It is Saturday Night, after all. Time for an All-American Post.

Stephen Colbert on Capitol Hill. Not over on the Capital mall, where he should be, preparing for his March to Keep Fear Alive. He was testifying before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Security of the House Judiciary Committee. They wanted to hear his views about how hard it is to bend over in the field all day picking beans.

Colbert arrived before the committee in his complete right wing nutcase persona. I can’t remember whether witnesses before congressional committees are asked to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Probably not. If they did, it would present a real challenge to a comic who has foresworn “truth” in favor of “truthiness.”

If Colbert was feeling a little daunted by his appearance before one of the more august committees of the House, he didn’t show it. He complained that stooping over all day was hard, but worse, was completely unnecessary. There is no reason, he said, why beans have to be grown at ground level, where they are so hard to pick. They should be grown at waist level. And he thought that a nation that could put a man on the moon ought to be able to do that.

That particular idea might strike you as far-fetched, but he did have a more practical solution. All this painful labor is made necessary by the demand for vegetables. The “obvious answer is for all of us to stop eating fruits and vegetables — and if you look at the recent obesity statistics you’ll see that many Americans have already started.”

Needless to say, Congressmen are not accustomed to being treated like this. At home in the district, sure, but not behind the committee table. It is therefore understandable that a member might think that tut-tutting Mr. Colbert would be in order. Not a good idea. This is Comedy Central we’re looking at.

Representative Lamar Smith, R-TX did go so far as to ask, “Does one day in the field make you an expert witness?”

“I believe that one day of me studying anything makes me an expert,” Mr. Colbert replied.

Tea Party Exegesis

I was disappointed to learn in the New York Times that Jimmy Carter, certainly our best ex-president, thinks that the story of Onan is about masturbation. I don't care all that much about Onan. It has been many years since I lived anywhere masturbation was thought to be a hot topic for Christian ethics, let alone for biblical exegesis. But I actually do care about the story of Tamar. She is one of my favorite women in the world and Onan plays a bit part in the story of Tamar, so I guess I'm going to have to get into it after all. For anyone who wonders why I might be such a fan of Tamar, I have put my reasons in this telling of her story. She is, in any case, a good deal more interesting than Christine O'Donnell.

Oh yes. Christine O'Donnell is the Tea Party candidate for the office of U. S. Senator from Delaware. Maureen Dowd, a regular New York Times columnist, reported in her column this morning that Ms. O'Donnell once said, "The Bible says that lust in our heart is committing adultery, so you can't masturbate without lust." Well, OK, there's some biblical work to be done there, but that's Christine O'Donnell and I don't think I've got that kind of time. But Jimmy Carter told Maureen Dowd, she says, that the Old Testament story of Onan "warns against wasting thy seed on the ground."

It doesn't, actually, and Jimmy Carter has taught a Sunday School class in Plains, Georgia for many years and he ought to know that. If you care about exegesis at all, the first question you need to ask of a story is, "What is it about?" If you are going to draw any lessons from it, you need at least to know what it is about. The story of Tamar is about being obedient to God's laws. And what law is involved here? Levirate marriage.

We will have to pause momentarily to consider levirate marriage. That may have been the part of the story that stopped Robert Redford from seriously considering my proposal that Tamar was the kind of story he should make a movie of. Something stopped him, at any rate. The best I got back was a snotty letter from one of his henchpersons. Levirate marriage shows how important it was for Israelites to have male descendants in every clan line. And how do we do that? If a son does not have a male heir (and Tamar's husband, Er, did not have one), his next younger brother is to impregnate her and the resulting son would be considered "the son of Er" for clan purposes.

Onan was the next younger brother and producing an heir for Er was his job. He didn't want to do that job. We don't know why. Maybe he hated Er. Maybe he didn't like having his father, Judah, send him to Tamar as a favor to Er. In any case, Onan did whatever he did for the purpose of seeing to it that he did not produce an heir for his brother, E, as God had commanded. God was not happy and killed Onan for that.

It was Judah's job, as head of the clan, to move the responsibility down to the next son. He didn't. The reasons are a little complicated. He may have reasoned that he had already lost two sons to Tamar and was not willing to risk a third. Also the third son was not yet old enough. In any case, Judah failed God by refusing to send the third son in the same way that Onan failed in refusing to impregnate Tamar. And it is entirely possible that God's vengeance would have fallen next on Judah.

