Notes from my Knapsack 3-4-21

Notes from my Knapsack 3-4-21

Jeff Gill

Consensus, coercion, & community

___

Even when we don't all agree on much, our consensus as a community is clear every time you stop at a stop sign.

That red octagonal warning is an instruction, a reminder. It also can be seen as an expression of the law, and we're used to thinking of "the law" as an objective reality, but it's really much more of our community consensus that at certain places, you should stop, and we concur by so doing. We stop.

Okay, sometimes, we roll. Tapping the brakes and slowing, looking back and forth, and not quite stopping. Am I saying too much? Is this just me? No? Didn't think so. Late at night, in a quiet neighborhood, when… well, when no one is looking. And we think, when it doesn't matter much.

Circumstances alter cases. The central intersection in Our Fayre Village, Broadway and Main, has a stop light, and no one would breeze through it, even at midnight… I think. But the stop instruction encoded in the red-yellow-green is enhanced with a "no right turn on red" instruction which means you can't do so before 7:30 pm. But I've been behind more than a few who did so, and I've been in the right turn lane there at 5:15 pm and been honked at while the light is red.

You see what I mean? We have laws, and reminders of said laws, but our community is governed primarily by consensus. If the consensus breaks down, we lose much of the reliable substructure of law and ordinance and policy, even if the written law and technical enforcement remains unchanged.

I'm sure both time of day and distance from the center of town, as well as the amount of traffic nearby all weigh heavily on compliance, because once violated, a law about stop signs is less than the paper it's written on (I'm staying away from the traffic camera debate here entirely). Zoning and building, though, take us into a different category, one I work with regularly with our community board for that. If you are given a variance to build within eight feet of your lot line, and you actually put in your porch or patio to two feet away, it's concrete (sometimes literally!) and visible long after the act. But if you don't make a big deal out of it, and your neighbors don't mind, we might not catch it, especially if it's small. The problem is if a while later a new neighbor moves in, and does care, and the evidence of your breach of consensus is still sitting there, a violation.

So we've got two basic categories here: the passing event or behavior, and the permanent impact in physical or fiscal terms. And in each, you have the big violations, and the small. Small breaches of the social consensus in terms of impermanent acts are those most likely to slide by.

Which brings us to masks, and the policies around them. Did you have a mask on yesterday indoors with strangers, and who's to know? Most of these are like rolling through a stop sign at midnight. But if you say "the consensus is silly" and make a general habit of not sharing in it, day after day, it starts to become a concrete and un-ignorable fact.

How do we build a consensus around behavior, to support personal acts in public spaces?

(To be continued)

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's gotten a few speeding tickets in strict enforcement zones. Tell him what kind of consensus you're hoping we can reach as a community at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-27-21

Faith Works 2-27-21

Jeff Gill

When it's not about what you want to do

___

Second Sunday of Lent tomorrow. Easter is coming April 4th, but first we prepare to make the journey with Jesus to the cross. There's more to Easter, but all roads go through Calvary. That's why Lent is a penitential season, even a sacrificial season. 

We don't tend to want to make sacrifices, not on our own. Our tendency to self, our general orientation to me first, you second, has to receive a divine corrective, a grace from without to transform the struggle within. It takes an openness to God's activity in the world, and a willingness to work with choices that aren't always apparently to our benefit, to make that first step into holiness, and wholeness.

Jesus says to Peter that the time will come, for him as for all of us, when he will have to go where he does not want to go. And as is so often the case in scripture, Jesus is speaking to us. That passage is for the one spoken to, and it speaks to the audience of faith. "Where you do not want to go."

One year ago, I had no intention of resigning from pulpit ministry. I had some short and long term goals in mind for the church I was serving. There was a vision I was still struggling to speak clearly, and invite others to follow, for the community as a whole. There were obstacles present, but they were fairly typical ones for a church of this area. In the extended church family, we had six funerals since Christmas Eve and had another clearly coming in hospice. Times I'd hope to pivot to a new stage of ministry would turn back to loss and grief and memorialization. Our losses included some pillars of our church which involved the mourning and sorrow of much of the congregation, so momentum tends to stop when everyone has to turn in that direction.

