Wineskins old and new

 

Wild Rose: Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
and waste its sweetness on the [prairie] air.
-Thomas Grey

A few years ago, my son-in-law tried valiantly to explain Bitcoin to me. My failure to grasp the basic principles—I realized later—wasn’t because I am a poor learner or he a poor teacher. I’ve since read a great deal about Cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and, most recently, NFTs (Non-fungible-tokens) and I think that the pathways in my brain that might allow me to grasp Bitcoin are beginning to form.

                And that’s really what it’s about, isn’t it? “New wine in old wineskins.” Perhaps that’s why we detest the music of the day; my favourite Playlist on Spotify is titled 70s Ballads. The popular music pathways in my brain were established back then; Avril Lavigne’s I Want to be your Girlfriend, ought to stay off my musical pathways! It grates like a mini-skirt in the church choir.

“Money is about bills and change and deposits and bank statements and cheques (not checks) and get your crypto outa my face!” says the curmudgeon.

                Perhaps it’s also why there’s so much strong resistance to change in Christian faith, when, for instance, scholars tell us that Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch. My goodness, in the German sermons of my youth these books were called, “Erste, zweite, dritte Mose, etc.). Life’s experiences create brain pathways, particularly those repeated often and over a long period of time. On the one hand, these pathways are highly beneficial: they allow us to do even complicated things almost as reflexes—correctly and quickly. On the downside, they reinforce prejudice against new ideas, new people, new institutions, unfamiliar philosophies, even new music.

                “I’m sorry,” he said cryptically, “but your cryptocurrency-crap simply doesn’t compute.”

                The attempt to visualize new things and ideas using older, established pathways is like a person who has only ever baked bread (and that very often) putting ice cream in the oven because he/she can only conceive of food as being that-which-has-been-baked. Neither cryptocurrency, nor blockchain, nor non-fungible tokens can be explained using traditional banking paradigms.

That God is a spirit that dwells in and among us has a hard time gaining acceptance when visual images of God and Jesus abound, and the application of personal pronouns when talking about God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit has formed hard and persistent pathways in our brains. In our minds, the spirits of peace, joy, justice, mercy, happiness come wearing material bodies.

In the time of COVID-19, we’ve observed that many reject the only real preventative treatment science has to offer, namely vaccines. Why would people do that? The only explanation I find logical is that admitting to the beneficence of governments and health science is to them like Avril Lavigne singing I want to be your Girlfriend … in a mini-skirt … in church. The brain pathways of, for instance, the most conservative Mennonites in Canada have been established through a history of separation from, and suspicion of, civic authority, and this "pathway" goes back centuries. When a new pathway allowing for cooperation across secular and religious boundaries is desperately required, a new pathway must be created in the naysayers, many of whom are living with vestiges of pseudo-colonial defensiveness.

This isn’t the whole story of vaccination denial, obviously. When asked, people give other reasons in other cases, like a suspicion about being injected with harmful or unethically gathered substances. But that, too, responds to a brain pathway that will show up in more cases than just in vaccination.

And as we’ve all discovered—in myself in my case —new pathways don’t come easily.

You see, old wineskins have done all their drying out, their contracting and expanding; they’re “brittle.” New wine requires a flexible container, a new wine skin, in other words. If you, like me, are approaching three score and twenty years, the claim to having a new wineskin of a mind would be ludicrous. I guess recognizing and accepting our “brittleness” won’t make of us new wine skins, but it’s a start on the path to understanding … surely!

At any age.