Actually, following that line of speculation, Tamar might have saved Judah's life by seducing him, getting herself pregnant, and producing heirs, finally, for her dead husband, Er. Two heirs,in fact, since she gave birth to twins, Perez and Zerah. And that's how Tamar winds up in Matthew's account of the genealogy of the Messiah. She was the one who was faithful to God, although it took the seduction of her father-in-law to get the job done.

Jimmy. Christine. That's what the story is about. Whatever lessons we might learn from it probably ought to feature "being obedient to God" as the first Powerpoint slide. Of course, I wouldn't argue that levirate marriage is required in the 21st Century. Ms. O'Donnell might. Mr. Carter might. But I don't. I do argue that "obedience to God" is still a crucial concept and anyone who thinks of himself or herself as a follower of this God might want to give some thought to just what "obedience" might mean right now. At least it's worth asking.

The Eight Answers

Nothing heavy tonight. I like to celebrate the Saturday evening posts with something easy and fun. This little skit on how to sound smart and stay dumb is my idea of fun.

Sometime in the first week of my American government class at PSU, I will play a clip from the movie, Born Yesterday. I’m thinking of the 1993 version, not the 1950 one. This one has Don Johnson as Paul Verall, the Washington insider, Melanie Griffith as Billie Dawn, the political novice, and John Goodman as Harry Brock, Billie’s boyfriend/keeper/boss.

Billie seems likely to make a lot of trouble for Harry in Washington, where he has come to buy some Senators, so he hires Paul Verall to “smarten her up” a little. Paul starts very conventionally by telling her to get a copy of the Washington Post and circle any words she doesn’t know. It turns out that there are quite a few she doesn't know. That’s not good enough for getting smart quickly in Washington, so he comes up with another plan.

At this point in the presentation, I mention to my class that the expression, “the liberal arts” was once one of a set of two. I ask them to think of these two as options. They are two ways one might go about the process of learning about American government. The other phrase was “the servile arts.” So we have “the arts fit for free men” and “the arts fit for servants.” I promise them that I will teach the course in the liberal arts mode, but I admit that there is nothing to prevent them from taking the course in the servile arts mode.

Then I play the clip. It takes two minutes and 57 seconds. Paul tells Billie that everyone in Washington talks about the same thing at parties and that the only time anyone is willing to say he doesn’t know something is when he is being indicted. So the deal is that he will stand across from her and (unobtrusively) hold up from one to eight fingers. That way she will know which of the eight "answers" to parrot. This practice is called psittacism, by the way, a word I never utter in class. The closest English verb is "to parrot."

Here are the eight answers. You will notice that they are answers in the sense of “things you can say when people ask you something.” Beyond that, they aren’t much.

Answer 1. Here’s what I’d like to know. Who elected the Washington Post president?

Answer 2. We can’t be the policeman of the world, but until we get another cop on the block, we have to support our friends.

Answer 3. Being a superpower has a price.

Answer 4. It’s still a dangerous world out there.

Note: At the party, Billie starts with 2 and adds 3, pauses, and adds 4. It’s beautiful

Answer 5. That’s about as likely as a Democrat being elected president.

Note: This after the previous 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Answer 6. It makes you wonder if a parliamentary system isn’t better.

Answer 7. I don’t think Abe Lincoln himself would know what to do about that.

Note: There is a pathetic little exchange after this one. Paul says, “You say that one when you don’t know what to say. Billie responds, “Good. I’ll just say that one.”

Answer 8. If only the U. N. would take out the Vernor amendment to Resolution 165, we’d have the power to do what needs to be done.

What will happen in November?

It will get colder. More Pacific Northwest football games will be played in mud. Many leaves will fall. And some Democrats. But not as many as people think.

In my Page (the non-Post entries on my blog), I warned that I like reading polls. If you think polls are about as reliable as Rorschach blots, you can move right along. The next post is going to be about self-respect and may be more a rant than a sober analysis. If you think there is useful information in polls, come along and look at the New York Times/CBS Poll of September 10--14.

Sometimes I get all systematic about analyzing polls, but that's not the way I'm feeling today. I'll just breeze through and give you some of the results and play with them a little. You can download the entire poll by using the hyperlink in yesterday's New York Times.

Since the previous poll in August, the number of people disapproving the way Obama is handling his job as president has gone up and the number approving has gone down. "Approve" is now under 50% at 45%, although the number disapproving is also under 50%. The number of respondents who answered "don't know" or who had no answer at all (the category is labeled DK/NA) is lower than it has ever been since they started asking this question. The "I'm not sure" position is getting squeezed out. It now stands at 8%.

