What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Guides and God

    So, am I all up in arms about Girl Guides dropping their promise to love [their] God[s]?

    No, I don’t think so. I suspect God can take it.

    This is what the Girl Guides used to promise:

    I Promise that I will do my best;
    To love my God,
    To serve my Queen and my Country,
    To help other people
    And
    To keep the Guide Law.

    Now they are going to say this:

    I promise that I will do my best:
    To be true to myself and develop my beliefs,
    To serve the Queen and my community, 
    and
    To keep the Guide Law.

    This doesn’t seem to me to be particularly troubling. It looks as though Guiding wants to be modern and inclusive. I’m just a little surprised they’ve kept the Queen in there which surely must exclude republicans.

    I don’t expect that Guiding will change significantly by changing that promise except to allow some girls to take part who might once have thought that it was not for them because they were not religious.

    The “self” has a complex relationship with religion. And Christianity is something of a mixed bag when it comes to the self. On the one hand it is all about losing your self and being lost in God and service of others. On the other, we are told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling, which sounds a bit like a good starting place for a lot of modern therapy.

    “Unto thine own self be true” is an injunction that sometimes is wrongly attributed to the Bible. It isn’t, it is a misquote in any case and comes from Polonius speaking to Laertes in Hamlet: “This above all- to thine own self be true”.

    I think that God will survive the Guides’ change of wording and I hope that Guiding will flourish as a result of trying to keep up with the times.

    However, you can see an enormous shift in ethical thinking taking place between those two versions of the promise. The self is paramount in modern thinking. I think that’s an inevitable thing. I also think that it is a good thing. We’ve not thought nearly enough about the self in the past. Somewhere inside though, I find myself thinking that focusing on the self is not an absolute good. Some things within the self may not be good. Presumably the injunction to serve the community in the Guide promise is an attempt to mitigate that.

    If I’d been a Guide taking part in their big consultation about the promise, I’d probably have wanted something included about preventing harm. I think that’s a good direction to follow for ethical thinking and can cover the self and others.

    I like the new Rainbow promise though:

    I promise that I will do my best to think about my beliefs and to be kind and helpful.

    You can find the inside skinny on this from a Guide leader at Some Random Bint’s blog.

    , , , ,

7 responses to “Revised Commenting Policy”

  1. Darren Moore Avatar
    Darren Moore

    I try to stick to the policy, whilst commenting on it.

    Most of it pretty understandable/standard. But,
    1.using Scripture as a weapon/quoting isolated verses. To a point I agree, but surely as well as the whole has to be understood as part of the whole, the whole is made us by parts. People misuse the Bible by taking a verse out of context, but they can easily be shown up. Otherwise we can’t use the Bible at all, other than saying – read all of it – there’s something that relates to what I’m saying.

    2. How does the disclaimer square with not being able to comment on PSA? Is that a given (i.e. that it’s nonsense)? Are other opinions banned? Like Roman Catholic views. Even if (highly unlikely) it’s a minority view, are other historically minority views banned (charismatics, baptists) and non-Christians and all liberals – as there views are pretty minority.

    3. Likening gay people to murderers. Unpleasant I agree. Although if (if I may quote a verse – but not to prove a point), this a reference to the 2nd 1/2 of Romans 1, the list includes people who disobey parents and the greedy. Presumably they’re still fair game?

    Just not sure this quite stacks. It’s why people ask, “What are you afraid of?” when it comes to PSA?

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Darren – thank you for your interest. However. the question is not whether you think this commenting policy quite stacks but whether I do.

      Reply
  2. John Sandeman Avatar
    John Sandeman

    Kelvin,
    When reading about theories of the atonement, there is a real risk of continually reading things that have been said many times over – as you point out. But can I credit you with something reasonably original? “We’ve already established that like most Christian people I don’t believe in it.” I have never worked out how to determine the proportions of Christians who believe the various atonement theories. Is there some research out there?

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Thanks John – I’m not aware of any research though I’d be interested in any there was. When I wrote that, I was thinking not simply of who believes what now but also of Christians through time. The history of these various ways of understanding the (or an) atonement is fairly well attested and it is clear that some have risen and fallen through time.

      My presumption is that most of the people in the great blocks of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches (both now and through history) don’t believe in penal substitution – or at least, don’t believe it in the same way that a classical evangelical might believe in it as doctrine which must be personally accepted in order to lead to individual salvation. However, as you rightly point out, who believes what may not be so simple.

      Reply
  3. Darren Moore Avatar
    Darren Moore

    There are a few bits of research on this, but mostly from the context of PSA
    E.g. Chapter 5 of “Pierced for our Transgressions”, by Jeffery, Ovey & Sach (IVP), which is a quite survey of theologians, east & west, a dozen of which are pre-reformation, starting with Justin Martyr.

    Henri Blocher, “Biblical Metaphors of the atonement”, in the journal of the evangelical theological society, 47 (2004), pp629-645
    “The divine substitution: The atonement in the Bible and history” by Shaw & Edwards (Day One).

    I get the your blog, your rules. Just doesn’t sound like decent is welcome.

    Reply
    1. Darren Moore Avatar
      Darren Moore

      Bit of a PS,
      Robert Letham’s, “Through Western eyes”
      Looks at the differences & common ground with E-orthodoxy on lots of things, including salvation. Letham (Reformed), thinks there’s lots to get from the East re:-Trinity in worship, incarnational stuff, divination (rightly understood), but still holds that his “Reformed”

      Reply
    2. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Well, Darren, I’ve found that there are quite a number of people who do want to meet and chat without the Atonement Thought Police stepping in to correct them all the time. In fact, though I expect you’ll be surprised to hear it, to those who don’t believe that particular doctrine, comments rather like your own can appear to be quite aggressive and verging on bullying.

      So, you may not feel welcome to behave exactly as you like here. You are not. And there’s a comminity of folk who like it that way.

      Reply

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