Then my father died. His loss, along with other family complications back in Indiana, suddenly meant I was gone for weeks just as the pandemic was announced March 11, and I was gone or in transit pretty much through Easter. I tried to get back into the online rhythms we were establishing, but it quickly became clear that my family needed me to be away every other weekend, and that this would be the case for a long time. After brief consideration of some kind of leave, and seeing the open-endedness ahead, I gave my notice, and concluded my ministry to that church in August.

For a preacher, there are certain rules, guidelines in some church traditions and canon law in others. One is that you stay away for at least a year. There's a cold logic to this, and the roots of it go back to the 1950s and 60s when in many traditions some of the first diverse clergy candidates came into parish ministry. Without a clear and sweeping guideline like this, parishioners would go back to the retired or former minister, often male and white, rather than turn to the new pastor to allow them to care for them and enter into a ministerial role in their family, for baptisms and weddings and funerals.

Generally, a preacher and their family finds a different church a ways away and goes there. But a strange and disturbing part of the COVID circumstances that helped force me to this choice is that we can't go to another church, either. Caring for an elderly father-in-law regularly means we have to be twice as cautious, so after 40 years of pretty much unbroken church attendance, we're part of the online congregation… of many churches. Like many of you.

This is not where I ever wanted to be; it's not where I wanted to go a year ago. But it is beyond a doubt where God has put me. And I'm learning from this dislocation. I'm experiencing things many of you have and are experiencing, things that having a settled and regular church home, even by video, insulate you from. I'm learning, and I'm getting chances to share perspectives and counsel with a surprising number of fellow clergy still in the thick of things.

This is not where I wanted to go. But it is where I am, and I'm learning this Lent how to be at peace with that. Which is what Lent is for.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's not preaching much these days, except in text and print and posts. Tell him how your faith has been forced into new paths at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-20-21

Faith Works 2-20-21

Jeff Gill

Where you do not want to go

___

We are now into Lent, the period leading up to Easter, which falls as it does on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, also known as April 4 this year.

I will admit to a certain holy impatience with a tendency to make Lent all about what we don't do, what we do without, and this year especially. Disciplines can and should include sacrifice, and practice in making willing, even cheerful sacrifices can be good for any of us, but Lent can't just be about avoiding "Alleluias" and giving up some dietary treat for 40 days (not counting Sundays, since they're feast days and hence a time to celebrate at any season, each a little Easter).

Yet this is also a good year for a penitential turn, particularly if you've not wrestled with that side of your faith very much. We've been wrestling and resisting and yes, even resenting all that we've given up since last March, and our attitude towards such things can also be a spiritual weathervane whose predictions we perhaps should attend to with care.

A couple of cautions these next seven weeks, for regular readers here. My commission many years ago, and the responsibility I still feel, is that "Faith Works" is meant to be open to how faith is part of the lives of all of us, in many and various ways. The religion column, in a generic sense, almost left these pages when previous writers here used the space to bash on denominations and practices not their own. I was asked, when I inquired about picking up the opportunity to write here, "can you write about faith without telling over 90% of my readers they're idiots?" Beyond that initial request, I've never been told what to write about or what I can't cover, and I appreciate that. And I respect the need for a place to invite seekers and non-believers to hear discussion of faith which is inclusive.

What you'll be getting the next few weeks, though, will be explicitly Christian. I've always been clear about that being my own basic orientation, and what I preach and teach on my own. These next few columns, though, will be written on the assumption that you share some basic propositions of Christianity: if that's not you, come back after Easter, but I think there's still going to be plenty of interest to anyone as I reflect on the purpose and meaning of Lent.

It's going to be a series of mediations on John 21:18-19. And even more particularly on the comment by Jesus to Peter in verse 18: "Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go."

