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Sacked for teaching King Lear

Shakespearean tragedy has become high farce, after a Christian high school sacked a teacher for using a “morally defiling” King Lear text in class.

Suzette Martin, 40, was sacked from the private Westmount School in Kerikeri for teaching her Year 13 students from a modern version of the play.

If you read further into the article, you will find that she was actually sacked for not clearing her teaching material (a modern version of King Lear) with the school board before using it. Not quite the same thing as being sacked for teaching King Lear. The newspaper prints a spark notes version of King Lear, but it is not certain which modern version Ms. Martin was using. Modern versions do tend to strip the subtleties out of Shakespearean language, making a play like Lear rather earthy, I would suspect.

This kind of clash of world-views is inevitable given the government’s insistence on school’s having qualified teachers (requiring tertiary education) and the Brethren’s insistence on discouraging tertiary education, thereby ensuring there are no qualified Brethren teachers. The only way round this issue is for Brethren school boards to maintain extreme control over teaching material and course content. Ms. Martin must have known about this requirement given that she had been working there since 2006.

Whereas the Exclusive Brethren have the perfect right to impose their world view on the teachers (it is their school, after all), the teachers have absolutely no right to attempt to impose an opposing world view. Ms. Martin had apparently been encouraging pupils to go on to university, despite her contract specifically barring that. In fact, her very reason for using the modern text (to get good marks in NCEA) reveals that she was more interested in them passing NCEA than learning Shakespeare. If you remove an imperative to pass NCEA university entrance, then there is no real need for such a text. Pupils would probably gain a better appreciation of the Bard using the original text (if education, rather than exams was the motivation)

The extent of the clash of world view is well illustrated by these comments by Secondary Principals’ Association of New Zealand president, Patrick Walsh:

He said the big question was over a clause in Martin’s employment agreement clause barring teachers from encouraging further education.

“They receive Government funding. Shouldn’t they have to promote government priorities?”

Well, obviously not. How can you have a private religious school following a secular government agenda? Does this not obliterate a parent’s right to choose what type of education their child has? This is simply more of that wonderful ERA socialist thinking where children belong to the state and should receive only state indoctrination. It should be clear that any attempt to impose state priorities on a Brethren school would immediately see the school cease to accept state funding. If the school could not survive financially, all the parents would home-school their children (and I mean ALL – these are Exclusive Brethren). Even if the government made home schooling illegal (a gross trampling of human rights) these parent would continue to do this illegally, such is the strength of their beliefs.

Funding to these religious schools is far less than that of state schools, so the taxpayer benefits a great deal from these institutions. Unlike the Exclusive Brethren, most of the pupils from Christian schools would end up in the state system. I view this not as government subsidizing Christian schools, but Christians subsidizing government schooling in return for some say over course content and philosophy.

Readers will know that the MacDaughters were home-schooled for most of their secondary education. During this time, I came to know many Exclusive Brethren parents. While I do not subscribe to their world view, I understand where they are coming from. Universities are dominated by people whose world view is complete anathema to the Brethren. It is not surprising that they are leery about sending their kids there. However, I think this is a serious mistake. Both the MacDaughters are at university and coping well with the anti-Christian milieu. This is because we ensured that they had the analytical tools to understand various world views and where people were coming from. They can now spot atheistic and humanist sub-text from a thousand paces away. It helps immensely if you can see the underlying presuppositions behind many things that are painted as “truth”. They can also tell the difference between a fact and the interpretation of a fact, which about 90% of university students seem unable to do.

Many of the MacDaughter’s friends are not Christians. Both they and their friends are the better for this. There is little to be gained by hiding from the rest of the world except irrelevancy. The last thing Christians need to be is irrelevant.

Related posts:

1. Standard Fail
2. Non-standard
3. Indiscipline

I do not expect someone like Peter to appreciate the difference, simply because he is preoccupied with the physical reality and facts of Jesus’ death. His problem is not a new one. The ancient Greeks on hearing the Gospel thought it was thoroughly crazy and made no sense to their world view. The Romans were perplexed and the Jews thought it was blasphemy. Each had the same problem as Peter – that Christ’s sacrifice, death and, most particularly, his resurrection did not fit into their world view, regardless of whether their world view was a mechanistic one (like Peter’s), a polytheistic one (like the Greeks and Romans) or a monotheistic one (like the Jews). The spiritual dimensions behind the actual act of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection are wildly different from conventional theism and obviously far removed from atheism. I will not even attempt to explain them here, except to say that they are appreciated by faith, rather than reason, but they are not unreasonable.