This question is a good question. I don't have any negative criticism of it at all. Still, I would love to know what the respondent’s think Obama's "job" is. Is it "making things better?" Is it "caring deeply and personally that people are still hurting?" Is it "making sure that however things are, the blame for those bad things can be assigned to someone else?"

About a third of the respondents think "things in this country" have "gotten pretty seriously off track." The alternative, by the way, is "are generally going in the right direction." Following my post on euphemisms and dysphemisms, I would think that the phrasing "pretty seriously off track" would be attractive today--just the phrasing--while "going in the right direction" would not be. The good thing about these polls is that they ask the same questions in the same way every time, so it is safe to compare them. The percentage of people who think things are going in the right direction has not been above 40% since September of last year.

Things are worse for the Congress, of course. Only 21% of the respondents believe Congress is "handling its job," although there is, again, the question of what the job of the Congress really is. There is no question that passing healthcare legislation has taken most of their time, attracted most of the ink, and probably fewer photons than would be required to give a good account to TV watchers. Given that use of their time, it is worth noting that 49% of the respondents disapprove ("somewhat" or "strongly") of the healthcare law, while only 37% approve (also combining "somewhat" and "strongly") The 49% who disapproved, were asked if the law should be repealed. Nearly all(about 80%) of the 49% said it should be repealed.

What does that mean? The next poll question asked if the respondents would be more or less likely to vote for a congressional candidate who supported the reforms--this would include incumbents, who have a recorded vote and challengers, who do not. Some said they would be more likely to support such a candidate (28%), some would be less likely (28%) and some said it would make no difference at all (41%). Is it just really cool to live in a democracy or what?

Still, odd as it may seem with all the anti-incumbent rhetoric, it is better to be a Democrat than a Republican. "Approve of the way Democrats in Congress are handling their job (38%)" matches up pretty well with "Approve of the way Republicans in Congress are handling their job (20%). The disapprovals are (Dems) 58% and (Reps) 68%. The opinion of the Democratic party in general is not favorable (45% favorable to 48% unfavorable. But Democrats run, mostly, against Republicans and the opinion of the Republican party is even worse (34% favorable to 56% unfavorable).

If you push beyond favoring the Democrats in general, you find it is echoed in most policy areas. Who has better ideas for solving the nation's problems? Democrats (40% to 33%). Who is more likely to make the right decisions on immigration? Democrats (40% to 38%). Create new jobs? Democrats (44% to 38%). Help the middle class? Democrats (55% to 33%). Help small businesses? Democrats (49% to 41%). The single issue the Republicans win is that they are more likely to reduce the federal budget deficit (42% to 34%). This, with the Bush-era deficits, is amazing, but there it is. The Republicans are getting credit for protesting Democratic deficits and they are not being blamed for their own deficits. It's odd, but then it's politics.

Still, odd as it may seem, when you ask the anti-incumbent question directly, only 34% believe their own congressional representative, the incumbent, deserves to be re-elected. The percentage who feel that "a new person" should be elected is up to a historic high at 55%. The "new person" question in 1994, when the Republicans took over both houses of Congress, was only 53%. And where is Newt Gingrich today? On the other hand, a lot of voters are going to say that they favor "a new person" in general, but that they don't know enough about the particular new person in their own district, to vote for him or her. So questions that put "this particular person" up against "any new person" aren't very helpful in any one district.

There is so much more, but I've had my fun for today. And only another month and a half until election day. Woohoo!

Being "Sensitive"

I've heard a lot of people say, lately, that if the Muslims in New York were as "sensitive" as they should be, they wouldn't build a "mosque" that close to Ground Zero. Not long ago, a white bureaucrat was fired, briefly, for saying that a certain Washington D. C. budget was "niggardly." Some of the people who protested were engaging in what is called "folk etymology." That means, in this case, that you can tell where that word comes from just by looking at it. Others knew what it meant, but thought that someone that willing to risk offending blacks, shouldn't have a job in the District. He was restored to his job by the black leadership, who said, eventually, "Look, we know what the word means. We aren't offended and he's right."

It seems to me that it wasn't that long ago, you had to do something wrong to get attacked that way. Or you had to do something that actually offended a constituency with the clout to make you pay for offending them. Now, you don't have to actually offend anyone. If you said or did something that could have offended someone, it is the prerogative of anyone to complain that you are "insensitive." Puh-leese!