We have in many ways been going where we do not want to go in the last year. Or is that just me? No, didn't think so. Thank you. So "where you do not want to go" is my compass, and in a contradictory way my anchor for this Lent.

And it constitutes my partial answer to the question I ended with last time, asking about how faith community leaders can deal with the mass communication and mass confusion so many people are living with these days: "Is there an answer for preachers and ministers in this misinformation age?" I think we do have an answer for how people can deal with the complex and contradictory messages we all get from the culture around us, but in many ways, that answer is "where we do not want to go." Which is a challenging message to share. In many ways, it won't be popular. It never has been, and is potentially less so now.

If you're willing to think about why we all have to spend some time in our lives "going where we do not want to go" then I invite you to join me here this Lent.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been taken a number of places he did not want to go in 2020. Tell him where you've been at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-18-21

Notes from my Knapsack 2-18-21

Jeff Gill

Homeless response is complicated

___

While I appreciate well-intended energy and deep concern to help our community reach every last person who has to deal with homelessness, I believe it's important to keep in mind that every night in Licking County, something over 200 people who would otherwise be homeless are sheltered, either in emergency or transitional housing. It isn't accurate to say nothing is being done, or that the groups doing this work aren't regularly talking and working together. This needed work and supportive services are offered through the Licking County Coalition for Housing, by The Center for New Beginnings, by the Salvation Army, along with at least three faith-based groups which do not receive federal or state funding, so they have different guidelines around how they provide their overnight shelter assistance. The more formally organized housing programs do partner with them to help offer transitional services and housing from emergency shelter to independence and stability. That's not even counting a variety of recovery houses and addiction programs, both evidence-based with federal and state funding, and more informal programs, that might as well be called shelter programs in practical fact. There is also some supportive housing that's done in and around the edges of our mental health providers which has rules and guidelines that can be frustrating to navigate, but again, with federal and state money comes federal and state strings that can't be casually cut. But it all adds up to well over 200 people a night in our county who are housed by programs and projects, receiving funds both federal and state as well as locally raised, which all have very tight controls and scrutiny on how and in what ways and over whom we are serving. 

 

And starting two years ago, a group of people, more recently organized into a Warming Shelter Task Force, put together an additional effort to provide emergency shelter to people needing assistance on very cold nights. This is also a group drawn from most of those already working with homelessness, which also asks questions and invites input directly from people experiencing homelessness on how we can respond to their needs. The reasons any one person might be unsheltered on a night below 10 degrees are many and various, and lack of current shelter capacity is only one of the factors leading to there being a few dozen on any given night in vehicles, in unheated buildings or structures, or "out there" with their belongings, such as they have been able to hold onto. Which is part of why people might choose to stay in a tent or hand-made shelter even when it's terribly cold, for fear of losing what little they have. Many of us believe a winter-long "low barriers" shelter might encourage some of those who are unsheltered to come in, and gain more trust and confidence in the supportive programs and opportunities available. But for now, we can only provide this on nights that are expected to be 10 degrees or lower overnight. So in the recent cold snap, when we had only a few "come in" to make use of the overnight warming shelter, we know that's not everyone out there. We also know some situations aren't even going to be met by a low barriers shelter, but need us to go out to where they are, and start rebuilding trust and responding with care to anxieties and issues that are keeping some out in the cold. In fact, LCCH and Newark Homeless Outreach and other faith-based groups are doing that outreach work already, and we share information and opportunities, also using the daytime warming setting of Vertical 196 to make contacts and start building those relationships that can lead people to try supportive and assistive programs that are available to them.