Amusingly, Peter Cresswell heads his post with Dali’s famous painting of the Crucifixion:

I am amused because you will note that Jesus is depicted as being crucified on a tesseract (a representation of a cube extended into the 4th Dimension – otherwise known as a hypercube). This was Dali’s way of capturing the idea that Jesus’ death has more meaning than the simple act of execution. Peter seems to think it represents man-worship and suggests that the Christ figure is depicted as not being in pain and as aloof – missing the spiritual significance of the work entirely.

It is not my intention to fisk Peter’s entire post, so I will just confine myself to some simple observations:

• Christians are not to blame for the bizarre nature of Easter shopping rules. This is the result of politics, not religion per se. Most Christians I know do not care about easter shopping one way or the other. Some feel there should be no shops open at all. I have yet to find anyone who likes the current compromise. It is my impression that most of the flak around religious holiday regulation seems to come from trade unions who wish to maintain public holidays as they are.
• Easter is not a “myth”. Regardless of how you feel about the religious nature of the easter story, the actual crucifixion of Jesus is one of the better attested events of history. To dismiss it as a myth is to make yourself look ignorant.
• Easter was originally a pagan holiday. I see this argument for Christmas/Yuletide as well. It is not a relevant argument. Christians were not going to take part in pagan fertility rights, so they decided to set up their own festival to celebrate the resurrection. If you want to use easter to celebrate fertility, feel free. I will be using it to celebrate Jesus.

You see, Mr. Cresswell, it is not all about the sacrifice of the crucifixion, it is all about the renewal of the resurrection. As such, the rebirth and renewal celebrated in the original easter celebrations are amazingly appropriate. Even bunny rabbits and eggs have their place in the Christian Easter.

Related posts:

1. Merry Christmas – Part 3
2. Black Easter?
3. Good Friday

The Herald on Sunday continues it’s vendetta against Destiny Church. I have concerns about Destiny too, but this is now getting extremely silly:

Destiny fosters new converts

A Destiny Church pastor working for a child-fostering organisation that gets $10 million a year of taxpayer money is placing vulnerable children with Destiny members of the congregation.

New Plymouth Destiny pastor Robyn Edmonds oversees foster placements as the Taranaki branch manager of the Open Home Foundation, which helps “disadvantaged and hurt” children.

The foster kids are expected to attend Destiny’s controversial services each Sunday.

The link with Destiny has caused concern at the highest levels of the foundation.

Now this is simply plain stupid. There are hundred of churches who actively encourage members of their congregation to foster children. Open Home Foundation itself is a Christian organisation. Most assuredly, any social worker dealing in foster care, who is a churchgoer, will encourage church members to foster. They usually know these people well and can be certain that the foster child will get the care s/he needs. It is far better than simply fostering to an unknown couple. This is not to suggest that non-christian couples cannot take good care of children. But if the social worker has personal knowledge of the foster family, so much the better.

It is therefore unsurprising that Robyn Edmonds is keen on Destiny church members fostering children. In particular, Destiny has a strong social ministry to it’s community, so foster care would most certainly be seen as part of this. There are many churches with similar concerns, including the Salvation Army, whom I have heard foster more children than any other church (I don’t have any official stats on that, though).

Then the HoS article loses the plot entirely:

Another member said the extra children meant a greater income and higher tithes. However, he said the appeal was fresh membership.

I don’t know where the journalist found the “member”, but only a complete moron could think that this is a way for Destiny to generate more income. The allowance given to foster parents barely covers the basic necessities and the vast majority of foster parents dig deep into their own pockets for these children. To suggest that this is a money-making venture is a piece of scurrilous trash spouted by some embittered person and brazenly repeated by the “journalist”, David Fisher, who should be deeply ashamed of himself for repeating such nonsense. He does not seem to realise that this sort of reporting unfairly casts doubt on the motives of  all foster care parents. The HoS and Mr. Fisher should be printing an abject apology for this insulting balderdash next week. Make it a front page item, please.

To also suggest that this is some bizarre attempt to drum up membership is even more absurd. Most of these children are babies and infants and foster care is usually quite temporary. They are unlikely to be growing up in this environment, anyway, even if they are old enough to comprehend what is going on. Had the reporter in question bothered to do any research into foster care, he would have known that placements are reviewed every 6 months for children under the age of 7 and every year above this age and that it is rare for placements to be more that a couple of years (most are much shorter). Long-term placements are usually made with relatives. Of course, it would be rather too much to expect a journalist to type “foster care New Zealand” into Google, wouldn’t it?

This is the worst sort of spam – vindictive spam. This is just another murky article in the Herald’s campaign against Destiny.

However much you may dislike Brian Tamaki and his posturing, there is no doubt that Destiny does one thing superbly – and that is social outreach. The church has made a difference in many people’s lives, including the lives of young foster children. Whereas I don’t really expect a newspaper to focus on the good things Destiny does (“good” does not sell papers), I don’t believe it is right to attempt to make the good things they do into bad ones. That sort of demonising does no-one any good and simply makes the Herald look spiteful.

