🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
I once read about how differences in the meaning of a word once it is translated into another language has caused rifts in philosophical and theological communities. The particular word being discussed as that time was the Greek word “Homoousia” and its use in defining the substance of the individual persons of a Trinitarian God. The translating of Homoousia into (Latin) Filioque, into (english) consubstantial is confusing enough. I may be wrong in my own interpretation of the issue but that isn’t my point right now.
What I read about this issue that strikes me now is how the words we use mold the very way that we think. It was posited that the Greek way of thought, with a historically rich background of philosophy, theology, and artistry, brought with it a complexity that was not necessarily shared by other cultures. That shaped a language, which shaped the way people thought. Certain nuance is lost in trying to interpret a language outside of its culture.
Continuing along with the way in which language and culture shape the way a person thinks, I was thinking about some of the lessons taught in my American culture and how it has had an affect on my life. Particularly I thought today about Adam, Eve, Kane, Abel… That was the beginning of this train of thought because I sat in Church as it occurred to me, but it is more universal than its religious beginning.
I wondered what Adam did with the rest of his life after he bit into an apple. What were the successes and failures of Eve besides her fall from grace? Kane was sent out from God’s people for murdering his brother, but what of the rest of that life? I mention these (alleged) progenitors not for their religious context and not even for my own personal belief or lack thereof in their actual existence. I bring them up in the context of how such a fundamental moral taught in the society in which I live shapes the thinking of that collective body. Feel free to exchange the religious figures of my life with your own. Even Aesop’s characters will do: The crow, the fox, the hare.
My personal moment of understanding was in realizing how each character in each story has come to be defined by, and as, one single act. Eve is the defier, Kane the murderer, the fox is sly, and the crow is a trickster. I get that these are stories meant to teach a principle in a manner easy to understand, remember, and pass on. Yet, how rooted does such simplicity become when it is accepted on such a base level?
I can empathize with Kane because I am in prison for the rest of my life for a murder charge. I am a murderer. I am defined as my single worst act in an entire lifetime of other actions. It matters nothing to my society that I am a son. Nor that I am a brother. It doesn’t even matter to them that I am a completely different person than I was; because I am still a murderer.
Too bad I couldn’t be defined as a hero for the rest of my life for the time I saved a child from drowning. I guess a second point to be made on the topic would be how we are taught to remember a person’s flaws and faults instead of their graces. Such a religion, such a philosophy, to teach us to see each other as irredeemable must be balanced.
My own struggles in life have exposed me to many extremes in individual grace and sin. I’ve seen the worst from the best, the best from the worst, and a whole lot of mediocrity in between. I have seen all of this in myself just as much as I’ve found it in others. I don’t ask for forgiveness for what cannot be repaired. I ask for no credit for anything I’ve done well. I only ask for a new lesson to be taught, and I’ll keep it simple so it can be understood, remembered, and passed on. Only this:
I am not my hands. I am not my feet.
I am not my best. I am not my worst.
I am a person, whole and complete.
If you are going to judge me, see me completely.