posted
Pop, I'm relying on memory for this, so it might be wrong (OK, probably wrong with my track record lately), but I thought some of the incidents you described had been added to the Law. Not so much added, I guess, as clarified. The Law said don't work on the Sabbath, but what constituted work had been updated and changed through the years til it became a bit ridiculous (ie, healing someone).
Posts: 221 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Moose - It makes total sense, and it would be something I would think about in considering this, too.
The example you gave in the account in Matthew 12:1-8 where the Pharisees accused Jesus disciples of, "doing what it is not lawful to do on the sabbath" was actually based upon their OWN strict interpretation of the Law, not it's original intent. Jesus used a couple of examples to illustrate this point, such as when David and his men were hungry, they stopped at the tabernacle and ate the loaves of presentation. Those loaves had already been removed from before Jehovah and replaced by fresh ones, and they were ordinarily reserved for the priests to eat. Yet, under the circumstances, David and his men were not condemned for eating them. Because the Law made room for circumstances and reasonableness.
This is the same principle as when Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The Pharisees asked if it was 'lawful to cure on the sabbath?'
Jesus made a parable by asking them, "Who will be the man among you that has one sheep and, if this falls into a pit on the sabbath, will not get hold of it and lift it out?... All considered, of how much more worth is a man than a sheep! So it is lawful to do a fine thing on the sabbath."
He was not breaking sabbath laws to do what he wanted to, he corrected their interpretation, which was harsh and burdensome.
I've never read that Jesus small presentation of spitting on the eyes of the blind man was an offense to the Law.
However, while there was room for reasonableness in interpretting the sabbath and acts of kindness/healing/etc... there was never room with interpretation to the sin of adultery. It was repeated as a major offense to God, and was in fact the ultimate reason why Jehovah rejected the Jewish nation - the adultery they had commited with other nations and gods.
It's not the mercy Jesus would have shown that seems out of character to me, but rather getting involved in a judicial action being carried out for a gross sin.
edit: Two different instances of Jesus spitting in the healing process. One for blind man, one for deaf man with speech impediment. I'll change mine back to blind man from Mark 8:22-26.
posted
Zan and Ralphie, that's what my parenthetical statement was intended to indicate -- that I understand it as a cohesive consistent message if that's the interpretation. Because I'm not clear on how many of the (someone said 613?) laws were Law and how many were "commentary," and which parts of what I failingly remember are based on scripture and which on interpretations and extrascriptural material, I didn't know for sure how much of the "Sabbath" law was Law, and how much was interpretation thereof.
And the passage I was referring to, Ralphie, was from John 9:6 -- "Having said this, he spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the man's eyes." Later (v.14) it's revealed that it was the Sabbath.
Maybe I'm just interpreting the particular questionable passage in a way that suits my already-set beliefs, so that it's consistent for me. I'm certain that some Hatrackers would say that's a fairly common, if not necessary, practice.
--Pop
[Edit -- I found the Mark story, too, but Jesus spit directly into the guy's eyes, rather than on the ground.]
[ August 15, 2003, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Papa Moose ]
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posted
I once heard the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman explained in a different light that made Jesus' response make perfect sense to me.
While Mosaic law did indeed prescribe stoning (death) for an adulterous woman, Jews, under Roman control, did not have the power to mete out a death sentence. So, they were essentially setting Jesus up to choose Mosaic law (rejecting Roman authority - treason) or Roman authority (rejecting Mosaic authority - heresy). Instead, he side-stepped the question of authority with his suggestion that the perfect among them begin the stoning.
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posted
That's a very interesting take, Lusti. If that were the case than his actions would be more understandable, and more in character.
But then it would be about side-stepping a potential political trap set for him as opposed to a lesson in not judging, if I have it right?
However, it still doesn't explain why the passage isn't found in any scriptural manuscript before the sixth century, which I believe is the most common reason why there are Biblical scholars that do not believe it was part of the original canon.
(That's a good reminder in most any setting, Moose. )
posted
It seems like many of the stories of Jesus' life take place in the context of side stepping traps. But, the context of the stories do not necessarily change their meanings. There are so many different meanings that can be taken from any one of the Biblical stories. We get to try to determine what they mean to ourselves.
As to the authenticity of this particular story, all of the Bible should be taken with a grain of salt given the amount of time that has transpired since the events supposedly take place and the inherant uncertainty of the nature of the texts themselves.
quote:It seems like many of the stories of Jesus' life take place in the context of side stepping traps. But, the context of the stories do not necessarily change their meanings. There are so many different meanings that can be taken from any one of the Biblical stories. We get to try to determine what they mean to ourselves.
