George Bush visits my school!

I don't know what came over me. There it was, a sign in sheet. Waiting to be tainted by my deviant behavior. After I walked into the afternoon meeting, early of course, I signed my name and under "position" I put "teacher." In the next line, I put George Bush and under position "President." Stuff like this was common back for me in the day. I can't remember which day it was, but some time a while back I would sign a celebrity in for a meeting. I really did not try to hide it was me. If I had, I should have done a better job. Anyway, as the meeting goes forward, I somehow missed the fact or did not understand that the state education agency was going to get a copy of who showed up and signed their name for this meeting. As I was standing in the hall after the meeting, the flock of elders still inside and collecting things begin to murmur about who signed in as Bush. Because they know me, they hunted me down pretty quickly. In fact I was my department chair's first guess. And instead of getting to scratch it out, I got punished (as she laughed uncontrollably). I had to run around with a blank sheet to all corners of my massive school (big enough for 3,000 plus students) to hunt down signatures. Some of them thought I was a fool, while others cracked up hilariously. The Indian lady in TLC (kids in wheel chairs, some tube fed) really couldn't grasp why someone would do something so foolish, while the nice Spanish lady marveled in the hilarity of the situation... me misbehaving and going on a scavenger hunt for signatures. Some thought it was a political statement while it was just the first name that popped in my head. My "drinking buddy" John, acted as if I had told him the funniest joke in the bar when I needed his signature. Finally, when I got the signature from the school psychologist, who is a pretty good friend, she playfully.... well maybe a little seriously... said "Don't you feel like a fool now?" My response, with a big smartass grin on my face was. "No." In fact, I went on to tell her, it was one of the funnest things I have done in a long time. I went to places I normally don't go to and saw people I wouldn't normally see. I caused joyful laughter and even enjoyed the "you idiot" responses. I faced a side of life that I would normally avoid, seeing the kids in TLC bound to wheel chairs. Even in their almost vegetative state, those who could would gleefully wave when waved at. One kid was catatonic with a permanent smile. It must have been because he knew what I had done... yeah, its all about me isn't it. I need to go back again. I wonder what celebrity will show up at the next department meeting.

Wrestling with scriptural authority... Thanks Judas!

Is scripture authoritative? I ponder this more as the "Gospel of Judas" has been discovered this week. Some statements of faith describe the Bible as beeing "innerant" (a word with loaded meaning in different Christian circles, but basically means without error to one degree or another) in its original manuscripts. As the church grew and became more institutionalized, they also began to subscribe to their favorite writings involving how church life should be practiced. Collections of individual parchments (or whatever they had) of the writings of those they believed to be of authority, to pass the apostolic test to match their theological suppositions. Even back in the beginning of church life, it was not different than now. They wrestled with which books or parchment (not given verse assignments by the way) should be accepted as their rule for church life. As a result, some faction's writing were left out. As history progressed, we eventully have the "canon" of authority we have now and as you can tell, that does not inlude the book of Judas as well as some other writings. That may be a good thing. I haven't read them though I know the books that were left out have some stark theological contrasts to what we have. If your up for a fun project, research Gnosticism.

Keeping all this in mind, here is where my problem is. Humans are the same throughout history. History repeats itself. The winner writes history. Now, I can accept that writings from the apostles are authoritative. But, if we give authority to the canon we have now, are we to also trust that the people who subscribed to those pieces of Christian literature and gave it their stamp of approval are also equally authoritative in that we can really trust these humans to pick our books of faith without any personal bias? Maybe the answer would be in researching who was on the committee that picked our 66 books or more if you read the Catholic Bible. But, I don't have time to do that and we all know that no human is beyond reproach. Even one of the 12 (as our tradition shows us about Judas, until now) was a snake. From American Politics to the Southern Baptist Church, there is a long tradition of stuffing the committee with yes men. Why could it not be the same for the canonization committee that would have to have as much authority as the scripture itself if we follow the chain of logic. Who was probably on the committee? It could be likely that the committee was stuffed with a bunch of people from the winning side and the winning side is not always right is it? Nope... But, they still could be right too.

Now, this new Gospel of Judas that was discovered in a cave a while back claims that Judas had special knowledge (characteristic of early Gnostic teaching) of Jesus' destiny and ordered by Jesus to turn him over to the Romans. Judas was following orders. I really don't like that. Following the implications (and using the lense of those who win, which I was raised and educated with), I really don't like what this would say about Jesus. It makes him look like a manipulator and a little sneaky in my book. Our canon does not do that. But, even though I don't like that teaching, I also know that there are tons of other books out there that did not make it in either. The books made it in based on a standard created by men and I don't know yet if I can grant authority to them and therefore full authority to the book they gave me. Scripture is valuable, but is it fully authoritative? Even after taking several "biblical interpretation" classes, how far do we go in what we take literal and what we take allegorically. Many people of equal smarts and education disagree on these issues. Some are obviouly wrong to me while others sometimes aren't. Just pondering.