A few days ago, a bus in New York crashed bad. So far 15 of the 31 passengers are dead, and there are some accusations that the bus driver fell asleep at the wheel. Apparently the company he worked for has been flagged for problems with fatigued drivers, which reminded me of a section from Marx's Das Kapital.
Marx writes about a railway accident that occurred when some railway workers fell asleep on the job, resulting in the deaths of hundreds. But, “Everyone knows the consequences that may occur if the driver and foreman of a locomotive engine are not continually on the lookout. How can that be expected from a man who has been at work for 29 or 30 hours, exposed to the weather, and without rest?”
The workers were charged with manslaughter but, of course, there were no consequences for their employers.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
finishing up
I've been finishing a lot of books lately, including a few that I've been reading since summer. Today I finished reading The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright. Here are the 4 main things I thought were interesting:
1. Wright insists that the parables are to be read, and were delivered, as stories about the nation of Israel, rather than about individuals.
2. Truth, not as "a set of doctrines or theories but as a person and as persons indwelt by that person."
3. One of the huge dividing lines in the church, one of the real ones, is in the distribution of weight between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Most Christians I know put all the weight on the crucifixion, and read the scriptures that way. Wright argues that every early Christian theology was focused around the resurrection, and that a bodily resurrection.
4. Did Jesus know himself to be God? "It was in short the knowledge that characterizes vocation. As I have put it elsewhere: 'As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be."
1. Wright insists that the parables are to be read, and were delivered, as stories about the nation of Israel, rather than about individuals.
2. Truth, not as "a set of doctrines or theories but as a person and as persons indwelt by that person."
3. One of the huge dividing lines in the church, one of the real ones, is in the distribution of weight between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Most Christians I know put all the weight on the crucifixion, and read the scriptures that way. Wright argues that every early Christian theology was focused around the resurrection, and that a bodily resurrection.
4. Did Jesus know himself to be God? "It was in short the knowledge that characterizes vocation. As I have put it elsewhere: 'As part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be."
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