I meant, if it was to be within Jesus character to have said such than it would be specifically in the case you mentioned above. In my opinion, it would STILL be out of character for him to interrupt a judicial operation for the grievous sin of adultery unless the adultery issue didn't enter into it at all.
I'm not sure if I'm articulating that well. :/
At any rate, the perservation of the Scriptures remains a fascination to me, and one of the reasons why I believe it to be inspired. According to many sources, though, the most common mistakes are not the removal of scripture but the ADDITION of them, and there are a few scriptures that didn't pop up until as late as the sixteenth century. Because many of these scriptures that were added were meant to support the idealogies of the transcriber, to preserve the original message I believe it's important to be familiar with scriptures that found their way in later, keep them in mind, but take those, specifically, with a particular grain of salt.
Ultimately, I was just wondering if anyone else had come across the same information I had, that there were Biblical scholars very skeptical as to the accounts authenticity.
(btw - Does it seem that the three of us always end up talking about this kind of stuff with each other? I can't name any other thread, but it always seems to end up being the three of us. It's made you two my favorite people to talk to about scriptural matters. )
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quote:I don't think this story is apocryphal. When I was in seminary, I heard about it from students who had experienced it themselves. Not once did someone say anything negative about the object lesson.
That's one of the funny things about apocryphal stories. People often retell them as if it happened to them directly or, more commonly, to someone they know personally.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: Claim: Students at a religious institute enrolled in a class on the life of Jesus arrive at their classroom to take the final exam and find a notice informing them that the test will be given in another building on the other side of the campus. As the students rush across campus to the new room, each is accosted by a forlorn beggar who entreats their help. None of the students stops for him, however -- they all rush by, anxious to arrive on time for the exam.
The instructor is waiting for the students when they finally reach the classroom. He explains to them that the beggar was an actor, planted by him to test their reactions. Because the students did not demonstrate that they had acquired any compassion while studying the life of Jesus, they all failed the exam.
Variations: In some versions a single student stops to assist the beggar and is rewarded with an 'A' for the course
Origins: This legend is based upon a real-life study conducted for a social psychology class at Princeton University in 1970. The basic approach of the experiment was to ask seminary students to prepare talks on biblical topics, then send them from one building to another with varying degrees of urgency. Each student passed an actor posing as a person in need of assistance, and the students' reactions were recorded to determine how much their perceived need to hurry and the subjects of the talks they were about to give affected their willingness to aid the "victim." As the subsequent write-up of the experiment explained:
"In order to examine the influence of . . . variables on helping behavior, seminary students were asked to participate in a study on religious education and vocations. In the first testing session, personality questionnaires concerning types of religiosity were administered. In a second individual session, the subject began experimental procedures in one building and was asked to report to another building for later procedures. While in transit, the subject passed a slumped "victim" planted in an alleyway. The dependent variable was whether and how the subject helped the victim. The independent variables were the degree to which the subject was told to hurry in reaching the other building and the talk he was to give when he arrived there. Some subjects were to give a talk on the jobs in which seminary students would be most effective, others, on the parable of the Good Samaritan."
This study has gained widespread currency as an urban legend in the years since it was conducted, and it's easy to see why: it preys on our basic fears that when we need help, none of the faceless strangers in our modern urban society will stop to help us, either. If religion students well versed in the life of Jesus can't be counted on to put aside their immediate needs and come to the aid of a supplicant, who can?
The legend form of the study changes a few of the details: the surreptitious assignment given the students becomes their final exam, and the course being offered is specifically about the "life of Jesus" rather than a general religious studies class. The "only one student stopped to help" variant is a predictable folkloric modification -- it still gets the moral across to the audience without scaring us too badly. Even if society as a whole fails miserably, we can still be comforted by the affirming thought that at least a few decent people out there actually care.
posted
To quote the end of The Chosen: Would you do the same thing? Yes, if I can't find a better way.
That's what this comes down to, for me anyway. Two of the hallmarks of our society are self-deception and casual ignorance. As I said before, throwing darts at Jesus or esssentially electricuting someone to death do not cause the trauma. The psychological trauma comes from the disparity between one's image of themself and reality.
These exercises are not a question of hurting these people because they deserve it (although every single person who conformed fully in the Milgram experiment would have went to jail if the experiment were real). They are a question of teaching and of therapy. It is important for people to realize the truth of who they are and what they are capable of. Without this recognition, there can be no improvement in their condition.
