For those of you who aren’t into
collegiate athletics, there are three schools in the process of leaving the Big
East Conference in order to join other conferences where the money is better – (who
is kidding who about amateur collegiate athletics?) Universities who are
members of athletic conferences have contractual agreements with their
respective conferences that set forth stipulations for leaving the conferences.
Two typical stipulations (contractual obligations) are the payment of a fee to
leave and a “notice requirement” that is often from one – three years. The
notice requirement is in place to enable the conference in question to adjust
its scheduling and to recruit a replacement school to take the place of the one
that is leaving.
As is often the case when schools
leave conferences, the contractual obligations mean nothing to at least one of
the three schools leaving the Big East. This university’s attitude is, “We’re
leaving and we’ll deal with it in court if we can’t arrive at an agreement.”
Here we have an academic
institution that has entered into an agreement with other academic
institutions, and when the agreement is no long to its liking it simply ignores
its obligations and says, “Either negotiate with us or sue us.” Now I could
write, “Is this how its English Faculty teaches students to interact with a
text of literature?” but if I write that I have to acknowledge that the faculty
may well have a “reader response” approach to literature, in which case the
feelings of the students mean more than the text – certainly the university’s feelings, wants, and needs take
precedent over any moral or ethical obligation to honor the text of it
contract. The university reminds me of some of the pastors I mentioned in the
previous post, forget the text and go with the pragmatic, go with what works.
I used to think that the legal
system was the last bastion of textual integrity; but it is so no longer. In my
business vocation I see again and again not only businesses ignore contracts,
but courts ignoring the texts of contracts and imposing their own thoughts on
the words that two contractual competent parties agreed to. Because this is the
ethos of our judicial system, more and more people and businesses are willing
to break contracts, not fulfilling their obligations because they know they
have a chance in court to convince the court to ignore the words of the
contract. And in any case, the expense of litigation is such that many parties
would rather settle out-of-court; ethical and moral obligations no longer
matter – it is a matter of getting the best deal that you can.
In a world in which words no
longer matter, whether written or spoken, it is all the more important for
professing followers of Jesus Christ to treat the Biblical text with integrity
as opposed to using it for an existential joyride. Just because people don’t
say what they mean doesn’t mean that the Bible doesn’t say what God means. And
isn’t that how we descended into this abyss? “Has God really said you are not
to eat of this tree? You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you
eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good
and evil.”
Do we really think that fidelity
to the Word of God, to the text of Scripture is not important? Not critical? What
would Adam and Eve say?
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