in the culture.

But may not in the way we think it does.

When I listen to individuals speak, it seems like every election they think that if only the right person gets in office that everything will be corrected. Yet on a gut level they must know that this is simply not true. Some people will complain about entrenched power structures in Washington, and start another round of “throw the bums out.”

But like Eric Hoffer anticipates, soon you have another group of bums.

One problem is that while voting is a force for change, it is not the magical power of instant change. Voting is part of the conversation of change, and it is one way that we participate in the conversation. But laws alone (even if they all were passed by an administration) do not change a culture overnight.

Change is slow.

150 years ago, the Federal government amended to Constitution to secure voting rights for all nationalities including the freed slaves. And 88 years ago the Federal government amended the Constitution yet again to secure voting rights for women. And finally, after this next election we will have either a black man or a white woman in the White House.

Change takes time.

Voting and writing and politicking and even arguing are part of the process that changes culture. But change is not instant. And just because I disagree with someone doesn’t make me smarter than them. Smart and passionate people can disagree about how to change our culture. Every disagreement is not the beginning of a war.

While I am interested in politics, I rarely talk about it our culture because I find so few people who are willing to actually try and see a different position their own. They are so certain they are right, that anyone is disagrees seems virtually damnable.

My brother suggests that political argument are like two kids arguing about whose dad is bigger. I would add that it also seem like football fans ready to right over the outcome of a game that has little to do with their real lives. This is misplaced passion.

Change is about negotiation. The beauty of democracy is our freedom to self-govern. The ugliness of democracy is our freedom to self-govern. This means we can’t execute everyone who is wrong (that is everyone from part X or everyone who supports position x).

I believe this undisciplined passion is a sign of the loss of true, cultivated rhetoric. Would that we all would learn to articulate our ideas instead of repeating the latest spin from our “side.”

An articulate word can potentially do more to effect change than a war, thus fulfilling the dictum, “the pen is mightier than the sword.”

There’s a time to argue, there’s a time to comprise and there’s a time to fight.

But if every election and every issue is a time to fight (verbally if not physically), we may lose our ability to know when it really is time to fight. If I compare every political foe to Hitler, then what happens when the real Hitler shows up. At that point, my words will seem like empty chaff.

So as I think about politics and voting, I encourage people to speak about and vote your passion. But also be willing and ready to listen. It’s okay to be undecided sometimes. We all know a lot less than we think we do.

Be wiling to put down your fists, and quiet your disrespectful comments to those who disagree. Be willing to wait for change.

Then we might actually be a force for change. Then we might actually learn to live our ideas. Then we might actually discover valuable compromises that address the real issues even more effectively.

Then we might actually be able to recognize those “once in a lifetime” moments when it is time to fight, when it is time to say the imperative “No!” The Quakers taught me that consensus works because people learn that “NO” is so powerful, you learn to use it wisely and rarely.

Then we might be ready to lay down our lives for a better future and follow in the path of so many who were willing to die to create the future.

The way of politics as conversation is slower, more challenging, requires more discipline and may even make us feel and look like failures. But it also is way to move beyond the temporary need of ego to always castigate, and work for true and lasting change that can potentially create a better future.

Politics as National Conversation

September 4, 2008 / dougfloyd / 4 Comments

I’m trying to articulate something in my head and this is a poor first stab. Argue with me if you like, it might help me.

In spite of the differences that seem to characterize our national politics, I would suggest that we are more alike than different. Politics is a bit like a long, slow conversation across space and time. It is part of a larger cultural conversation that helps define and shape the future.

I didn’t watch both conventions this year, but I usually do. If you can silence your emotions temporarily, I think you might be amazed by the similarity in both parties and both conventions. From the heights of dramatic oratory to the depths of attack politics, there are always striking similarities. They both are talking from the same narrative.

This a narrative that gives both parties speaking points. Parties make focus upon different themes, develop different plotlines and seem to say different things, but actually I think they are limited by the constraints of a meta-narrative that exists within our national consciousness.