The quest for victimhood is a good deal more aggressive these days. You can, if you put your mind to it, learn to be offended by most political events or by the absence of those events. I've been reading Renegade recently, a very good account of the Obama campaign of 2008. He said at one point that Sen. McCain's attempts to make a very ugly economy look good were no more effective than putting lipstick on a pig. Funny. Trite, but funny. The Republican operatives spent days trying to persuade people that "lipstick" was a reference to Sarah Palin and that women everywhere should be offended. No one thought it was worth pursuing the idea that this attempt required McCain to be the pig.

I've been hearing more and more that the men and women of our armed forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere else "to protect our freedoms." What freedoms are we talking about? It used to be enough to say that they were where they were "to protect American interests." And it was understood that "American interests" included the interests of American corporations. Access to cheap copper and cheap oil and cheap bananas, for instance, are of very great interest to the businesses who would otherwise have to pay more for them and charge more for them. It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether the interests of these corporations are so important to the government of the United States that they should be supported by every American who pays taxes.

Who will say that it is too much to identify the function of the armed forces in general as being in the business of "protecting our freedoms?" Is the clarification that moves this function from "protecting our freedoms" to "protecting American interests" going to offend anyone? Is it insensitive to risk offending the families of men and women who are now in danger from America's enemies? Does it really matter that we have inflated "American interests" to "our freedoms?"

This is territory already well trodden by "Support Our Troops." The political strategist who first figured out that we could skip over where the troops were and what they were doing and go straight to whether we should "support" them, was a public relations genius. I have never seen a bumper sticker that raises the question of whether some uses of military force should be supported but that others should be opposed. Or, more exactly, the ones I have seen are too long to chant effectively. Who will say that we, as the people of a democratic government, must skip over the uses to which our armies are put? Who will say that "Support Our Militarism" is a bumper sticker worth having a conversation about? Is it insensitive to wonder aloud whether killing as many suspected foes a year as we kill might strengthen the movements we are trying to weaken.

And while we're at it, who is going to say that it took great courage for the terrorists of 9/11 to fly their planes into buildings and get themselves killed (along with a lot of other people)? I've never heard it said. And I, myself, have said only in American government courses where the point is that here is something everyone knows is true and no one is allowed to say. I say it bears on American civil liberties, and it does, but it bears on the language of politics, too. Shall we keep the meaning of "courage," or shall we apply it to acts that are done by the good guys only. When these acts are done by the bad guys--the same acts--they are not "courage," but...oh...what? Vindictiveness?

It seems to me that the bad guys are going to survive our lack of appreciation. I am not so sure we are. I wonder if we will survive the degradation of the language we use to negotiate our public attitudes. Look up "courage" in a good dictionary. Try to find a caveat that this applies only to us and not to our enemies.

These are instances in which we have muddled our political discourse because so few people have the courage to insist on clarity where "sensitivity" is felt to be a higher value. So we "support" our troops because we don't want to oppose them and don't have the wit to insist on a better question. We celebrate our military's function in "protecting our freedoms" because we are reluctant to say that so many of our own people have died protecting only "our interests." We allow a word as important as "courage" to be blurred beyond certain recognition or divided so that it's meaning depends on who it was who was courageous. And we do this because we don't want to run the risk of being called "insensitive."

Perfectly sensible people refuse to say these things because the costs will be swift and personal and the benefits will be slow and societal. But we will do them or suffer the consequences of their not being done.

Well, Sh**t, I Dropped the Noodles on the Floor

One of the things that always puzzled me when I was a kid was that there were words that were “not to be said.” In my family, there was a familiar series of reasons why we were not to use certain words, but beyond that, I knew that the phenomenon was general even if the reasons varied from one family to another.

It seemed more reasonable to me that things were “bad,” rather than words. Body parts or body functions that had to do with sexual practices or excretory functions, for example, could be “bad.” I was OK with that. What confused me was that anus, for instance, was a good word, while asshole was a bad word. It was the words, apparently, not the things. How odd.

I’ve thought about this from time to time since then and as I now see it, we imagine a word scale that goes from -1 through 0 (neutral) to +1. These vary, as I pointed out in my post “Conservative and Proud,” from one setting to another. Asshole could be a -1 word in one setting and a +1 word in another. I get that. But what about that zero? What is that?

This brings us to the question of euphemisms and dysphemisms and that brings me to George Carlin. Shit is a word Carlin loves to say. As I let my mind wander back over the years of Carlin I enjoyed with my kids, I remember uses of shit as a noun (pot, mostly), a verb, an adjective, and an adverb. How he missed conjunctions and prepositions, I can’t imagine.