 

Homelessness is a complex issue. But I regret any time public statements are made that imply no one is doing anything, or that those who are aren't in touch with each other. In fact, the work is going on every day. It is not yet enough, I'd be the first to agree, but we do well to build on the foundations of what is, as we look to building up what may yet be done, to care for those with the most pressing of needs, the need for shelter and housing security.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been working on ending chronic homelessness in our community since 1991. Tell him about what you're thankful for at home by way of knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-13-21

Faith Works 2-13-21

Jeff Gill

Thinking like a community

___

If a worshiper hears one thing from the pulpit for sixty minutes on Sunday and then gets a completely different message from twenty-seven hours of media consumption at home and on their devices, there's an imbalance that's hard to fight.

But the message of a ministry, the good news however you frame it — the Christian gospel, the call to faith of Islam, the noble truths of Buddhism, the rationalism of atheism, even — is often at odds with the surrounding culture. I am a Christian, by upbringing and by adult conviction, and I know much of what I believe is ultimately true about life and death and eternity is regularly contradicted by the culture in which I live.

One of the tensions of recent years is that we had a few decades where people of my faith perspective could expect the surrounding culture to mostly affirm our beliefs, and rarely if ever challenge them, let alone contradict them. This is a secret advantage minority beliefs had in the Twentieth Century: they never assumed for a minute that classroom instruction or popular media would do their work for them. If they wanted children and families and newly convicted adults to come to their understandings, they would have to teach and reinforce them on their own. Christians, especially Protestant Christians, got . . . well, we got lazy. And took for granted that Hollywood and TV news and Miss McGillicuddy in the third grade would do at least some of our work for us. When the overarching culture got crude and profane and agnostic at best, anti-theistic at worst, it not only has been a shock for many, it also has laid bare how our assumptions have not served us well in teaching and forming faith into adulthood.

But there's another challenge today: for a congregation of 100 people in, say, 1970 there were three TV networks, and you generally watched one or another, let's say Walter. There were three news magazines, and your house got Newsweek. You subscribed to either the morning Columbus Citizen-Journal or the evening Dispatch, along with the Newark Advocate. At church, your minister promoted the denominational publication, which was generally a monthly, often mailed in bulk to the church and distributed at the door with the bulletin. There were still a few movie theaters downtown, but each was a single screen, maybe rotating a pair of movies per week at most. And the discussions about politics and culture people had outside of church were largely defined at workplaces and in neighborhoods. There's your whole media environment.

Today, a congregation of 100 people has 1000 different ways to consume media, with tens of thousands of programs and channels. My 1970 predecessor could at least be conversant and generally aware of the entire incoming information environment, or close enough to speak to it all in general, with their interpretation of God's Word for the day. A preacher today cannot even begin to be certain what images, ideas, or impressions have bounced off of the imaginations and intentions of their congregation just in the week since they were last together.

A hundred years ago, ministers really were, and were expected, to be one of the best informed people a church member would meet, and their suggestions, let alone pulpit proclamations, about what people should read or reflect on or even to think about had the weight of respect and status behind them. If you were a thoughtful farmer or factory worker or even local professional person, the minister's reading and knowledge was taken as one of the best and most reliable guides you could rely on.

Today, we find we are often just one more opinion in people's ears. They don't mean to be disrespectful or dismissive, but trust me (see what I did there?) we feel it. A passing blog post can sweep away a point we've been building up carefully for weeks; a TV commentator's vast generalization pushes past a very personal message we've been trying to share.

Is there an answer for preachers and ministers in this misinformation age? I think so. Come back next week, and we'll be in Lent, a good time to reflect on this very question.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking a great deal about media and ministry this past year. Tell him what you're thinking at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 2-6-21

Faith Works 2-6-21

Jeff Gill

Discussion, declaration, and discernment

___

If you agree, as I said recently, that neither you nor I are God, then it's not a big leap to accepting that neither of us can know everything.

This is where the firehose of the internet becomes a challenge. You can be tempted (aha! theologically familiar ground) to think you can know much, even almost everything you need to know, if you take enough bites out of the apple of online information.

