The Tectonic School Philosophy - Part 9

A series of posts outlining the background and purpose behind Tectonic School

This series of posts come out of the draft document that, combined with a sizable number of devotionals, will eventually comprise a book to help launch Tectonic School programs.

It outlines particular problems that are present in our society, our local churches, and in the lives of individuals and families. The solution offered is a plan to integrate a severely disenfranchised and undervalued group - young men - into meaningful involvement in local communities through training and employment in trade jobs and the life of the local church. This will be accomplished through cooperation in mutually beneficial relationships with local businesses, local churches, and local families. 

This is the fourth post in a series. The first post is available here: 

Failures and Faithlessness in Speaking Truth

This error can be understood in two ways; one is the error of wrongly fearing God, which can express itself conservatively or liberally. The other is idolatry, the displacement of the true God for another one.

An error of understanding, or misapplication of scripture does not necessarily result in a teaching contrary to scripture. Consider the meaning of the words used for sin. In Hebrew, it is a word that means to slip or misstep, and similarly In Greek, the word used describes an arrow that fails to hit its mark. To miss the mark is a useful definition of sin. It reflects the concept of trajectory and intensity. I can miss the mark when tossing a crumpled up paper into a wastebasket. If it falls to the left or right, the direction is off. If it falls short or goes long, the intensity is off. But if I throw it at a person instead, I haven’t missed the mark of the wastebasket, I’ve set a different aim. 

While the meaning of the command “Do not murder” can be debated to include questions about things like intent or use of force, it cannot be misconstrued to mean “Do murder”.¹  That replaces the God who spoke truth with the god who speaks lies, the father of lies, the devil. The same can be said about the rest of teaching scripture. There is a range of interpretive meanings, and there are many errors that can be understood as a failure to hit the mark, but there is also a limit to what is attributable to human frailty and ignorance before it is rightly understood as willful rebellion.  

This is important to understand, because it shields us from making similar errors, mainly falling into the defeater argument. In a formal debate, the person who wins is not necessarily the one who holds the right position, who is committed to being truthful, or even the one who is most convincing, but the one who is able to avoid technical mistakes.

We can decry the reality of this situation, but we cannot avoid it. Why is this? The debate must exist within a structure of rules to serve the purpose for which it exists. Every means of evaluating right from wrong, or truth from falsehood exists in these sorts of structures, though the rules and strategies vary. While technical execution is most important to winning competitive debates, charismatic persuasion is much more important in a debate between two candidates running for office. In a court of law, the goal is to determine truthfulness and factuality, while in the scientific method, isolated and repeatable evidence of cause and effect is the gold standard.

Yet all of these structures are prone to exploitation of technicalities and loopholes. A just system seeks to update and reform such weak points when they are discovered, but the likelihood of such improvement happening is dependent on whether or not the loopholes benefit the people in charge of fixing the law.

The Roots of Error

The Pharisees sought on many occasions to trap Jesus into saying something that would allow them to dismiss him. Their continued attempts to corner him indicate that they took his teachings seriously, even if they were upset by them. Not everything about what the Pharisees taught was wrong, in fact Jesus told people “... the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you.”² But he cautioned people not to imitate their behavior, because it missed the mark of what the law was intended to accomplish.    

In other words, the spirit of the law was being subverted by the letter. This behavior was often called out prior to Jesus through the office of a prophet. In the early days of the kingdom of Israel, prophets spoke most often against the blatant disobedience of the Lord’s commands. After the return from exile, the Israelites integrated the lessons learned from their prior failure to perform the ritual requirements of God’s law, and they began to orient their culture towards observance of the Torah. 

The prophet Daniel, a man who personally exhibited righteousness in his deeds, was overcome by the grievous error of Israel’s sin before God, yet he marveled at the faithfulness of God, who told the prophet Jeremiah the length of Jerusalem’s desolation. Seeing the return on the horizon, Daniel prayed a powerful prayer of repentance. 

Unlike the suffering inflicted on the Israelites in Egypt, by an outside force, Daniel saw that God was justly judging the people who bore His name for their wickedness. Yet despite their faithlessness, God kept His promises to Israel. Many people surely viewed the return to Israel as a sign of God's faithfulness to His people. Their zeal for God was stirred by His overwhelming mercy. Yet not all of this increase in religious fervor was born out of gratitude; many viewed it as a means of appeasing the God who sent Israel into exile, and often kept out of fear. Such fear can be seen in the prayers of Ezra, and in his decision to act on God’s silence by having men abandon their wives and children for their foreign blood, rather than teaching them to obey God’s commands. Worse still, the law was sometimes for personal gain on the part of those in charge of administering it, or as a means of coercing useful behavior from the people they considered lower class.

1.  This is the key difference between perspectival knowledge and postmodernism. Perspectival knowledge understands that a person sees from a particular place and time, with a limited amount of facts and scenarios to draw upon. If someone misinterprets the meaning of a command, we should not hold ignorance of particular facts against them, although we should expect them to understand the ‘gist’ of the teaching. Postmodernism, as it has been tacitly accepted by the general public, centers on the notion that because none of us can know with absolute certainty what someone else’s words mean, we should not be held responsible for understanding any particular interpretation of a command. This gives unlimited freedom to the individual to reinterpret the words, and when the intent of the speaker is deconstructed to “power dynamics”, even the most explicitly contrary interpretation can be justified. Therefore, it is valid for someone to conclude that because the authority commanding us not to murder is attempting to manipulate our behavior for their own benefit, the best way to liberate ourselves from the grasp of their power is to commit murder.  

2. Matthew 23:2