Here’s Carlin on saying and hearing the word “shit.”

Shit's a nice word. It's a friendly, happy, y'know, kind of word. Handy word. Middle class has never really been into ****, y'know, as a word.No, not really comfortable.Not completely into it. Y'know, not really relaxed with it. You'll hear it around the kitchen if someone drops a casserole, y'know, "Oh, ****! Oh! Oh, look at the noodles! Oh, ****! Don't say that, Johnny, just hear it. Oh, ****!" Sometimes they say 'shoot'. They can't kid me, man. 'Shoot' is 'shit' with two 'o's.

I’m guessing that all those quadruple asterisks are to stand for shit, although that is puzzling since shit is the first word of the paragraph. There is so much to play with in that paragraph. Maybe if I just say what they are, it will help me focus on the use I had in mind when I called it up. The middle class has not been comfortable with the word. Hear it, Johnny, but don’t say it. But the one I had in mind was, “shoot is just shit with two o’s.”

Is that right? Is shit, shoot with two o’s? Is shoot, shit with an i-? Is one of those forms real and the other a fraud? Which one? This brings us to the need for the 0 in the center of the scale. So I drop the casserole on the floor and I am angry and upset. Am I looking for a neutral denotation or a neutral affect equidistant between shit and shoot? Nope. Not.

How about if I say “Gajurgis!!”? You never know for sure, but I intend that as a nonce word—like the one time pad in the spy novels—that means nothing at all. On the other hand, that j- in the middle could be said with a lot of gusto. And you could kick off the whole word with a very robust g-. You could even hang onto the sibilant at the end if you didn’t feel purged yet. As a “word” you could say when you were really upset, it is harmless.

Which accounts, I think, for what such words are used so seldom. The boundaries of “good speech” and the sensibilities of “good people” are so clear that we may feel that we have not really expressed our anger if we have not violated at least one of them. Several violations would be better. “Shit!” as a response to dropping the casserole is really very good. It evokes excrement where you really don’t want it, i.e., in the kitchen, and it is really not something “nice people” say, which further expresses just how angry you are. Breaking out of the prison of “what you ought to say” helps you express your true feelings. “Gajurgis!” probably does not.

What Does God Want From Shy Christians?

“What particular use do you suppose God has in mind for shy Christians?[1] There ought to be something. I don’t think “shy” is a disease. I don’t think it’s a character disorder. Some people are just shy and if they are Christians, they are shy Christians.

Let’s begin by looking at what shy is going to mean in this piece. It doesn’t refer to people who have a psychotic hatred of or a neurotic aversion to people. Those are diseases and I’m not talking about diseases. It isn’t the stirring of a sense of self-consciousness and the mild anxiety that sometimes goes with it in stressful situations. Those are things that could happen to anyone, given the right situation; they aren’t the property of shy people particularly.

I’m inclined to say that I, myself, am shy. I hesitate to say so because the fact is that most people say they are shy, when they are asked. And also because I made a living being professionally gregarious at and around the legislature in Salem for many years. And also because I have chosen a career that involves standing before groups of people and trying to teach them about politics. And also because I have a daughter who described herself as shy when she was a cheerleader—a cheerleader!—in high school and I could not find a way to take her account of herself seriously. I am taking it seriously now.

I am going to follow my original inclination, however, and say that I am shy. I want to spend a little time saying what I mean by that and then a little more time trying to answer the question with which I began this post. It will take just a little extra time because I want to build the general case for gifts (see 1 Corinthians 12 for Paul’s take) and then apply it to temperament and character. Or, more exactly, to kinds of temperament and character.

So here’s what I mean by shy. I go into an unstructured situation not knowing what to do. I think what it must feel like to gregarious people—that’s what I’m calling “the other kind of people.” It must feel like an opportunity to meet new people or to exchange casual conversation with friends and acquaintances. It must feel like a party that goes on and on. I’m guessing. When I’m at a party, I try to find someone who really wants to talk about something—“talk about something” describes the kind of conversation, not any topic in particular—and go off into a quiet corner with that person and play with the idea until it’s time to go home. I tell myself I do that because I'm shy.

I also think gregarious people make different kinds of mistakes than shy people. Gregarious people are inclined to take more, in a conversation, than was offered and the people from whom that more was taken sometimes feel bad about it. Shy people are inclined to take less, in a conversation, than was offered and the people who saw their offer rejected sometimes feel bad about it. You noted the parallelism there, I trust. For every way of doing it right, there is a way of doing it wrong. For every temperament, there are jobs that belong particularly to people whose temperaments make them good at it. It's their job.

