Faith Works 7-7-23

Faith Works 7-7-23
Jeff Gill

Things they never told you
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"They never taught me that in school!"

It's a common enough refrain. Certain events, grim or ghastly, discreditable or discriminatory, you hear about as an adult and think "they didn't cover that in U.S. History class."

This comes up in discussion about media, including the paper you're reading whether online or in print as a paper paper: why wasn't such and such an event or program or celebration in the coverage? Is it just bad news that gets ink or pixels?

And church life has its own version of the problem. I was recently at an educational talk for ministers where someone said "the problem is people don't hear about that in their congregations."

So who is keeping the good stuff away from us? Which gatekeepers are controlling the flow of information? Why don't we hear it all, straight up?

This is where I'd be tempted to put a picture of someone drinking, or trying to, from a firehouse. You know the old saying. You can't. The force of the flow means you just can't get your sip of water from the foamy blast (plus risking having your lip ripped off). You want a drink of water, find a fountain or squirt bottle.

In reality, all education or news coverage or preaching and teaching in faith communities requires someone make some decisions about what gets covered in what order over which period of time. Call them teachers or administrators, editors or publishers, parsons or bishops or seminary teachers, but they all have to make choices, and to make choices includes what to not cover.

The word "decision" comes from a Latin root, "de-cisio" which is related to our word scissors. It means to decide is to cut off. Making a choice to do one thing always and necessarily means to not do other things. Decisions about teaching and training and narrative, even in a sermon, means as much work around what you won't get around to saying as it does to decide what to emphasize.

For a number of years, I taught at a small university the intro to American history course. Like most at the time, it was in the catalog as "From Columbus to Reconstruction." I struggled every semester I taught with both ends. To start American history without dealing with the Native American context that is most emphatically in place before 1492 is to miss out of sources of our Articles of Confederation and ultimately the U.S. Constitution (you can look it up!), and share in the injustice of describing North America as "wilderness" when the first colonists arrive, which is simply and sadly not true.

At the other end, I love to teach Civil War history, and I could spend a week of class time just on Antietam and Gettysburg. The period after Appomattox, from 1865 to 1877, usually got the short end of an already very short stick. But class after class I wrested time out of earlier portions (each edit I pang in my historical heart) to make sure I gave due credit to the significance of Reconstruction, and today I wish I'd done even more.

Preaching? How do you discern what to cover when you know you have a constant influx of new believers who still don't know Galatians from Genesis, Junia from Jonah, immersion from intinction? You are constantly teaching an intro class even as you try to encourage and inspire long time members who know their Bible.

Choosing what to include always includes hard choices about what to cut out. Otherwise, you never get around to teaching or preaching or communicating anything in particular.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he'd preach longer if he could. Tell him where something could be cut at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.