September 12, 2011
Trolling
In Internet speak a
‘troll’ is a person who tries to bait others on message boards. I am excited
about the word with this definition and I plan to add it to my religious vocabulary.
We’ve all been in Sunday School classes or Bible Studies where the discussion
is deliberately derailed by someone throwing in controversial thoughts just for
sport. While we can’t stop others from derailing a discussion, it’s possible
that identifying their comments as trolling will shine a light on their
motivation.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Everyone knows the charming party game where one person writes down a sentence and hands it to the moderator. Then it is whispered to each other around the room in succession until the last person speaks it to everyone. The difference is supposed to be funny when the moderator reads the original sentence. But actually, it is more insightful than funny. The same principle operating upon this one simple sentence is joined by several other principles to highly effect many nuances upon the complex systems of ideas we pass around for our educations. And when you think about it, the most of what we know we know by this second hand method of learning.
-----I thank God regularly that He did not subject His Words for mankind to a high degree of pass-around before they reach the user. Instead, except for its historical books, eye witnesses and those directly involved in the matters of it’s presentations wrote what we read in it. Therefore, like the game moderator, we hold the intended sentence in our hands while we hear many thoughts about it’s meanings which have been passed down through two-thousand years of church, Sunday School, and Seminary.
-----While most doctrines and teachings have a certain level of practical clarity, the more refined levels of their detail are much less clear and are sometimes completely erroneous. Yet these taught and re-taught meanings tend to be heard most often in Sunday schools and Bible studies. So it does not take a great deal of study before a person is dealing with less clear and sometimes erroneous details of second-hand, second-hand, second-hand teachings.
-----Take for instance, the “Daniel” Ezekiel 14:14 & 20 mentions with Noah and Job, and again mentions at 28:3 as a measure of high wisdom. It is often taught that this is the Daniel of whom Ezekiel and Jeremiah were roughly contemporary. But Daniel was no more than an adolescent when Ezekiel wrote. How could an adolescent be counted with Noah and Job as a benchmark of wisdom and righteousness? Moreover, it was presumed by Hebrew scholars that an early scribe, or maybe Ezekiel himself, misspelled Daniel, because the name is missing its yod and really spells Danel instead of Daniel. This misspelling was the easy presumption to make until the Ugaritic text of fourteenth century BC Syria was discovered in 1928. Therein was one Danel depicted as “judging the cause of the widow, adjudicating the case of the fatherless." He passed through trials and lost his son as Job lost his family. Like Noah and Job, he was not Hebrew and was an ancient figure of notoriety. His character makes complete sense in Ezekiel’s context. It is highly likely Ezekiel is referring to that ancient Canaanite figure. Yet the mention of this Danel with all his aspects in Sunday School might leave you being perceived as a troll, since Danel was associated with the Ba’als. And the fact that his name is the same combination of Dan and ‘El as is Daniel’s isn’t likely to help you much, either.
-----You’re probably right that the trolling label will shine a light on impertinent motivation, but you’ll also need to accept its shadow being intermittently cast upon a few real gems of insight.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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