I like “largetalk;” smalltalk just doesn’t do it for me. (I am using both largetalk and smalltalk against the advice of my spellchecker, but when it objected to spellchecker, I stopped taking it seriously.) Besides, I’m no good at smalltalk. And the effort of it wears me out. I’m really tired afterwards and, usually, discouraged as well because I’ve done the job so badly. And I remember that it has been a long time since I remembered to take a deep breath. And I think there are a lot of people like me. I don’t know if that way of characterizing the experience I’m calling “being shy” has any resonance with you. I hope so, because it’s the best I can do right now.

Now I want to take a small theological detour. I’m going to play off of Paul’s chapter on “gifts,” where he says that everyone is given a gift that could be used for the building up of the group. I’m going to say that everyone is a kind of person. Every kind of person is better at something—shy people might have acute empathy with others, for instance—than another kind of person. Every Christian has the obligation and the opportunity, to be of service as the kind of person he actually is. Doing what you can do, acting in a sustainable positive fashion, is all one person can expect of another. It is sometimes argued that God expects more, but I have not yet been persuaded.

That’s how the system works. Everyone is diligent about doing what he can do. Everyone is appreciative of the people who do other kinds of good things. Both those contribute to the vitality and effectiveness of the group.

There are some exceptions I would grant. I am thinking of four in particular. The first is that every now and then, something needs to be done and you are the person who is there. The fact that the job to be done is “not your kind of thing” doesn’t really matter in this case. If it’s you or nobody, it’s you. The second is that this understanding does relieve you of the need to do the things that would be done better by others, but it identifies as crucially important that you do the things that belong to people like you. The third is that there are some things that now cause you great anxiety which, if you would learn to do them better, could be a normal and sustainable part of your repertory. And, finally, it is worth remembering that we are talking about shy today, but no one is just shy. People are shy and competent and insensitive and knowledgeable and naive and “having a bad day.”

That’s the theological dilemma and a four practical little buffers. Now that we come, finally, to the question of what God wants from shy Christians, we find it is already answered. There is always the possibility that this is my answer, not God’s, but let’s stop for a moment and remember whose blog this is.

The answer is that, under ordinary circumstances, God wants shy Christians to do carefully and well the work their shyness prepares them to do. No one is obligated, by virtue of being a follower of Jesus Christ, to be gregarious. At my church, they are careful to ask the congregation to “stand if you are able,” but we are not asked to "sing if you are able,” or to “make smalltalk if you are able.” (I have made smalltalk one word against the advice of my spellchecker.) We say that the coffee time after the worship service is “fellowship” and we call it “a good thing” because, after all, who is against “fellowship?” I don’t know. Who is against cocktail party conversation? The coffee time is stressful because it is about either meeting new people or talking intently to your friends so you won’t have to meet the new people. The new people really do need to be not only met, but welcomed. I hope very much that someone does that because if it needs to be done and no one is doing it, I am back on the hook again and for me, the costs are high.

I believe that every person has a gift to give, but in this post, I am arguing that every kind of person has a gift. If they give it, they should be supported by those of their friends who know what is going on. If they fail to give it, they should be criticized (helpfully) by those of their friends who know what is going on. But they will not be expected to do the things that will cost them a good deal when those things could be done by people who would consider them a golden opportunity.

The point I am about to make, the last point, is a very small-scale view of God’s providence. I know that Providence—that’s Providence with a capital P—is about larger things. I remember a remark that “Providence” is the word Christians use for history. But we do say that God provides, the Latin is providere, because God foresees; the Latin is pro = “before” + videre = “to see.” It is God’s ability to see what is needed that sustains God’s ability to provide what is needed.

Nothing in the Christian doctrine of Providence implies that I, myself, will see what is coming or what is needed in any systematic way. But the implication of this notion of providence is that there is a “fitting together” of the faithfulness of different kinds of disciples that makes the outcome of their service more than the simple sum of the work they have done.


[1] Shy doesn’t suggest everything I have in mind, but I think it is the best word overall. I have been surprised by how differently this question develops for me when I say introverted or reserved or private instead of shy. My mind simply takes different paths when I think of this dilemma using those other words. I have stayed with shy because it is a more colloquial word; essentially, a wider door. A door more people can get through and move on into the rest of the post.