So my early take on verse 15 was that of Paul kneeling before God the Father of all Christians. That is not what not the entirety of what he was saying. That interpretation was not big enough. The view implied by Paul was really much bigger: he was kneeling before the creator of all, the one and only God. He knelt before the maker of all people.
Many people will deny Paul’s viewpoint, just as many will not obediently kneel before God. The denials of the non-kneelers do not unmake God the maker of all. Such folks still exist as a result of God’s design. They may not like it any more than they want reading glasses. Like it or not, though, with mileage come glasses, wrinkles, and a bunch of other things. Disliking or denying or not claiming something does not alter the situation. Inevitable is just that. We all have to tug and fight with our own conceptions though and my statements here are not intended to castigate others; hopefully, they would consider the Bible, the Judeo-Christian spectrum, and adept authors to knock down and mold their own experiences and thoughts.
Reject the prejudice1
There is a personal side note to this, a side note to my prejudice on Bible translation. The post-1984 NIV translations get this verse better than the 1984 version. I was, am, naturally more pleased with the 1984 version because I like to have Paul kneeling before God the Father of the Christian family. The thing is that is not really what Paul said. So, here is a lesson for me: when I find my opinion about a translation to be wrong, I do best to drop it. I must not be tenacious when my opinion is upended.
Admit prior shortcomings
We do well to acknowledge prior wrong-headedness. No one is perfect; that is a common phrase. We do well to aim for perfection. While composing this lesson I found myself drawn time after time to the embattled Virginia Democrats. Last week we spoke of the Democratic Governor Ralph Northam whose tenure in the Governor’s mansion was threatened by his decade’s old medical school yearbook. 1984 was the year this pediatrician-cum-Governor graduated from medical school. His yearbook has him posing in blackface beside an unidentified character in Klan robes.
Rabbit trail warning: Of course, many vantage points are floating up now like “It’s not me because I hold my beer in my other hand.”–this is where I would insert the “are you serious?” photo or the laughter track. Rabbit Trail #2: Last week a fellow in class with a twinkle in his eye suggested that his one of his wife’s favorite movies was Blazing Saddles. The rebuttal and all that surrounded that discussion engendered its own set of laughter. In any event, since I am talking of vantage points floating and Northam’s beer-handedness-excuse I found Monty Python’s Holy Grail discussion of whether or not witches float to come to mind. You are now departing the rabbit trail.
Things became much more troublesome for these Virginia Democrats this week. A woman alleged being sexually assaulted by the Lieutenant Governor: Justin Fairfax. Then the Attorney General, Mark Herring, had his own crisis of blackface in regard to photos taken when he was 19. Here is an apnews link about these things. By the time I was ready to publish this another woman was dropping accusations and Fairfax was asking the FBI to investigate.
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