Every time I hear the Milgram experiment dismissed or misrepresented, as Pod did, I hear the stomp of jackboots. The question of the experiment was "How do we react to authority?" The answer is pretty clear. We do what they tell us, up to and including torturing another person to death. And yet, very few people seem to acknowledge this point. And I think, dear god, what is it going to take? Do we actually have to put people through the experiment and show them how they, themselves, are willing to kill someone else merely because an authority figure asks them to and gives some gentle nudging?
The same can be said for the darts example. These are peopel who were eager to fling darts at pictures of people they didn't like, which is completely contrary to the religion that they profess to believe. This situation reminded of the "elightened" people of America being eager to go to war, to kill Saddam Hussein and his sons, instead of regarded them as the hateful neccessities that I saw them as. Back to our students. The teacher called them on their bad behavior and, hopefully, they've learned quite a few lessons from this. Hopefully, the next time a situation where they want to hurt someone that they don't like pops up, they'll flash back to this lesson and not do it, even if someone in authority is subtly urging them to.
Real trust and real trustworthyness doesn't consist of never hurting of letting someone be hurt. It consists of always trying to do what's best for someone, even when that involves them being hurt. Ethics, especially therapuetic ethics, is not a set of objective rules, but rather walking this tight line.
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posted
I really liked that post Squick. I think the distastefulness of the Milgram experiment is because everyone can alwasy say "sure those fools may have done it, but I am not so easily fooled".
Posts: 4548 | Registered: May 2001
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quote: Maybe Nick, with 2000 posts, is comfortable enough to be treated like that... or maybe he's just too much Nick to care what anyone else thinks. I haven't seen enough of him to judge that and, for all I know, I may be aggravating the hell out of him by making a big deal out of this.
Treated like what? They are not ripping me. As for the "... or maybe he's just too much Nick to care what anyone else thinks...." comment, I don't quite get your meaning.
Here is why I posted it: 1. I thought it had a good symbolic message. 2. I didn't think it was an actual event. I just thought as a theoretical event, it transcended the verse Matthew 25:40 very well. 3. I didn't suggest that seminary teachers should go around using this method by any means.
Katharina, you say that you just shouldn't embarass teenagers in front of their peers? I have dealt with a lot of that myself, and I don't think it had that bad of an effect on me. I'm at the end of my teenage years--coming on the 19 years old--and I have to say that if anything, it's made me stronger as a person. Sure kids will have a easier time in high school and middle school without any embarrassment, but it's kind of a utopian idea to think that it will never happen. Christ teaches us to be humble anway.
Oh, and I decided not to do a 2,000th landmark. I think 5,000 would be better. I guess I just didn't feel like it. Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
My mother was my seminary teacher and she did teach this leason, with one modification. She made us all line up and get ready. She handed the darts to the first person, me. I was taking careful aim and right before I let fly, she stopped me. She said she had forgotten something. She proceeded to pull out a picture of Jesus and taped it in front of the picture I had drawn. She quoted the said scripture. We then had a heartfelt lesson on forgiveness and acceptance.
BTW- as a joke my picture was of my Mom. She knew I was joking.
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posted
kat- yeah, me neither. I just posted that in case any of the less enlightened, intelligent individuals didn't realize what they were thinking.
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posted
I'm leaving for a week with limited (on purpose) computer access over the next week, but I thought I'd point out that Milgram did a whole series of experiments on this theme, trying to sort out variables that increased compliance with authority.
Another irony that I don't think has been mentioned is that Milgram himself came under fire for his manipulation of research subjects - something that was far from unique in social psychology back then.
I have his book somewhere at home. I'll try to dig it out if it's ever relevant in another discussion.
And, btw, MrSquicky, not all people who follow the paths of the Milgram subjects and are discovered get into legal trouble. Depends on the setting and who the victims were. Unfortunately, as I posted on another thread, we have plenty of examples of torture (electric shock devices and other fun stuff) used on people with labels of autism and mental retardation. Every year sees some absolutely horrendous deaths of people under wildly abusive uses of restraint policies. Charges against staff people, even when death is the result, seldom occur.
1. Generally woefully ignorant of my religion. 2. Deluded in thinking that I am unaffected by commercials. 3. Would very likely electrocute someone if given half a chance.
But I love him anyway. Posts: 221 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
"So the central question is whether or not the teacher was abusing his position of trust to put them in a situation they did not create on their own...."
I'm confused. Isn't the ultimate point of this demonstration that the students DID create this situation? Or is there a cultural difference, here, in which the students cannot be reasonably expected to act on their own initiative in a seminary class?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
IT just seemed really aggressive to me, Nick, and Pop... I would have taken it personalluy and I kinda took it personally *for* Nick... a presumption I shouldn't have made...Apologies all around.
