In “Figures of Speech“, Quinn introduces 60 different figures of speech, citing several examples of each. This little book is a virtual bestiary of many of my favorite lines from Yeats, Shakespeare, the Bible, and other sources. Over the years, I’ve read and memorized extensively, and I know what I like, but I’ve never in my life taken a college-level literature course. It was exciting to see that all of these different techniques have names and can be correlated across sources. Since reading this book, my mind has been flooded with examples Quinn didn’t cite, explaining so many lines of poetry I found beautiful but couldn’t say why. For example, the parallels are obvious between Blake and Shakespeare here:

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

and:

Tell me where is fancy bred?
Or in the heart or in the head

But before reading this book, I never would have thought to articulate the parallel. Of course, poetry is about much more than figures of speech, but this was an enjoyable and illuminating book.

While reading the book, I found myself re-evaluating my attitudes about the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. As a child, most of the verses I memorized were KJV, but I’ve since switched to New International Version (NIV), and memorized several Psalms in NIV. Quinn cites beautiful passages from KJV, many of which I remember from childhood. But when I looked them up in NIV I was surprised to find that many had lost the very figures of speech which made them beautiful. The ugly starts right at the beginning of the Bible. Compare KJV:

the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

with NIV:

the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

How many times have I read my NIV and not noticed this? Many other examples of figures of speech present in KJV are lost in NIV, and upon further reflection, it makes sense. KJV attempts to be more literal, word-for-word, while NIV attempts to express the semantic meaning in natural English. To be sure, the editors of NIV were able to preserve a fraction of the figures of speech present in the Hebrew and Greek, but it appears that many were lost.

C. S. Lewis once speculated that Ecclesiastes might not be inspired, and I’ve always intended to write an essay defending Ecclesiastes. This post from Unk both defends Ecclesiastes and underscores the beauty of the figures of speech in KJV. Unk quotes Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 (KJV, NIV) and says:

It is one of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture, in terms of the poetic quality of the language, at least in the King James Version—about that season of life.

Who can disagree? The NIV version is beautiful, but the fidelity of KJV more beautiful still. Yeats’ poem “When You are Old” is one of my favorite depictions of this season, but is a pale shadow of Ecclesiastes 12 in KJV, and apes the same figures of speech. Shall we assume that Yeats was not speaking of Ecclesiastes 12, and the creator who is Love, who moved upon the face of the waters?

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead,
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

I think I have made a mistake in choosing a translation for the children. If I were starting over, I would insist on teaching children first with KJV, just as I have insisted on Shakespeare in the original English.

The decision to raise children atheist is typically couched as noble desire to give the children “freedom of choice”. Even people who are nominally spiritual, pay a great deal of lip service to “allowing the child to choose” (meaning, “shielding him from Christianity”), as this current discussion amongst homeschoolers attests. I think that all of this discussion about “freedom of choice” is terribly misleading.

If we really believe something, we tell our kids, and we explain why we believe it. Nobody says, “I choose to follow a path that believes in gravity, but I don’t tell my kids to avoid cliffs, since I want them to make up their own minds when they’re old enough.” We indoctrinate our kids with all sorts of beliefs about personal responsibility, financial responsibility, commitment to education, and so on. You teach your son that Mommy and Daddy love him. Some of these lessons are objectively defensible, some are more subjective, but educating a child means indoctrinating him.

If you’re holding off from teaching your kids something, it might just mean that you don’t really believe it. That’s what I think is going on with many of the responses on the homeschooling thread. People today often use “faith” as a part of their projected identity. Their “belief” is something they wear like clothes to signal something about themselves. If you choose faith like you choose clothes, you’ll want your children to do the same.

On the other hand, if you really believe something important, you’ll indoctrinate your kids. It’s your job. Part of your indoctrination may be to tell him that Christians are brainwashed, if you really believe that. In the case of many atheists, I think they really do believe it, and they simply don’t want their kids to become Christians. So this claim that “I don’t want to indoctrinate my kids” is a cop-out.

And either way, I think it’s also a cop-out to say that it’s about “letting the child decide”. No amount of indoctrination can stop a child from making his own choice when he is “old enough”. Young adults frequently throw aside all of their best training. Atheists become Christians, Christians become atheists, and young adults enter risky careers, pick up bad habits, and adopt poor financial strategies. Children sometimes decide that Mommy and Daddy never really loved them. You don’t mitigate this risk by pretending to have no beliefs. You mitigate the risk by being clear about what you believe, and why.