Looked at reasonably, let alone theologically, we know that's not true. In fact, many of us have had reason to look back at things once often said, including by ourselves, about how the main barrier to understanding and transformation was lack of information. "If only people knew more about others, different cultures, various ways of being, we would have a better and more loving world." Yeah, that experiment has been run, and having at least access to, and maybe even actually getting more information doesn't necessarily change behavior or attitudes or feelings. 

And that's really what I've been talking about here for the last few weeks. More information actually is creating room for confusion, even adding to tension and dissension. On a personal and practical level, I don't think less access is a good thing, so censorship or restrictions on free speech aren't where I'm going, but in truth I do believe we need to think and even pray about how we do consume content, how we choose what to read and view and take in. Or in the metaphor I keep coming back to, I don't want government or even, up to a certain point, my faith community, to tell me exactly what to eat, but I do think it's a part of healthy religious dialogue and teaching to be reminded that "we are what we eat."

Everyone generally acknowledges this with food: eat junk, especially too much junk or exclusively fast food, highly processed and additive-laden, and you will get poor outcomes in your physical health. "You are what you eat." Eat junk, feel junky.

How much more so, then, your media diet. "You are what you view." If you watch crud, your thinking and emotions and reactions are going to get cruddy. If you view lots of porn, your understanding of intimate relationships will become twisted and unrealistic and damaging for both you and those you love. If you absorb mass quantities of celebrity gossip, I think it's emotional and financial pornography of a sort: it messes up your understanding of what real life and relationships are like. And when it comes to political news . . .

These are perilous waters I'm proposing we paddle in. It's easier for me to talk about why you should avoid porn or gossip entirely for the health of your soul, and I hope that case is clear here as well. But civic affairs and electoral activities are something you really can't avoid 100%, nor do I want to make that case. Yet if I even hint I have the absolute solution for which channel or outlet to watch, I'm going to push the eject button for many of you still reading this far into my reflections on this terribly important subject.

Can I for this week say this much, as a former parish pastor and still an ordained Christian minister: in most churches I've served, if I had two solid hours a week of your ear, I was doing well. Sunday morning worship, maybe a Bible study midweek or evening prayer and devotions service. A newsletter could add to that impact, and now we have email and social media, but it's still in bits and chunks.

Two hours plus some change is the absolute most I could imagine having access to your ear and mind and heart. But what my predecessors in ministry couldn't imagine is a time where, on leaving the church building, many of the most devoted members would then go home and give another perspective an average of three to 23 hours (or more!) per week.

Look, I've always known some would leave church and go home and hear what Robert Schuller had to say. And would hear about how my message didn't quite measure up to his. Made my (relative) peace with that a long time ago. But I had an hour, and the Crystal Cathedral had an hour. Now, with 24 hour cable news, and online push notifications, Sean Hannity has at least five hours a week to my one; Rachel Maddow or Wolf Blitzer ditto. How does a preacher compete, just on the hour by hour basis? On a certain level, you just don't.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking a great deal about media and ministry this past year. Tell him what you're thinking at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Notes from my Knapsack 2-4-21

Notes from my Knapsack 2-4-21

Jeff Gill

Waiting my turn

___

My wife and I are thankful that our respective parents in Indiana, her dad and my mom, are now vaccinated, or will be by the time this hits print.  They both have gotten their first shots, and second shots are set up. Now, we wait on getting our own.

I'm also thankful that I have been a regular blood donor for many years, creeping up on 15 gallons here in a few months. This means every 60 days I get a COVID test, and I've been negative thus far, one time I like being called a negative sort of guy. Between us, we've had a scattering of official and work-related tests that have confirmed for us that we've been able to stay clear of the virus, while doing what needs to be done.

But we're also just young enough (a phrase neither of us has much occasion to use!) to not be on any of the criteria for getting scheduled soon for the COVID vaccine. And may not until towards the end of this thing. Word out of Washington and the state of Ohio is that we might need to wait until the end of May until we'd be unambiguously candidates for our shots.

