#110 The Cranky Mathematician Comes Back

I was a math major in college. Because of that, I tend to get frustrated when I encounter things that are mathematically incorrect or improper. Once in a while I stop to blog about one of those things. Welcome to the fourth installment of "The Cranky Mathematician."

My daughter, Lanie, has a shapes puzzle. She also has a shapes book. Sometimes we watch TV shows that teaches shapes. We often encounter the following shape:

That is not a diamond. That's a rhombus, a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. It really bothers me that we teach kids to call that shape a diamond. It's a rhombus. That's the mathematical term. Why in the world do we teach them to say diamond when they're little just so they can be taught in school that a rhombus looks like a diamond? Let's just teach kids the word "rhombus." R's can be tricky for little kids, but lots of words have r's in them. At the end of the day, "rhombus" really isn't significantly more difficult to say than "diamond." (Side note 1: I don't think I've ever seen an actual, precious diamond cut into the shape of a rhombus. I'm sure you could do it, but most diamonds don't look like that. Diamond is a silly name for this shape.) (Side note 2: That is the shape we use for the suit of diamonds in card games. However, clubs and spades aren't intuitive for most people. They just learn what each suit looks like. So I don't think we need to call this shape a diamond for the sake of cards.) I'm going to teach Lanie to say rhombus. And if some day she corrects you for calling that shape a diamond, know this: she's right.

Grace and peace,

BMH

#109 Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed Be Your Name

I'm fairly regularly in a situation where a group of people prays the Lord's Prayer together. (For example, our weekly community men's Bible study closes each meeting that way.) No matter the setting, we recite the Lord's Prayer this way:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

(Often there's one or two people who use "trespasses" instead of "debts," and some people say "forever and ever" instead of "forever," but what I've printed above is the most common form.)

We say the Lord's Prayer that way because that's the way we learned it. Elderly nursing home residents learned the Lord's Prayer that way when they were children. I learned it that way when I was a child. It's easy and good to use the prayer the way we first learned it.

But here's the thing: I have never owned a Bible that translates the Lord's Prayer that way. The form of the Lord's Prayer I've printed above is a cross between the King James Version and the Revised Standard Version. I've never regularly attended a church that still used either of those Bible translations in worship. I don't use "thee" and "thou" and "thy" when I speak or write, nor do I know anyone (as far as I know) who uses that language in everyday communication.

So why do we still say the Lord's Prayer that way? The answer, of course, is because we learned it that way. But why do we still teach it that way? Again, probably because we learned it that way. But I think that's a mostly silly reason. Using "thee" and "thou" and "thy" in prayer isn't wrong. The extra formality can remind us of God's greatness and help us be respectful. But we don't need to be extra formal in prayer. The words Jesus used when He taught His disciples this prayer were not extra formal, so we don't need to translate them that way. I think that teaching children this prayer with language they don't normally use and might not understand increases the risk that they will simply recite this prayer without much thought or meaning. And that's what we should really try to avoid when we use the Lord's Prayer.

If we pray the Lord's Prayer on our own, I think we should pray it however seems most comfortable and natural to us. If we use it with a group who all learned to use "thy," we should feel free to continue to do so. But if we pray the Lord's Prayer with those who are still learning it, such as in a normal church service, I really think we should use more contemporary and accessible language. It may be a bit uncomfortable for some of us who've done this before, but I think it'll help at least the newest of us (and maybe all of us) understand a little better. I'll even leave you the text from the NIV, which is pretty close to how I learned it but much closer to how I speak and think and understand:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever. Amen.

Grace and peace,

BMH

P.S. We maybe shouldn't use "hallowed" anymore either. We could use something like "make your name holy" or "may your holy name be honored." However, the NIV is meant to be written at an average reading level, and it keeps "hallowed." I'll keep thinking it about that. 