Interestingly, the evidence shows that this phenomenon started right when black separatism began to take hold. Prior to Malcolm X and the Black Panthers, black educational achievement was lauded by other blacks. As separatism took hold, educational achievement soon became identified with “being white”. In my experience, this antipathy towards education was not official, since children I knew of committed “Nation of Islam” (Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan’s organization) members would often be high achievers. Unfortunately, the separatism was interpreted by the common man as an antipathy towards intellectual achievement.

In reading Bobby Seale’s “A Lonely Rage” many years ago, I was struck by the parallels to American Fundamentalist separatism. But the leaders of Young Earth Creationism are even more damnable than the leaders of Nation of Islam, IMO. They officially preach an anti-intellectual and anti-science agenda, and smear anyone who dares to attain scientific achievement. If you study evolutionary biology, geology, or astrophysics, you are a traitor to fundamentalism, and guilty of trying to “act scientific”. Considering that fundamentalism began it’s existence in a commitment to Scottish Common Sense Realism and Baconian empiricism, the current climate is especially tragic. Separatism becomes idolatry, and when this idolatry is officially endorsed by the leaders, it is shameful indeed.

Since I wasn’t there when the earth was created, and since I lack the discernment to perceive the “geology” section in my Bible, I don’t tend to argue about these things.  I also know people who claim that Neil Armstrong never set foot on the moon (it was all staged in Hollywood).  I think they are a bit silly, like the Young Earth Creationists.  But I wasn’t there when the moon landing happened, and neither were they, so I don’t waste my time arguing with them.

Strangely, though, there are some within Christian fundamentalism who want to use Young Earth Creationism as a litmus test.  If you do not profess belief in a certain geological age for the earth, you should be considered to be opposed to fundamental Christian truth, and subject to separation, secondary separation, and militantly opposed by all true Christian fundamentalists.

Since such a litmus test has never been used historically by Christianity, these people feel it necessary to justify themselves.  Why is a specific geological age for the earth a “fundamental” truth?  The answer is – get this – “Conceding that YEC may be wrong would irreparably erode Biblical authority”.

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Do these people not see the implications of such a statement?  If you believe that the Bible has no authority except when science aligns with it completely, you are an atheist already!  By making God’s revealed word subordinate to a relatively inconsequential field of materialist science such as geology, these litmus testers make God’s word inconsequential.  As if the authority of God’s word derives from empirical testing of raw atoms – could professed atheists come up with a more sublime blasphemy?  What a staggering lack of faith, ironically masquerading as belief!

I suppose that we might one day find that they are right, and that the Bible was, indeed, a tome about geology.  In that case, the Young Earth Creationists will be kings of all geology: heirs to the matchless prize of power over dirt and rocks.  In the meantime, however, these contrived disagreements between Biblical eisegesis and modern carbon dating do not diminish the timeless lessons of the Bible one single bit.

Look at what happens when you let these crazy religious fanatics take over government!  Next thing you know, you’ll be in a concentration camp facing genocide!

However, the truth is precisely the opposite.  The arrests in Egypt were conducted by the secular government, and those arrested were members of the fundamentalist Islamic party who seek to influence the upcoming elections.  The secular Egyptian government has stated that they conducted these arrests to “simulate” what it would be like if the fundamentalists took over, to educate the people in advance of the elections.

In other words, the pro-Western secular powers are religiously persecuting fundamentalist Muslims, and the Christians are opportunistically seizing upon this to claim that fundamentalist Muslims are bad.  This would be exactly the same as if the Obama administration were to arrest and imprison members of Westboro Baptist Church (the “God Hates Fags” guy), as a way of “simulating” what it would be like if the Baptists took over government.

As much as we disagree with fundamentalist Muslims, or with the Westboro Baptist Folks, this is not the way to combat them.  By seizing on lies and deceit, Christians cheapen and diminish themselves.  The idea that Christians would use these arrests to smear Islam is disgusting and reprehensible, and does not help Christianity.

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The arrests were conducted by the secular Mubarak government, against members of the world’s largest and oldest Islamist group, al-ikhwān al-muslimūn, or “The Muslim Brotherhood”.  To understand the significance of this, you need to understand a little bit of history.  Mubarak became president when Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists associated with the Muslim Brotherhood (in fact, the fatwah against Sadat was issued by none other than Omar Abdel-Rahman, who is currently in prison for the first World Trade Center bombing).  To say the least, Mubarak’s pro-Western, secular government is not a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The antagonism between Egypt’s secular government and Muslim Brotherhood is not new.  The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928, in Egypt, by an Islamic fundamentalist preacher named Hasan-al-Banna.  Al-Banna’s goal was to evict the colonial and secular powers who controlled Egypt at the time.  The Muslim Brotherhood has never held political power, and has been outlawed periodically and persecuted by secular authorities throughout its existence.  In 1948 (after the partition of Palestine), Egypt’s secular prime minister, Mahmoud Fahmi an-Nukrashi Pasha was assassinated by Muslim Brotherhood.  In retaliation, Hassan-al-Banna was assassinated by the secular forces shortly after.