That means we wait, and watch, and listen. The various cases are made for who should be "next," and I'll admit we have plenty of discussions at home about the relative ethics and practicalities of which group or demographic should be versus what is. Opinions? We have a few.

In general, I think everyone is doing the best they can, and as long as our elderly parents are protected, I'm willing to wait. I'm also going to be as quick to say yes as I could possibly be if someone offers. If one of those "hey, we have a couple extra defrosted and our appointments are all done and you're just walking by" situations comes up, oh yeah, I will roll up a sleeve and say "hit me!" What I don't want to do is work angles to sneak in early if we're still struggling to get shots lined up for those who need and want them.

The situation I hope to avoid, though, is getting my turn soon because so many who are, with reasons and rights in line in front of me, say "nope, won't let them inject that into me." No one thought this would be 100% willingness from the outset, but the numbers of care center staff and front line workers who are declining have surprised the Governor, policy makers, and me. 

Don't want to be a guinea pig? Hey, after the first million, who's the guinea pig? My mom? The person working down the linefrom you who said yes when you said no? I think the testing is done, and the results are clear. These vaccines are as safe as anything you'd buy in the produce or snack food sections at the grocery store. And honestly, if it means I have to wait longer, I am happy to, if it means more people who need the vaccine sooner say yes to receiving it. Don't take a pass on it on my account. Make me wait.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been patient, on occasion, but not consistently. Tell him how you wait productively at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Faith Works 1-30-21

Faith Works 1-30-21

Jeff Gill

Notes towards a theology of media consumption
___

Where I've been going in recent weeks, in thinking out loud about media consumption and curatorial work and clergy, is in a direction that I intend to be towards the theological.

That's a word which sadly makes many tune out. Ewwww, theology. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin (the answer is three, by the way) or how to justify the ways of God to humanity by way of a twenty-seven point five volume work.

Actually, I hope I've been doing theology these last few weeks, I just didn't say so. To be, theology is just what the word is derived from: talk about, or better yet, talking with God. Theos, or God in Greek, and Logos, which is often translated "Word" but is something a bit more essential and also relational. Dialogue is a "logos" passed back and forth between two people, not so much an argument as a subject we're trying to understand between the two of us ("dio" in Greek for two and dia- is between two, got it?), and so we're having a dialogue about a subject of mutual interest.

Likewise a discussion about things having to do with God, or with God: that's a theology in process, at work. You and I "talk" here about the Divine, and we're doing theology.

Now, as to the theological topic at hand, here's a theological statement I think even my agnostic and even atheist friends would agree with: I'm not God. Nor are you, fair enough? [Much head nodding, I'm sure.]

Okay then. If, whatever your approach to theism, you agree that I am not God, let me take the dialogue a step further: whatever or whomever God is, if I am not God, then among other things I can't know everything. We might stretch our dialogue into more of a group free-for-all as some say "but I don't agree there is a God" and others have various opinions about the nature of the Almighty, but a common reference point is that the Western tradition for a thousand years has said "God is a being beyond which none greater can be imagined." Details to come later, but that's a good starting point.

And I, as well as you, if you don't mind me saying so, necessarily know less than such a being. God knows all, or at least all that is knowable, and we do not.

Folks, this is abstract, but important in application, because the obvious implication is that no matter how late we stay up on the internet, we will never know everything there is to know about aardvarks, anarchists, atoms, let alone the events of recent weeks. We can try to know more, but we will never know all. At which point we have to start making choices. Choices about whom to believe, where we put our trust, how we assemble our partial facts into an actual plan for what to do when we get up tomorrow.

My lack of certainty, of absolute knowledge about aardvarks is unlikely to come up tomorrow, so I let that go entirely. Anarchists? I wonder what they're up to, but if I'm sure none are under the bed I can sleep soundly. Atoms most people don't think about, but they're fascinating, even if you can't trust them. (Why can't you trust them? Because they make up everything.)

