What the snoop would say

Sam Gosling wrote a book last year on what a person’s living space says about their personality. The book is call “Snoop.” Without giving a review of the work, I’ll take an interesting aspect from the book and sleep on it.

I slept, and when I woke this is what came to mind.

The idea is that we have two spaces in our home, the public space and the private. In the typical American home, there is the bedroom and the living room, the former being private and the latter being public. Do a quick run through of each space in your home, think about what’s on the walls, which books you have in each space, what kinds of things you keep in each space, and think about your spiritual life. What do you see?

My bedroom has nearly all clues to me being religious at all. One wall is covered with icons, handwritten prayers and Scripture passages, and other objects of devotion that inspire a rich inner life. If you step outside my room, there are far fewer clues. From the way I set up my living space, I am fairly private with much of my spirituality.

How about the inverse of that? Imagine a bedroom with almost no signs of devotion or religiosity, but in the living room there are oodles of paintings, crosses on the walls, bibles with gold ribbons laced through them, etc. Many of us have been in homes like this, but do you ever wonder if it’s the same in the private places of that home? What does it say about a person that has a spirituality that is exclusively public?

It’s easy to criticize both, their flaws are glaring, but think about this: if you had to have your spiritual life in either your public space or your private space, with no sign in the other, which would you choose? Why is that, and what does it say about your life with God?

I don’t think the answer is balance.

Before we talk about papal infallibility.....

A few years ago I went to a once-a-semester meeting where students can come and ask a priest any question they want with the hope that one of them might stump him. An event aptly named “Stump the Priest.” I went and after some of the questioning, the priest made the comment that it seems like Protestants are given a list of questions that Catholics apparently can’t answer, a kind of to-do list of objections for us. One big one that comes up a lot, and is in fact most ridiculed, is the pope.

Whatever he says we have to hold as infallible, and we believe he cannot sin, right?

Not true.

One thing I’ve learned that needs to happen before any apology of the authority of the pope occurs is a conversation about what a bishop is. If a person doesn’t have bishops in her denomination, then they have at least two issues with the pope.

The office of the bishop occurs in Scripture as “overseer” or “episcopate”, and Paul even gives a description of the ideal bishop in 1 Tim. 3. Oh yeah, bishops are biblical too. From what I know anyone who is congregationalist wouldn’t have bishops, Baptists wouldn’t either, which I think count as congregationalist. It’s better to start with denominations that do. If you’re Catholic, United Methodist, Anglican, Orthodox, or Lutheran you have them. Otherwise no.

From the start, early in the second century, Irenaeus argued the authority of the bishops as successors to the apostles in their teaching. Back then they could say this guy was taught by a guy who was taught by one of the apostles, and if that isn’t authoritative, we have another discussion on our hands.

As far as what their purpose is in the church, bishops serve two big roles in the Catholic Church:

They preserve the teaching of the apostles. As successors to them through their being ordained a bishop, they teach and carry on orthodox theology. This is where the pope’s infallibility and role as teacher comes in. He’s just the bishop of bishops, as established by the hierarchy of the church.

The second role is that of administrator or shepherd to the people. They have all the functions of a presbyter (priest), yet are set above them to manage, exhort, and teach them. One bishop to a diocese unless they ask for more auxiliary ones, like what's happening in Dallas right now. We have two to help with Bishop Kevin Farrell.

What about cardinals? Another kind of bishop, they’re different in being set under the pope, his cabinet in a sense.

This revelation I found helpful in establishing a diplomatic discussion of the purpose and value of the pope, while working in the role of the bishop. I mean, that’s all he is, just another shepherd ordained to serve the people in a long line that stretches nearly two thousand years to those who walked with Christ in the flesh. No biggie.

The Warning of Fairy Tales

About a year ago I woke up with the idea that I wanted to be a writer, propelling me into several sessions of letting my brain out of its cage, or at least part of it, and seeing where it goes. One quick and obvious place it went was fairy tales.

I’ve loved them since a child, and whatever event that triggers the end of a child’s interest that so many go through skipped me and I kept loving them. They’ve always been some of the most interesting and stimulating stories I’ve read, which is why I wanted to write them.

On the surface they may seem “easy” or “simple” because of the language or the nanny-like style in which they’re told, but they can have an impact on the imagination unlike anything in literature.

Notice I haven’t said a word about social commentary or political protests within the stories, which is what I found when I wanted to read English professors talk about them. “These stories are really about the woman’s struggle with.....” and they would go on to explain how woman are subjugated in the stories, or power passes between people in such and such way.

Is this really what these stories are about?

I would argue that they’re not about these things at all (or at least on a minor level, really only if a person has something in the craw about society and feels they need to engineer it to their liking), but are dealing with two big subjects we all deal with on a daily basis: morality and psychology.

If anything applies in fairy land, it is the moral law. As Chesterton said, even the great green dragons keep their promises there. Morals are the one conversion that is easiest between our world and theirs, as much as contemporary thinkers might want to distort the existence of good and evil.

Next, they are about psychology. They deal with human experiences with fear, deception, stealing, love, promises, God and ourselves, and whatever beautiful or horrible thing we might be capable of doing to each other. They help us deal with problems in our lives by the simple act of placing ourselves in the story and letting the plot take us to its end. Something about storytelling works this magic on us.

Fulfilling the title of this entry, though, I want to say that these stories often served as warnings to the listeners. Warnings. We hear warnings for all sorts of things, usually stuff like medicine or issues regarding civil law, but adults? Are we warned enough in our time, or are we ruled by it’s nasty sister, permissiveness?

How nice it would be if some grown-ups (I’ll group children in this, but I remember getting enough warnings as a child to last until I was twenty two) had a fairy come and warn them that if they do a certain thing, the consequences will be dire? It’d be a nice world, I think, maybe not if you’re that adult, but you’d probably be grateful later on. Just a hunch.