Given this acrimonious history, it should be no surprise to find the secular Egyptian government taking action against the Muslim Brotherhood; especially before an election.  What should be a surprise, though, is that people parrot the accusations that “those mean Islamists are persecuting secularists in Egypt!”

When I first began reading his posts (like this one) about organizations with mysterious names like “Emergence” and “Northland International Overarching Entity”, I assumed the author was fictionalizing real-world entities to “protect the guilty”, and I enjoyed his posts purely in that spirit.  I even googled “Northland International Overarching Entity” and got no matches, so I assumed that the name was chosen to have the literary flair like “The Institute at Braxton” in C. S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength”, while being a stand-in for an unnamed real-world institution.  Little did I imagine that “Emergence” and “Northland International” were real names!

It turns out that reality is more bizarre than fiction!  Upon further research, I find that the topic of this post is quite relevant to something that has weighed on my mind recently.

You see, my brother recently pointed me to the web site of a church that forbids the use of electric guitars – and most other modern instruments.  Experience has taught me that different churches have different norms and preferences about worship music, but it never occurred to me that such differences would be rationalized as being THE WILL OF GOD.  How foolish I was!  This particular church explains, “Psalm 150 refers to a large list of instruments that we are commanded to use in praising the Lord.”  As idolatrous and unprecedented as it would be to claim that Psalm 150 commands you to use specific instruments in all worship services, the pastor is not satisfied with such innovation – he wants to read Psalm 150 as a law that prohibits the instruments not listed!

Mosaic law has grown to constitute 613 (recently 620) Mitzvot, or laws.  The 613 are comprised of 248 mitzvot aseh, things you must do, and 365 mitvot to la’aseh, things you are prohibited from doing (the 248 and 365 mirror the number of limbs in the body, and the number of days in a year, respectively).  Curiously, the mitzvot to la’aseh have never included prohibitions on non-Psalm 150 musical instruments.

The very premise seems ignorant and idolatrous to me.  Neither Jesus nor any of the Jews of antiquity believed that the Mosaic law prohibited use of instruments not mentioned in Psalm 150.  There is no historical precedent for such a wild claim.  Never in the history of Judaism or Christianity have Psalms actually constituted LAW.  The Psalms are hymns!  There is something very ironic about someone taking an ancient hymn and acting as if it dictates immutable law prohibiting modern hymns.  One imagines future generations throwing apostates in prison for violating precepts of “Amazing Grace”.

To be sure, I support the role of pastors to set rules for their congregants, and I believe that obedience to pastors is one way that congregants express obedience and love of God.  This is what Matthew 16:19 is saying, isn’t it?  As an example, my current church’s worship team regularly use electric guitars, but I would still attend the church if my pastor decided that electric guitars are prohibited at this church.  I would consider this prohibition to be a local norm or preference, and not some universal scriptural law or WILL OF GOD that applies to all Christendom,  but I would still consider it profitable for spiritual growth to obey.

If my pastor insisted on turning his own bizarre interpretation of Psalms into universal law, I might begin praying about how to rebuke this idolatry, “speaking truth in love”, and failing a change, start looking for a different church.  Thankfully, it’s purely an academic exercise for me.

The relevance to the Remonstrans post being discussed is highlighted in a comment from Unk, the proprietor of the blog named Unknowing.  Unk, like Dissidens, is a genius, and is in fact the reason that I discovered Remonstrans.  Unk points to “Evangelist Ken Lynch”, who apparently makes a career of being holier than you by using only musical instruments that adhere to the WILL OF GOD.  You, too, can bring Ken Lynch to your church and learn how to be holier than the dirty rabble in the other churches!

Apparently, these are not purely academic exercises confined to some random Michigan church found on the Internet.  Apparently these issues are cropping up in real churches attended by real people.  And apparently there is a relationship to some sort of nationwide “fundamentalist movement”.  Individual pastors doing wacky things, I can understand – we all do wacky things at times.  A national “movement” imposing wackiness broadly on churches?  That’s something I hadn’t considered.

The whole discussion raises more questions than answers for me.  But I do know idolatry when I see it, and I know that church leadership should not be imposing idolatry on congregants.