The National Post reports on a demographic reversal in certain Canadian communities where former minorities have overtaken the majority from Canada’s traditionally Caucasian populace. This is especially noticeable in cities in British Columbia (my home province) and Ontario.
This isn’t exactly a surprise. Last August, a report appeared in the Windsor Star describing complaints about a billboard promoting Hezbollah. Last November, the Post reported efforts in Quebec to address concerns regarding the right of Islamic women to vote veiled.
As you would expect, growth in immigration is accompanied by a change in the Canadian religious spectrum. Statistics Canada reported an increase in Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism as long ago as this 2003 report on the 2001 census. Presumably this growth has only increased.
It seems that Canadians are responding to this change with ambivalence:
Mr. Ley said managing the integration of immigrants is a challenge facing developed countries around the world, and he thinks Canada is headed in the right direction. “We’ve chosen not to go the French way, which is a very strong position that you come here and you be like us. A more multicultural view is that there’s give and take and there’s an evolution of a national society. That is the choice that Canada has made.”
Perhaps the alleged give-and-take of Canadian society will prevent overt racial strife. However, it also inhibits the spread of the gospel to every tribe and nation. During chapel at BJU yesterday, Bob Rutledge delivered a passionate appeal (audio) to present the love of Christ to Muslim people.
John 4:35 Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.
Indeed, the fields are now at Canadian doorsteps. Canadian Christians face a tremendous mission. Behold, now is the day of salvation!
[Edit 04/08/08: Added link to audio for Rutledge sermon.]
I turned in an interpretation of Mark 9:49-50 for Hermeneutics class today. This is the second project I’ve had like this where I was given a difficult, short passage of Scripture (Mark 9:49-50) to interpret. Using the rules of biblical interpretation I learned in class, I was to supposed to explain the meaning of each phrase/detail of the passage.
Disclaimer
Before I continue with a description of my experience working on the project, I suppose I should include a disclaimer. Anyone who has this assignment in the future students needs to realize that:
- My interpretation here is guaranteed to be cloudy enough that it won’t help you much.
- Indeed, even if I were to revise the paper in light of my professor’s comments, I am still highly likely guaranteed to be wrong in key interpretational questions anyway.
- The wealth of commentaries in the library collection should be more than sufficient to help you understand this passage. “Hardest verse in Mark” or not, this is a class project because it is attainable. More on that below.
Observations from the project
Interpretational doability
Although many commentators term Mark 9:49 “the most difficult verse” in the book, on the most demanding questions most of the commentators have a fairly uniform approach. The difficulty with this passage comes from grappling with the passage itself and exposing yourself to all the possible interpretations.
In many ways, perhaps the key difficulty for “secondary interpreters” (those who have the benefit of the commentator’s labour) is to be able to affirm the accuracy of the commentator’s interpretations. No commentator will claim a licensed interpretation of the passage, but the insights of each commentator combined with the others yields a helpful and likely accurate approach.
Text criticism and interpretation
One part of this project that drove me crazy was the insistence on interpreting Mark 9:49 in light of its textual variants. The phrase καί πᾶσα θυσία ἁλὶ ἁλισθήσεται (translated “and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt” in the KJV) is contested on the basis of textual criticism, yet factors heavily into the interpretations offered by many commentators. Many commentators believe that it was an allusion to Lev. 2:13 added by a copyist in a manuscript margin, and thus not part of the original passage in Mark. Over time, the phrase was incorporated into the actual text of manuscripts based on this alleged addition.
Almost all the commentators based their interpretation on this contested phrase, noting that the connection with Leviticus throws light on an otherwise confusing statement. It seemed ludicrous to me that a copyist’s allusion which was (allegedly) added inappropriately to certain text families should sway every commentator’s interpretation. Continue reading →
Last Christmas while visiting family I was able to preach twice at my home church in Victoria, BC. The first message was a lesson from Judges 17 that I gave during the Adult Bible Study class, and the second is a sermon from Daniel 1 that I preached later that afternoon. (I’m only now posting these because True North didn’t exist in those days, and I wanted to archive them here now.)
I’ve included links to the audio files here, but since these are hosted on the church site I cannot guarantee that the links will continue to work in the future. Continue reading →
