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My tangents tend to go all over the place.  Today’s came from a website that recommended I read an article on early modern citizenship and contemporary parallels. 

A phrase or two stuck out to me as I read. 

Commitment to citizenship is often accompanied by ideals/virtues of how we should live in the community.  Further, when you confer and police the virtues of this citizenship, the group often claims to produce those virtues in the citizens.  This is claimed to be done foremost through education.  At the same time, the culture of a group can only be cultivated outside the school.

I then replaced “church membership” for the talk about citizenship.  An interesting exercise.

OK, being the library geek that I am, here is the citation:  Gordon, Andrew and Stack, Trevor (2007) ‘Citizenship Beyond
the State: Thinking with Early Modern Citizenship in the Contemporary World’,
Citizenship Studies, 11:2, 117 – 133

Conversations often start well.  Usually there is a common topic that seems to be the point of contact. 

The question often is – when are you done?

At least, when I was a youth, that was the consideration.  Perhaps I didn’t have too much to say, or maybe I figured all you need to say was the point leave it at that.  Over and out!

Now, years later, I have way too much to say.  I’m sure I could find enough tangents to keep up a talk for some time.  But when are you done?  When their eyes glaze over?  When you are repeating a point you made 10 minutes ago?  When you aren’t interested in the topic any longer but you keep talking?

I hope to learn more . . . or maybe I should just say . . .

Over and Out!

When I go into a mall or a large office building I learn something.

I am here!

Now, the building plans are laid out – often with nice labels and even categorized and tagged.  You can go anywhere from HERE.

Except that you probably want to know where you are going (destination), or you take the attitude that you are just here for the fun of it (journey). 

I’m a bit of a destination type of guy!  I usually don’t go to a meeting place unless I have a reason to be there – I’ve been invited, I’ve got a product in mind that a store holds, I’ve found I am in need of a washroom.  When I’m done (or when I have found a reason to stick around), I’m committed. 

The adventurous types tend to just drop in.  They would not make good members or participants in a gathering.  They will have fun and may even find something they are looking for.  But . . . and here my question arises – How long?

And yes, there is a parallel to what is happening in the church.  What do you see?

We were flying into Bible territory yesterday in our morning church service.  Our pastor was talking about the prodigal son in Luke 15.  We got to verse 13 and he made a point of what a young son was doing – as the New Living Translation says, “wild living”.  This became a bit of unison repetition throughout the sermon by the congregation to emphasize this point.

Of course, with my curiosity to know what the Greek said I turned to the passage.  The living part was easy – it says living!  The wild part?  One English translation just calls this living “prodigally”.  Not much help. 

The Greek word is asotos (with a few accents here and there which I will ignore for your sake).  Akin to another Greek word that really is “a prodigal”.  This is the only time this particular form of the word is used in the New Testament. 

Having said that, here are some words that have been used to describe asotos:  unsavedness (what can’t be saved – waste), wastefulness, wantonness, profligacy, dissipation, incorrigibleness, abandoned, debauchery, excess, riotous, loose.  Of course, you need to compare this to other Greek writers of the time to get context for what this word may have meant.  Perhaps all of these things or maybe just one or two?

In some ways you can choose your definition.  I would want to make the point that the older brother (who presumably kept up with spying out the younger brother) points out a few verses later that the younger brother was with prostitutes.  Maybe not all he was doing, but something he was doing.  Thus I would want my definition to include prostitutes in some way. 

At the very least, the “away from home” behaviour was not good. 

I guess “wild” could describe it!