We start with a discussion of what is permissible on the sabbath and what isn’t. Which, if I’m in a good mood, I’m happy to take as a caution against uncritically using rigid laws to prevent you from doing good; e.g. Matthew 12:11, “And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?” Of course, it’s not quite that simple: part of his justification is that priests are allowed to do more on the sabbath than other people and, as he says in Matthew 12:8, “For the Son of man is Lord even of the sabbath day.” So there is a bit of special pleading here, but it’s pretty sensible special pleading, and in general I like how the chapter starts.
I’m not so thrilled with how the chapter continues and ends: a repeat of the “you’re with me or against” me philosophy that I ranted about yesterday, complete with a recasting of family ties. But it’s gentler this time, and actually there’s a lot of good in the recasting of family ties that the chapter ends with: he’s not rejecting existing family ties, he’s instead broadening the notion of family, and I wholeheartedly support that.
And, in the middle, we have a rather interesting line, from Matthew 12:25: “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand”. Which I quite like: people working together are ever so much more powerful than people working against each other, or even than people who are randomly working in related but not particularly well-aligned directions. Now, that statement alone doesn’t mean that you should take draconian measures to force people in line; but that doesn’t limit the statement’s utility as a diagnostic, or even say that parting ways isn’t sometimes a quite reasonable response to a serious difference in views and desires.
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“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand”
But are you reading this as a moral claim (houses and cities and kingdoms should strive for unity) or some kind of claim about what actually happens! I would say there are vast individual differences between houses, and between kingdoms/nations, as to how divided against themselves they can be, and still stand. In some cases it can be quite a lot!
12/28/2010 @ 7:25 pm
Oof, that’s a really good question. I’m not reading it as a moral claim, no, I’m reading it as a statement of fact, but of course, now that you point it out, it’s laughably false on the surface of things.
I think that what’s going on here is another instance of my Agile brainwashing. So I’m really reading it as “a team will generally be more effective if their actions are aligned”. Even that might be false, though – some amount of random walking is useful for discovery. (Which is one reason why slack is a good idea.) And most groups aren’t teams, in particular kingdoms, houses, and cities aren’t! (Or, in general, math departments.)
12/28/2010 @ 8:03 pm