Related posts:

1. Spam Journalism #60
2. Spam Journalism # 36
3. Spam Journalism #65

But, plainly, churches are not like other charities.

If the boss of a secular, non-profit organisation, let’s say, the CEO of a trust for disabled children, used donor cash to buy a mini-mansion and a Harley, supporters would go elsewhere.

One assumes that the journalist, Heather McCracken, has not yet realised that CEOs have salaries, upon which they can spend whatever they like, including mansions and Harleys, if they are that well-paid. Taking donations directly is, of course, fraud and would warrant immediate police investigation. It is highly unlikely that Brian Tamaki’s income is fraudulent in this sense of the word.

The thing is, his income is not the issue, nor is his wealth. The Bible makes no restriction on your earnings or your assets and that lack of restriction extends to pastors. Wealth is often mentioned in a negative sense, particularly in the New Testament, but always in conjunction with warnings not to let your wealth supplant the place of God in your life. Having wealth is not the problem, it is trusting in wealth. This is not to say that I am quite comfortable with the extent of Tamaki’s wealth, but that is because I am fully aware that his congregation is not wealthy and that Tamaki’s wealth derives mostly from their donations (rather than from Tamaki’s own resources). This tells me that there is something seriously wrong.

The wrongness, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the eftpos machines in Destiny Church, that the Herald is so excited about. The church I worship at has an eftpos machine. It is extremely convenient for making (free-will) donations when you have forgotten to draw money (a frequent occurrence for me). It’s presence is not an issue, because no-one is being co-erced into giving. Eftpos is not the problem – bad doctrine is.

In fairness to the Herald, their articles have touched on both aspects of Destiny/Tamaki doctrine that are poor. Unfortunately, the Herald does not have the background or the interest to explore these, preferring to waffle on about Tamaki’s boat and Harley. But the doctrinal issues are central to understanding the problem.

The first issue is the one of tithing. Many churches, particularly Pacific Island congregations, have a strict adherence to a 10% tithe of all of your income. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of tithing. The biblical injunction to give is :

2Cor. 9:7 Let each one [give] as he has made up his own mind and purposed in his heart, not reluctantly or sorrowfully or under compulsion, for God loves (He takes pleasure in, prizes above other things, and is unwilling to abandon or to do without) a cheerful (joyous, “prompt to do it”) giver [whose heart is in his giving]. [Amplified Bible]

I have purposefully used the Amplified Bible here because it renders the meaning of the passage very explicit. The decision to give brings God pleasure, but it is our decision. This passage does not make any sense if there is some biblical injunction to give 10% of our income. I do not have space, or inclination, to give a biblical exposition on what the Old Testament tithe means to us today. If you are really interested, you can download Eating Sacred Cows by Graeme Carlé, the pastor of the church I attend. It is by far the best exposition of the biblical tithe I have read (and it is a short and easy read). I also recommend Matthew E Narramore’s Tithing: Low-realm, Obsolete and Defunct which is available on-line here.

The other doctrinal problem is the one that has plagued the “prosperity cults”. The strange idea that, if you give generously, God will make you wealthy. Not bless you, mind you, but make you wealthy. This is simply playing a game of spiritual Lotto. I put money into the offering and. magically, more money appears in my bank account.

This would be great, if it was true, but God does not work like this (if He did, people would become Christians just to get money, obviously). Whereas God does love a cheerful giver and God loves to bless those he loves, His blessings rarely consist of financial rewards. And our motivation for giving is not to receive rewards anyway, at least, not immediate, tangible rewards. This does not mean that God does not reward His children, just that He is not obliged to by our giving.

This sort of non-biblical teaching inevitably leads to vast disappointment and disillusionment amongst the believers. It also tends to lead to pastors who know no financial constraints and start to see the congregation as their very own inexhaustible syphon of money. Their motives may remain pure rather than venal, but the end result is always the same – grandiose dreams destroyed by ugly rifts as disenchantment spreads through the body of the church. The split we have just seen in Brisbane (where Tamaki’s influence is the least) is just the first signs of a great deal of internal disruption. I suspect that the recent “vows of allegiance” that Destiny’s leaders had to take (“voluntarily”, of course) is simply another sign that things at Destiny are starting to fall apart – Tamaki’s “loyal” lieutenants are attempting to consolidate authority.

And everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them will be like a stupid (foolish) man who built his house upon the sand.

And the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great and complete was the fall of it. Matt. 7:26-27 [Amplified]

Related posts:

1. Brian’s Cult
2. Spam Journalism #69
3. Money