Hopewit

  I'd like to focus on the word,  free , for a moment.  Suppose a deer gets caught in a barbed wire fence and can’t get away. And suppose some good people who happen to have wire cutters with them cut the deer loose, and the deer runs off wherever it likes. (This is a very popular motif on Facebook.) The deer is freed , and therefore free . Or is he? Suppose then that the hunting season opens and men with rifles are roaming the woods and meadows. The deer has good reason to be afraid and nervous until the season ends and frees the deer from the anxiety of the hunt. He feels free (well except for the coming of a winter of hunger, cold, disease, wolves and coyotes, perhaps).   Freedom from fear is the principal thing most refugees are seeking. And then there’s freedom of choice (“order whatever you like, son”) and there’s freedom of movement , which we deny transgressors as punishment by jailing them. And there are other freedoms , like freedom from discrimina...

  You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! (II Corinthians 11:19, NIV) Dirk Willems rescues his naive pursuer. This saying from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is rendered in such a variety of ways in translations and paraphrases that it’s hard to know whether he’s for or against putting up with “fools.” Or likely, whether any current interpretation does his comment justice. Certainly, politicians who use it to denigrate opponents should stop, read the verse in context and consult Bible scholars before saying, “I don’t suffer fools gladly.” Perhaps Paul (who was skillful in exercising soft persuasion, even humour in his preaching and writing) was employing political skill to endear himself and his cause to the Corinthian audience. Corinth, a Greek city, was a centre of learning in Paul’s time, comparable to a university city like Oxford, UK in ours.   We mustn’t forget that Paul also wrote, “but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to ...