Just like any conversation, this national conversation requires give and take, listening and speaking. Since we’re not a fascist state, you can’t just stuff a sock in someone’s mouth if you don’t like what their saying. I wonder if we realized how similar we are and how slow change takes (decades if not centuries), that we might play a role in the conversation without throwing a tantrum when our dreams of reformation are not realized overnight like Jack’s beanstalk.

This is a terrible simplification that needs more work, but here are some essential elements in the American narrative that may or may not show up in the narrative of another nation: religion, the future, nature/ecology/land, peace/war/violence, national/individual identity

Religion – Robert Bellah has suggested that the religion in America is the worship of the individual. Whether Christian, Atheist, Buddhist or more, American are deep individualists. In fact, so deep we can barely grasp the consciousness of other culture who do not revolve around the individual.

Within this context, I would suggest that Christianity has played a dominant role in the national conversation. But in a very different way than Europe. Historian Mark Noll suggests that American Christianity has always been a populist movement whereas in Europe it was a classicist movement.

There is a fascinating tension in the role of Christianity/religion between the public and private sphere, which is very different than other nations. Americans are never really sure what role religion is allowed to play. We fear any one group ruling and defining religion for everyone else since the individual is enshrined as our true divine.

Strangely, even our atheists seem exalt the individual to a virtual divine position. Even our atheism looks a bit religious. I’ve read some European atheists refer to English and American atheists as “Christian atheists.” Where else do those who believe in a god and those who believe in a “no god” feel the pressing need to make our “declaration of faith.”

Future – Americans love to talk about the future and change. Listen to any speak from virtually any point, and you’ll see that Americans are always “building bridges to the future.”

Natural World – I think that Americans have been trying to negotiate the role of the natural world in our narrative for at least 100 hundred years, starting with Teddy Roosevelt. We spent the 20th century trying to move the narrative beyond the narrative constraints of the Industrial revolution.

We still may not agree on particulars but I think the 21st century will redefine our narrative relation with nature that is beyond the Industrial revolution.

Peace/War/Violence – Americans like to think we’re pacifists, but trust me we’re not. We’re a violent nation. Even our peace activists are violent. A conversation on war is part of a much larger conversation on violence/war/peace.

Identity – There are other parts of the narrative, but these stand out at the moment. I think all the issues mentioned also fall under the category of identity. Instead of appealing to an ancient, racial and/or historical identity, we are the “high plains drifter” who comes to the rescues. I think the cult of heroism underlies many of the policies for both the conservatives and liberals. But I also think Americans are continually trying to figure who we are. We try on one culture and then another.

Dreaming

August 28, 2008 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

My mind wanders.

I remember it quietly wandering off during the sing-song rhythm of the speaker’s voice. And that was last Sunday. As a child, my imagination moved so easily between dreaming that my teacher’s and parent’s might say, “Come on Dougie, keep up with us.”

One day while walking with my family at a shopping center, I soon began to drift and dream. My body kept moving as my eyes followed the legs in front of me moving back and forth, back and forth. A few steps into Gimbels and I realized that I was following the wrong set of legs.

After a short panic, my parents arrived in the store and found me. They had walked into another store, but I was drifting off elsewhere and just kept following whoever was walking in front of me.

As I drifted, I was dreaming in “what ifs.” What if I could walk through that glass? What if I could climb up in the church’s rafters and fly from beam to beam? My imagination would ask a question and soon my reason was working alongside my imagination to construct whatever dreamy world I created.

The human imagination can ask all sorts of fantastic questions, and the human reason can build a logical though self-contained world from that question. Lewis Carroll asked, “What if you could walk through a mirror, and enter into another world?” Then he wrote “Through the Looking Glass” to answer that question.

Both “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are imaginative worlds that Lewis Carroll created with the richness of his imaginations and the precision of his logic. You see, these fantasy worlds were not illogical. They were perfectly logical. In fact, Lewis Carroll was not primarily a children’s author, but a logician.

He applied his logical mind to building these imaginative worlds. Each chapter in “Through the Looking Glass” is a move on a chess board. And yet, the story is not physically real.

