Biblical discrepancies

 One of the highlights of my week is the time I spend leading Bible studies in Maximum and Medium A at Drakenstein Correctional Centre.

Whatever the ostensible topic of the day, we always have wide ranging and hard hitting discussions in (I trust) Spirit-led directions.

Last week one of the men brought up a good illustration to explain some of the apparent discrepancies in biblical accounts.

In Medium A there are various rooms (cells) which accommodate everything from one to 20-30 men. Each has to produce a "room report" every day which provides details of everything that's happened within the room. A single cell example might start with the inmate taking off his shoes and leaving them outside the door when he went inside. A multiple-occupancy room report would have the men going inside with their shoes on.

Fast forward one hundred years to historians researching prison habits in twenty-first century Western Cape Correctional Centres. One historian is convinced that inmates have to be bare-footed inside the cells, no shoes are allowed. Another historian says that's rubbish; he has evidence of shoe-wearing within prison rooms. Without additional knowledge who can tell which historian is correct? How can the discrepancy be resolved?

With a little bit of extra information it's easy to see how both views can be reconciled.

A man in a single cell has to leave his shoes outside because shoelaces can be used to commit suicide. When there are multiple inmates in one room it's more difficult to use shoelaces to kill yourself without someone else noticing and intervening. Therefore there isn't the ban on shoes in rooms containing more than one person. Apparent discrepancy resolved.

Sometimes all we need is a bit more background information and the humilty to acknowledge that there might be things modern people don't know but original writers and readers did.

At last

 This morning we actually managed to get past the first session of the Restoration programme.

On Monday evening Ashley and I went through "About you" with about twenty members of a local addiction support group. Some were interested, others a bit miffed that they'd come with a list of questions only to find the meeting was focused on something else. We thanked them for their time and invited them all to the next session on Saturday.

On Saturday six of the group turned up at the church hall to delve deeper into understanding and breaking the cycle of damaged lives, unforgiveness, self-centredness and pain. We'd prayed that the right people would attend. These were the support group leader, his wife and four men whom he'd identified as future group leaders. They wanted to be equipped to help others; they ended up being challenged and informed themselves.

We were trying to fit five sessions into one day. One of the challenges of working in the community is the difficulty of getting people to commit to a time for regular meetings, especially when some work and others can't see the point. That's why we'd agreed to try a one-day programme. This group saw the benefit of what we were offering and even said, "Don't hurry through the material. We'll come again. Tell us everything." So we tried.

We only covered about half of what we'd planned but even so, one man said he'd sat through many courses but none had made such an impact as this (and we hadn't even reached the topic of forgiveness).

Thank God for his timing and his gathering the right people. This is how ideas spread - organically and at a grassroots level, by people known and trusted reaching others in a way that an outside process might struggle to achieve.

We're looking forward to the next time.