After a cascading series of disasters in the last 10 days, I went and played till 1 am (got in bed at three) at a dingy, smoke-filled-to-the-point-of bar to make exactly $35 and then had to get up at 6am to get to work on time... As I said a few times earlier... I was way cranky today.
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The study was unethical. Point blank, no question about it. Does that mean that the results are worthless? I never said anything to that effect. It is true that people trust those who are in a position of authority. Such a result should be unsurprising given our culture, our upbringings and how our society functions. Abuses of such trust are unethical.
quote:For the teacher, the situation quickly becomes one of gripping tension. It is not a game for him: conflict is intense obvious. The manifest suffering of the learner presses him to quit: but each time he hesitates to administer a shock, the experimenter orders him to continue. To extricate himself from this plight, the subject must make a clear break with authority.
The experimentors were in a position of trust, they broke that trust, and because of it, this experiment sucks, regardless of what was discovered. The results still don't change that these disturbing results were garnered by the execution of a disturbing study.
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posted
Also, i think "gentle nudging" by the experimentor is a misrepresentation of this study.
And, frankly, i can say that i'd never even participate in this study to begin with. As far as psychological experiments go, i decided quite a while ago that, as a psycholinguist, i don't even want to touch experiments that aren't non-invasive, painless and require not emotionally stressful tasks from participants. While i understand that for some questions this can't always be avoided. I'm not going to be the one performing or participating in such studies.
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posted
I teach at a college level as a graduate assistant, and I have seen a fellow assistant use the "embarass a student into learning" tactic. I can tell you without qualification that those students in this person's class were a) completely miserable and b) learned nothing. Once shame and humiliation enter the picture, for most people, the learning experience is over. They simply shut down and wait for the torment to end.
I am sure there are people for whom this tactic works well, but if it were used on me, I would never ever trust that person ever again. Shame is NOT a pleasant or useful feeling, particularly for those of us with guilt complexes. It gets to the point where the smallest misstep causes overwhelming guilt, to the point of not being able to function. This is NOT healthy.
As for the people who advocate a little humiliation to produce "a stronger person with a thicker skin," I say the price is too high. I was mocked mercilessly in middle school by people my age, and as a result, I developed the much-vaunted thicker skin--so much so that I became vicious back. In high school, I would say horrible, cutting things to the people who hurt me, both as a defense mechanism and as revenge. I made people cry, and was happy for it. I was definitely NOT a nice person.
I've obviously changed since then (I hope). I recognize what I was, and what I did. I also recognize it to be the product of shame and humiliation, albeit not at the hands of an authority figure. Now, I am a basically optimistic person, and I tend to restrain my sarcastic, mean comments (except in the insult thread!)
I suppose you could say that those experiences made me the person I am today, but I still think it would have been better to remained the person that I was prior to spending two years being ostracized and made fun of.
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posted
(was I the only one who thought, "oh yeah, bet he put a picture of Jesus under the target?" )
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posted
I don't understand why people would be HUMILIATED by throwing darts at Jesus. Again, is this a cultural thing?
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posted
TomD, I think it's that within a culture which holds piety up as an ideal, to reveal oneself as non-pious publically is a humiliation. Even, by the way, if everyone else reveals the same thing, as the moral of so many revered stories is to be the one who does it right. (i.e., you should've remembered not to do that "to the least of these" if you were a good Christian)
Maybe kind of like if the leader of a meeting of true-believer communist graduate students in philospophy were to "trick" the members into voting for assigning private property?
[dkw: good. I'll assume it's my piety and not my cynicism, then. ]
posted
Pod, Of course calling it "gentle nudging" is a misrepresentation. It's on par with calling the experimenter's intervention "prodding". Either statement could fit the facts close enough to give basis for arguing for it. However, both statements miss the true nature of the design and implementation of the intervention.
Calling it "gentle nudging" implies that the subjects conformed to the experiment with very little outside manipulation. Therefore, they would have complied because they wanted to and should take pretty much full responsibility for their actions. Caliing it "prodding" implies that the primary reason the subjects conformed was because the experimenter met any reluctance with direct, explicit pressure. This interpretation would, to a large extent, suggest that the experimenters bullied the subjects and would serve to lessen the responsibility that we could lay on them.
As I said above, the reality is much different from either of these. The subjects quite obviously did not want to comply with their instructions. Doing so caused them a great deal of stress. However, the experiementer's verbal manipulations were not the primary reason that the subjects complied. Many subjects complied fully without ever once having the experiment say anything beyond the initial instructions. Also, it's important to note that the highest level of manipulation - the "big guns" as it were - was not an instruction to continue, but instead an absolving the subject of responsibility - "I'll take full responsibility for the consequences."
