Blue Cord

While we are on the subject of frivolous lawsuits, I thought I would mention a story that happened down in my home state of Tennessee.

At Lakewind Church in Knoxville, a man claims he was so filled with the Holy Spirit during a service that he fell and hit his head. He is suing the church for $2.5 million for “medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.”

This story seems like something you would see at The Onion, but since the story was reported by the AP I am assuming it is reliable. Of course, if The Onion were making this up, they would have said that the man was suing the Holy Spirit.

Let’s think about this theologically for a second. If you believe that the Spirit of God takes over your body and causes you to fall down (something the NT associates more with demon possession), then you have a big question to ask before giving yourself over to such an experience: Do I believe that the Holy Spirit will handle my body responsibly? That is, will the Holy Spirit prevent my head from hitting the pew when causing me to fall? At the very least, will God cause one of the other church members to catch me when God hurls me to the floor?

If your answer is no, then you had better look around you to make sure you have a safe fall zone before this irresponsible God gets a hold of you.

Of course, Paul says that Christians should not take each other to court (1 Cor 6:1-8), but apparently this man was concentrating on esoteric experiences instead of listening to that part of the sermon.

The Grand Rapids Press and and Channel 8 News in Grand Rapids, Michigan, are reporting that a man is suing two publishers, Zondervan and Thomas Nelson, over their publication of Bibles that contain the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The Thomas Nelson suit is over the NKJV translation, while the Zondervan suit appears to be connected to the NIV.¹

The plaintiff, Bradley Fowler, says his parents’ pastor used a translation that condemned homosexuality, which caused his parents to oppose homosexuality, which caused them to cause him to endure “emotional duress and mental instability.” He claims that it was “the intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion to cause ‘me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence . . . including murder’.”²

Setting aside the fact that neither Thomas Nelson nor Zondervan did the translation work and therefore may not be the right defendants, Fowler is going to have a very difficult time proving a causal linkage between the emtional duress he has suffered (which I am sure is quite real) and the particular translation his parents’ pastor used. Given that this is a church that used either the NIV or NKJV, it is probably a conservative church that was been opposed to homosexuality long before either of those two translations came out. Even when they read translations that did not use the word homosexuality, they were led by the Bible (and other factors) to conclude that homosexuality was wrong. The new translations may have given them some extra ammo, but it certainly did not create their opinions. And even if it did cause his parents to oppose homosexuality, it is still up to them to decide how to repond to their son. It is possible to disagree with someone who is gay without causing them emotional distress.³

The case also raises a lot of questions over academic freedom, translator responsibility, and freedom of the press (which includes any publishing activity, not just newspapers). For example, while I disagree with using the word “homosexuals” to translate 1 Corinthians 6:9 because it is inaccurate and somewhat anachronistic, it is a defensible translation. One can hardly claim that the translators (or publisher) were being irresponsible by translating it this way.

I suspect Fowler has one of two motives for bringing his suit. Either he is just trying to get money, in which case he is probably going to be disappointed, or he is attempting to get the publishers to change the translation. If it is the latter, I think arguments from solid scholarship are going to much more effective than a frivolous lawsuit.

1. The news sources do not discuss the translations, but as far as I can tell the NIV is the only translation they carry that uses the word “homosexual” in 1 Corinthians 6:9. The TNIV may also use the word, but I don’t have a copy to check. [back]
2. Only the part in single quotations is a direct quote from Fowler. The first part of the quote is the wording of the news report. [back]
3. I know our culture says that anyone who disagrees with you is automatically judging you, but that isn’t the case. [back]

A friend of mine forwarded this story to me today. Last week, a 78-year-old man crossing the street in Hartford, Connecticut, was hit by a car that was traveling in the wrong lane. The car did not stop. Neither did anyone else. The entire event was caught on a surveillance video. For those unfamiliar with Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), this video serves as a re-enactment. The only difference is that there is no Good Samaritan in this story.