This is both the gift and the danger of the mind. Reason working alongside imagination can answer all sorts of questions, but the answer may or may not be true. In addition to my dreamy magical worlds of walking through walls and flying in the rafters, I asked other questions like “What if I am kidnapped?” “What if there’s a ghost in the basement?” Or “What if my parents are raptured and I am left behind?”

The same imagination that brought such delight also filled me with terror. Because once my imagination set the question in motion, I began looking for clues as to why that might be true. A sound in the basement and a flash of light suddenly grows into a terrifying goblin living beneath us.

The gift of reasonable minds and active imaginations have helped us discover news worlds, land on the moon, write amazing literature, and find cures to diseases. But the same gift can also lead to terror and fear and evil worlds like terrorism and fascism and racism. Left unchecked, the mind will draw from its rich resources to churn out perfectly reasonable answers. But these reasonable answers may be wrong and even be disastrous upon my power to think

Our minds may ask questions like “What if there is no God?” “Or what if God is evil?” If I start with the idea that God is absent, a mere phantom, then my mind and imagination will work outward from the supposition to find reasonable assurance that I am right. While we all may face doubts at times, if we continually apply our skills of reason and imagination to doubt, then we will end up where we start–in doubt. The starting point of reason makes all the difference.

C.S. Lewis once suggested that a man who doesn’t believe in miracles will not be convinced of miracles because he sees one. His mind will build a case as to why he didn’t see a miracle at all. So while the mind is an amazing gift for processing, imagining and rationalizing, it fails in the initial act of discovery.

The human relationship with God is built on trusting God’s faithfulness in both the seen and the unseen. In one sense, this relationship is similar to human relationships that require trust as a fundamental starting point. Think of a husband and wife.Trust allows them freedom to rest in their shared love without the need for constant reaffirmation.

In this trusting relationship, the presence of the beloved brings a sense of peace and joy. While dramatic gestures of love may reaffirm presence, there are many steady, quiet affirmations through little actions. A shared conversation. A quiet walk.

Presence for me is often found in the gentle touching of one foot brushing up against the other’s foot during a night of sleep. This quiet assurance brings peace and a reminder that my love is there. A trust in the covenant faithfulness of my spouse allows me to rest in her presence and away from her presence. But that trust can be damaged. If the imagination begins to ask, “What if my spouse is unfaithful?” The mind can easily begin to question every action, every word.

This leads to fear of the unseen. For as soon as the spouse is not present the imagination begins reeling. Where are they headed? What are they doing? The mind requires constant reassurance of the spouse’s faithfulness. This is why we guard the trust our spouse puts in us. Once lost it so difficult to regain.

This is also why the Psalmist writes again and again and again about trusting the Lord instead trusting the arm of the flesh. As our trust grows more and more in my reason and the reasonableness of the world around me, the power of “what ifs” can begin to plague me. Like a jealous spouse, I begin discovering clues everywhere that reinforce the absence of God.

This dark hole of doubting chokes and smothers the joy of the soul. We need signs and constant reassurance that God is there. “Why can’t He just appear and take away my doubts?” But he is inviting me to trust in His covenant faithfulness—both seen and unseen.

And like a foot poking across the bed, His Word pokes across the space between heaven and earth. Again and again and again, He quietly calms my souls in the gentle intimacy of His Word. The Psalmist reminds me of how prone I am to trust in the unfaithfulness of my own mind—which can easily create fictions upon fictions.

Thus I am reminded to trust in something, someone outside myself. Ultimately, this trust is a gift. When I trust in the Word and trust in the Lord of the Word, I come to realize that I have been given a precious gift. I can use that gift to dream like a newlywed uses the gift of their new love to dream. They imagine a life together. They dream of children and home and a life of new possibilities. I can approach the Word as a dream. And wrap my open mind around the words and stories contained within.

I can learn to dream fantastic dreams like the prophet Ezekiel. This strange man ended up in exile in Babylon. Everything he saw around him suggested that the God of Israel was defeated by the gods of Babylon. In the midst of a crushing empire that dominated other nations by power and oppression, Ezekiel trusts the Lord. Thus his “what ifs” wrap around the faithfulness of God.