Now of course you're thinking "how can I trust anyone who would make a joke like that?" Fair point. And that might be a reason to dismiss me as a partner in dialogue. Hey, I've had people tell me "you're not serious enough." That is one criteria people can use for information: is it a serious and substantive source? A comic book may or may not put accuracy above humor, let alone a weekly columnist.

And for many, the mere fact that I'm both a religious person (guilty) and an ordained minister (guilty as charged) makes my statements on facts or opinions untrustworthy. The interesting thing here is that this is a relatively new state of affairs in our general culture. I hope to say more about in whom we do put our trust next week. 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's made worse jokes, believe it or not. Tell him your favorite "Dad joke" at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Positano, Italy

 

Faith Works 1-23-21

Faith Works 1-23-21

Jeff Gill

Choices about what to consume can consume us
___

Making choices about what to consume. We make those choices even when we don't think about it, and maybe that's the most important time to be making more conscious choices.

I was saying in an earlier column that social media has short circuited much curatorial work, thinking in terms of curators in the museum sense, and curates and pastors and clergy in a churchly sense. Curation, in that sense, is helping to make public choices, whether what goes on display, up into glass cases, versus the vast warehouses worth of collections; or for ministers, helping people understand what information is going to inspire and uplift and renew your life.

The Bible itself is a spirit-led act of, well, curation. You hear this every so often about "lost books" or even better "hidden books of the Bible" that didn't make the canonical cut for becoming Holy Scripture. As for hidden, why does a goober in Ohio like me own paperback copies of most of it, when each Easter some cable program purports to blow the lid off of "what they don't want you to read!" It's not an act of secrecy, it's a compassionate act of spiritual discernment. There are thousands of ancient books, and trust me, they ain't all holy.

Hey, for most Protestants, 66 books still is a whole lot, and people ask me "which Gospel should I read first?" Or "I need a psalm or two to help me with having hope." I could say "honestly, you really need to read the whole thing, Genesis to Revelation," and in my active ministry, I've done what I could to encourage reading the Bible through, but the truth is it's never a majority who do that. Most need an outline of highlights, a selection, and they welcome guidance on what those selections are.

Then you get study Bibles, let alone translations, and supportive materials, or stand-alone studies (you know, Beth Moore, LifeWay, authors and publishers). Most people dive in and are quickly intimidated by how much is out there. Hey, they ask, can you help me navigate which is better, whose material will help me? I've always done the best I can.

But with social media, everything is available to everyone. Which does not always serve our discernment well, nor does it consistently help with dialogue and understanding. A minister recommends a particular book or speaker, and you can end up bombarded with "well, I heard from…" And then you're playing defense. I spent many years in Bible studies trying to defend my interpretations against the stuff "below the line" written by people not in the room, when participants have had trouble distinguishing between the words of the Bible, and the notes of the study Bible's editor. That can be frustrating, when you are aware that words in print have a weight the preacher doesn't always have when it comes to a difference of interpretation, but that author isn't there to interrogate for how and why they came to that conclusion.

Which is where this becomes all the more significant on the consumption of media and material in general. If I am saying something you disagree with, you can ask me questions, interrogate my assumptions if you will. You can request that I defend my terms and world view. But friends, there is so much out there, incoming, that we just don't know where it's coming from, or why, and based on what. I am most secure with information as well as opinion I can know more about in terms of origin and intent. I don't require that I agree with it for me to be able to learn from it. What I need is a certain level of trust, at least a sort of confidence, in why I'm being told something. Even a sales pitch can teach me, if I know what's being sold.

There's a true saying out there about social media: if you don't pay anything, and you can't tell where the source is making money off telling you about it, you are probably the product. That doesn't make it all lies, but it does tell you how to take what they're saying under consideration. 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's consumed a book or two, and wishes he'd known in advance not to bother reading some of them. Tell him how you make choices about what to read and accept as gospel (small-G) at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.

Walton homes & Kansas landmarks

 

Newlin-Walton family memorials in Illinois