As the man lay conscious and bleeding on the pavement, no one stopped. Cars continued to roll by. Some slowed, but eventually went on their way. One car approaching in the lane in which he lay stopped for several seconds, then did a u-turn and went down another street. A guy on a motorcycle circled around to take a look, then headed on his way. Pedestrians on the sidewalk didn’t even approach the guy for the first half a minute, and even later they only got within five feet. The most anyone could be bothered to do was to call 911, which only four people out of the twenty-five to thirty people around him did. Eventually, a police car that happened to be driving by stopped to help him.

Now, some might argue that no one around had any first aid training. They didn’t help him because they didn’t want to make the situation worse. That may be the case, but that should not have prevented them from providing the simple comfort of human presence. Just having someone there talking with him would have calmed him down and it would have helped to know that someone cared. But apparently no one did care. Not only did no one come to be at his side, but no one even bothered to stop traffic so he wouldn’t get hit again. Cars full of priests just kept driving by, while the Levites on the sidewalk stood and watched.

I grew up in the South, but I have lived in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the Midwest. Of all of these, I am not surprised that this happened in New England. Yes, there are a lot of good things to say about New England and there are some good people here. But in the seven years I have lived in Connecticut and Massachusetts I have seen more disregard for one’s neighbor than I have in all my time in the other regions combined. The surprising thing is that I am not surprised by this video.

For comparison sake, let me tell you what happened when I lived in Iowa in 2003. One day in January as I was driving down the street, the car in front of me struck a pedestrian. The fact that a car struck a pedestrian is the only similarity between the story in Iowa and the story in Connecticut. In Iowa, the car that struck the pedestrian stopped. So did a bunch of other cars. Within fifteen seconds, there were six of us around him. Someone who had a cell phone called 911, while the rest of us took our coats off to cover the man and support his head. Even though it was ten degrees below zero, not a single individual held back his or her coat. And while some of us went to stop traffic to keep the man from getting hit again, others stayed and talked with the man so he would know that someone cared and was with him.

The basic problem in Hartford boiled down to this: everyone expected everyone else to do something, so no one did anything. Unlike the scribe in the parable they didn’t even bother to ask, “And who is my neighbor?” When you can see a fellow human being lying bleeding in the street and keep driving by, you as an individual are seriously lacking in character. And when everyone present does that, your culture is in deep trouble.

It is being reported in the biblioblogosphere that David Noel Freedman has died.¹ Freedman was a giant in the field. He was a Johns Hopkins University graduate, and his fellow student Frank Moore Cross was the Doktorvater of my professor P. Kyle McCarter when I was at Hopkins, so naturally we read a lot of Freedman’s books and articles. And if I ever have to be trapped on a deserted island with only one book (in addition to the Bible), that book would be the Anchor Bible Dictionary, which Freedman edited.²

I don’t believe I ever met Freedman, unless it was in passing at a Johns Hopkins reception at the SBL. I do have a small connection with him, however. My first publication was a seventy-five word entry on the Egyptian city of Hanes in the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible, edited by David Noel Freedman et al. It earned me the first $3.25 I ever made as a scholar.

As I was searching for his official obituary on the web, I came across an article about his father, David Freedman. He was a comedy writer in the early days of radio, and also produced some works for stage and screen. He wrote a biography that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Another biography about Florenz Ziegfeld was later the basis for the movie The Ziegfeld Follies. He also wrote the script for Blue Blazes, a short comedy film starting Buster Keaton as a bumbling firefighter.  David Noel Freedman wrote an article about his father entitled “David Freedman: Captain of Comedy”.

1. Jim West appears to have been the first to report this. I have not been able to find an official announcement. [back]
2. I am hoping that whoever makes up the rules for being trapped on a deserted island will let the six volumes of the ABD count as one book. [back]

I just heard from a friend at Yale that the memorial service for Brevard Childs will be held on September 25th at 5:30 pm.  The service will be in Marquand Chapel at Yale Divinity School.