Footnote to the moot-moots

Whose death matters?

In June of 2024, a man was just riding his bike to work. Early in the morning when traffic should be low to nonexistent. Wearing a helmet and a reflective vest. A racing driver lost control and plowed him over. Anyone who bikes in this city was grieved and outraged. This stretch of roadway is designated as a bike route. There's a little green sign with a bicycle icon to tell you that. The wide road that invites speeding certainly doesn't. How does a person even drive 159 km/hr on a sleepy residential street within city limits? (Because the street is too damn wide.) For about as long as it has existed, the cycling advocacy organization has identified this stretch of roadway as a route in critical need of remediation to make it safer. So, within a week, temporary safety measures had been rolled out. Reduced speed limit signs were erected, poly posts narrowed the roadway and speed cameras made sure folks took it seriously. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 20, 40,...

Celebration

Is all this celebrating really necessary? Certainly, there can be value in acknowledging when we've done something well. But every occasion seems to be a celebration lately and it's starting to make me feel uncomfortable. Thus, Dick Benner's comments in the Canadian Mennonite on the proceedings at Mennonite World Conference jumped out at me. Katherine Johnson, assistant general secretary for the Lutheran World Federation, represented 68 million Lutherans worldwide. She claimed that while Lutherans were “proud of their theological distinctives,” they would not be “celebrating” their 500th birthday in 2017 due to the divisiveness of the Reformation. Their goal is to help shape the church for the 21st century, she said. A thought for Mennonite Brethren who are gearing up to celebrate 150 years in January. Our theological distinctives include some morsels of truth we may have understood better than others, but they are still far from beginning to comprehend Truth. There is...

Hermeneutics

"Who's this Herman Neufeld they keep talking about?" (A cheesey joke about hermeneutics from Katie Funk Wiebe's humour column in the old Gospel Herald, or some such publication. It always gives me a chuckle.) I've been reminded recently (sorry, can't cite the source) that the books, letters, etc., that comprise the Bible were generally written to communities, and that we also, as readers of the Bible, should receive God's word in community, asking not "what does the Bible say to me?" but "what does the Bible say to us ?" It fascinates me that Christianity bestows great value on individuals, but demands community. Some religions prize the collective to the extent that the individual does not matter at all; others prize certain individuals, but not others. Jesus died for each human being, and Paul tells us no human-constructed category of person has more value than another. Yet, in his prayer in the garden, Jesus' foremost concern for...

kar0ling

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