Are you a Christian? How do you know?

One of the things I’ve decided about Christianity is that anybody who calls themselves a Christian is a Christian. There really is no authority that says otherwise. Sure, there are authorities. There are multiple authorities. I bet there’s someone reading this right now who would tell me they know how to define someone into or out of Christianity. There do seem to be rules. I’ve had them enumerated for me by one or another helpful Christian in person, and there are more books than you’d ever be able to read, and more TV programs than you’d ever be able to watch, and more radio … Those who have ears to hear, let them hear. 

But they don’t all agree, do they? They can’t all be Christian then. Or. They are all Christian, every Christian as Christian as every other. As each asserts themselves to be.

In his neat explainer Sapiens Yuval Harari offers this take on Christian history:

[I]f we combine all the victims of [the Roman Empire’s] persecutions [of Christians], it turns out that … the polytheistic Romans killed no more than a few thousand Christians. In contrast, over the course of the next 1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion.

Now, I’ve often blamed Christians for all the crimes of Christianity. Christians are certainly responsible for much evil in the world. Yet there are as well nice Christians. Sweethearts, helpful, kind, compassionate. They consider themselves Christian. I can’t just call Christianity the source of evil if there are nice Christians who find it a font of encouragement for practicing love. People seem to find motivation for doing evil — and doing good — in all sorts of ideologies (just another way of saying “religion,” according to Yuval Harari). 

Thus I have decided, as I said above, that it is not my business to police who is and who is not a Christian. Never will I remonstrate against anyone who goes against the supposed tenets of Christianity. The tenets of Christianity are the business of people who call themselves Christian. Those who kill over their disagreements need to be prosecuted for murder. But the disagreement itself is nothing I need have an opinion about. 

source:

Sapiens: a brief history of humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

2015. HarperCollins, New York

the weather in a bell

There are lots of little facts wandering around in the world. Sometimes they come packaged neatly and in ways that make you go huh. 

During World War Two, BBC News was broadcast to Nazi-occupied Europe. Each news programme opened with a live broadcast of Big Ben tolling the hour — the magical sound of freedom. Ingenious German physicists found a way to determine the weather conditions in London based on tiny differences in the tone of the broadcast ding-dongs. This information offered invaluable help to the Luftwaffe. When the British Secret Service discovered this, they replaced the live broadcast with a set recording of the famous clock.

The clock struck one and down he run.

source:

Sapiens: a brief history of humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

2015. HarperCollins, New York

word of the day: circumvention

word of the day: circumvention

Margery Sharp must have had pointed out to her the challenges to a child’s comprehension that her vocabulary presented. As the Rescuers series progresses there are fewer words that are mysteries to me, anyway. I suspect she consciously chose to present fewer such challenges. And sometimes Sharp herself provides a full definition, not just the context that offers clues.

Circumvention means getting around something, as railway engineers may route a track around a mountain, or river mouth, or even stretch of bog, instead of pushing straight ahead. It is often the most practical and safest course, quite apart from saving money. There is a great deal to be said for circumvention, if no loss of principle is involved; why bash one’s head against a brick wall, for instance, if a little further on there’s a gate? Of course circumventing rather than opposing head-on some unjust tyrannous law is something else again, and less to be recommended.

source: 

Miss Bianca and the Bridesmaid

by Margery Sharp

illustrated by Erik Blegveld

1972. Little, Brown & Co., Boston MA