Perhaps the hardest thing I had to deal with during my decade of college was context. You might not be able to tell, but I have a degree in English, thus ten wonderful years of reading, writing, analyzing, structure and context. I have found two spectrums of this study: creative and analytic. When you approach a text with the creative lens, every word holds meaning, as you read, more time, thought, emotion and definition goes into it. There is a flow, a voice and rhythm with each word and is imperative to seek out the authors voice to better understand what is really being communicated. This form of study has come too easily for me. I tend to communicate within this style and, it has the potential and reality to be misinterpreted when not read within the correct lens.
The analytic style was a bit harder for me to comprehend at first. I remember sitting in my Rhetoric in Writing class, pages behind everyone else. When I met with my professor later that day he wanted to look at my copy of the article we were going through. I was digesting the article the way I always had, scrupulous notes, comments, definitions jammed in the now narrow margins and cross over relationships and sometimes incoherent questions scribbled out or answered. He asked if I were an English Major. Embarrassed I said no, just a Minor. He said that I was approaching the text as though I were approaching a poem or Literature, where every letter, every word and every punctuation held meaning of its own. This was, as he put it a very important and beautiful way to grasp concpepts. And the students who took his class, rarely held this skill. However, this was not the tool in which to approach the texts at hand. Over the following hour, he taught me a new way to see things. To first review the text, then to identify and read the important markers and arguments that which were presented. He showed me where to look for the authors intent and how to identify the arguments which were at first glance unnoticeable. I think I did relatively well in his class, I ended up with a B, even with the unflattering reference I made about Al Gore in my final paper.
This was the catalyst for the direction my studies took me. I tried to approach all of my texts and studies with both of these lenses, I quickly found that in doing this, I gained a more fruitful and deep insight to everything I was to learn. One of my favorite Authors, Ezra Pound, wrote a simple book called ABC of Reading. In chapter 2, he discusses Approach and Language:
It doesn't in our contemporary world, so much matter where you begin the examination of a subject, so long as you keep on until you get round again to your starting point. As it were, you start on a sphere, or a cube; you must keep on until you have seen it from all sides. Or if you think of your subject as a stool or table, you must keep on until it has three legs and will stand up, or four legs and won't tip over too easily.
Language was obviously created, and is, obviously, USED for communication.
In chapter 6, he emphasizes the importance of comparison with an equal, yet opposite form.
You can't judge any chemical's action merely by putting it with more of itself. To know it, you have got to know its limits, both what it is and what it is not. What substances are harder or softer, what more resilient, what more compact.
You can't measure it merely by itself diluted with some neutral substance.
It is important for us, as communicating human beings, to not only take these "academic" tools and utilize them in our everyday interactions, but to internalize them. In doing this, there would be a dramatic decline in arguments, misunderstandings and relationships would be healthy verses destructive. Now, if we are taught in a "secular" educational institution, how we ought to take things into context, look at things in more than one way and fully educate ourselves on the subject or topic before making assertions and guard against unfounded accusations. How much more are we as Reformed believers to do the same, if not more?
There are two mindsets in the "religious" community concerning this idea. Erroring on the side of Love/Grace and "It's your choice to be offended". Of these, I prefer the former so I will explain the latter first as to better explain my stance. When you use the sentence: it's your choice to be offended, you either a) use this as an excuse to continue in blatant, vile sin against those around you, or b) are sinned against doubly. When someone sins against you, instead of seeking repentance and recognition for the offence, you are essentially told: He beat you, stole from you, lied to you, but it's your choice to be hurt by it. It's your choice to be in pain. Thus, turning the victim into the villain for simply expressing the injustice or seeking an acknowledgment or apology for the sinful act done to them. Nowhere does it say in the Bible that it is simply your choice to be offended. It does, however, have verse after verse on what to do when a brother or sister offends you. You go to them, simple as that. You confront them with their sin and reconcile with forgiveness.
God created us capable of every emotion that could possibly be vocalized, and those that even have no words that which could express the depth and magnitude of what we are experiencing. So to deny someone the ability to feel and express that which God had intently created in us, would be to deny that which God had created. When God chose those whom would believe in Him before even time began, He purposed a heart in us, a heart of flesh.
Now, in the secular world, the phrase: Error on the side of Grace, translates to: Give them the benefit of the doubt. In a practical application, if someone that you know, say a co-worker responds to a question with an annoyed tone or snaps at you; erroring on the side of grace would dictate your response to not be hasty in assuming your co-worker is either mad at you or doesn't like you. What you would do (which I fully emphasize is not a natural, innate reaction, but one that is constantly exercised), you would separate yourself from their response; understanding that their world does not revolve around you and they could be dealing with things you are unaware of. When treating those around us with love and complete grace, we need to diligently take note of who they are and who we are. No one is better than anyone else, we are all made of dust and have sinned accordingly.
It grieves me to no end when people who claim their Christianity, throw their offence and sin about as it were a processional, hailing "it's your choice to be offended!" as they continue in their offence. How than, does that show love and grace to your fellow believers? Is that the example Christ set for us? Of course, that is a rhetorical question. Anyone who went to Sunday School as a child knows the answer to that. When Christ did offend, it was the hypocritical "religious" leaders and it was their sin that was the offence, not Christ.
Prov. 18:19 A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.Next time you're dinking around online, you might find it interesting to Google: to be offended is a choice.
Is. 29:21 who by a word make a man out to be an offender, and lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate, and with an empty plea turn aside him who is in the right.
Job 34:31 For has anyone said to God,
‘I have borne punishment; I will not offend any more;
Matt. 18:35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.
Mark 11:25 And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.
Col. 3:13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
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