From: kgatling@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Keith E Gatling)
Subject: Re: God's Family Values
Organization: Manlius Pebble Hill School; Dewitt, NY
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 92 10:12:59 EDT

In article <17ak3dINN700@iraul1.ira.uka.de> stoesser@i31s21.ira.uka.de
(Achim Stoesser) writes:

   >To quote Dan Yergeau (yergeau@gloworm.Stanford.EDU):
   >: An NBC poll today revealed, among those identifying themselves as
   >: Christian, that
   >:   -- only 68% could provide the birth year of Christ within 10 years,
   >:   -- only 40% knew who the mother of Christ was,
   >:   -- only 18% knew that Christ was a Jew,
   >:   -- only 3% could name four of the books of the Bible documenting
   >:      the life of Christ,
   >:   -- and 58% attributed the Ten Commandments to Christ

Achim, and everyone else of like mind, there is something you really need to
take into consideration when you toss around information like this.  That is
that being a Christian is a lot like being an actor.  Lots of people say
they're actors who really make their living by waiting tables, and might do
a TV commerical every now and then.  I could call myself an actor just
because I had a role in the local production of "Jesus Christ Superstar,"
but if I had a bit of sense, if I were introduced to Jason Robards, I'd tell
him I was a teacher.

Christianity's like that too.  Anyone who has even the tiniest bit of
knowledge can, as it said in the quote above, "identify themselves" as
Christians, whether they understand and follow the concepts or not.  There
aren't a whole lot of people out there policing this to say, "No, you don't
believe X, Y, and Z, so you can't call yourself a Christian, and I'm taking
away your membership card!"  True, there are some...I've run into my share
of fundamentalists who don't consider *me* a Christian because I don't
subscribe to their particular subset of beliefs or their particular
interpretation of the Bible, but for the most part, there is no organization
policing whether or not a person has a right to call themselves a
Christian.  That, for better or worse, is left up to the conscience of that
person.


Oh...and by the way, about that quote about "if you don't hate your mother
or father, or whatever other relative"...have you ever heard of the term
"idiomatic phrase" see also "figure of speech"?  Some of these don't
translate well from language to language.  Imagine the consternation that
might be caused by someone reading a passage in Greek or Aramaic translated
from English where the original mentioned something about "being in hot
water" or "pulling one's leg."  The way I understood it (after some initial
misgivings of my own until someone pointed out that you can't read something
from first century Palestine as if it were written for 20th century America)
was that it was a middle eastern figure of speech for "if you don't love God
more than these..." which got translated literally into English, German, or
whatever (giving us the old problem phrase about hating) rather than
idiomatically (which would have preserved the original meaning while losing
the original words).

This is always a big question when translating something to another
language; do we translate it word for word and risk having the meaning
confused, or do we try to get the true meaning and lose the words?

Well, I do think I've said enough on this.


--
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* Keith E Gatling                                  kgatling@mailbox.syr.edu *
*          Opinions?  I've got plenty of them.  Just ask my wife!           *
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