{"id":4218,"date":"2009-05-16T21:40:20","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T01:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=4218"},"modified":"2009-05-16T21:40:20","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T01:40:20","slug":"how-am-i-mean-let-me-count-the-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/how-am-i-mean-let-me-count-the-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"How am I mean? Let me count the ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few recent conversations started me thinking about how utterly rotten<\/a> I am to the Diocese of Niagara<\/a> and the Anglican Church of Canada<\/a>; possibly even downright abusive and taunting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What has been keeping me awake at night is, is it justified?<\/p>\n

The parish I attend is an ANiC church that used to be in the Diocese of Niagara; the diocese is suing 3 of the ANiC churches in Niagara \u2013 or more accurately the wardens of the churches. The parishes in question had a choice of whether to fight for their buildings or to hand over the keys to the diocese; I think a moderately convincing case could be made for simply handing over the keys and avoiding further strife: the case could be based on 1 Cor 6<\/a>, or Matt 5:40<\/a> for example. J. I. Packer addresses these issues to some extent here<\/a>. He makes the point that parishes have a duty to try to hang on to their buildings if the gospel would suffer by letting them go. I find this convincing for at least the parish I am familiar with.<\/p>\n

In that context, let me get back to being mean. Two reasons have been presented to me for being \u201cnice\u201d:<\/p>\n

First, as a parish, being kind and generous is \u201cwho we are\u201d; the person who suggested that would probably concede that it is not who I am \u2013 but let\u2019s examine the idea anyway. It is true that the parish I attend is a loving, caring, giving community of wonderful people. Nevertheless, we are engaged in a lawsuit that we believe to be legitimate. Fighting someone in court is not an amicable activity: to pretend otherwise, adopt a simpering grin and make gestures of phony friendship is merely concealing a warzone with treacly charm: it is futile. I concede, though, that we are programmed to adopt the veneer of politeness from an early age and it probably does help to hold anarchy at bay. After all, if I were as naturally impolite as this individual<\/a>, it could have ended up with riot police and fire-hoses – perhaps not the end of the world, but it would have ruined the carpet.<\/p>\n

The second is the game-playing aspect: we want to look like the good-guys. Preferably the innocent, downtrodden, set-upon by an unfeeling institutional Goliath, helpless, butter-wouldn\u2019t-melt-in-our-mouths good-guys. Well, the simple fact is, we are the good-guys, but we are also fighting a messy battle in court where cut, thrust, chop and dice make a little verbal taunting look tame. To insist on verbal niceties would be like forbidding 2nd<\/sup> world war solders from singing the vulgar version of Colonel Bogey so as to avoid offending Hitler.<\/p>\n

So now, back to sleeping soundly and \u2013 counting the ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few recent conversations started me thinking about how utterly rotten I am to the Diocese of Niagara and the Anglican Church of Canada; possibly even downright abusive and taunting. What has been keeping me awake at night is, is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,75,110],"tags":[2032,2080,2111],"class_list":["post-4218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglican-church-of-canada","category-christianity","category-diocese-of-niagara","tag-anglican-church-of-canada","tag-christianity","tag-diocese-of-niagara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}