With an imagination immersed the commandments of the Lord, the covenant of the Lord, and the promises of the Lord, He begins to dream. And in the land of exile, he dreams of returning home and rebuilding the temple. He dreams of a stream flowing from that temple that will bring healing to all nations. His dream rooted in relational trust gave energy and hope to the exiled Jews. They joined in his dreams. And eventually, his dreams led them home.

That was over 2,000 years ago. The great and mighty Babylonian gods have long faded from sight. But the dreams of Ezekiel still inspire. In his dreams, we hear the God of Israel still speaking, encouraging, and challenging us.

So I’m kinda glad my mind wanders. By God’s grace, I want to let it wander in the garden of His Word. I want to dream even more dreams and not simply dreams of flying through the rafters and walking through glass. But dreams of justice and peace and kindness and love.

By God’s grace may the stories and songs of Scripture come alive in our imagination. And may we dream the dreams of God.

It's All Over Now Baby Blue

August 27, 2008 / dougfloyd / 0 Comments

While I’m working on business KPIs and online marketing, I listen to the Grateful Dead belt out Dylan’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.”

Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore.
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

I feel a bit foolish as tears fill my eyes and a deep ache fills my heart because something, someone “calls for me.”I don’t always understand what makes me cry so easily. One minute I in the midst of promotions and products and schedules, and the next moment, I’ve slipped over into a thin place.

This joyful pain seems out of place in the cold light of fluorescent rows, staring down on endless cubicles of people pounding out metrics on laptop machines. And yet, the voice still calls.

Beneath our engines of enterprise and above our monuments of marketing, the still small voice is wooing, drawing and stirring us to love. Maybe the match I strike does not burn up this material world around me. Maybe instead I leave the cold, relation-less sterility of business behind, and remember once again that I am a lover and called to love and embody love in the midst of every place–whether lush green valley or a cynderblock room of cubicles.

David and Goliath, St. George and the Garden of Eden

August 25, 2008 / dougfloyd / 1 Comment

When Goliath challenges Israel, King Saul and the people shrink back in fear (1 Samuel 17:11). Saul’s fear betrays his loss of true authority. He stands head and shoulders above all Israelites, yet he cannot protect his people from the giants in the land.

Goliath stands before Israel clad in “scales of armor.” Peter Leithart emphasize the allusion between Goliath’s scales and the serpent in the garden. Goliath threatens Israel, the beloved, just as the serpent threatened Eve in the garden.

Adam failed his test in the garden, allowing the serpent to attack Eve and not coming to her defense. The image is repeated again her. King Saul, like Adam, is helpless before the threat.

David appears as God’s chosen King. He stands before the serpent and kills it in the name of the Lord. Then what does he do? He cuts off the head. The wicked authority is overthrown, which sends the wicked army into chaos.

As I think about that story and look at the St. George and the dragon icon on my desk, I realize that the St. George story is simply a retelling of the Garden of Eden story yet again. George fights the wicked dragon that threatens the city and rescues the maiden from the dragon’s grasp.

These stories paint a picture of what the true king does. The king and the land are one. He does not act for his own glory, his own power, his own pleasure. He lays down his life to defend the bride, the beloved, from the dragon.

Jesus fulfills this Adamic commission completely, thus He is the true King, the true Adam, the true Messiah. He fights the dragon, lays down his life, and crushes the head of the serpent with His heal. This act of total love does not fail. The Father vindicates the Son on the day of Resurrection by the power of the Spirit.

This pattern of the king laying down his life for the beloved gives us a model of true authority–be it in the home, the business, the church or even the government. Unfortunately, most of us are used to seeing Sauls rule the land. These Sauls are not true shepherds, thus they plunder the beloved.

Think of the CEOs that get rich while their company (and the people in the company) suffer and bleed. These men are not true leaders, but hirelings. Jesus says to the faithful servants, “You were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things.”

Part of this faithfulness includes the willingness to lay down our lives, our reputations, our livelihood for those we lead. Whether it is a father with his family, a manager with her employees, a pastor with his church
or whatever the position of authority.

True authority is revealed in the boldness of David to lay down his life on behalf of the beloved. May the Spirit of Christ raise us up and reveal his true kingly rule and authority in and through us.

Reflections along the way.