When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, was assigned reading for me. I’m happy to say that it didn’t turn out to be the drag that much assigned reading turns out to be. Although I’m not currently involved in any work that gives me opportunities to apply their specific recommendations about working with the poor, their principles are thought-provoking and rich enough to invite reflection. They have me musing on how I help others in all sorts of relationships, from work to friends to family. Worth reading.
One of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason. Americans to not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian dream as do Europeans.
–Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
I’m going to tell two more stories about having my use of Slovak corrected. The stories are representative of a theme of my experience here. I don’t know whether other people learning other languages in other places experience something similar – but I suspect they do. After you read them, I would be happy to hear your theory about why things happen this way – is it something about language, or human nature, or something else?
The first episode happened over a year ago, when I needed to purchase an art canvas for Anya to paint, and to have a photograph printed. I had to go to two different shops, but in both cases I would have to specify the dimensions: “I would like a canvas x cm by y cm”; “I would like a print l cm by w cm.” I was going to these shops right after Slovak, so I asked my tutor how to specify dimensions. She told me to say “x cm za y cm.” That seemed simple enough. (more…)
You may recall my bumbling mishap of several months ago in my infamous “milovanie” episode. Today I was practicing (read “murdering”) Slovak with the same friend, and yet again my tongue failed me. It happened like this: we have had a good bit of rain lately, and yesterday I was stuck walking in it, and I was not as prepared for it as I should have been. I was telling my little story in Slovak, and when I got to the end I meant to say that I was wet. I meant to say (and I know this – really), “Bol som mokry.” But I said another word (which I also know – really): “Bol som mrkvy.”
When I said this Katka laughed hard and long – in fact, it was a long time before she could stop laughing. Even I was laughing so hard I almost choked on my lunch. Because I didn’t tell her that I was wet; I told her that I was carrots.
Sigh…
Last year Tabletalk magazine asked me to write a little something on the ninth-century missionaries to the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius. That essay was published this month, and if you are curious you can read it online here. You can read it even if you aren’t curious.
You should note that it may appear that I am posing as a pastor, since they published the essay in their monthly column called the “Pastor’s Perspective,” which they describe thus: “Pastor’s Perspective is an opportunity each month for a different seasoned pastor to apply the themes discussed in Tabletalk more directly to the life of the layperson and equip the saints for service in the local congregation.” I’m no pastor, but I am different and even seasoned (after a fashion), and I didn’t know my words would be applied to this column till after it was published.
Over the weekend I had a few hours to myself to lounge around my room in the castle, so I plunged into a new book by Dick Keyes called Seeing through Cynicism: A Reconsideration of the Power of Suspicion. It is a sober-minded analysis of the cynical spirit of our age, where it came from, what is good about it, and why it ultimately fails. But Keyes, the director of L’Abri in Massachusetts, doesn’t leave us empty-handed: he presents an honest alternative, and takes a redemptive approach to his critique.
I have to confess that he exposed some faithless cynicism of my own that has embedded itself into my psyche from my experience and through the cultural air that I breathe. I’m glad he did, and I think many of you will be surprised to find how deeply you have been affected as well. So consider yourself warned – but also consider yourself encouraged to read it anyway. (more…)
Traumatic experiences can burn images and memories into your brain. I need to burn the Slovak language into my brain, and I may have inadvertently discovered a way to ensure that new words and expressions get carved deep in my long-term memory. The discovery came about this way:
The Slovak word for painting is “malovanie.” There is a very similar word in Slovak that has a very different meaning: “milovanie,” which means, um, “love-making.” During a Slovak conversation session Thursday, I tried to tell my friend that I loved painting. She turned bright red and almost fell out of her chair laughing. I asked her what I said and, after she collected herself several minutes later, she explained my little slip.
I will never forget those two words.
Something to chew on from Lesslie Newbigin:
I believe that the Christian view of God’s purposes for the human family is different from both [capitalism and socialism]… and arises from a distinct belief about what human nature is. From its first page to its last, the Bible is informed by a vision of human nature for which neither freedom nor equality is fundamental; what is fundamental is relatedness. Man – male and female – is made for God in such a way that being in the image of God involves being bound together in this most profound of all mutual relationships. God binds himself in a covenant relationship with men and women to which he remains faithful at whatever cost and however unfaithful his covenant partner is. And people and nations are called to live in binding covenant relationships of brotherhood. Human beings reach their true end in such relatedness, in bonds of mutual love and obedience that reflect the mutual relatedness in love that is the being of the Triune God himself. Neither freedom nor equality are words that can take us to the heart of the matter.”
[Foolishness to the Greeks, 118-119]
In the second chapter of Foolishness to the Greeks, Newbigin paints a marvelous profile of modern culture. His analysis is compelling, and makes me curious to read further to see how he thinks the gospel needs to confront the modern world (and to see whether what he says will remain relevant in a post-modern world). Here’s a brief taste of his profile of our culture – a snippet that appealed to me because of its insight into bureaucracy:
Many observers have noted that bureaucratization plays a central role in modern societies. The division of labor and the consequent pluralization and complexification of society require the development of techniques for large-scale control. Bureaucracy applies the mechanical model to this task. It provides machinery in which there is a high degree of division of labor, of specialization, of predictability, and of anonymity. It is of the essence of bureaucracy that it sets out to achieve a kind of justice by treating each individual as an anonymous and replaceable unit. The introduction into bureaucratic procedures of the personal relationships that govern the private life of the home is – in bureaucratic terms – corruption and nepotism. Bureaucracy applies the principles of reason as understood at the Enlightenment to human life in the public sphere: the analysis of every situation into the smallest possible components and the recombination of these elements in terms of logical relationships which, ideally, can be expressed in mathematical terms and handled by a computer. In its ultimate development, bureaucracy is the rule of nobody and is therefore experienced as tyranny.
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