#108 Beautiful Simplicity

At the risk of stating the obvious, sports are often complicated. In order to play and watch many sports well, you have to have at least a decent understanding of a whole book of rules. Then those rules are enforced by imperfect officials who don't see everything, make mistakes, and are prone to be biased toward the home team. And if that wasn't bad enough, sometimes the team that plays the best isn't the team that wins. When we watch sports we often find several reasons to walk away frustrated or make excuses if things don't go the way we'd hoped.

But what if I told you that there's a sport that isn't complicated? What if I told you there's a sport with very few rules and almost no room for official error, a sport where those who perform better always win? This beautifully simple sport is cross country*. Now technically cross country does have rules about team size and uniforms and spikes, but for all intents and purposes it boils down to this: whoever travels the whole course from the starting line to the finish line the fastest wins. It's pretty hard to cheat in cross country. You could try to cut the course or to knock over another runner, but those things are pretty obvious, and other runners would pretty well eat you alive if you tried cheating. And officials really don't have to watch for much beyond that. The trickiest thing for officials is when multiple runners finish at nearly the same time, but even then it usually isn't as hard to determine the proper order as you might think. But the best part, in my opinion, is that you can't really hide or make excuses in cross country. If some others beat you it's because they ran better than you did. Period. Sure, you can have a bad day or be bothered by an injury and lose to someone you normally would have beaten. But whoever finishes first ran better that day than everyone else. That's all there is to it. You can't fake it. You can't really get lucky and win (barring, I suppose, a horrific injury or other competitors tripping over each other).

The beautiful simplicity of cross country is what I love so much about it. On race day it was simply myself against the other competitors out there on the course in whatever conditions. When it didn't go well, I had no one to blame but myself, and that was pretty brutal at times. But when the race did go well, there was this glorious sense of achievement. I didn't have to worry that I'd just gotten lucky or been favored by the officials. That day I was faster than however many others, and that was it. That made all the hard work of training worth it. If only more of life were that simple.

Grace and peace,
BMH

*Note: Much of what I say could easily apply to track, swimming, or cycling. However, I think those sports are more complicated due to things like more equipment and more limitations on the number of people who can compete at one time.

#107 Mini-Biographies

On November 18 I'm scheduled to preach at Trinity Christian Reformed Church in Ames, IA. The church asked me to send in a 2-3 sentence biography for the bulletin. So I started with two pretty predictable sentences: Brian Hofman is the pastor of Kanawha CRC. He has been married to Tessa for 5 years, and their daughter, Lanie, is nearly 2.

When I got to the third sentence, my mind starting going several directions. None of them seemed like great bulletin material, but I thought I'd share them here. So here's a few one-sentence autobiographies. Pick your favorite!

• Brian grew his beard to help others believe he's old enough to be a pastor.
• A native Wisconsinite, Brian believes there cannot be a more perfect food than a beer-boiled cheddarwurst.
• Brian will gladly talk your ear off about theology, the Milwaukee Brewers, or Superman comics.
• Brian studied mathematics and ran cross country in college, but he no longer does either of those things as often as he'd like.
• A Chris Farley enthusiast, Brian has a Chris Farley bobblehead on his desk and every Chris Farley-led movie on his shelf.
• Like a wannabe hipster, Brian listens to a lot of music by artists that most of the people he knows have never heard of before.
• Brian is fairly certain heaven smells like a climate-controlled acoustic guitar showroom.
• Brian thinks there are almost no circumstances where it is inappropriate to quote The Lord of the Rings.
• After 11 years driving a green Honda Civic named Janie, Brian now cruises around in a Honda Odyssey he calls Diana.
• Brian sometimes wishes he could be paid in Culver's double strawberry custard.
• During high school Brian wore sweatshirts so often that a few of his friends called him Hoodie.
• Brian used to organize jam sessions in college and still finds few things as enjoyable as playing his acoustic guitar, Autumn.
• Brian still hasn't given up hope that Jesus' ascension is a sign all humans will be able to fly like Superman in the new creation (even if he thinks that's theologically doubtful).

Grace and peace,

BMH