The subjects compliance was caused primarily by the indirect pressure of authority implied by the situation. When the experimenter issued one of the three statements to encourage the subject to go on, he was trying to reinforce this pressure by directly breaking into the subjects' thinking and either adding pressure by setting up a personal confrontation situation or lessening the subjects' sense of responsibility.
This, then, is what the Milgram experiment found. The majority of people who went through the experiment found themselves unable to stand up to the generalized, nebulous situation of authority, even to the point of shocking another person to death. They complied, not because of threats or trickery, but quite simply because a person they viewed as an authority implacably told them to. If we could remove the person while still keeping the authority of the situation as powerful, they would still comply.
Besides the obvious and disturbing implications of these findings, there is a more subtle and more wide-reaching one. That is, people's actions (and likely their beliefs as well) are much more maleable than almost anyone wants to admit.
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I'm not sure that I understand the exact reasons why you think that this study was unethical. It seems to me to keep coming back to a betrayal of trust. No doubt you have other reasons (I'll probably deal with some of them below), but that seems to me to be your main one. However, betraying our subjects' trust is pretty much part and parcel of almost any social psych experiment. We always lie; it's the only way to actually get meaningful results.
I understand why performing this experiment has come to be considered unethical. The primary reason is that the level of psychic trauma suffered by the participants was judged to be unacceptable. A secondary reason is that there was no need to put any of the subjects through this trauma; we had learned pretty much all the important stuff already. There were not enough potential benefits of continuing the experiments to justify the pain they inflicted.
I have a lot more sympathy for the second argument than for the first one. No experiment should ever be performed whose trauma outweighs it's potential benefits. As for it being unacceptable, I agree that continuing the procedure as it was fits this description, but I can see the possibility of turning the psychic trauma of having to acknowledge what you are really like into a benefit, rather than a injury. Don't get me wrong, as I am part of this profession, I would never knowlingly violate its ethics, but that doesn't mean that I won't try to get these definitions broadened.
I agree that continuing the Milgram experiment, as an experiment, would be unethical, even if you could set up a follow-up program that led to beneficial outcomes. However, using a similar procedure as a theraputic tool might not be unethical. Therapeutic ethics differ from experimental ones. In specific regard to this example, therapists are allowed and even encouraged to hurt in order to lead to healing.
Self-deception is the obesity of the American psyche. I hope that we can find a therapy to deal with it that is less traumatic and troubling than Milgram-type manipulations, but, if it comes down to it, I (and others) are willing to take responsibilty for using them to combat this self-deception. It is a case where I truely believe that the benefits outweigh the losses*.
* - Note, there is almost no possibility of me or anyone ever instituting anything like what I'm describing. The idea is crazy. It's much more a rhetorical position, albiet one that I believe in strongly, than anything else. That being said, if you have any suggestions as to how to beat people's self-deceiving tendencies, I'd love to hear them.
Your mom made it an effective lesson without the humiliation aspect. People could quietly reflect on their own readiness to throw the darts and learn from that without having to find out that they'd just darted Jesus...
posted
I agree with the objection to public humilation that people have brought up. I don't think that public humilation is ever really going to work in western society. I also don't really think that the teacher was really setting up a public humilation situation.
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quote: In a follow up survey, 84% of the subjects had positive feelings about being part of the research. A year after the study, Milgram connected the subjects to an impartial psychiatrist. Although he found, that extreme stress had been experienced by the subjects, no permeant trauma could be found to exist.
quote: However, Milgram debriefed subjects and looked for any effects - 84% were happy to have participated - 15% neutral - 1% were sorry to have participated - hired a psychiatrist to determine long term effects. -subjects thought experience was instructive and enriching.
quote: While none of the participants in Milgram's experiments appeared to suffer any long-term effects, the true nature of the experiment was not explained, and the participants were denied information.
posted
I'm intrigued by the idea that 84% of these participants, without having been TOLD that it was all just a test, went home feeling good about things -- given that a fair number of them had been led to believe that they had killed and/or permanently injured someone.
That's even MORE ghastly.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Wow Kayla, that's really something that I should have known. All of the condemnations of the ethics of the Milgram experiment that I've read seemed based off of the idea that there was long term damage done to the subjects, so I just assumed that there wasn't refuting evidence of this. Mmmmm...assumption, my old foe.
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Tom, It would be completely unethical to not disclose the true nature of the experiment during the debriefing period. That's completely unjustifiable. Milgram's debriefing did reveal to the subjects that no one was actually shocked and the general principles that the experiments thought drove people's behavior. So, a year later, the subjects knew the reality of what had happened.
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